Appendix 9. If You Are a Pastor

These days I often find myself lost in thought. I am troubled over whether pastors really need to take part in politics, because it seems to me that a pastor’s work may be this: to nurture the people rightly in the word, and to help them shine as lamps as they go on to live as politicians, business people, and artists. Of course, with heretical groups setting out to enter politics, there must be worry and much to think over. All the more reason, I think, for pastors to keep to their own place. If we consider what calling a pastor has received from God, the answer comes at once. The world is not where Christians are meant to stay, in any case. Pastors, elders, and every member of the church are citizens not of this world but of heaven. The task God has entrusted to every church in the world is the saving of souls. I believe a pastor’s calling is to help the people make their decision by the word and go back out into the world to shine its light. Though they have such precious work to fulfill, pastors set out into the world to go into politics, and when I see it my heart is heavy, because it looks to me like grabbing for the worldly power Jesus laid aside.

The unrighteous steward in Luke 16:1-15, who forgives the debts, makes this easy to understand. Though the unrighteous steward forgave the poor their debts, his master commended him; in the end, what the master wanted was for the steward to understand the hardships of the poor and the weak and to forgive their debts. The poor, who could never repay their debts by their own strength… people worn out by the work of the world… the master wanted a steward who would cancel their debts and help them find strength to live. In God’s sight, the wealth of this world is unrighteous. All of it is unrighteous, because the moment the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was eaten, everything in the world fell under the curse along with it. Of course, when saved believers use by faith everything they need, both to labor for God’s work and to live their lives, they will be commended as wise, just like the unrighteous steward. For the command to be faithful even with unrighteous wealth is the very heart of God.

Everything in the world is unrighteous wealth, but if Christians who have received the Spirit of God are faithful with that wealth for the Kingdom of God, God will entrust them with true riches. Unrighteous wealth does not mean money earned dishonestly. It means that the things of this world are unrighteous. It is like this: a person without the Spirit of Christ can only be a sinner, but a person who has received the Spirit of Christ is a Christian. As the Lord says through Luke, church members go out into the world and live diligently; they run into trouble among people and circumstances, spill out all hundred measures of the word that filled them, take on a debt of a hundred measures again, and come back to the church exhausted. Then pastors must cancel a hundred measures, or fifty, by the word, by counsel, and by prayer. Only then can God’s people go out into that fierce world and fight the spiritual battle once more.

If pastors turn their backs on so precious a calling and leap into the politics of the world right before their eyes, who will fill the empty hearts of God’s people, gasping in spiritual drought? We must think about this more deeply.

We must think, and think again, about what God has entrusted to pastors. Just because the world, Satan, and the heretics are on the move, we must not take the same road. If you who read this are a pastor, may you consider what God has given you. If pastors do not step forward themselves, but lead the people God has entrusted to them into deeper truth and help them grow, each one of those people will shine fully as a lamp in the world. I earnestly hope that pastors will never let the word slip from their hands. If you fear heretics taking over the government and unbelievers seizing power, then I hope you will teach your people the truth all the more. We must help them gain spiritual discernment and look to the Lord alone, help them know God’s will as they take part in politics, and teach them to run their businesses by the word. We must help them build their homes and their lives around the word. It is because they do not know the word that people abandon God as soon as they become president. It is because pastors did not teach them that, once they hold power, they turn around and persecute Christianity.

Parents cannot shoulder the schoolbag and go to school themselves because their child is doing poorly. They must help the child study on their own, and raise them to be a mature person who in turn helps others. It is my earnest hope that you will look more deeply into the heart of God. When pastors pour the full word of truth into the hearts of the people who hang on their words, longing to hear the truth, God will raise up the nation, its people, and the church.