Citizens of God’s Kingdom

 

“But our citizenship is in heaven.”

—Philippians 3:2a

Just yesterday, we citizens of the United States of America celebrated the anniversary of the birth of our great nation. We did so with parades, picnics, family gatherings, and fireworks displays. We also did so with visits to the graveyards that hold the remains of those who sacrificed their very lives to protect the freedoms that we celebrated.

But for “Christ’s-ones”—Christians—we are citizens of an even greater Kingdom. For, before the foundation of the earth, God chose us to belong to Himself. In due season, He sent the Holy Spirit to speak into the deep recesses of our hearts and draw us into the fullness of the knowledge of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us by taking the penalty of our sins on Himself and dying on the cruel cross of Calvary.

As the Holy Spirit whispered to us, He revealed how Jesus rose again from the grave, thus conquering sin, and death, and Satan. Jesus ascended into heaven where He sat down at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. In that seat of honor and authority, Jesus makes intercession for us. Now, when God looks at us, He sees the blood stains from His Son’s precious blood covering us from the crown of our heads to the soles of our feet.

We are no longer only sinners. Now we are sinners redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ. God has adopted us as His sons and daughters. We belong to Him. We have moved from mere creations to children, children of God.

God has adopted us into His family. We are now citizens of the Great King. Our home is with Him. That’s where we will spend all eternity. The Body of Christ, the Church, will evermore live in the Presence of the King.

The Apostle Paul elegantly and succinctly captured the reality of this fact in these words found in Philippians 3:20:

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is fitting and proper that we celebrate our great nation, the United States of America. We owe so much to all those who have gone before us. The men and women who sacrificed to give birth to this nation. The men and women who dies to preserve our freedoms. And, the men and women who live today on the battlefields across the world to preserve our freedoms still.

It is fitting and proper that we fall to our knees and implore God to protect our nation; to ask Him to forgive our waywardness; to send a great, sweeping revival across our land that will draw men, women, boys, and girls into a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ; and to keep us safe from those, both within and without, that would forever change our nation and destroy our freedoms.

But, in so doing, we who belong to the Great King must always remember that our true citizenship is with the God who loves us and who sent His one and only Son to die in our place—the God who sent the Holy Spirit to live within us and grant us His comfort, strength, mercy, grace, and unfailing love.

We truly do have a story to tell to the nations. It is a story of what God has done in our individual lives. It is a story of what God has done in and through us as members of the Body of Christ, the Church. We are God’s children. We are citizens of His Great Kingdom.

Let us rejoice this day that God has chosen us to belong to Him. And, let us surrender our own foolish wills to Him and allow Him to spread His love across the pathway of our lives. May every person who comes into our lives soon learn of the reason for the hope that we hold within us. And, as God uses us for His divine purposes, may we become instruments of His mercy, grace, and love to a very needy world.

 

_{Copyright © 2015 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

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