Citizens of Heaven

Philippians 1:27-30

^27 Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel ^28 without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. ^29 For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him, ^30 since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

Karen and I are penny pinchers, so when we received an increase in our auto insurance, I knew it was again time to shop around. We’ve shopped around so much that I didn’t think I would save any money, but sure enough, one company was able to beat my current policy. I called a representative from my current policy to make sure I was getting all the discounts and to see if they could reduce my costs a little bit more. I have to say, the representative was extremely helpful and she did all she could do to massage the policy and squeeze every last penny out of it, but in the end, it was still higher than my comparison price.

Then she told me something that sealed the deal to make me stay at their company. She explained that since we have not had any claims or accidents in almost five years that we’ve been with their company, once we reached the five year mark we would be given something called “accident forgiveness”. I didn’t know what that was, but I love anything with forgiveness in the title, so I asked her to explain it to me. Accident forgiveness is basically like it sounds. If we have an accident and we are at fault, they completely forgive the first accident and do not raise your insurance rates. As I said, that was the deal clincher. I was prepared to drop my current insurer, but in the end I was willing to pay a little bit more for car insurance because of the future offer of forgiveness. Their offer of forgiveness changed my behavior.

This is just a very small illustration of how forgiveness given to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ is supposed to change our behavior.  In verse twenty seven Paul wrote, Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Our lives are to be lived in a way that is worthy of the gospel of Christ. What this means is that because Christ has forgiven us, this ought to change our behavior. This offer of forgiveness should change our behavior.

Here are two ways that this is abused and misunderstood. The first error is the error of religion. Religion tells us that we must change our behavior so that we can receive forgiveness. There are literally billions of people right now who are trying to earn forgiveness or some kind of favor with God. They alter their behavior in the hopes of being found worthy of forgiveness. The problem with this error of religion is that not only is it impossible to earn God’s forgiveness, but the very notion of trying to earn a gift of forgiveness cheapens the gift itself. If I can earn something like forgiveness, then it means that forgiveness is within my grasp. I may have to work a little, but forgiveness is within my power to achieve, and if something is within my power to achieve, then why do I need God? Earned forgiveness is not a gift—it is a right. If I have earned forgiveness, then I have a right to demand forgiveness, just like I have a right to demand my paycheck from my employer—I have earned it.  Furthermore, if I can demand forgiveness then I have just made myself equal with God.

The second type of error is more common in evangelical churches and is what I call gospel dilution. Gospel dilution is what happens when you dilute the meaning of the word gospel to the point that it no longer means gospel. For example, some Christians say that feeding the poor and seeking justice is the gospel. They think that starting schools and hospitals, digging wells, eradicating disease and loving your wife is the gospel. These things are not the gospel. I am going to argue in a minute that all of these things are inseparable from the gospel and must flow out of the gospel, but they are not themselves the gospel.

Here is how gospel dilution takes place. A group of evangelical Christians who were on fire for the Lord feel called to start an inner city rescue mission. They start with a few beds for homeless men, offer one meal per day and preach a gospel message before or after the meal. The mission grows steadily over the years and everyone is quite satisfied with preaching and practical ministry. Eventually some in the rescue mission begin to question the necessity of preaching a gospel message at every meal. Their reasoning looks like this: after all, the meal is what these people really need and maybe we shouldn’t force them to listen to a sermon. Besides, when Jesus said to feed the hungry and visit the prisoners, he didn’t mention anything about preaching a sermon.

After the gospel preaching is reduced to three times per week, it is trimmed down to one time on the weekend and finally the sermon is cut out altogether. For a while at least, they will still refer to their rescue mission as “gospel” work. They will send out fundraising letters and ask Christians to donate toward their “gospel mission”. After a few more years or perhaps decades, even the gospel terminology is dropped and al that is left is a social services and humanitarian project. What I have just described has happened thousands of times with rescue missions, hospitals, schools, missionary organizations, churches and even entire denominations. Yale and Princeton were once evangelical institutions. The United Church of Christ was once centered on the true gospel. It may take 50-100 years or more to slide down this slippery slope, but it always begins with gospel dilution. I am all in favor of generous humanitarian labor, but it is a tragedy when they try to dress this work in Christian clothes.

In the error of religion, forgiveness isn’t necessary because I have made God irrelevant by my efforts and hard work. In the error of gospel dilution, forgiveness isn’t necessary because it is eventually replaced with good deeds. As I said at the beginning, genuine forgiveness ought to change my behavior, but my changed behavior, no matter how good, is not the gospel. The forgiveness is.

Let me show you how Paul explained this in verse 27. Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Paul is talking about changing our behavior—that we should live our lives in such a way that it is worthy of the gospel of Christ. The gospel comes first and is the thing upon which our lives are built. The gospel is not our changed lives neither does the gospel come about as a result of a changed life, rather the gospel is always foundationally prior to a changed life.

Let’s take a close look at the word gospel. The word for gospel is euangelion. eu = good and angelion = message—the good message. You probably also see the word angel, which means messenger. If you look at the word euangelion you can see where we get the words evangelism, evangelist and evangelical. The gospel is the good message of salvation in Jesus Christ. The gospel is not feeding the poor or loving others. In other words, the gospel is the message of salvation, not what we do in response to this salvation.

