Rafael Cruz, the father and top campaign surrogate of Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, told an Iowa talk radio host on Friday that his son is running for president in order to “share the love of Jesus Christ” with “every person in America of every race, color and creed.”

In an interview with conservative Iowa radio host and Cruz supporter Steve Deace three days before the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucus, the elder Cruz repeated his refrain that “people of faith” must unite behind his son’s candidacy in order to buck the Republican “establishment.”

“He’s a man of integrity, he’s a man of faith,” Cruz said of his son, “he’s a man that you can be certain that he will be consistent with the principles, the Judeo-Christian principles, that have made America great and the principles of the Constitution of the United States of America, which are one and the same.”

“Those principles are what gives every American, every hard-working American who is looking for a way to achieve their dreams, a way to give their children or grandchildren a better life, those are those principles that are the bedrock of America, those Judeo-Christian principles,” he added.

He then told Deace that Ted Cruz sees his candidacy as something of a religious mission. “And he knows that by doing that, he is expressing the love of Jesus Christ to every American,” he said. “My son Ted believes, like Jesus said, that you must be the servant of all. That is the greatest thing we can do. Ted truly has a servant spirit, he wants to love, to serve We the People, every person in America of every race, color and creed, and just share the love of Jesus Christ with them. It is for the love of Christ and the love of this country that he is running for president.”

If believers unite behind Ted Cruz, he said, “we are going to see America restored again to that shining city on a hill to the glory of God.”