transformed into the same image

The Lord Jesus dwells in the Body of Christ. The Spirit calls some of the men and women of this Body to a new work: the taking and exercising of all worldly political power for the Kingdom of God.

To enable them to do this work, the Spirit will transform them, and they will take on the image of Jesus the King.

These are the aspects of Jesus’ face. This is how he looked. This is how every political leader will look.

1. They will be poor. They will never have any wealth, any assets, any financial security. Their lives will be devoid of luxury.
2. They will be unmarried, childless and celibate. They will leave behind their fathers’ houses and become one with the King. They will have for their mother and brothers and sisters all who hear the will of God and do it.
3. They will withdraw constantly into the silence of prayer and they will know intimately the voice of the Father.
4. They will be lowly. They will not seek personal fame. They will empty themselves, taking on the form of a slave.
5. Jesus is the Truth. Those conformed to his image will tell absolutely no lies. No “white” lies, no “noble” lies. They will tell no lies.
6. Jesus did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Those who will bear the face of the King will be trained in arms and in warfare, and when there is war, they themselves will fight.
7. They will have masterful knowledge of the Scriptures and of whatever mundane disciplines they need to serve God’s people.
8. They, like the Lord, will be baptized, confirmed in the Spirit, and fully alive in the communion of the One Body, the Church.
9. As Jesus lived in community with his disciples, so will the Kingdom’s political leaders live together in community. They will work together; they will sleep under the same roofs; they will eat and drink at the One Table together. They will spread throughout Creation, but they will remain perfectly One within a single unified organization, and they will grow together in love.
10. Jesus Christ is the Lord of Love. The light of Jesus’ face and the mark that most distinguishes it from every other is the abyssal, the heavenly love with which it looks at every person. The same love will show forth from these disciples. Love for the Father and love for the World will well up from the Son alive in them. Every one of them will drown in this love; for their Beloved, every one of them will die. We will know that it is Jesus who lives in them by their love.

If these aspects are all clearly visible in the men and women who seek political power, then Christ the King has come to break and to build up the world through them.

Prepare His way, brothers and sisters. Make straight His paths. And if you hear His voice calling you to this work, then know that all the prayers for God’s Kingdom, all the Church’s prayers: like an oil of anointing, they pour upon You. Know that the whole court of Heaven looks with excitement upon You.

Know this, leave behind everything, and come.