Dual Citizenship

11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. 13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. 16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. 17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor. (1 peter 2:11-17)

As believers we are citizens of Heaven. When we place our faith in Christ we become members of His kingdom and He reserves a future place for us to dwell with Him for eternity (2 Corinthians 1:21-22, Ephesians 1:13-14). However, God does not whisk us off to Heaven at the moment of conversion. We remain citizens of this world. Not only that, we retain a sin nature that provokes us to satisfy every desire our flesh has.

Scripture assures us that the power (and penalty) of the sin nature has been defeated and we are free to walk in righteousness (Romans 8:1-2). This walk is one of dual citizenship. We live on this earth as creatures of this earth. Yet, we are also called to manifest and represent the values of our heavenly citizenship.

In the above passage, Peter calls us foreigners and exiles. How often do we consider this? On the one hand some of us don’t consider this because we choose our earthly citizenship over our heavenly. We take on the values of this world, happy to simply carry Christ in our pocket like a “Get out of Hell” card. On the other hand, some of us are vexed by the things we encounter in culture. We look at the life of righteousness we are called to live and compare it to the “norms” of this world and at times find ourselves a bit overwhelmed.

I submit that the solution to both situations is a healthy reminder that we are not of this world. We are here for a purpose and that purpose is found in our heavenly citizenship. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul reminds us that we are ambassadors who represent Heaven and seek to bring peace between God and men (I highly recommend that you read that whole chapter).

So, in the end it really isn’t about us. This is why in our above passage, Peter concludes,
“Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves.” (v.16)
In the end the Christian life isn’t about fighting for the freedoms that I have, it’s about using them to represent my true citizenship.