Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Philippians 3:20

For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ:

20. For ] The A.V., by marking Php 3:18-19 as a parenthesis, connects this “for” with Php 3:17. But there is no need for this. A suppressed link of thought is easily seen and expressed between Php 3:19-20; somewhat thus: “such principles and practices are wholly alien to ours; for &c.” In a grave oral address or dialogue such links have often to be supplied, and the Apostle’s written style is a very near approach to the oral.

A reading “ But,” or “ Now,” has much support in early quotations, but none in MSS. See Lightfoot here.

our ] He refers to the “ensamples” mentioned Php 3:17, as distinguished from their opponents. Or perhaps we should say, from their false friends. For very possibly these antinomians claimed to be the true disciples of Pauline truth, the true exponents of free grace as against legalism.

conversation ] R.V. “ citizenship ”; margin, “ commonwealth.” The A.V. is the rendering also of all our older versions, except Wyclif’s, which has “lyuyng.” It represents the conversatio of the Latin versions, a word which means not “mutual speech” but “the intercourse of life” (see on Php 1:27); and the meaning is thus, in effect, that “ we live on earth as those whose home is in heaven.” The same English is found (in A.V.) Psa 50:23; 2Co 1:12; Gal 1:13; Eph 2:3; Eph 4:22; above Php 1:27 (where see note); &c. But the Greek in all these places is quite different from the Greek here, where the word is polteuma. (connected with polis, city, polts, citizen), a word which occurs nowhere else in N.T., nor in LXX., nor in the Apocrypha. In classical Greek it denotes ( a) a “ measure,” or “ policy,” of state; ( b) the governing body of a state, its “ government ”; ( c) the constitution of a state, including the rights of its citizens. On the whole, this last meaning best suits the present context, or at least approaches it most nearly. What the Apostle means is that Christians are citizens of the heavenly City, enrolled on its register, free of its privileges, and, on the other hand, “obliged by the nobility” of such a position to live, whether in the City or not as yet, as those who belong to it and represent it. “Our citizenship, our civic status, is in heaven,” fairly gives this thought. In the anonymous Epistle to Diognetus, a Christian writing of cent. 2 (printed with the works of St Justin), a sentence occurs (c. 5) which well illustrates this passage, and perhaps refers to it, and is in itself nobly true: “Christians, as dwellers, are on earth, as citizens, in heaven.” The verb cognate to the noun here is used there; see, on the verb, note on Php 1:27 above.

is ] More strictly and fully, subsists. See second note on Php 2:6 above, where the same word occurs. The thought is that the “citizenship” is at any moment an antecedent and abiding fact, on which the citizen may fall back.

in heaven ] Lit., in (the) heavens; as often in N.T. On this plural see note on Eph 2:10, in this Series. Cp. Gal 4:26; Heb 12:22; Rev 3:12 (where see Abp Trench’s full note, Epistles to the Seven Churches, pp. 183 187), xxi., xxii., for the revealed conception of the heavenly City, the Our nopolis, as it is finely called by St Clement of Alexandria (cent. 2), and Eusebius of Csarea (cent. 4); and other Greek Fathers use the word ouranopolts of the Christian. The great treatise of St Augustine (cent. 4 5), On the City (Civilas) of God, contains a wealth of illustration of the idea of this verse. To Augustine, writing amidst the wreck of Old Rome (about a.d. 420), the Christian appears as citizen of a State which is the antithesis not of human order, which is of God, and which is promoted by the true citizens of heaven, but of “the world,” which is at enmity with Him. This State, or City, is now existing and operating, through its members, but not to be consummated and fully revealed till the eternity of glory shall come in (see Smith’s Dict. of Christian Biography, 1., p. 221). The thought of the Holy City was dear to St Augustine. The noble medieval lines,

Me receptet Syon illa,

Urbs beata, urbs tranquilla,

(quoted at the close of Longfellow’s Golden Legend), are taken almost verbally from Augustine, de Spiritu et Anim, c. lx. See Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 332 (and cp. pp. 312 320).

