Citizen in the Kingdom of God

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
(Philippians 3:20-21)

To live for Jesus is to be loyal to him. When we speak of loyalty, we typically are referring to our commitment to a person, an organization, or even a particular people group, such as a nation or an ethnic community. When we speak of loyalty to Jesus, we are talking about much more than being aligned with or committed to Jesus. We are talking about living for Jesus and his kingdom. We are talking about being citizens of the kingdom of God.

From the beginning of creation, God's intent for humanity has been that He alone would be in the position of ultimate authority. After all, in creating us, God knows what is best for us and what proves to be dangerous to us. God's intent is to reign over humanity. But in reigning over humanity, God was not interested in being a dictator, but rather keeping us in a close intimate relationship with Himself. In fact, His intent from the beginning has been to have human beings have a role in God's reign over the earth, thus He gave us dominion over a portion of His creation. From a human perspective, God's creation is His kingdom and we are meant to be His subjects, the citizens of His kingdom. However, because of humanity's fall into sin, our being cast out of the Garden of Eden included a loss of our role in creation and our citizenship. But thanks be to God who is merciful and gracious, that He has had a plan in place to redeem human beings from slavery to sin and the fall, and to restore our citizenship in His kingdom.

Therefore, in exploring how a mature Christian "Lives for Jesus", we have to address our position as citizens in the kingdom of God. We need to understand that growth in Christ involves a move from having a degree of loyalty to culture and country, while having no loyalty towards God, to becoming completely loyal to God and His kingdom.

Growth towards Christian maturity

Local Loyalty

The place of our birth and the citizenship of our parents determines our own citizenship. It is possible to change one's citizenship, but that is more of the exception than the rule. For human beings, our citizenship is connected to our country and our culture. We pledge to be loyal to our nation. Not only to our nation, but within our nation, many of us feel a loyalty to our particular state. Narrow that down even more and we find that we are profess our loyalty to our town, a school, or even a club. When push comes to shove, our loyalty to our family and friends comes to the surface. We believe can be loyal to a variety of people groups, and this is displayed in the many ways and for the many groups that we show loyalty to. But deep down inside, our loyalty is actually to ourselves. There may be times when our loyalty to one group causes our supposed loyalty to another group to be in conflict. At that point, we discover that our loyalty to one of those groups is less important to us than we claimed. This is because we can only be truly loyal to only one entity. True loyalty is seen in the complete commitment of all areas of our life to only one thing. In the final analysis, apart from Christ Jesus, our loyalty resides only to ourselves. Sure, we have groups we align with as long as they are in alignment with us. We honor and respect our citizenship as it has been set by the location of our birth and the standards of our world at this time in history. But when examined, our citizenship is registered in our own kingdom, a kingdom of our making. Our ultimate loyalty is localized to ourselves.

My Loyalties Are Unstable

The problem with loyalty to the entities of this world is that they cannot last. They cannot endure. They are unstable. There can arise circumstances that break the supposed bond of loyalty between one group and another, one person and a group, or even one person with another. This is because the foundation of even the best loyalty this world can offer is shifting sand. Take loyalty to our country. While we may proclaim to be loyal to our nation, it is possible for our nation to stop being loyal to us. Let's face the reality that there is nothing to prevent a country from changing its laws or revoking a person's citizenship. This has been done time and again throughout history. Or take loyalty to a particular group. Various things can result in a change to that group that breaks the ties of loyalty. Many companies have closed their doors and moved to another location, even another country. We have sought to be loyal to them, but they have not remained loyal to us. So many families have been split apart for a variety of reasons, showing the instability of the loyalty that is meant to bind families together. The temporary nature of the type of loyalty the world offers is one of the reasons that our ultimate loyalty is pledged to ourselves. It may sound strange, but many of us have not been loyal to ourselves. There are many of us who have allowed things into our lives that have been disastrous. We go after things that we know we shouldn't pursue. We can be so self-destructive. What we discover as we go through life apart from the Lord Jesus Christ is that our loyalty is based on something that is not stable and is extended to things that cannot endure. The problem isn't that loyalty itself is unstable, but that the entities we claim to be loyal to cannot be loyal in return. Our citizenship, career, job, home, town, family, and even our own life will not stand the test of time for all of these will pass away. Nations collapse. Careers and jobs come to an end. Homes are sold, lost, or even destroyed. Towns change, some grow and others decline. Some families go through positive changes as children grow up and leave home, others go through devastating changes caused by things like divorce and even death. Even our own life, will arrive at to the point, which we have no real say in or control over. It can seem like a hopeless situation, and some people see it that way. We human beings have been designed to be loyal. We are designed to love and to have faith. But because of the fall that brought sin and death into this world, our loyalty has been misplaced. For those outside of Christ, the only option is to do one's best to be loyal to oneself and accept that loyalty is more of an illusion than a reality. But this is not the perspective that marks the person who grows in maturity in Christ. The person moving towards maturity begins to recognize deep inside that there is a problem with the loyalty of those around us and even without ourselves. We don't yet have an understanding at this point of why that is. Nor do we realize that God has the one and only solution. Still, the mature Christian senses there must be more. The instability is not ok.

