Christianity will indeed accomplish many useful things in this world, but if it is accepted in order to accomplish those useful things it is not Christianity. Christianity will combat Bolshevism; but if it is accepted in order to combat Bolshevism, it is not Christianity: Christianity will produce a unified nation, in a slow but satisfactory way; but if it is accepted in order to produce a unified nation, it is not Christianity: Christianity will produce a healthy community; but if it is accepted in order to produce a healthy community, it is not Christianity: Christianity will promote international peace; but if it is accepted in order to promote international peace, it is not Christianity. Our Lord said: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” But if you seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness in order that all those other things may be added unto you, you will miss both those other things and the Kingdom of God as well.
#Quoted in Russell Moore, The Kingdom of Christ (2004)
The problem was not in considering Israel as a pedagogue for the new Israel in Christ but in imagining that a modern state (rather than the international and transtemporal body of Christ) could be the new Israel.#
By identifying the kingdom of God with the advance of Christianity in the world here and now, it was easy to take the further step of identifying the fortunes of Christianity with those of the empire. Christendom is the result of this unholy alliance.#
The kingdom of God advances through the proclamation of the gospel, not through force.#
Recalling the fig tree that withered at Jesus’ curse, symbolizing the pronouncement of woes and the parables of the kingdom, the picture is of an Israel that, despite its national judgement as a covenant-breaker, is nevertheless kept alive by extensive pruning and grafting at the level of individual salvation through Christ.#