from whence ] Lit., “ out of which ( place).” The pronoun is singular, and so cannot refer directly to the plural noun, “ the heavens.” The construction must be either ( a) a merely adverbial one, an equivalent for the adverb “ whence ”; or ( b) the pronoun must refer back to the noun politeuma (on which see above). In the latter case, we must suppose that the idea of citizenship suggests, and passes into, that of city, the local home of the citizens, and the word denoting citizenship is treated as if it denoted city [24] . The solution ( a) is no doubt simpler, but clear evidence for the usage (where ideas of place are in view), is not apparent, though the fact is asserted (e.g. by Winer, Grammar of N. T. Greek, Moulton’s Ed., p. 177). Happily the grammatical problem leaves the essential meaning of the clause quite clear.

[24] We might thus perhaps render, or explain, politeuma by “ seat of citizenship.”

we look for ] Better, with R.V., we wait for. The form of the verb implies a waiting full of attention, perseverance, and desire. The verb occurs elsewhere, Rom 8:19; Rom 8:23; Rom 8:25; 1Co 1:7; Gal 5:5; Heb 9:28 ; 1Pe 3:20. Of these passages all but Gal.(?) and 1 Pet. refer to the longed for Return of the Lord, the blessed goal of the believer’s hope. Cp. Luk 12:35-38; Act 1:11; Act 3:20-21; Rom 8:18; Rom 8:23-25; Rom 13:11-12; 1Co 11:26; 1Co 15:23, &c.; Col 3:4 ; 1Th 1:10; 1Th 2:19 ; 1Th 3:13; 1Th 4:14 to 1Th 5:10; 1Th 5:23; 2Th 1:7-10; 1Ti 6:14; 2Ti 2:11-12; 2Ti 4:8; Tit 2:13; Heb 10:25; Heb 10:37; Jas 5:7-8; 1Pe 1:7 ; 1Pe 1:13; 1Pe 4:13 ; 1Pe 5:4; 2Pe 3:4 ; 2Pe 3:9; 2Pe 3:13 ; 1Jn 2:28; 1Jn 3:2-3; Rev 2:25; Rev 22:20.

the Saviour &c.] There is no article in the Greek; and therefore render, perhaps, as our Saviour, the Lord &c. The A.V. is by no means untenable grammatically, but the word “Saviour” is so placed as to suggest not only emphasis but predicative force. And the deep connexion in the N.T. between the Lord’s Return and the full and final “salvation” of the believer’s being (cp. esp. Rom 13:11) gives a natural fitness to this use of the holy Title here.

“The Lord Jesus Christ”: this full designation of the Blessed Person suits the tone of solemn hope and joy in the passage.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

For our conversation is in heaven – That is, this is true of all who are sincere Christians. It is a characteristic of Christians, in contradistinction from those who are the enemies of the cross, that their conversation is in heaven. The word conversation we now apply almost entirely to oral discourse. It formerly, however, meant conduct in general, and it is usually employed in this sense in the Scriptures; see the notes at Phi 1:27, where the verb occurs, from which the noun here is derived. The word used here – politeuma – is found nowhere else in the New Testament. It properly means, any public measure, administration of the state, the manner in which the affairs of a state are administered; and then the state itself, the community, commonwealth, those who are hound under the same laws, and associated in the same society. Here it cannot mean that their conversation, in the sense of discourse or talking, was in heaven; nor that their conduct was in heaven – for this would convey no idea, and the original word does not demand it; but the idea is, that they were heavenly citizens, or citizens of the heavenly world, in contradistinction from a worldly community, They were governed by the laws of heaven; they were a community associated as citizens of that world, and expecting there to dwell.

The idea is, that there are two great communities in the universe – that of the world, and that of heaven: that governed by worldly laws and institutions, and that by the laws of heaven; that associated for worldly purposes, and that associated for heavenly or religious purposes; and that the Christian belonged to the latter – the enemy of the cross, though in the church, belonged to the former. Between true Christians, therefore, and others, there is all the difference which arises from belonging to different communities; being bound together for different purposes; subject to different laws; and altogether under a different administration. There is more difference between them than there is between the subjects of two earthly governments; compare Eph 2:6, note 19, note.

