Christians often feel caught in the tension between caring for their own families and churches and their broader desire to impact their nation—and the world—with the gospel of Christ.
Yet these responsibilities are not mutually exclusive. For centuries, believers have found clarity through the biblical order of love, known in Christian tradition as the ordo amoris, which begins with loving God and flows outward to those God has placed closest to us. Indeed, it is by fortifying the foundations of our own local congregations that we are able to commission and sustain missionaries to reach the nations.
The Love of the Church
Contrary to the claims of some theological systems, the church of Jesus Christ is not an interruption in the flow of history nor a parenthesis in the purposes of God. From the moment the first gospel promise was issued in Genesis 3:15, there existed a community composed of those who embraced the word by faith. This assembly of people in covenant relationship with God—small or great, gathered or scattered—is the key supporting character in the redemptive arc spanning both testaments. This church exists both globally, or invisibly, as the community of all the elect, and locally, or visibly, in particular congregations sitting under the preaching of the word of God and right administration of the sacraments. Christ loved and died not for humanity in the abstract but for a particular people—his bride, the church (John 10:11, Acts 20:28, Ephesians 5:25, Titus 2:14).
Today, expressive individualism exacts a heavy toll on the corporate life of the saints. All too common is the view that relationship with Christ may be pursued in isolation rather than community. Contemplative piety and modern spiritualism conspire to downgrade the value of life together within the visible, local church. Public regard for institutional religion continues generally to plummet, though trends among Generation Z men show early signs of hope. And within the church, pragmatic ecclesiologies treat attendees as consumers of spiritual products rather than souls knit together by their mutual adoption into the communion of God. A robust doctrine of the church is the only antidote. Casual church attendance—or non-attendance—must be replaced by an eager desire to be counted among the saints each Lord’s Day. Consumerist attitudes must give way to a spirit of service and fellowship like that which marked the church in Acts 2, and self-centered spirituality must step aside for the sake of submission to qualified shepherds. The gathered people of God should make Jerusalem their chief joy (Psalm 137:6) and the saints their delight (Psalm 16:3). We must not neglect the assembling of ourselves together but gather all the more to approach the living God and edify one another as those who belong to the heavenly Zion (Hebrews 10:24–25, 12:22).
The Love of the Nation
The same biblical principles of love explored throughout this book apply to the nation, people, or people group. God raised up a chosen nation under the old covenant as both a type of the church and a blessing to all the other nations (Genesis 12:1–3). These nations, thus, are the intended beneficiaries of God’s loving purposes in redemptive history. At root, the Hebrews’ impulse of love for their own land and kin (see Psalm 122:6–9, 137:5–6, Isaiah 62:1–7), minus the ethnocentric excesses addressed in the New Testament, accorded with both natural law and special revelation—the former as an extension of filial piety, and the latter on account of their unique status as the covenant people of God. It was virtuous and fitting for Nehemiah to fast and pray for his own people (Nehemiah 1:4–11), for Esther to intercede for her kin before Ahasuerus (Esther 4:13–16, 7:3–4), for Paul to languish for his fellow Hebrews (Romans 9:1–3; 10:1), and for the Lord Jesus Christ to lament the fate of the unbelieving Jews of the first century (Luke 19:41–44, Matthew 23:37–39). These principles apply to all believers and not only those of Jewish lineage. All Christians are to honor their progenitors (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:15), to bless their nation through righteous conduct (Proverbs 14:34), to pursue their people’s delight in God (Psalm 22:27–28, 67:1–5), and to preserve the bonds of natural affection (Romans 1:31, 2 Timothy 3:3).
Given that Christ suffered, died, and rose again for the joy of all nations in God, it should not surprise us that diabolical schemes are directed toward the deconstruction and deracination of nations themselves. If the enemy cannot halt the advance of the gospel, he will endeavor instead to fracture the very peoples who are its intended recipients. Globalism, multiculturalism, and mass migration have each wrought tragic and lasting effects upon national distinctions, eroding traditional cultures and fragmenting distinct peoples with their values and customs. Whether traced to secularism, the “open society,” the postwar consensus, the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, or other upstream influences, the result is the same: cultic attachment to a liberal, “rules-based” international order that militates against cultivating a traditional and biblical love for one’s native people—especially where that people represents a historically Christian or European culture. Critical race theory, anticolonialism, and the many other manifestations of social justice warfare are among the tentacles of this transnationalist Leviathan. Yet racialist reactions to these agendas also obstruct healthy national affection, reducing nationality to mere ethnicity and positing a biologically determinist hierarchy of civilizations. This too must be opposed.
Only a rightly ordered, biblical love of nation offers a lasting solution—one that applies both law and gospel to cultivate and preserve what is good, true, and beautiful within a people. Churches must be planted, Christian enterprises multiplied, households fortified, institutions established, and thick communities nurtured in service to nations that are discipled and made robustly Christian.
The Love of the World
Though human love is naturally limited and incomplete, the love of God is not. It was too small a thing for Jesus Christ to save Israel only; he came for the salvation of all the nations (Isaiah 49:6). God loves the world such that he sent his Son for its redemption and restoration (John 3:16–17). Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), saves the world (John 4:42, 1 John 2:2), and gives life to the world (John 6:33). God in Christ is reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19), desiring all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:3–6), and causing salvation to appear for all people (Titus 2:11). Modeling his God, the believer is also called to love the people of the world—rejecting the sinful world system (1 John 2:15–17) yet praying for all people (1 Timothy 2:1–4), doing good to all (Galatians 6:10), and bringing the good news of salvation to everyone (Matthew 28:19–20).
Though the universality of the Christian faith is often emphasized in evangelical circles, we must not let familiarity breed contempt. It is true that the Christian household has fallen on hard times—churches lie in disorder, towns descend into chaos and lovelessness, and nations are weakened by dark forces. Yet it is no less true that the whole world stands in desperate need of the gospel. Billions have never heard the name of Jesus Christ and remain under the burning wrath of God, without access to the saving message of his Son. Only as churches send missionaries, preachers proclaim the gospel, and unbelievers hear the word of faith and believe can they be delivered from eternal torment and welcomed into the glorious company of the saints (Romans 10:14–17). The first century was at least as chaotic a time as our own, yet the Spirit of God was not hindered from commissioning Paul and Barnabas as the first apostolic missionaries to cross land and sea and bring the gospel to far-off peoples (Acts 13:1–3)—and he may do such a work in our day also.
Our concern for a restoration of a proper ordering of loves should not diminish our love for the world; it is precisely because God loves the world that we may be confident in his concern for our nation, our towns, our churches, our families, and ourselves.
Our concern for a restoration of a proper ordering of loves should not diminish our love for the world; it is precisely because God loves the world that we may be confident in his concern for our nation, our towns, our churches, our families, and ourselves. May our Lord forbid that our love for his world would grow cold, and may he grant that the overflow of our particular loves would ultimately be a love as borderless as his.
Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from the seventh chapter of Alex Kocman’s book Ordered to Love: Recovering the Order of Affections from the Home to the Ends of the Earth (Cape Coral: Founders Press, 2026).
