Asbury, A Clarification

Asbury, A Clarification
Saturday, March 18, 2023 by Dr. James Walraven

Categories: Apologetics / Contemporary issues / Encouraging words / Spiritual warfare / The church / Thought for Today

In thinking about things, I believe one of my posts regarding Asbury, in part, missed the mark. In the fifth post, I talked about how being either liberal or conservative didn’t prevent one from being a Christian, and for an example, I contrasted Simon the Zealot with Matthew, and that Jesus’s disciples included those from both the political Left and the political Right.

Matthew, as we talked about, was working for the Romans. Many in the Emergent and Progressive churches would likely label him an oppressor; in the literature , that is how they describe Rome. Meanwhile, Simon would be seen as something of an early leftist “freedom fighter.”

When choosing “the twelve,” Jesus included both of them. One does wonder if they ever got into any “political discussions.” Interestingly, God didn’t deem that of any importance, as the Scriptures are 100% silent on the subject. What mattered is that both put Christ first; both left their past behind and followed Christ. With Matthew, Scripture is directly clear; with Simon, one can only assume, as the Scriptures don’t record any of his words, only declaring that he was a zealot.

Traditions about how and where Simon was martyred are varied. There is yet another tradition that says he died of old age in Edessa. We just don’t know. A Roman Catholic tradition seeks to say that Simon’s “zealotry” related to how he proclaimed the Gospel after conversion. Since he is called a zealot from the time he appears in the Scriptures, I think it is safer to remain with the political view of him.

The point, regardless, is that both Matthew and Simon left their past behind (Paul says the same thing about himself, going so far as to say that he counts his past as rubbish or refuse). If we don’t elevate Christ over political aspirations, regardless of which side those aspirations may be on—Left or Right—something other than Christ has first place. If Christ does have first place in our lives, whatever our political views may have been, they now need to conform to what the Bible states.

On the one hand, God’s justice is real, even in respects to social justice. But on the other hand, and this is key, it is justice according to God’s standards, not our sinful ones. What God declares to be “sin” will never be “just” in God’s eyes. Thus, there are things in the Scriptures that will tick off adherents to both those on the political Left and Right.

What do we value most: our politics, or our willingness to put our politics aside, to follow and obey Christ? Given the heated polemics in much of what passes for “Christianity” that is not an idle question.

That also gets back to why I’m not a member of any political party, as mentioned in that post. No political party will solve the underlying “sin issue,” the one issue most prefer to deny exists. That issue is solved only through the work of Jesus Christ, his death on the cross, and for us by then placing faith in Him. Sadly, political parties insist they can solve our problems via their own programs and methodologies. That will never happen.

Jesus remains the only answer.

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