From whence also we look for the Saviour – From heaven. That is, it is one of the characteristics of the Christian that he believes that the Lord Jesus will return from heaven, and that he looks and waits for it. Other men do not believe this 2Pe 3:4, but the Christian confidently expects it. His Saviour has been taken away from the earth, and is now in heaven, but it is a great and standing article of his faith that that same Saviour will again come, and take the believer to himself; see the Joh 14:2-3, note; 1Th 4:1, note. This was the firm belief of the early Christians, and this expectation with them was allowed to exert a constant influence on their hearts and lives. It led them:

(1)To desire to be prepared for his coming;

(2)To feel that earthly affairs were of little importance, as the scene here was soon to close;

(3)To live above the world, and in the desire of the appearing of the Lord Jesus.

This was one of the elementary doctrines of their faith, and one of the means of producing deadness to the world among them; and among the early Christians there was, perhaps, no doctrine that was more the object of firm belief, and the ground of more delightful contemplation, than that their ascended Master would return. In regard to the certainty of their belief on this point, and the effect which it had on their minds, see the following texts of the New Testament; Mat 24:42, Mat 24:44; Luk 12:37; Joh 14:3; Act 1:11; 1Co 4:5; Col 3:4; 1Th 2:19; 2Th 2:1; Heb 10:37; Jam 5:7-8; 1Jo 3:2; Rev 22:7, Rev 22:12, Rev 22:20. It may be asked, with great force, whether Christians in general have now any such expectation of the second appearing of the Lord Jesus, or whether they have not fallen into the dangerous error of prevailing unbelief, so that the expectation of his coming is allowed to exert almost no influence on the soul.

In the passage before us, Paul says that it was one of the distinct characteristics of Christians that they looked for the coming of the Saviour from heaven. They believed that he would return. They anticipated that important effects would follow to them from his second coming. So we should look. There may be, indeed, a difference of opinion about the time when he will come, and about the question whether he will come to reign literally, on the earth – but the fact that Christ will return to our world is common ground on which all Christians may meet, and is a fact which should be allowed to exert its full influence on the heart. It is a glorious truth – for what a sad world would this be, and what a sad prospect would be before the Christian, if the Saviour were never to come to raise his people from their graves, and to gather his redeemed to himself! The fact that he will come is identified with all our hopes. It is fitted to cheer us in trial; to guard us in temptation; to make us dead to the world; to lead us to keep the eye turned toward heaven.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Php 3:20-21

For our conversation is in heaven–Observe

I.

Heaven is described as a polity.

II. Every believer has an interest in it.

III. This interest influences his conduct.

1. He confesses himself a stranger on earth.

2. Denies himself.

3. Sets his affections on things above.

IV. The great obstacle to his complete happiness is his humiliated body.

V. He anticipates its glorification.

VI. Christ will effect it at His coming.

VII. Therefore we look for Him. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The Christians country

1. Conversation has much the same meaning as the political word constitution. Citizenship is a good rendering if to the ordinary meaning of political standing and privilege be added the mode of a nations government, the character of its laws, the tone and habits of its citizens.

2. The word rendered is denotes that our constitution endures and rules.

3. States have their heads; ours is the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. There are here two practical motives by which St. Paul urges the Philippians to walk so that they have true Christian teachers for an ensample.

I. The energy of loyalty.

1. Loyalty is reverence for, not mere submission to law. A man may be obedient for fear of punishment. A loyal man will not think much of a penalty to be escaped. The privilege of his citizenship was the protection of every Roman. By pleading this Paul escaped the lash. But that would be a poor loyalty which only pleaded privilege without the homage of submission. The loyal Roman would behave himself as a freeman. Regard for others would be instilled into him by reverence for the law which protected all. They are not loyal Englishmen who by their vices have brought shame on the English name in foreign lands. Attachment to ones country will lead a man to live worthy of it.

