Our Citizenship Is in Heaven

Chapter 3 began with joy in the Lord (3:1, L16), and it ends with hope in the Lord. Against the earthly-minded of L20, whose end is destruction and whose god is the belly (3:19), Paul sets two of the letter's most luminous sentences. A citizenship that reorders every loyalty, and a Savior who will remake even our bodies. These two verses are the close of the chapter and the seedbed of chapter 4. Read them well, and the commands to stand firm, rejoice always, and be anxious for nothing will land in their proper place.

1. A colony of heaven, in a Roman colony

"But our citizenship is in heaven" (3:20). The word for citizenship (politeuma) was not abstract for the Philippians. Philippi was a proud Roman colony; its people boasted Roman citizenship, wore it, modeled their city on Rome, and would have bristled at any rival allegiance. Paul takes their proudest political identity and rewrites it: your true politeuma is in heaven. You are, already, a colony of a greater city.

This is the same thread Paul planted back in 1:27, "let your manner of life (politeuō, the verb) be worthy of the gospel" (see L9). The root idea runs through the whole letter. The believer's first loyalty, greatest concern, and highest hope is not Rome, not comfort, not nation, not career, but heaven. Murray: "Our first interest, our greatest loyalty, and our highest concern is heaven." Rogers, preaching "The Politics of Pilgrims" from exactly these verses, put it sharply: "We're not vagabonds; we're not strangers. A vagabond has no home. A stranger is away from home. A pilgrim is headed home." (Rogers, "The Politics of Pilgrims," on 3:18-21)

2. We await a Savior

Heaven is not our destination because we die and float there; it is our destination because a Person comes from there. "And from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ" (3:20). Note the verb: await. The Christian posture is not nostalgia for a past salvation only, nor absorption in present duties only, but eager expectation of a returning Lord. Rogers loved to contrast the Christian's allegiance with the Roman cry "Caesar is Lord": "The Christians said, 'No, Jesus is Lord.'... We didn't vote Him in, and we won't vote Him out."

This is the hope that frees us from headline hysteria. Paul wrote this from a Roman cell under Nero, the epitome of evil, and his eyes were up, not around. Rogers again, from the same sermon: "It may be possible for some earthly kingdom... to be in decline, and God's kingdom will be doing quite well." A citizen of heaven is not crushed when earthly kingdoms falter, because the City that matters is not in decline, and its King is coming.

3. Bodies made like his

Then the promise that completes the chapter: "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" (3:21). Against those whose "god is the belly" (3:19), who pamper a body that will perish, Paul sets a body that will be transformed. The bodies we now offer in willing service (cf. L13) will one day be remade in the pattern of Christ's resurrection body. The same power that subjects all things to him will subject even our decay to glory.

Murray draws the devotional conclusion: "Give up your bodies to the Lord's service because the Lord will give you back a better body" (Murray, "Copycat or Copy-Christ?" on 3:17-21). This is the final answer to the earthly mind of 3:19. The belly-worshipper clings to a body that dies; the citizen of heaven spends a body in love, knowing it will rise. And the chapter that opened with "rejoice in the Lord" (3:1) closes on the Lord who is able, "the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself." There is no panic in heaven.

Chapter 3 ends here, and chapter 4 will pick up its threads directly: "Therefore, my brothers... stand firm thus in the Lord" (4:1), then "rejoice in the Lord always" (4:4), then the famous peace and contentment passages you may already know. Read in context, those commands flow straight from a citizen of heaven awaiting a Savior. That is where we go next.