Tim Keller, the late Presbyterian pastor and author, was skilled at navigating culture, politics, and faith. One of the gifts he left us was a distinctly Christian alternative to the dominant political and cultural narratives of our time. Known as “third way” or “third-wayism,” it’s a call for Christians to advocate for the kingdom of God amidst, and sometimes against, the cultural currents.

Importantly, Keller’s view is not an invitation to abstain from politics altogether. In his 2018 NYT article, “How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don’t,” he writes, “The Bible shows believers as holding important posts in pagan governments — think of Joseph and Daniel in the Old Testament. Christians should be involved politically as a way of loving our neighbors, whether they believe as we do or not. To work for better public schools or for a justice system not weighted against the poor or to end racial segregation requires political engagement... ” He goes on to write, “Nevertheless… they should not identify the Christian church or faith with a political party as the only Christian one” and lists several reasons for his case.

Regrettably, what Keller warned about has come true. For many Evangelicals today, conservatism, the Republican Party, even the MAGA sect, have become extensions of Christianity itself.

Criticisms of the Third Way

Last year, some of the most famous Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) singers opened at Charlie Kirk’s memorial-rally—artists whose songs are sung in churches across the world. It was quite the sight, campaign rally cries flanked by worship songs and gospel-altar calls, the arena’s hands raised both toward God and in political praise. It was one of the most explicit blurrings of sacred and political in recent times.

But it’s simply the fruit of what has been happening in arenas, political rallies, and social media platforms across the country—the latest expression of a movement called Christian nationalism. Paul Miller, a professor at Georgetown and author of the book The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism, defines Christian nationalism as “the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation’—not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future.” Beyond a religion or free expression of faith, they believe that Christianity is a cultural heritage that must be enshrined in government.

While the general base of Christian nationalists seems to have stayed stable since 2022, its supporters are getting louder, bolder. Now 59% of U.S. adults say they have heard or read about Christian nationalism, a 14-point increase in two years.

Supporters of this view, including conservative Evangelical commentators like Allie Beth Stuckey, have been quick to criticize nonconformists like Keller. Their charge is that third-way is too lukewarm, intended to water down the Christian message for the sake of cultural appeasement. They fear it has smuggled in progressive values and instead champion a confrontational approach that treats conservatism as Christian, progressivism as un-Christian, and moderation as concession.

Yet despite these bold accusations, they seem to misunderstand Keller. Stuckey, Alisa Childers, and others caricature his view as centrism—a compromise between the two political parties. This is disingenuous. Researcher and writer Chris Watkins says it like this: “rather than crudely splitting the difference in this way, third-way thinking is about letting the Bible set its own table—unfold its own categories and tell its own story in its own way—rather than squeezing it in awkwardly between existing ideologies at a table set by others. Only when the Bible has first been allowed to speak in its own terms can we bring it into meaningful conversation with secular ideologies.”

Keller himself clarified: “Christians should never seek a middle ground for its own sake.” He insisted that we should actively follow the Bible wherever it leads us—left or right. In response, Stuckey argues that the Right has the moral high ground, that it’s aligned with Christianity on all issues. She points to Democratic stances on abortion, gender ideology, and hostility to religious institutions—moral evils that neutrality risks enabling.

She’s partially right. The stakes are high, and there are serious issues with the Left that Christians must oppose. In fact, one of the defining features of the early church was its firm stance against Roman infanticide, abortion, and other moral evils. Even John the Baptist was beheaded for speaking out against Herod’s marital immorality. But again, third way ≠ neutrality. Keller’s view calls Christians to stand against any vision of “freedom” divorced from holiness and human flourishing, such as progressivism’s reduction of sexual ethics to consent alone. Christians should not affirm every cultural movement simply because it is labeled “compassionate” or “liberating.” None of this is at odds with third way.

Moreover, it’s not just the Left that has anti-Biblical policy; the GOP has taken increasingly extreme positions, rolling back clean energy and environmental policies or vehemently dispelling undocumented immigrants. Whereas the Bible compels readers to steward the earth (Genesis 2:15), care for the oppressed and marginalized (Isaiah 1:17, Luke 4:18-19, Deuteronomy 10:18-19, Micah 6:8, etc.), and love the sojourner (throughout the Torah). In Matthew 7:15-20, Jesus explains that false prophets can be exposed, like a bad tree, by their rotten fruit. The rhetoric of right-wing populism is ridden with stereotypes, pride, and anger.