2. You see how loyalty to heaven affected Paul. It was a pain to him that there were Christians unmindful of their heavenly character, dishonouring themselves and casting contempt on their citizenship. The honour of the heavenly citizen is the strong motive by which he appeals to his disciples. Loyalty to a higher order is an energy to resist temptation. True patriotic pride is an impulse to sons to prove worthy of their sires; a name is theirs which they must not dishonour. The higher law of the household constrains many to purity of thought and manly struggle. The thought of home, wife, children, parents, deprives temptation of all its force. Loyalty to the sanctities of household piety is the energy of a pure and reverent life. In this way Paul appeals to the Philippians when he says we are citizens of heaven. He is putting them on their honour, while around them are many who have fallen from their profession.

3. Reflect on the obligations of your heavenly home. How pure, lowly, gentle, etc., you expect to be when there. But to all this we are actually called now. Many a man reflecting on his end hopes for a previous time of amendment. In this he shows his recognition of the heavenly character. And we are now citizens of heaven, and its life must be our life on earth.

II. The inspiration of hope.

1. Note the sudden change in Pauls writing. Having introduced the fact of the heavenly citizenship, as an admonition he turns to dwell on the hope it inspires. The Philippians had seen Pauls degradation change into triumph on the mention of the words, I am a Roman citizen. Then the imperial law of Rome had been his protection; now he was enduring wrong at the hands of the emperor himself. The contrast between human statecraft and heavenly rule comes up sharp before him, and in a burst of triumph he utters his expectation of his Kings appearance.

2. Paul knew what was the bondage of the body. How often had the zeal of his spirit worn out the feeble flesh. It is deeply pathetic to think of this man of inspired will, dauntless courage, and deathless energy, suffering humiliation because of the tried and suffering frame. But the body was not vile. He is finding no fault with it. It is answering the purpose of humiliation for which it was designed. His master was keeping him down in feeble flesh that any spiritual pride in him might be checked. Think of it, you of hasty spirit; this man, noblest of all who have borne Christs image, submitted meekly to this restriction.

3. But it was in hope of a blessed transformation. Wisely ordered is the body of humiliation, lest the terrible sin of spiritual arrogance should be ours. But wise and kind as is the discipline, we long for it to be over. Our body is, indeed, a body of humiliation; we must have it changed ere we can be free. But we shall be free. Guard we the Spirit, and He by the energy with which He is able to subdue all things to Himself will change the body, etc. (A. Mackennal, D. D.)

The citizenship and the hope

I. The citizenship. The meaning of the apostle is expressed more fully in Eph 2:19; Heb 12:22; Gal 4:26. Believers are already numbered among the citizens of the eternal city.

1. They are introduced among the denizens of glory by regeneration.

2. They live according to the laws of their Divine sovereign.

3. They enjoy the immunities of the celestial citizenship–freedom from the guilt and power of sin, peace which passeth all understanding, complete safety.

4. They are engaged in the employments of the city of God; for they delight to do His will.

5. These considerations should have a practical influence on our heart and conduct. If citizens of heaven, we ought not to degrade ourselves by the slavery of earth.

II. The hope.

1. The coming of Christ. The original expresses earnest expectation and intense desire. Paul was intent upon and delighted with the animating prospect.

(1) The foundation of the hope was the sure Word of God. For Jesus had repeatedly declared that He would come again (Mat 24:30; Mar 13:26), and the angels at the ascension (Act 1:11).

(2) At His second advent Jesus will accomplish all the predictions which relate to His kingdom and glory (Dan 7:13-14).

2. The resurrection of the saints.

(1) The bodies of the faithful will be transformed into the likeness of the glorious body of Christ (Rom 6:1-23; 1Co 15:1-58). Christs glorious body is–

(a) Immortal. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more. Neither can they who are counted worthy to attain that world and the resurrection from the dead die any more. Upon such the second death hath no power.

(b) Incorruptible; and so the bodies of Gods people will be free from all deformity and sin. Sown in corruption they shall be raised in incorruption.

(c) Identical. As Christ was known after His resurrection, so every believer will be known to those with whom he conversed here.

(d) Spiritual. Christ stood before His disciples when the doors were shut. And though we know little of the change which will pass upon us, we may safely believe that the body will be refined from all that now causes it to hang as a clog upon the aspirations and operations of the immaterial spirit. The senses will be wonderfully improved, so that we shall see God, hear the harmonies of the celestial choir, taste the rivers of pleasures, and speak the language of heaven.

