Rome could not help but trip over her own feet. When you get the gospel wrong the error does not stay hermetically sealed, leaving everything else safe. Rather, the whole ship goes down. Rome, seeking to elevate the church, created a two-tiered world, not just distinguishing, not just dividing, but separating the sacred and the secular. The Reformation, in turn, did not seek merely to get this doctrine or that straightened out, but sought to bring every thought, as well as every word and deed captive. They understood, as we must once again come to understand, that Jesus rules over all things.
While contemporary evangelicals are not making the exact mistake Rome made we have divided reality into two worlds. We are happy to affirm that Jesus rules over our spiritual lives, that He reigns in that kingdom that resides in our hearts. Our broader lives is where things get a bit fuzzy. He impacts our work in the sense that we try to live ethically there. He is present when we are at play in the sense that we don’t want to commit any of the really bad sins. But our attitudes, perspectives, even our convictions often are simply inherited from the world around us. When we find cognitive dissonance between what the world says and what the Word says, too often we embrace the former and massage the latter. Then we justify what we’ve done by separating our faith from the rest of the world.
It, the world, however, is all His. His reign knows no bounds. There is no issue over which He has no opinion, and no opinion He has that is not true. He commands of us that we take not some, not most, but every thought captive to His obedience. That means when I think through how a man has peace with God, I must submit to Him. When I think through how to understand the culture wars, I must submit to Him. It means that I must fear Him and not the disapproval of the world.
The irony is that we can have the courage to face the world because He really does rule over it. When we stand firm in rejecting the sexual anarchy of the broader world and are vilified for it, every bit of hardship that comes our way, whether we are cancelled or driven out of business or put in prison, it is because such is what He ordained for our good and His glory. We need never fear He is in heaven wringing His hands over what we are going through.
Our calling isn’t, however, just to stand against the forces of change and shout “STOP!” Our calling is to make manifest, that is, visible, the glory of His reign. We are to press the crown rights of King Jesus where’re He reigns. Where does He reign? Everywhere. Reformation means re-forming, in the power of the Spirit, ourselves and the world around us. Jesus reigns.