I recently attended a talk by Ian Barrs about Christians and their involvement in politics. One of his many points was that we cannot ignore Biblical commands in whatever our involvement in politics, from chatting with friends to running for office. He gave a handful of examples of such commands:
- love other believers (John 13:34-35, John 17:20-21)
- love your neighbor (Luke 10:25-37)
- love your enemy (Matthew 5:43-48)
- pray for those and bless those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44, Romans 12:14)
- honor and pray for those in authority (1 Timothy 2:1-4)
- obey the law, generally (1 Peter 2:13-17)
- do not bear false witness (Deuteronomy 5:20)
While I think one could make an excellent case for many other Biblical commands—this is already a very challenging list.
He also quoted from Francis Schaeffer’s The Mark of the Christian (emphasis mine):
In John 13 the point was that, if an individual Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he or she is not a Christian. Here Jesus is stating something else that is much more cutting, much more profound: We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.
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