(2) Wondrous is this blessed hope; but let it not be thought incredible. As if to silence every objection, the text tells us that the transformation will be effected by the almighty power of God. (C. Neat.)

Christian citizenship

I. The heavenly citizenship of Christians.

1. Their city heaven. The allusion here is to the love of a Jew, Greek, or Roman, for his metropolis. The apostle represents true Christians as composing a commonwealth whose city is not earthly, but the heavenly Jerusalem: the metropolis of the great empire of the universe where God dwells, where angels do His pleasure, where the spirits of good men are gathered, and to which all true Christians are continually ascending.

2. Their enrollment. Formerly they were aliens, but they were invested with the citizenship by pardon. Upon the penitent acceptance of reconciliation through Christ their name is inscribed in the book of life.

3. Their privileges.

(1) Freedom. That had an importance when the apostle wrote which it has not now. It is of little consequence to be free of any cry, however distinguished, when the great body of the people are free. But in Rome the great body of the people were slaves. Every man who is not liberated by the grace of Christ is under the power of the god of this world. We have no proof of our citizenship unless we have been enabled by Divine power to break off our sins.

(2) Admission to honourable employment and office. There is a diversity of offices, but every Christian is an official character and bears the honourable relation of priest in Gods temple. The city is a holy city, a temple itself.

(3) Fellowship with the whole body.

(a) Saints on earth. Every Christian receives the benefit of the prayers of the millions of Christians who reside on earth.

(b) Angels, who are ministering spirits.

(c) God.

(4) Right to common property.

(a) The blessings of providence.

(b) The benedictions and hopes of grace.

(c) Heirship with the humanity of Jesus Christ.

(d) Inheritance in God.

II. The conduct manifested by Christians and corresponding with their privilege.

1. This must be the conversation of the whole community. All collective bodies acquire a genius, a common character. The Greeks were remarkable for refinement, the Romans for a lofty ambition, the citizens of heaven for holiness. The nations of them that are saved walk in the heavenly city clad in white as an emblem of purity, bearing palms as a symbol of victory. Unless our genius, our whole character, be holy, we do not carry about with us the mark of our city. If you are living under the influence of unsanctified passions, your claim of citizenship is unfounded.

2. We boast of the institutions of our city–God forbid that I should glory, etc. Wherever there is a spirit of shame there is treachery, and wherever there is treachery Christ disowns us.

3. Courage. When the rulers saw the boldness of Peter and John, they took know ledge of them that they had been with Him who never knew how to fear man. This courage arises from the fact that every Christian is under the protection of his Lord. Wherever a Roman went his shield was the magistrate of Rome; wherever an Englishman goes he feels himself under the protection of his country.

4. Our citizenship will be seen in our spirit. We shall feel for the common cause, endeavour to spread the cause of Christ, and rejoice in seeing the heavenly city continually crowded with new inhabitants.

5. He who converses as a citizen of heaven has his affections there, and does not mind earthly things. How natural when at a distance from our native land or home to turn our thoughts towards it. What shall we say of citizens of heaven who never think of it, or to whom the thought is dull?

6. This heavenly state of mind can only be preserved by looking for the Saviour the Lord from heaven. (R. Watson.)

Heavenly Citizenship

By a city or state we understand a multitude or society of people, united in one body, governed by the same laws, enjoying the same rights, subject to the same prince, and having among them the same form of policy. From whence it is evident that the Christian Church is a state, since all these conditions belong to it. But this holy republic differs entirely from the kingdoms of the world in many respects, but more especially in this (which includes all the others,) that it is in heaven, whereas all others are on the earth (Dan 2:44). And therefore this state is called the kingdom of heaven, the city of God, Jerusalem that is above, and the new Jerusalem. And herein it differs not only from the kingdoms of this world, but from the state of Adam in Paradise and the Jews under the theocracy. This Divine city is really in heaven because–

I. Jesus its Prince and Builder is heavenly (1Co 15:47). Not formed of earth and dust like Adam, the head of the first republic; nor by virtue of flesh and blood like Moses, the founder of the Jewish polity; but formed of celestial mould and animated by the Holy Spirit. As His origin was heaven, so also is His abode there; there is His court, and the seat of His empire, whether you consider His Divine or human nature. For although as God He is everywhere, filling all space with His essence, yet Scripture particularly insists upon His presence in the heavens, because there is no place in the universe where that presence is so gloriously manifested, to the utter exclusion of sin, death, and sorrow. The palaces of princes, how magnificent soever they may be, are all here below; and even the Paradise destined for the habitation of man, though delightful was yet terrestrial.