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The Sins of Christian Nationalism

Across the board, politics has become a new religion in our secularized age. Finkel et al. describe our growing divide as “political sectarianism.” Americans are less willing than ever to date, marry, or even live near someone from the opposing party. Left and right are developing their own creeds, heresies, and saints. But more than this, I fear that Christian nationalism is guilty of a greater idolatry: by erasing the line between faith and government, the kingdom of America has replaced the kingdom of God.

Its core mission is to preserve America as a Christian nation through political power. But this risks elevating it into a role Scripture reserves for the church: the primary witness to God’s kingdom on earth. Throughout Jesus’ ministry and climaxing at Pentecost, God’s covenant people are no longer identified with a nation-state, but with the church, a community of disciples from every tribe, tongue, and nation. The church, not America, is commissioned to embody the kingdom here on earth. But instead, it has been relegated to something like a political cheerleader.

The deeper issue is with the movement’s foundational philosophy, which is rooted in power and dominance. It’s not uncommon to hear language like “greatness,” “supremacy,” “dominance over other nations” when advocates describe America. These characteristics also apply to those inside the movement itself. Historically, its members are overwhelmingly white (the consequence of joining Christianity to cultural inheritance), and its program politically hostile to immigrants, refugees, and the poor. But this is not the vocabulary of the kingdom Jesus announced. He described his kingdom as belonging to the poor in spirit, the meek, the lowly; his throne was a cross. Can you even call Christian nationalism, then, “Christian?”

In the book of Acts, the story of the early church, the first worshippers of Jesus called themselves followers of “the Way” (9:2, 19:9, 24:14), a reference to the life and mission of Jesus. They were completely devoted to the gospel, which, as I demonstrated in my previous article, was an explicitly political message. Jesus was executed on political charges (”king of the Jews”) because the kingdom he claimed to be bringing was a rival to Caesar’s. To confess “Jesus is Lord” during that period was to also declare, “Caesar is not.” [See my previous essay for a fuller treatment of the gospel’s political essence.]

This is what makes Christian nationalism a blatant inversion: it enlists a movement whose founding message was in opposition to empire, or earthly power, in the service of nationalist empire-building. In Biblical terms, it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Way of Jesus was always political, but for a kingdom greater than every nation on earth, including this one.

The First Way

The third way was never really a “third”—it’s a recovering of the first. It returns to Christianity’s original name, “the Way,” and its vision of a kingdom that stands above every nation. It calls us to support policies and politicians that love our neighbors: the protection of the innocent, compassion for the poor and powerless, feeding the hungry, protecting all life, stewarding the environment.

What does this look like practically, though? Keller admits, “there are many possible ways to help the poor. Should we shrink government and let private capital markets allocate resources, or should we expand the government… The Bible does not give exact answers to these questions for every time, place and culture.” But that is the point—”Christians…cannot allow the church to be fully identified with any particular party…” It should be reasonable for Christians to have different political strategies for best loving their neighbors. Our politics should be nuanced, absent of so-called “package deals.” At the same time, the Way often leads us against cultural currents. If certain policies are truly incompatible with the Way of Jesus, Christians are obligated to speak out.

When we realize that the message of Jesus is indeed political—not for empires but for the kingdom of God—everything comes into focus. This kingdom is still breaking in today through spiritual liberation, people being restored, and communities living as new creations. More than government, God’s kingdom is being unveiled in meek, ordinary moments: a public display of vulnerability that opens wounds to the redemptive power of the Spirit, a church embodying compassion for a group of refugees in need of support, a youth group studying Bible passages, markers and highlighters in hand, at a small table in an upper room. This is the work of the church, not a party or government, that trudges through the muck of the world, leaving Jesus’ life in its wake.

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This is the second in a series of essays about what Jesus really preached and what it means to follow him today, politically, culturally, and practically. Read my previous essay here:

The word “gospel” gets thrown around everywhere: broadcast by street preachers on the boardwalk, the heart of an altar call at your local church, the message a friend might share with you over coffee. But what actually is “the gospel?” Ask most Christians, and I suspect you’ll hear something like: God sent his son Jesus to die for our sins so that we can be forgiven, escape hell, and go to heaven when we die.

What’s the problem with that? If this resembles your own understanding, you’re not alone. Scholar and theologian NT Wright often remarks that this is what most Christians believe and what most non-Christians disbelieve. But could it be that, however familiar it may be, this summary fails to capture the gospel Jesus actually preached?

At InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the college ministry I was a part of, we used to intentionally study scripture like the original readers. If we were reading Mark 1, for example, we limited our access only to the Old Testament and the “manuscript” of Mark 1. Further reading was set aside. It’s a helpful approach because it places everyone—from experienced pastors to new Christians—on equal footing. It forces us to examine and interpret the text through itself, free from preconceived biases.

