You’ve been tricked! This article is not about politics! But I got you here, didn’t I? Good. Now, hear the words of Christ: “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32).
A political agenda is a plan (we might say “scheme” in some cases) belonging to a particular political party characterised by certain philosophies and methods to culminate the plan. Politicians make various promises and hardly keep any of them. God’s political agenda is to forgive sinners. All sins are forgivable. Yes, even that one. Every sinner can be forgiven. Yes, even murderers. God’s grace is never too small to cover any sin.
To be certain, God is not political. God is a God who saves. Thus, His plan to save is His salvific agenda.
God first announced His salvific agenda in Genesis 3:15, “I will put enmity between you [the serpent, the Devil] and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This verse is known as the protoevangelium, which means “first Gospel promise.”
Man rebels against their Creator and God immediately sets forth His salvific agenda to call such sinners to repentance. The promise of this agenda would unfold in “the woman’s seed,” the Messiah, Jesus Christ. “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel'” (Matthew 12:3; cf. Isaiah 7:14).
The serpent strikes Jesus in His crucifixion, but Jesus strikes the final blow to the serpent’s head in His death and resurrection. In death, Christ defeated death by dying as the final atonement (sacrifice for forgiveness of sins) for all mankind. In His death and resurrection, He promises life to those who believe in Him. “Since, therefore, the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the Devil” (Hebrews 2:14). The cross-event—Jesus’ death and resurrection—is together called the word of the cross, which is the power of God for those who are being saved (1 Corinthians 1:18).
God’s salvific agenda is still at work. Jesus is calling sinners to repentance in His Word and Sacraments. God delivered His promise in Jesus Christ, the promise we still receive today in the Word and Sacraments. Your political party cannot save you. They cannot save the earth. Your favoured politician does not call you to repentance. Rather, Christ saves you and He will create a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21). Christ alone calls you to repentance and promises you forgiveness of all your sins, which is assured to you in the hearing of the Word, the waters of your Baptism, and Jesus’ body and blood in the Eucharist.
By faith in these promises, Christ surely delivers His promise to you. God’s salvific agenda is more certain than the empty philosophies of politics.
The Lutheran Column 