The Immigration Debate Christians Can't Avoid | The Branch

"When you remove the people element of it, you remove the Christ element of it because he's about people." — Pastor Matthew Johnson

Immigration is one of the loudest conversations in American culture right now. It is also one of the most avoided inside the church. In this episode of the Branch Podcast, Pastors Matthew Johnson, Anthony Lombardi, and Chris Reed chose not to avoid it.

Their goal was not to issue a policy statement or tell people how to vote. It was something more pastoral: to give believers a biblical framework for thinking through a complex issue without losing their compassion, their convictions, or the people caught in the middle.

Before the pastors addressed immigration directly, they grounded the conversation in a theological reality that shapes everything else. We do not live in a fully redeemed world. We live in what theologians call the already but not yet.

Pastor Chris described it this way: Christ has come, he died and rose again, but the fullest effects of that have not yet arrived. Salvation is a past event, a present reality, and a future completion all at once. The same is true of restoration. The world is groaning, as Paul writes in Romans 8, waiting for the glory that is still to come.

This means that everything we deal with in this world — including immigration, governments, borders, and broken systems — exists inside that tension. We mourn what is broken. We strive for the ideal. And we resist the pull toward apathy that can come when we remind ourselves that things will always be imperfect this side of eternity. Pastor Matthew pointed to the Lord's Prayer as the corrective: Jesus taught his followers to pray that God's kingdom would come and his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is not a passive posture. It is an active one.

The pastors moved from theology into history, working through what Scripture actually shows about nations, borders, and the treatment of foreigners.

Pastor Chris walked through Genesis 11 and the Tower of Babel, noting that the diversity of nations and languages across the earth reflects something of the beauty and glory of God. Revelation pictures every nation, tongue, and tribe gathered in worship before King Jesus. The distinction between people is not itself sinful. But the enmity between those peoples, the walls built out of fear and pride, is a consequence of the fall.

On the question of Israel specifically, Pastor Anthony pointed out that God gave his people clear instructions for how to treat sojourners and foreigners who entered the land. There was a distinction between Israel and the surrounding nations, but that distinction was always meant to function as an invitation. Israel was to be a beacon, a people set apart to point the rest of the world toward the one true God. And even within the Old Testament, people outside Israel — those who were not Jewish by heritage — were welcomed into the people of God.

When it came to government, the pastors were clear. Romans 13 establishes that all governing authority has been instituted by God. Governments are not accidents. They exist for a purpose: to bring order, to protect their people, and to create the conditions for human flourishing. Pastor Anthony noted that God is a God of order, pointing to 1 Corinthians 14 as an example of that same principle applied even to how the church gathers. Order is not oppression. It reflects the character of God.

But governments are also led by broken human beings. And when a government stops protecting human flourishing and starts treating people as less than image bearers of God, that is where Christians must pay attention.

One of the most important contributions of this conversation was the insistence that immigration is not a single issue. It is a spectrum.

Pastor Chris laid it out plainly. There are people in this country illegally who have committed crimes. There are people here illegally who are simply trying to build a better life for their families. There are people here on work status. There are refugees. There are people who entered under previous administrations and are now actively pursuing legal status. Each of those situations is different, and treating them all the same does not serve truth or justice.

Pastor Anthony raised a sobering detail from a podcast he had listened to that morning. Pastors in Minneapolis, a city that had become a focal point of immigration enforcement, were reporting that roughly 30 percent of arrests were people who genuinely needed to be deported. That means a significant portion of people being detained were not criminals. They were caught in the sweep of enforcement that was not designed to make those distinctions carefully.

The pastors were not arguing against the government's right to enforce immigration law. They were asking a harder question: how is it being done, and are the people caught up in it being treated with dignity?

Pastor Chris drew a line that cut through much of the noise in this debate. The question is not only what the government is doing. It is how they are doing it.

A government that has the legal authority to deport people still has a responsibility to treat those people as human beings. Just because someone is not an American citizen does not make them any less an image bearer of God. When Christians who are Americans begin to write off the basic dignity of people simply because of their legal status, Pastor Chris argued, they have crossed into sinful territory. American identity and Christian identity are not the same thing. The call to love people transcends national borders.

Pastor Matthew put it in terms any parent or pastor would recognize. Fixing something broken is rarely a clean process. A marriage that has fallen apart over years does not heal overnight. A person who has let their health go cannot get back into shape without difficulty. When a nation's immigration system has been in disorder, restoring order will involve complexity, collateral damage, and hard decisions. That is not an excuse for inhumane treatment. It is a realistic description of why the process is painful even when the goal is legitimate.

So what does this mean practically for a follower of Jesus?

The pastors were careful not to turn Christians into either government enforcers or political activists. Pastor Chris used a straightforward illustration. If someone is speeding behind you on the highway, it is not your job to follow them and call the police. But how you respond to that person still matters. The same principle applies here. Enforcing immigration law is the government's responsibility, not the church's.

What is the church's responsibility? Pastor Anthony pointed to the book of Acts. Philip got into a carriage with an Ethiopian and shared the gospel. Peter walked into a Roman soldier's home. Paul and Silas spoke to a jailer in prison. The posture in every case was the same: I want to serve you. I want to show you something greater than all of this.

That posture does not require a political position. If a family in your community loses a provider to deportation or detention, the church can bring groceries. The church can show up. Peaceful protest is also a legitimate avenue for Christians who believe that the way enforcement is being carried out is unjust. Voting and civic engagement are real tools. But none of those things replace the basic call to love the neighbor in front of you, regardless of their legal status.

The final portion of the conversation may have been the most practical. How do you relate to someone who holds a completely different position on this issue?

Pastor Chris was direct. The culture has lost the ability to have civil dialogue, and a big reason is that people have stopped listening. Not listening to prepare a response, but genuinely seeking to understand. When someone holds a different view, the instinct is to write them off immediately. What if instead you assumed they might have a perspective worth learning from?

Pastor Anthony offered a word about the danger of what he called political idolatry — being so committed to a political tribe that the nuances of Scripture no longer get a hearing. Both sides of the political spectrum get things wrong. The way of Jesus regularly disrupts both. Christians should be willing to hold that tension rather than defaulting to whatever their preferred media outlet tells them to feel.

Pastor Matthew closed with a personal moment. Driving home earlier that day, he watched a car in front of him hand a man begging on the side of the road what appeared to be two twenty-dollar bills. His first reaction was annoyance. Then he saw the joy on the man's face and felt what he described as a deep conviction. He had reduced a human being to an issue. He had removed the human element and, in doing so, removed Christ from the moment.

That is the danger with immigration too. When it becomes only a policy debate, only a political argument, only a headline, the people disappear. And wherever people disappear from the conversation, so does the gospel.

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