Natural human loyalty to one’s own group - tribe, peer group, economic or social class, political party, etc. - directly conflicts with the gospel of Christ. The twelve tribes of Israel lost their distinctive identities during the diaspora, but the thousands of human language and culture groups around the world present a two-fold challenge. The first is that Jesus told His disciples that He would not return and the present age would not end until the gospel has been preached to every nation. (Matthew 24:14, Mark 13:10). (More on this later.) The second is that every person must value his or her connection to Christ above all other identifications, including that of ancestry, language, culture, peer group, social class - any competing loyalty.
Although Paul identified his credentials for potentially boasting in ancestry and tribal identity (2 Cor 11:22, Phil. 3:5), he wrote to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28, NASB). He elaborated with respect to his own identity to the Philippians:
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. [Philippians 3:8-11, NASB].
The key point is that there is nothing meritorious in God’s eyes about tribalism; it is a residual of the Tower of Babel curse (Genesis 11:7-9). God judged humankind for wanting to be like God by confounding their language; sadly, we humans came to love the judgment. Later, God mocked the Israelites’ ancestor worship (Jeremiah 11:10) even before the Incarnation. Any version of Christianity that does not call believers to leave ancestor worship and tribal loyalties does not bring them into the direct connection of knowing Christ experientially (as Paul exhorted, above), however wonderful its doctrine and practices.
We know that tribalism will persist until Jesus’ return. (Matthew 24:30). The mention of the worship of Christ by every tribe at the time of the end and in heaven (Revelation 1:7, 5:9, 7:9) illustrates God’s final triumph over the sin of Babel. That is why the gospel must be preached to every nation. But it also reinforces the necessity that we must derive our identity from Jesus - who He is and what He calls us to be - through direct experience with Him. Our political allegiances must fall away in the light of the eternal Son of God, or we will perish with them. (Revelation 6:16).
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