Now Christ is the true Example set by God for every soul in this world to follow. The conduct of Christ is Christianity. Conformity to that Example in the conduct of the individual believer—this and this alone, is Christianity in the world. The conduct of Christ, the Example, was totally separate in all things from politics and the affairs of the state. Christianity, therefore, is the total separation of the believer in Christ from politics and all the affairs of the state, the total separation of religion and the state in the individual believer.
Accordingly, Jesus said to His disciples forever, “Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.” John 5:19. And to His Father He said of His disciples forever, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. As He is, so are we in this world.” 1 John 4:17. “It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master.”
The following passage from a sermon by the late Thomas Hewlings Stockton presents an infinity of truth, and is worthy to stand forever in letters ablaze with eternal glory:
“There was one sacrifice too great for Christ to make. He was willing to leave the throne of the universe for the manger of Bethlehem; willing to grow up as the son of a poor carpenter; willing to be called the friend of publicans and sinners; willing to be watched with jealous eyes, and slandered by lying tongues, and hated by murderous hearts, and betrayed by friendly hands, and denied by pledged lips, and rejected by apostate priests and a deluded populace and cowardly princes; willing to be sentenced to the cross, and be nailed to the cross, and bleed and groan and thirst and die on the cross. But he was not willing to wear an earthly crown or robe, or wield an earthly scepter, or exercise earthly rule. That would have been too great a sacrifice. He did, indeed, endure the crown of thorns and the cast-off purple and the reed, and the cry, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ But this was merely because he preferred the mockery to the reality; so pouring infinite contempt on the one, not only by rejecting it in the beginning of his ministry, but also by accepting the other at its close.”
This is the Christianity of Jesus Christ, as respects the great question of religion and the state. And, as in all the instruction from God from the beginning of creation down, it calls always for the complete separation of religion and the state in all things and in all people, in order that the Christian may enjoy infinitely higher things.
A.T. JONES.