New Year Reflection

The beginning of a new year highlights something significant: We live in two worlds.
 
From the perspective of the secular world, we just entered a new year. And yet, according to the Church’s calendar, the new year began with the First Sunday of Advent. The two times, or two calendars, reveal that we live our lives in two spheres—the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man.
 
It isn’t that we can divide the two—the modern conception of a sacred-secular divide is a profound mistake, because everything exists under God’s authority and all of our life is within his kingdom. But it is very true that we experience a pretty jarring disconnect between the two, much of the time. What we do at work or in school sometimes doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with the kingdom of God. We inhabit two seemingly disconnected places.
 
Paul, who openly claimed and used his earthly, Roman citizenship when he thought it strategic, told the Philippian church, “our citizenship is in heaven.” This must have been shocking, because Philippi was a town founded for Roman military veterans. Their patriotism was likely akin to the patriotism our veterans feel—quite strong! He wasn’t criticizing or rebuking them, though. After all, it was in Philippi that he also claimed Roman citizenship after being illegally beaten and jailed. His point was simply that the one world—heaven—was more important than the other world. Our true and eternal citizenship is in heaven, not in Rome or America.
 
Keeping the two in right priority (i.e., letting the kingdom of God take precedence over earthly kingdoms) is hard, because so much of life is shaped by the earthly kingdom. But we must keep them in right priority if we are to remain true to our higher citizenship. Heaven gets to change how we think about America, but America doesn’t get to change how we think about heaven. We are in both, all the time, but only one gets to be the final answer to the questions of life.
 
The two mistakes that we easily make are to merge the two or divide the two. Instead, we are called to live as citizens of heaven in the midst of an earthly realm. Heaven sets our priorities, our character, and our hopes, but heaven is not lived in the abstract—it is lived out in the messiness and difficulty of the particular place in which God has planted us. This means feeling out of place, like exiles and strangers. Anyone seeking to live by heaven’s code of ethics (like humility, gentleness, or purity) as a faithful member of an earthly kingdom will experience the disconnect. The two don’t usually agree! And yet, the witness of the Scriptures is that we will be better earthly citizens if we let the code of heaven—such as forgiveness, love, and righteousness—be our standard.
 
Each time you write the date “2024” over the next few weeks, let it be a reminder to you of your dual citizenship, and let that reminder stir you to live as heaven’s citizen in your earthly home.

Steven+