II. As our King is in the heavens, so from thence is the root of our extraction. True believers are not sprung from the dust as Adam, nor from the loins of Jacob as Israelites, but from the Eternal Spirit after the pattern of Christ (Joh 3:3-5). For the Holy Spirit, rendering the Word of Life, which is the seed of our regeneration, fertile within us, forms us into new creatures, fit to enter into the heavenly state.

III. This heaven is our home and rest. We live on earth in the character of pilgrims and strangers till the work of our trial be completed. There already dwelt the first fruits of our society, and there will the remainder of the happy citizens assemble. Heaven is the eternal city to which we aspire.

IV. In heaven are also to be found the armies of our state; not weak soldiers armed with wood, or even iron, whose fidelity may be corrupted by the artifice of the enemy, whose strength may be weakened by a thousand casualties, and whose life may be taken by the sword; but immortal warriors, millions of angels clothed with wisdom and strength incorruptible. They watch over us night and day, and are sent here and there upon errands of mercy to us by our gracious Prince.

V. In this same place are our dignities and honours preserved; the thrones on which we shall hereafter sit; the cities of which our Master will give us the dominion in reward of our faithfulness; the incorruptible crowns with which He will ornament our foreheads; the kingdoms and priesthoods with which He will invest us. (J. Daille.)

Our conversation in heaven

I. A heavenly mindedness is necessary for that.

1. A heavenly mindedness must accompany a conversation in heaven; i.e., our heart is in heaven, our mind is directed thence.

2. As is the mind, so is the conduct. Worldly mindedness is enmity against Christ and His Cross–the friendship of the world is enmity against God.

3. As is the conduct, so shall be the end. Contrast of the earthly and heavenly minded (verses 19, 20).

II. There must be a change of heart in us.

1. We must be translated into the kingdom of heaven. By nature we are not heavenly minded; selfishness, sin, has made us earthly minded, estranged our heart from God.

2. This change can be wrought only by faith in Christ. (J. Neiling.)

The Christians relation to the heavenly world

I. What that relation is. Citizenship.

1. It is founded on the provisions of the evangelical economy. The object of that economy is the expression of Gods love for man–the Father seeking His child. The relation of a believer to God is that of a child to a father. Hence in the gospel our privileges and prospects are all because we are sons; if children, then heirs (1Jn 3:1-2).

2. This relation is maintained by a corresponding spirit. Not only is thy name written in heaven, but the name of God is written in thy heart and life. The relation is not hereditary, but moral. It is

(1) a spirit of abstraction from this world, not ascetic indeed, but that spirit which walks in the world, and displays its spirit and example to the world. They who would live for men must live with men. The Christian is here as a foreigner, but he cannot travel to his Fathers house without being a blessing.

(2) A spirit of devotion to that state of society to which he belongs, viz., heaven.

(3) A spirit of solicitude for preparation to depart when called upon–Locking for the Saviour.

II. The blissful prospect of the Christian in consequence of this relation. We have here–

1. A just representation of man at his best estate. He possesses a body of humiliation. The body is not abstractedly vile, and therefore we should not say that it is vile because it is dust, frail, etc. Nothing is vile that God has made; but the body reminds us of our humble state, and bears a brand it will never lose till the morning of the resurrection.

2. But it shall be fashioned like unto Christs glorious body, the result of which will be the qualification of the transformed saints for heaven.

