Christ is king

“Christ is king.” This is one of the oldest and clearest expressions of the Christian faith. Rightly understood it is a confession that the world belongs to God and that it is His rule and His sovereignty that must ultimately be respected and proclaimed. In the Gospels we encounter the conflict between the kingdoms of the world and the kingship of Christ. Jesus Himself teaches a transformative vision of what it means to live in the world as His follower: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). In the ancient Roman empire, the confession of Christ’s kingship stood in opposition to the claims of divinity and lordship of Caesar.

Christ is king, and indeed, the king of kings, as the Scriptures teach. This seemingly simple and straightforward confession has significant implications for how we understand Christian discipleship. This confession reorients Christian loyalty to earthly authorities, including parents and political rulers. We are to give all worldly sovereigns due respect and loyalty, but where there is conflict, as the apostles taught and modeled themselves, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

A recent report from the National Contagion Research Institute explores how the phrase “Christ is king” has been exploited in recent years by extremists who seek to sow division and hate. The report, including scholars from Rutgers University and a number of other academics and researchers (including Jordan Peterson), finds “the co-optation of Christian language and symbols by small, vocal groups of extremist actors who seek to redefine religious identity for ideological ends.”

The confession “Christ is king” is understood to be “a profound declaration of faith, which is now being weaponized by some political extremists, distorting its meaning to advance exclusionary and hateful narratives.” The report tracks social media mentions, trends, and hashtags using AI-powered language analysis to find associated terms and phrases from late 2022 to the present. The findings in the report include the troubling connections between upsurges in uses of the “Christ is king” phrase with Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, Muslim masculinity influencers, as well as other anti-Semitic tropes and trends, coalescing especially around Easter of this year. The report identifies Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Jake Shields, and Andrew Tate as among the most prominent propagators of the corruption of this Christian teaching. As the authors conclude, “a small minority of extreme, neo-Nazi ideologies have begun coding the phrase ‘Christ is king’ to give it a completely novel—and alarmingly malevolent—meaning within public discourse.”

It remains unclear whether the increased digital expression of such a twisted connection between Christ’s kingship and Jew hatred indicates an increase of sentiment across the population or merely a newfound boldness by extremists. What is clear, however, is that such activity is the antithesis of Christian teaching and faithfulness. True Christianity confesses that Christ is king. But this central truth does not mean that we are to take up arms, whether virtually or actually, to conquer the world in his name. Christ rules the world, but he does so through various institutions and in diverse ways. He rules the family in one way, the economy in another, and the political arena in still another. And if we proclaim with the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, for instance, that “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not call out: ‘Mine!’,” then we must also recognize that Christ’s sovereignty does not depend on Christian domination of all the spheres of social life.

The church father Augustine warned us of the dangers of the libido dominandi, the lust for power. When that desire for domination is joined with religious justification and zeal, the potential for abuse and destruction grows exponentially. And it is precisely this connection that is sought by the corruptors of our confession, “Christ the king.” It is true, as the authors of the report conclude, “This manipulation of religious language signals a direct attack on the civic and moral principles enshrined in the Constitution's protection of religious freedom.” Even more significant, though, is the direct attack that such perversion of Christian truth directs at the Christian faith itself.

All Christians must remember and believe that Christ is indeed king, and that, as Christ Himself taught us, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). We are not called to fight for our king as the worldly rulers and authorities have always demanded of their subjects. We are instead called to fight for our king with the power of the Holy Spirit, the word of God, which is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). Only with such spiritual weapons can we hope to remain faithful servants of our king, Jesus Christ.