Loyalty Shifting

When we start getting to know Christ Jesus, we are encountering the only one who has walked this earth to whom we can be truly loyal. We are encountering the only one who can be truly loyal to us. Our awareness that things are not as they should be or could be is one of the factors that leads us to consider and his claims. In Jesus we meet the one who is both Savior and Lord. The one in whom rests all authority in heaven and on earth. In him, we learn that his loyalty goes beyond death. In Christ we are promised victory over sin and death. In him we have the promise of eternal life. In no other name is salvation found. Neither we ourselves nor anything or anyone in this world make such a promise or deliver on it. But Christ has promised and he can be trusted to deliver. In encountering Christ, our loyalty begins to shift. As we begin following Jesus as his disciple, we are learning from the one who can teach us how to be truly loyal. Our understanding of loyalty starts to shift. We are seeing things in a new light. We don't fully understand what it means to be loyal to Jesus, what it means to be a citizen in the kingdom of God. In our mind loyalty to Jesus is on par with loyalty to our country. We don't yet realize that loyalty is something that is exclusive. Nevertheless, we are growing. A shifting in our loyalty is taking place. We may not realize it, but our loyalty to ourselves is decreasing and our loyalty to Jesus is increasing. With time we notice more and more that Jesus? loyalty is unlike the loyalty of anyone else. He demands more from us than anyone or anything else. But he also gives more than any other in this world. The deeper our faith becomes regarding Christ, the more our loyalty to him shifts and the clearer we see his loyalty to those who love and believe him. As we grow, we meet with situations in which our loyalties to the world and its ways are in conflict to loyalty to Jesus. Through choice after choice we align ourselves with Christ, separating a little more each time from the world. We are dying to ourselves, and we are crucifying the world. Outwardly, we are still a citizen of our country. We may even pledge allegiances to various groups. But if push comes to shove and we find an issue in conflict with the ways of the kingdom of God, we make the choice to align with the kingdom of God. Some of us may even pay a significant price in aligning with Christ for his ways go counter to the ways of the world. Nevertheless, we learn to pay the price by choosing to be loyal to Jesus above anyone or anything else.

Citizenship Affirmed

As with growth in other areas of our walk with Jesus, there comes a point in our life when we explicitly renounce any and all other allegiances we have been maintaining. We reach a point in which we willingly acknowledge and accept the demands of citizenship in the kingdom of God. We affirm that our citizenship in God's kingdom has priority over our culture, country, career, home, family, and even our life here on earth. All pales in comparison to Jesus. Loyalty to him is of supreme value. His loyalty to those who belong to him is priceless. Deep inside we know, and our actions bear it out, that our citizenship within God's kingdom. This citizenship trumps every other loyalty we have. Some might think that this leads us to despise everything that is in this world. That we would turn against everything and everyone including our family, job, and country. Instead, what happens is that by Christ living in us, we have come to have real compassion for the world. This compassion for the world in its lost and broken condition leads us to seek the best for everyone we encounter. We love like Jesus loved and thus we give ourselves to his work within our small spear of influence. The challenge we face is that the world cannot understand us anymore because we are not of this world. We are likely to face consequences as a result of our loyalty to Christ. We are likely to be misunderstood. We may suffer the loss of things the world cherishes. Some may view our loyalty to Jesus as disloyalty to our family, job, culture, country and perhaps even to the world as a whole. Be that as it may, loyalty to Christ enables us to endure whatever we suffer. What's more is that where these areas of life are not in conflict with Christ, we are able to demonstrate to the world a loyalty that is far beyond what this world can comprehend or offer. Citizenship in the kingdom of God enables us to be better citizens here on earth. We see things in ways the world cannot see them. We experience the Jesus? loyalty, which enables us to be loyal even to those who cannot or will not be loyal to us. We love those in this world more than we ever have before and more than we ever thought possible. We are part of the greatest kingdom there is or ever will be. Our citizenship is within the kingdom of God. This world is not our home.