However, after celebrating in the preaching of the gospel by his friends and his enemies, Paul laid out the next step. Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. If God has given you his great gospel, then how does your life reflect this unsurpassable gift? How has the gospel changed you? Are you living a life worthy of the gospel? A slightly better translation of this verse would be: Only live as a citizen worthy of the gospel of Christ. For some reason all of the translators left out the word citizen, perhaps because it needs a lot of explanation. Paul did not actually say “conduct yourselves in a certain manner” nor did he say “live your life in such a way,” but rather he literally wrote, “live as a citizen worthy of the gospel of Christ.”

Paul was in a prison in Rome, the capital of the Empire and he was writing to Christians in the prominent Roman city of Philippi, but do you think he was telling them to live as a good citizen of Rome? Do you think that Paul wanted them to imagine that Caesar was watching, therefore live as a good citizen of Rome? In case there was any lingering doubt, verse twenty of chapter three eliminates this possibility. There Paul wrote, “But our citizenship is in Heaven.” Therefore we can translate this verse this way: “Only live as a citizen of Heaven worthy of the gospel of Christ.” But how do I live as a citizen of heaven while all of my actual living is bound to the earth? That’s just it. As believers we have a dual citizenship—we are born into one country and born again into a better country.

I was talking with Nick Bentzen last week and learned that he a dual citizenship. Nick was born in Okinawa (how cool is that!) so he is a Japanese citizen, but since his dad was a U.S. citizen, Nick is also an American citizen. He holds a dual citizenship in both countries. But one day soon, Nick will have to make a choice and give up one of his citizenships. He cannot remain as a dual citizen for the rest of his life. Unless God calls him to return to Japan, at this point his plan is to give up the Japanese citizenship and retain his U.S. citizenship. In this instance, his U.S. citizenship is Nick’s true identity. If you are a Christian, we were born into one country and born again into another country. In that sense we have a dual citizenship, but our true identity is our heavenly citizenship. Therefore God calls us to make the choice of giving up our earthly citizenship and live as citizens of heaven.

But I am sure we have all heard the phrase, “He’s so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good.” This is usually a smoke screen kind of an argument and I don’t think I have ever met such a person. The people who say this want us to imagine that some Christians walk down the road of life, and like the religious people in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, these Christians stop over dead bodies and ignore starving people and the endless needs of others while they have dreamy visions of heaven and paradise in the after life. It is true that many Christians ignore the needs of people around them, but it’s never because they are dreaming of Heaven but because they have their minds on the things of earth. If we truly lived as citizens of Heaven, we would become the very best citizens of the earth. If we truly lived as citizens of Heaven in a way that was worthy of the gospel of Christ, we would literally have an earth-shattering impact on all those around us.

Let me illustrate what this looks like from the teaching of Jesus in Luke 6. In verses 37-38 Jesus said, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” This is a familiar sounding passage but I would guess that few people have given it much thought. The first part about forgiving and giving are the most practical ways to live as citizens worthy of the gospel of Christ. To be a good heavenly citizen is to love your earthly neighbor. To be a good citizen is to forgive and give to your earthly neighbor. But why should we do this? Jesus answered this question with in the last sentence. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. What is this measure and what does it have to do with giving and forgiving?

Jesus was referring to measurements in the marketplace. If you were in a first century marketplace you would purchase wheat and oats and the like based on a unit of measure. You have probably heard the terms ephah and omer, which are measurements of dry ingredients. At that time, a cab was roughly equivalent to a liter or a quart. I have here a glass quart jar. Obviously they did not use glass jars, but it will suffice for our illustration. Jesus was not concerned here with the unit of measure but with the generosity of the measurement. Jesus described the measurement with the following qualifiers: pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. If I fill this quart jar with beans, I get a fair amount of beans. If the price of beans was one dollar per quart, would you agree that this is one dollars worth? This is a fair measurement.

But Jesus is not measuring beans or wheat or oats—he is measuring his own grace. The measurement is the gospel of forgiveness and grace, and Jesus did not measure his grace in terns of fairness and equity, he measured his grace in terms of extravagance. So what I need to do is shake these beans down to make more room in the jar. Then I need to press down hard on them to make even more room. If the container was bigger, I would keep shaking and pressing the container as I filled it. Then what? Jesus said this generous measure is also running over. The thing that we are measuring is so large it cannot possibly fit into the container, so it spills over the top. This is a generous measurement. This is generous grace. It is shaken together, pressed down, running over and poured into your lap (pour jar of beans into someone’s lap.)

That is abundant grace. That is lavish grace. This is the gospel in all of its abundance. You and I don’t deserve a single bean, yet it is pressed down, shaken together, running over and poured into our laps. I am convinced that Jesus did not intend to stop with one measure of grace. Do you see, the full measure never stops pouring into our laps?! There is no end to it because Christ possesses it in infinite supply and he is infinitely generous with it. To live as a citizen worthy of the gospel of Christ then, is to use the measure with others that was used with us. But that is not what we do. We take this infinite supply of grace, pick up one piece of it and give it to our enemy, saying, “Here, I forgive you. Here is all the forgiveness I can muster.” And the really sad thing about this is that we think we are being generous to offer this much. After all, we reason, the person doesn’t deserve forgiveness, so he or she is lucky to have this much. Aren’t we fortunate that God did not think the way that we do?

Make you sure you get this. We do not give forgiveness and grace to others as a way to earn God’s grace, nor do we call our acts of grace and forgiveness to others the gospel. Such is not the gospel, but it is the necessary fruit of the gospel. We pour out this forgiveness and grace because t was given to us in the gospel. To lives a citizen worthy of the gospel of Christ is to bear the fruit of a forgiven life.

Rich Maurer

October 12, 2008