The Christian is called to be a revitalizing presence in the fallen order by the power of the gospel.
Abraham Kuyper was born to an aristocratic family in the Netherlands in 1837. Kuyper filled many roles in his long and impressive career. He was a local church pastor, the founder and chief voice of two newspapers, the leader of the Christian Democrats (a Dutch political party he founded), the author of more than two dozen books, and the prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905.
Like many figures after him—including Chuck Colson—Kuyper relished work in two worlds, politics and ministry. Kuyper started out in ministry and moved into politics (Colson did the reverse). Kuyper believed that Christ claimed all of life. His famous dictum, “There is not one square inch of the cosmos over which Christ does not cry, ‘Mine!’” ref lected his belief that Christians could serve the Lord in any vocation, whether country preacher, attentive mother, or newspaper columnist.
Kuyper’s life backed up his talk. He not only served as prime minister, but he invested in the future of his country by founding the Free University of Amsterdam, a school intended to train the next generation of Christian leaders—whether pastors, theologians, politicians, or economists. The school no longer has the strong Reformed bent of its early years, but it continues to rank as one of the top two hundred universities in the world nearly 140 years after its founding.
As is apparent in this brief survey of Kuyper’s program, he had more energy than one career could contain. Abraham Kuyper took God at his Word. If God was sovereign, as Scripture indicated he was, then his people were free to give him glory by laboring in his name, conscious of the Lord’s ability to accomplish whatever he desired.
Divine sovereignty was not a hindrance to human agency in Kuyper’s mind. It was a spark, a blast of nitro that could fuel many daring initiatives that other Christians—less conscious of the free- ing greatness of God—would not feel free to attempt. The effort might fail, or it might succeed in unprecedented fashion. Either way, the believer was called to dream big and then get to work.
Abraham Kuyper’s theology is debated today, and not every Christian agrees with his theory of “sphere sovereignty,” the idea that there are certain areas of life that each have their own set of skills and that are no less important than any other sphere. Some would argue that Kuyper’s view of broad Christian influence gives too little attention to the uniqueness of the church’s mission to fulfill the Great Commission. Kuyper’s views deserve careful sifting, but it should also be noted that the former Dutch Prime Minister offers us a picture of the Christian in the public square that is compelling and worthy of consideration. Kuyper’s strong view of God’s sovereignty did not shackle him from action. Rather, it catalyzed him. He really did believe that all the world was God’s. The Christian, accordingly, should not stay behind closed doors, but should venture boldly and bravely out into the fray, demonstrating the veracity and power of the biblical worldview.
Kuyper is notable for holding public office. Many Christians see the dangers of public service and shrink back. It is easier to stand apart and not be sullied by the world. We should consider afresh the example of Kuyper, who refused to let the potentiality of sin keep him from the practice of service. When a country secularizes as America currently is (and has been for some time), believers often face the temptation to pull back and let the world burn. We are not Christ, and we cannot undo the curse. Only he can. But in our time, we need more agents of grace, not less. We need more public leaders, not less. We need more community-builders, not less. We need more artists and musicians and novelists, not less. We need more faithful men and women who contribute to their neighborhood in simple but meaningful ways, not less.
Christians today can and should debate what precise shape their public involvement takes. For all groups, Kuyper offers a vivid and centripetal model. The world, as he saw, belongs to the Lord. The Christian is called to be a revitalizing presence in the fallen order by the power of the gospel. The problems we see before us as the fruits of sinfulness writ large should not cause us to batten down our hatches, but should motivate us to take some action—even in small forms—to love our neighbor by opposing evil and promoting goodness.
The question before us, then, is not whether we can get anything done in the name of Christ, but what we can undertake by his power.
This material is adapted from The Colson Way by Dr. Strachan and is used with permission of Thomas Nelson.