III. The foundation on which our confidence is reposed the Saviour.

1. His promised appearance.

2. His omnipotent energy. (T. Lessey.)

The attractions of heaven

I. Our citizenship is there.

1. We are born from;

2. Registered in;

3. Made meet for;

4. Admitted to the fellowship of heaven.

II. Our Lord is there.

1. We look for His coming.

2. According to promise.

3. To complete our salvation.

III. Our consummated happiness is there.

1. The body will be changed and glorified.

2. The purpose of grace fulfilled. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The characteristics of the true Christian

1. The present is not the principal state of man, and should never be viewed separate from another to which it bears the same relation as infancy to manhood, seed time to harvest.

2. This consideration teaches us the true importance of the present period. The grand question is, Where are we to reside forever?

3. Some never afford this subject a moments thought, others remain in a state of uncertainty. But Christians, conscious of the reality of their religion and the blindness of their condition, say, Our conversation is in heaven.

I. The Christians state.

1. The original sometimes signifies a certain alliance, and means citizenship; and sometimes a peculiar behaviour. The one infers and explains the other. The believer stands in connection with another world–a better country, even an heavenly; he is a citizen of no mean city–one whose builder and maker is God. How did a man boast in being a citizen of Rome! Think, then, what a privilege it is to belong to a state which Eye hath not seen, etc. Hence our Lord teaches His disciples to prefer their being registered there to the power and fame of working miracles.

2. As the Christian is allied to such a country, a suitable mode of living becomes him. A citizen of Rome could live in the most distant provinces. A citizen of heaven resides on earth, but he is a stranger and a foreigner. Though in the world he is not of it. And though certain purposes detain him here, his principles, habits, speech, show that he belongs to a peculiar people. He acts under an impression of heaven, and with reference to it. His chief care is to gain it.

II. His expectation.

1. This reminds us of the present abode of the Redeemer. Hence we need not wonder that Christians should have their conversation there. Where their treasure is there is their heart. The removal of a dear friend will frequently Tender a place indifferent to us, and we change our neighbourhood to be near him. So rising with Christ we seek those things which are above, where He sitteth.

2. Though our Redeemer is now in heaven He will come thence. He does not forget His friends. He communicates with them, and supplies them, and has promised to come again and receive them to Himself. And how wonderful the difference between His former and His future coming. Then He was seen of few, now every eye shall see Him. Then the world knew Him not; now we shall see Him as He is. Then He was despised and rejected of men; now He shall come in the clouds of heaven, with all the holy angels. Then He was born in a stable and nailed to a cross; now He shall sit on the throne of His glory.

3. The state of the Christians mind with regard to this appearance. He looks for Him.

(1) He believes His coming; and this distinguishes him from infidels.

(2) He pays attention to His coming; and thus he is distinguished from nominal Christians. We prepare for the reception of a friend, much more for a king; but the Personage expected is the King of kings. And the Christian waits with his loins girded and his lamps burning, and, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, lives soberly looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing.

4. The character under which the Christian waits for Him–The Saviour. This was the name given Him at His birth, because He should save His people from their sins. This work He is coming to finish.

III. His destiny.

1. The subject changed. Much of the wisdom and power of God are displayed in the formation of the human frame, and therefore it cannot wholly be a vile body. But when we view it as degraded by the Fall, as prostituted to the purposes of sin; when we think of its low and sordid appetites and infirmities, its diseases, its dissolution, we acknowledge the propriety of calling it a body of humiliation. But this body is not to be annihilated, only changed.

2. The model to which it will be conformed–His glorious body. The comparison does not regard His body in the days of His flesh; but to the post-resurrection glorified body when it was free from everything animal and humiliating. A glimpse of His glory was given at the Transfiguration, to Saul, and to John. A conformity to this glory is not too great a privilege for our hope. As sure as we now resemble our Saviour in disposition shall we be like Him in person; and the same mind will be followed with the same body.

3. The omnipotent agency by which the work is to be accomplished. Such a renovation is nothing else than the most stupendous of miracles, and therefore it demands more than kindness to effect it. The reanimation and organization of millions of dead bodies will not exhaust Him who is able to subdue all things unto Himself.

Learn–

1. To be thankful for the discoveries of revelation. The wisest philosophers were worse off than the most illiterate of Christians.

2. The importance the Scripture attaches to the doctrine of the resurrection. The intermediate state is imperfect. Man was embodied in his original, and will be in his ultimate condition.