Abandoning our assumptions then, let’s define the word itself. “Gospel” is a translation of the Greek word, “evangelion,” which can also be rendered as “good news.” It’s the same picture of a herald announcing the good news of a king’s victorious arrival. In the Bible, the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are the earliest, most trustworthy biographies of Jesus. Aptly called the Gospels, they portray Jesus through the same image—the arrival of a king. Interestingly, he was already preaching what he called the “gospel” as soon as he steps onto the scene, years before he died.

The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Mark 1 begins with a title: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” What better place than to start here. In verse 4, we’re introduced to John the Baptist, a wild, unkempt prophet-like figure calling the people around him to repent “for the forgiveness of sins.” After being baptized by John, Jesus speaks.

“…Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Did you catch it? Like John the Baptist, Jesus is making a proclamation: ‘The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.’ He then tells people to repent and believe in the gospel—the thing that he’s just proclaimed. This, in Jesus’ own words, is the gospel.

Remember that we are reading this like the first readers, first-century Palestinian Jews living under Roman rule. In this kingdom, Caesar was not only king, but deified. There was even an imperial cult known as Divus Iulius where he was worshiped as “Son of God,” “Savior,” and “Lord.” Jesus enters the scene here, in this specific moment, during the reign of the Roman empire and kingship of Tiberius Caesar. In this context, his announcement about God’s kingdom carried unmistakable political significance.

As the story progresses, Jesus moves from town to town in excitingly swift pace, teaching and healing lame, leper, and blind. These moments of divine restoration read like physical signs of the kingdom’s in-breaking, evidence that something new is happening.

Many first-century Jews likely heard Jesus’ message as the long-awaited announcement that God was finally acting to overthrow Rome and restore Israel, interpreting these miracles as signs of the prophesied messiah. In fact if you read on, Jesus’ own disciples—his closest friends and follower—believe him to be doing exactly this (even until the day of his ascension!). To their disappointment, his kingdom was unlike anything they could’ve conceived.

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What’s the Kingdom Like?

If the gospel is the announcement of God’s kingdom, what is this kingdom like? Every encounter Jesus has illustrates something about its quality. There are several threads that remain consistent.

The first is abundance. When Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well in John 4—which is already a scandalous interaction, a Jewish man speaking alone with a foreign woman—he offers her “living water,” telling her that whoever drinks it will never thirst again. Sure enough, by the end of their conversation she runs back into her village unable to contain the abundant joy she’s received. The wedding at Cana where the wine runs out and Jesus makes more (John 2:1-11), five thousand people fed with five loaves (Mark 6:32-44), a man paralyzed for 40 years seen by Jesus, then healed (John 5:1-15)—the kingdom of God is scandalously generous, not merely in a physical sense, but on a deep, spiritual level.

Another is new creation. When Nicodemus, a respected Pharisee and religious insider, comes to Jesus at night in John 3, Jesus tells him: “you must be born again.” Nicodemus is confused, how can a grown man re-enter the womb? But Jesus is pointing at something deeper: entry into his kingdom isn’t about religiosity or heritage, but requires becoming an entirely new person. It remakes you from the inside out.

Finally in almost every story are themes of rescue and restoration. The Samaritan woman had been married five times and was living with a man who wasn’t her husband; she came to draw water alone, at midday, almost certainly to avoid the other women. But despite being aware of her background, Jesus pursues her anyway. Again, she is fully restored by the end of their conversation—a woman ostracized from her own community becomes an evangelist. On another occasion, Jesus heals a hemorrhaging woman who was untouchable and impure for twelve years, calling her “daughter” in front of a crowd, publicly restoring her to community and to God (Mark 5). Zacchaeus, a despised tax collector who had defrauded his neighbors, encounters Jesus and immediately repays everyone he cheated fourfold (Luke 19:1-10).

When the kingdom meets people, they are changed. At the heart of the kingdom of God is relational restoration—broken, sinful people restored to each other and to God—resulting in abundance, transformation, and life.

The Shape of the Kingdom

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus, early in his ministry, reveals his mission statement in a synagogue in Nazareth.

17 the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4:17-20

Jesus’ mission, as he announces in Nazareth, is good news for those on the margins. Throughout the Gospels, he consistently draws near to people society had pushed aside: detested tax collectors, poor fishermen, blind beggars, Gentile demoniacs, and bleeding women (Luke 19:1–10; Mark 1:16–20; Mark 10:46–52; Luke 8:26–39; Mark 5).

