Our citizenship is in heaven
So, what next?
One phrase has echoed in my mind today (and over the last several months): “our citizenship is in heaven.”
It comes to us from the Apostle Paul by way of his letter to the Philippians, likely penned around A.D. 60 while he was imprisoned in Rome.
“For many…walk as enemies of the cross of Christ…But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”
Philippians 3:18, 20-21
Paul’s words confirm the instinct we’ve had all along. The dreams of parties and politicians are just too small.
Personal glory, national identity, preservation or subordination of status quo…All these things will pass away. Today’s headlines will be all but forgotten in 50 years. Not because we’re hurtling toward the end of the world as we know it, but because that’s just how time and the collective consciousness seems to work.
Of course, the things happening in the world around us matter. There is a reason that you and I are alive in this very moment. That reason, though, transcends politics and partisanship.
The weight of your calling and mine—the calling to know God and make him known—exposes this week’s battles on social media and cable news for what they are: flimsy, cardboard facades, designed to distract us from the thing that actually has the power to change the world.
In Jeremiah 29, as he addresses the elders, priests, prophets, and people of Jerusalem who have been captured by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and taken into exile, the prophet Jeremiah gives his fellow Israelites a list of directions:
“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
Jeremiah 29:5-7
I shared a little about these verses in August when I covered Jeremiah 29:11:
“The direction isn’t to find an escape, fight their captors, or withdraw into themselves once they’re in Babylon. It’s not to assimilate, either. Instead, it’s to remain faithful to God and to do everything in their power to make Babylon more like the idealistic goal that Jerusalem was intended to be—ultimately, more like Eden.”
From “A future and a hope,” published 8/29/2024
Here, as I shared then, we find a connection between the Yahweh worshippers of the Ancient Near East and Christians of today: God’s people must understand what it means to live in exile.
The Israelites often found themselves in exile, removed from their homeland and forced to live under the dominion of foreign kings. But believers today are in exile, too, always longing for our true country, where we will walk in the light of the Lord forever.
Our worldly nations, our teams, our in-groups, our social identities—these are the “foreign kings” fighting for our assimilation, begging for our allegiance. The most revolutionary thing you and I can do as believers is to deny them the power over our souls.
So, what comes next?
“Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.” Philippians 4:1
Press on toward the goal.
“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:14
There’s only one thing worth dedicating your life to: service to Christ. This is not a one-and-done decision; it’s something you must resolve to do every day, at every moment. In Philippians 3, Paul says that he “counts everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and…that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
Through Christ, you have a hope that surpasses the “light and momentary” troubles of this world. That’s an anchor that won’t fail.
Seek Truth and defend it.
“Therefore faithful Christian, seek the truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, adhere to truth and defend truth to the death. For truth will set you free from sin, the Devil and the destruction of the soul, and ultimately from eternal death which is eternal separation from God’s grace and the joy of salvation.”
Jan Hus, reformer of the church
All truth belongs to God. As believers, it is both our inheritance and our responsibility.
To defend the truth, you must first know the truth…and knowing the truth is a lifelong journey. There’s no point at which you will have attained it; no point at which you’ll have understood all there is to understand about the mysteries of God.
Once you are sure of something, though, it’s up to you to graciously, but unyieldingly, make it known.
Love indiscriminately.
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-6
Love is so much more than a nice feeling. It’s challenging, consuming, dignifiying. Love requires confronting difficult truths at times, but it isn’t brash, or inconsiderate, or dismissive.
Love also goes hand-in-hand with truth. One can’t thrive without the balance of the other. “Love without truth is sentimentality;” Tim Keller says in The Meaning of Marriage, “it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us.”
None of this is easy. None of this is natural. We haven’t been hung out to dry, though—through the power of the Holy Spirit and the sanctifying process of figuring out what it means to love God with heart, soul, and strength, we’ll slowly resemble Christ more and more.
An election win pales in comparison to the victory Christ accomplished on the cross.
An election loss is no cause for despair when hope has been secured by Christ forevermore.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be emotions. It does help put those emotions in their rightful place. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” where the only Righteous King rules forever and ever. Praise God for his grace.
From the archives:
Speaking of love…Carson may be tired of me quoting this one weekly and then telling him, “You’ve gotta read The Four Loves!!!” But I don’t care! It’s that good. My takeaways, published this time last year, here:
A visual reminder:
