“Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Believers and unbelievers are not the same. Yes, we are all still people. We are equally created in the image of God and are both inestimably valuable because of that. Jesus died for both groups. God loves us the same. But the former group have been transformed by the grace of God into citizens of heaven while the latter are still in the flesh and denizens of this world. Their trajectories are not the same, nor are their ends. Having talked about the latter yesterday, let’s join Paul today as he reflects a bit about the former.
“Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel, not being frightened in any way by your opponents. This is a sign of destruction for them, but of your salvation—and this is from God. For it has been granted to you on Christ’s behalf not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, since you are engaged in the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I have.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
We are in the thick of college basketball’s conference season. Teams all over the country are playing their conference rivals in a quest to finish the season on top of that smaller contest so that when the time for March Madness finally arrives, they’ll be well positioned to secure their spot in the Big Dance, as they call it. In this effort, wins are what count most. You don’t get credit for anything other than that. Playing well but not outscoring the other team is meaningless. A loss is only a loss. But what if it wasn’t? What if a loss only seemed like a loss on paper, but what really mattered was how you played? As Paul points out here, in our efforts to advance God’s kingdom something entirely more like that is the case. Let’s explore these powerful verses.
We are in the midst of another intensely partisan election season where one side regularly derides the other as hating America while the other side accuses the one of being a threat to our democracy. Both sides claim to love the country while insisting the other obviously does not. This raises an interesting question for us to consider as followers of Jesus: What does it look like to properly love our country? What does it look like for a follower of Jesus to properly love whatever country he happens to call home? As we continue in our series, Who Do You Want to Be, this week, examining what it looks like for believers to live like Jesus is coming back someday, let’s take a look at this question through the lens of the Gospel.
A Proper Patriotism
What does it look like to properly love your country? That’s a trickier question to answer than it might appear at first glance. I suspect most of you immediately called to mind all kinds of patriotic images. We’re not quite a month past the Fourth of July. Gathering as families and communities while we eat good food and watch other people blow stuff up seems to be a pretty good way to love our country. But can you love your country too much? Is that a thing? Can you make an idol out of it? What if you love it to the point that you are willing to overlook or otherwise justify obvious and real faults? No country has a history that is totally spotless from any sort of failing of morality. Does a proper love of country allow for honest conversations about those? At the same time, though, can you give those kinds of things too much attention? I mean, no country is perfect, sure, but none of them are all bad either. Every country has noble and redeeming qualities if you are willing to search for them. Yeah, maybe you have to search a little harder in some places than others, but they’re there. It seems that a proper love of country is going to avoid both of these extremes and fall in this messy middle ground of loving without idolizing, and being honest without becoming cynical. What has me thinking about all of this today is that as we continue in our teaching series, Who Do You Want to Be, we are going to be taking a look at our duty to be good citizens wherever we happen to live.
“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my reassured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine…” (ESV – Read the chapter)
One of the things we are called to (and by “we,” I mean “everybody”) over and over again in the Scriptures is obedience. We live in a day, though, when obedience is not a popular idea. We want to be free to do as we please. We want to loosen the restrictions on ourselves so we can pursue our hearts’ desires without any limitations. Nobody likes the idea of obedience…except for when they do. Read the rest…
The Nexus 