Whose Kingdom Are You Actually Living For?

By Pastor John Erickson

There is a strange temptation Christians face when we look around at the world: we start believing the only two options are to withdraw from everything or take control of everything.

Either disappear into our own little Christian bubble, or use whatever power we can get our hands on to make everybody else behave. Both options can feel appealing, especially when things around us are messy.

But what if Jesus is inviting us into a third way?

The book of Daniel begins with a people who have lost practically everything. Jerusalem has been besieged, the temple has been raided, and some of Judah's brightest young people are carried into Babylon. They haven't moved there because they are excited about the career opportunities. They are captives.

And yet this is precisely where Scripture teaches us something about faithfulness.

Living somewhere that isn't home

Daniel 1 describes the young exiles learning the language and literature of Babylon. They are given new names, prepared for service in the king's palace, and offered food from the royal table. The empire does not simply want their labor. It wants their allegiance.

That is what empires do. They tell you what matters, who deserves honor, what success looks like, and who you are supposed to be.

Daniel is not told to build a wall around himself and pretend Babylon doesn't exist. He will learn its language. He will work within its institutions. But he will not let Babylon define his ultimate identity.

We live with a different set of circumstances, but we know something about competing loyalties. Our jobs, communities, and cultural expectations have ideas about the good life. They can offer us a script to follow before we've even noticed we are reading from it.

So the question is not simply, How do I stay away from bad things? It is, Whose story is shaping who I am becoming?

The strange power of an exile

We tend to measure power by who gets the final word. Who holds the office? Who makes the rules? Who can force an outcome?

Babylon knew all about that kind of power. Nebuchadnezzar had armies, wealth, influence, and the ability to take people from their homes. The opening verses of Daniel make that painfully clear.

But the power available to Daniel is of a different kind. It is faithfulness. Integrity. Courage. Trust in God when he cannot control what the king will do next.

The two kinds of power aren't the same. Babylon's power often operates through fear and force; the exile's witness points toward a kingdom that changes people from the inside out.

And here is the really inconvenient part: those who follow Jesus aren't free to abandon his methods to accomplish what we think are his goals.

If we want to introduce someone to a kingdom marked by humility, mercy, truth, and love, we cannot rely on contempt, intimidation, and hatred to get them there. The way we live must actually reflect the King we serve.

Faithful presence, not fearful absence

First Peter 2:11 calls believers foreigners and exiles. Notice what Peter says next. He doesn't tell them to go hide until everything improves. He encourages them to live such good lives among their neighbors that those neighbors might eventually glorify God.

Peter's appeal is not a claim that every action of an emperor is good. His readers belong to God, and that allegiance shapes how they live within human institutions.

In other words: be present. Be honorable. Do good. Show respect. Love people. Let your life become a witness to the character of Jesus.

It is possible to serve your community without worshiping its institutions. It is possible to respect authority without believing authority is ultimate. It is possible to disagree deeply with another person and still treat that person as someone made in God's image.

None of that is passive. Some days it takes an extraordinary amount of courage.

We can become so preoccupied with controlling the world around us that we forget the work of surrendering the world within us. We worry about whose values are winning out there while neglecting whether the character of Christ is growing in here.

A different question to ask

When you encounter something in the world that troubles you, there are plenty of ways to react. You can get angry. You can retreat. You can collect people who already agree with you and spend an evening congratulating one another on how right you are.

I know the appeal. But before we do any of that, maybe we should ask: What would faithfulness to King Jesus look like here?

What would it look like in the way I speak to my coworker? The way I talk about someone I disagree with? The way I handle responsibility when nobody is watching?

Daniel didn't get to choose the empire in which he lived. He did get to choose whom he would serve.

So do we.

I want us to take that question into ordinary places: our children's soccer games, the grocery store, the school-board meeting, and whatever we are about to post online. Our character does not get a day off because we feel strongly about an issue.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:44 to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. That is a searching test of our allegiance. If winning an argument requires me to stop treating the other person as someone God loves, what exactly have I won?

Our calling isn't to pretend Babylon is our home, or to hate everyone who lives there. It is to live as people who belong to another kingdom-right where God has placed us.