Love of Country
Joel Van Hoogen
Is it appropriate to be proud of your country? What place does patriotism have in our obedience to Christ? Is it right for us to sing, “God bless America”? Start with this: Nations are God’s idea. Whatever the mediating forces that give rise to nations and whatever the failings that accompany them, they exist by God’s decree. He determines their rise and their fall. He determines the boundaries of their dominions. And they have a primary purpose, namely, God gives them as environments in which he may be discovered (Acts 17:26–28).
God has a plan for the nations. Psalms 22:27–28 (NKJV) speaks of that day when all nations shall rest under the blessed rule of God: “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You. For the Kingdom is the Lord’s, and He rules over the nations.” This eschatological hope is celebrated in Revelation 5:9–10, as triumphant saints rejoice in its pending accomplishment: “You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth.” A completed salvation shall unite a redeemed people before God in everlasting worship. This redemption will not wipe away our former identities. We shall see people there representing diverse races, languages, and nations. [1]
Our mission is to reach the nations for Christ. Our motivation is threefold. First, we are compelled by the command of our Lord Jesus (Matt 28:18–20; Acts 1:8). We obey him and turn outward to make disciples in our Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. Second, we are to be compelled by compassion for lost people in all these localities. This compassion engages us in the great command to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:31). Third, our highest motive is a zealous love for our Savior. He has died to win to himself people from all the nations, and our motive in missions peaks in a passion that he should be glorified and worshipped among them all.
God has destined that all nations one day serve him as King and worship him as Lord. From this divine intent for the nations, we might safely make this minimal application: A national pride, a pride in your nation and country, is a good thing. Whatever the flaws and errors of your land, it exists by God’s decree, and God has a plan for it.
Paul is an example to us of appropriate national pride. The nation he belonged to was a nation of people and customs and boundaries like our own. And Paul was proud of his nation and his national identity. Yes, Paul’s reasoning for that pride was Israel’s unique place in God’s redemptive strategy (Rom 9:4–5), but as we have seen, that strategy entails a redemption of nations as well as individuals. Israel, at the time in which Paul carried out his ministry, had a corporate mindset that effectively made them enemies of the gospel (Rom 11:28). And yet, Paul loved his nation, and there was a genuine pride he expressed in being a member of that nation.
Was God about to abandon Israel forever? Paul answers in Romans 11:1–2, “I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.” In 2 Corinthians 11:22, Paul speaks of his place among the Israelites, not in shame but as a credit to himself: “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I…” In Philippians 3:4–5 Paul again writes, “I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews…” Now the context of all these passages reveals a greater point about them, but from each we may take away this note: there was a pride, or what we might even call a patriotism, Paul had in his national identity. A minimal application of Paul’s love of his country and countrymen and willing identity with them should be this: You are not wrong to feel a special love and a distinguishing pride in your homeland. Only now consider how Paul expressed that nationalistic pride, and let me suggest that if you love your country, you should follow his example.
A pride of nation should never eclipse our love of God and our glory in him.
In all these references where Paul expresses a love for his nation and an identity as one of its members, the context will show that Paul espouses a greater love for God and a greater desire for God’s glory to be known by him and through him. Our pride in our country should never interfere with our complete allegiance to God and our commitment to live for his glory over all else.
Love of country will be expressed in our prayers.
Paul called upon the Ephesians to pray for all people, for kings and all who are in governmental authority (1 Tim 2:1–2). Among the kinds of prayers Paul called for are prayers of thanksgiving. Yes, we are to thank God for our nation, and it should not be difficult to find reasons to do so. Paul also called for intercessions on behalf of an individual’s nation. Paul set the example for passionate intercession for his own country and people. In Romans 9:1–4, Paul writes, “I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites…” The agonizing depth of Paul’s love for his countrymen may stun us. It most certainly was a place Paul arrived at through long sessions of Spirit-led prayer.
Have you felt an agonizing love in prayer for your nation before? It is of God. It is God harnessing your natural affections and stewarding them by his Spirit to nurture prayerful longings for a nation he longs to bless. If these prayers are of God, you are not motivated by a desire that your nation retain its greatness or its standard of living or its temporal blessings. Paul is seeking a great saving work of God among his people in longing prayer. To this end the Spirit also would lead our intercessions for our nation.
A proper love of a nation will make you a proclaimer of the gospel to it.
Paul’s love of his nation led him to vocally proclaim the gospel within it. Paul identifies himself as an apostle to the Gentiles (Rom 11:13). God had distinctly called Paul to a work among the nations outside of Israel. And yet the passion of Paul for his countrymen in Romans 9:1-5 reveals that Paul had not lost a focus or interest in the salvation of those of his own country.
A true love for your nation will make us proclaimers of the gospel beyond it.
At Paul’s conversion, God appointed him to take the gospel to the Gentile nations (Acts 9:15). And yet, Paul’s mission was not a Christian innovation but an expression of Israel’s greatest purpose, to be a blessing to the nations (Gen 12:1–3; 18:18). Israel had been blessed to be a blessing. It had been chosen of God as a receptacle from which God would pour out his benediction upon all nations. Israel’s greatness came to the extent that it set forth the name of God among the surrounding nations by its worship and obedience. To the extent it failed to do so, it fell from its God-given task.
Paul was acting out the mission of Israel as he went to the nations to proclaim the Messiah. The most Israelite-honoring, patriotic activity Paul could have engaged in was to carry out the mission for which God had raised up Israel in the first place.
And what of our nation? I believe that America has been raised up by God for a purpose, not of spreading democracy or capitalism or its values of justice (though these may contribute to its highest calling). God has raised up this nation as a beacon from which the gospel might shine to the ends of the earth. We are not the new Israel, but the pattern remains. We have been blessed to be a blessing. And we, the church, honor our nation and preserve it most strategically when, as a people of God, from this land, we take the gospel to the nations. The churches of America do our nation a great service when they proclaim this gospel boldly within it and take this gospel most intentionally from it to the rest of the world.
The motives for mission are three: Obedience to Christ’s command, compassion for the lost, passion for God’s glory. Here is a less important motive but one worth considering. We should determine to take, not our governance, not our prosperity, not our notions of equality, but the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. It is a patriotic act. If you want God to bless your nation, do the work God purposed for it when he raised it up. Be a light to the nations of the salvation found in Jesus Christ. When we do this we can sing most appropriately, “God bless America, Land that I love…”