—Saint Andrew’s Church, Savannah
 
The Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity—November 3, 2002
 
Citizenship
 
“For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed unto the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself” (Philippians 3:20-21).
 
Was St. Paul, who wrote the words that I just quoted, a loyal citizen of the Roman Empire? Certainly, we know that St. Paul was executed by that Empire for the offense of preaching the Gospel and for proclaiming a greater King than Caesar, but was St. Paul a good citizen?
 
We know from the Acts of the Apostles that St. Paul was not shy about revealing his Roman citizenship. We can read, for example, about his arrest in Jerusalem: “And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?” (Acts 22:25). Since Roman citizens had rights, this question troubled his captors: “Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born” (Acts 22:27-28).
 
And in the end, rather than yield himself to the Jerusalem mob or to the pliable local officials who might very well ignore the Roman law in order to placate the mob, St. Paul made a fairly ordinary Roman declaration: “For if I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die: but if there be none of these things whereof these accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them. I appeal unto Caesar” (Acts 25:11). St. Paul went to Rome for his trial, and eventually he even died like a Roman, beheaded rather than crucified, as was his right as a citizen.
 
If we look at the evidence, we can see that St. Paul was a perfect Roman citizen, who placed only one limit on his earthly citizenship and on his willingness to obey the law of the Empire. He lived and died by that limit, but he did not choose it for himself, since it was nothing like a private opinion of his own. Rather, his Lord and our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had laid down that limit in the Gospel, as we heard reported by St. Matthew just this morning: “Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's” (Matthew 22:21).
 
The Lord God Almighty loves the nations of this world, or else he would not have sent his only-begotten Son to die for them and to redeem them. Nor would he have commanded his Son, at the moment of his Ascension, to deliver this Great Commission to the Church through the Apostles: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matthew 28:19-20).
 
God Almighty loves the nations, and that final “amen” is important. It signifies that this commission to teach, to convert, and to baptize “all nations” is the sworn Word of God and the permanent obligation of every Christian until the Second Coming, when the nations will pass away to be replaced by a new heaven and a new earth, identical in every way with the one and only Kingdom of God, and populated entirely by the adopted children of God.


We are intended by God to love and serve the nations of this earth, and especially to love and serve the nation that God has made our earthly home. Our earthly nation is, in effect, an extended family. We are meant to feel something in our hearts when we see our nation’s flag raised up above us. We are meant to honor our earthly governors and to pray for them, perhaps most warmly when we are forced by our conscience to honor the office itself, as something that belongs, under God, to us all, which we lend temporarily to this or that person, even though we cannot honor the private person or the behavior of an office holder.
 
We ought to be, as St. Paul was, perfect citizens with exactly the same limit—that we live “under God” and render unto Caesar only those things that God has allotted to Caesar, and not those matters of governance, of truth, and of kingship that God has reserved to himself. Our citizenship here on earth, not matter how much we love our nation, is temporary. Our citizenship in the kingdom of heaven, by the grace of God and the blood of Jesus Christ, is permanent, eternal, and the final definition of who we are and of what we ought to be or do.
 
St. Paul died, not to offend Caesar, but to obey God in those things that belong to God. No nation, no empire can claim our souls for itself because all earthly nations, however beloved, are a part of “the body of our humiliation.” Our nations are fallen, just as we are fallen. Our governments are fallible, just as any other earthly human endeavor is fallible. Caesar is not a god, even if he beheads us for worshipping only the One True God. And the only true way to love Caesar, any other earthly governor, or any earthly nation is to say “no” when God has said “no” and to say “yes” when God has said “yes.”
 
Our first task, then, as citizens of heaven, is to seek the grace of God to conform ourselves, our private lives and the lives of our families, to the righteous glory of Jesus Christ. We must be dissatisfied with anything in our lives or our homes that is not a fit representation of the kingdom of heaven or unworthy of the great and glorious God who is enthroned there. Converting the nations, converting the world, begins with our own whole-hearted conversion to Jesus Christ—with the exchange of the lives that we might have lived on our own for the new life that Jesus Christ has given us, the life that he himself lives as he is proclaimed in the Gospel.
 
Then, as loyal citizens of the kingdom of heaven, we must look to the nation around us and to all the nations of the world. If we are Christians, we have been unalterably committed by our Lord and Savior to deliver the Gospel to every nation, near or far. Those nations are called by Christ, just as much as we are, to obeying all things whatsoever that Jesus Christ has taught and commanded. There are no exceptions, either among those who live in foreign lands or among those who live in this land.
 
The more that we love the earthly nation that God has given us, the more we will work and pray to conform that nation to Christ—not by the sword—but by good example, faithful citizenship, and the grace of God. A faithful Christian is the best citizen of any earthly nation, as St. Augustine explained sixteen centuries ago:
Wherefore, let those who say that the doctrine of Christ is incompatible with the State’s well-being, give us an army composed of soldiers such as the doctrine of Christ requires them to be; let them give us such subjects, such husbands and wives, such parents and children, such masters and servants, such kings, such judges—in short, even such taxpayers and tax-gatherers, as the Christian religion has taught that men should be, and then let them dare to say that it is adverse to the State’s well-being; yea, rather, let them no longer hesitate to confess that this doctrine, if it were obeyed, would be the salvation of the commonwealth (To Marcellinus, Letter 138, 15).
 
We go to the polls this week, and we have before us a God-given opportunity to exercise both our heavenly and our earthly citizenship. As Christians, whether we are voting in a civil or a church election, we should vote in exactly the same way. We should pray for the guidance of God the Holy Ghost, and then we should vote for the person that we believe will honor God best, obeying God’s revealed will and purposes. God is the test of true citizenship, on earth as it is in heaven.
 
No earthly government can or will save us. We wait for our Savior to return to us from heaven. But an earthly government can be more or less pleasing to God, more or less obedient to his law, more or less in conformity to Christ. These are the considerations that must rule us as we exercise our heavenly and our earthly franchise. Christians can be loyal citizens on earth, but only if they are loyal Christians first, faithful to God in Christ above all.