In doing so, he reveals that the kingdom of God is upside-down. It does not reward status, wealth, or power. “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” he says in Mark 10:23. And when his disciples argue about greatness, he tells them, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all” (Matthew 20:26–27).

To the untrained eye, this kingdom appears humble, weak, and unimpressive. It stands in direct contrast to the kingdom of Caesar and, more broadly, to every power structure built for the strong at the expense of the vulnerable. In Jesus’ kingdom, the lowly are lifted up, the oppressed find hope, and enemies become neighbors.

But note that many of the people Jesus welcomed were not only socially excluded but considered spiritually and ritually unclean, cut off from the temple and from God. The gospel is thus not merely a social reversal, but the announcement that through Jesus, access to God is open to everyone.

Perhaps this is why the kingdom takes root first among the poor, the sick, and the sinner. They had no illusions about their need for rescue. The same posture is required of all of us. When Jesus says the kingdom belongs to little children, he is pointing to humility, dependence, and need as the way in. Power often masks need.

Jesus not only proclaimed this kingdom, he embodied it. He was born in a barn, raised in a notoriously insignificant town, spent his life among fishermen and outcasts, and died a criminal’s death. In his book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, historian Tom Holland explains that crucifixion was not just execution, but a shameful obliteration reserved for the lowest criminals. “Familiarity with the Christian story,” he writes, “has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a figure Jesus was. In the ancient world, it was axiomatic that the strong should triumph over the weak. That the son of God should be crucified was not just shocking—it was obscene.”

Jesus’ upside-down kingship reaches its climax at the cross, where he bears the weight of human sin and brokenness and opens the way back to God. And when he rises from the dead three days later, he is vindicated as the world’s true King and the first of God’s new creation.

The cross and resurrection deserve fuller treatment, and we’ll return to them in a later essay. For now, what matters is that Jesus’ announcement was not the start of a new movement. He was stepping into a story God had been telling from the beginning.

Kingdom is for Everyone

Jesus’ arrival fulfilled an ancient promise present throughout the Hebrew scriptures. The SparkNotes version goes like this: In Genesis, God creates a good world and dwells with his people—heaven and earth united together in harmony. But when people give into selfishness, deception, and disobedience, wanting to rule over themselves rather than submit to the kingship of God, mistrust and brokenness enter the picture, separating people from God, earth from heaven. The entire, overarching narrative of the Bible from then on is a story of God’s pursuit.

In Isaiah 65:17, for example, a poetic prophecy, God declares:

“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.”

This theme continues throughout the book and until Revelation. In Revelation 21:1-4, for instance, John sees:

“a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

The Biblical authors provide various lenses to view this drama: a bridegroom chasing after and rescuing his bride, a patient God sticking with a stiff-necked people, and a cosmic kingdom, eager to invade and reunite with Earth once again.

God desires to dwell together with humanity in a reunified kingdom, relationship restored, heaven and earth once again rejoined in harmony. Jesus claimed to be bringing this very kingdom, not merely as a future hope, but here and now. It’s here… and yet not fully here—something theologians call “already and not yet.” While the arrival of Jesus marked its breaking into the world, it hasn’t yet been consummated. We live in the in-between, the tension of a kingdom that is real and tangible and also still coming.

This is why Jesus told us to pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6), inviting us to partner with him in pulling heaven to earth day by day. Wright puts it well:

We are also commissioned to partner with Jesus in proclaiming and embodying this kingdom in our world. “Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion…The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics…”

― N.T. Wright, Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is

But that too is a story for another essay.

The good news is that we are invited into this kingdom now, and the invitation is for everyone. But it also asks us to embody the posture of the margins—recognizing our need for healing, forgiveness, and restoration. It asks that we leave old ways behind and draw near to Jesus to be made new.

What is the Gospel

We are now poised to answer this question. The gospel is the announcement that everything has changed—the kingdom of God has finally arrived in Jesus. We are invited to reside under his kingship, receive healing and redemption, restore our relationship to God, and live as new people.

So what about that “John 3:16 Gospel,” the one about escaping hell and securing our residence in heaven? It’s logical, neat, and familiar, and personal forgiveness is undoubtedly integral to the story. But it misses the larger message Jesus came to announce. The Biblical narrative isn’t about us going to heaven, it’s about heaven coming down to earth, first 2,000 years ago with Jesus, still as his kingdom spreads through people, and fully when he returns to make all things new. The gospel is breaking news about Jesus becoming lord, and us being restored in relationship to the God for whom we were made. Where does that news find you?

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This is first in a series of essays about what Jesus really preached and what it means to follow him today, politically, culturally, and practically.