3. Let this thought be combined with the thought of death.

(1) Remember it in view of your own dissolution, and, as you look toward the grave, take courage and drink in the revelation–I am the Resurrection and the Life.

(2) Remember it when you lose your pious friends. You have not parted from them forever.

4. Are you the children of the resurrection? For though the resurrection as an event is universal, as a privilege it is limited. Can that be a deliverance which raises a man from a bad state and consigns him to a worse? (W. Jay.)

The heavenly citizenship

I. Our citizenship.

1. Its nature.

2. Its immunities.

3. Its responsibilities.

II. Our privilege.

1. Citizens of no mean city.

2. The foundation of outright.

3. Its advantages.

III. Our duty.

1. To cultivate heavenly dispositions, affections, habits.

2. To glory in our privileges and prospects.

3. To labour for the enlargement of heaven.

IV. Our hope–the coming of Christ.

1. From whence? Heaven.

2. How?

(1) Personally.

(2) Gloriously.

3. What for?

(1) To destroy His foes.

(2) To save His people and introduce them to heaven.

4. Its certainty established by

(1) His own promise.

(2) The general testimony of revelation.

(3) The purpose of God.

5. Its anticipation.

(1) A duty.

(2) Supposes faith, fitness, desire, research, active preparation. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The perfect life

Paul is rebuking the world life of his time. He tells the Philippians of the call to the higher life. As the mind of Christ is different from that of the world so is His rule. It is described as a scheme of life introducing to the perfect condition of heaven, and forming part of it. The perfect Christian looks steadfastly up into heaven as containing Christ, and representing the law, ideal, and aim of his conduct.

I. Its origin.

1. A spirit and outlook so ethereal must have a correspondingly lofty cause, h desire that reaches to heaven must have heaven for its source and attraction.

2. The spirit of man can, and has, become a partaker of the heavenly sphere while dwelling among earthly conditions.

3. What is it that links us with that sphere? Christ. His life imparted to us has created this other worldliness of thought, feeling, purpose. He is to us the embodiment of heaven, the centre of its interest and life.

4. The manner of His continuous influence is expressed in the term Saviour. It is a rescue of our spiritual nature from inertness and fatal debility, and through that it works upon the whole man towards the attainment of a far-reaching destiny.

II. Its method of development.

1. The circumstances in which our spiritual life is to be perfected are not completely realized in the present.

2. But our higher life has to commence amid earthly conditions. The defects and sins of our fellows have to be confronted, and our own failings and depravities have to be brought under.

3. In nature the rule is that the more complex and highly organized a living creature is the slower is its development. The young of animals attain the full use of their faculties much sooner than the child. But this life has its seat in the mind, and, considering this, we cannot wonder if it be slow.

4. It must also be uncertain. Frequent lapses, seasons of depression, periods of apparent standing still. Yet, on the whole, progress. Much of this uncertainty is due to the fact that it is a movement from body to spirit. Not only has it to assimilate truth, it has to contend with error and evil tendencies. The body of humiliation is the graveyard of many a hope, the register of many a sin, the condition of spiritual weakness.

5. A bodily principle will ever cleave to us, but it will be sublimated and made more amenable to the dictates of the Spirit. The perfect life is not realized in pure spirit; the salvation of the body is included. Laggard in the earthly development, it may in other realms be a true helpmeet and enricher of the spirit.

6. Christ in us is the hope and effectual realization of future glory for body and soul.

III. Its culminating glory. The city, with its rights and privileges of citizenship, its order, law, society, and civilization in ancient times, constituted the haven of liberty and the sanctuary of the higher hopes of man. So Paul and John, when they contemplate the future, naturally think of it as an etherealized Rome or Jerusalem. It is a common life. We are to be perfected together. The society and political relationships of the world will have their correspondences on high.

1. Order and government will exist in the noblest forms. Righteousness will be the universal law.

2. Of this life the centre and sustaining power will be the Saviour. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)

Citizenship detected by speech

Our very speech should be such that our citizenship should be detected. We should not be able to live long in a house without men finding out what we are. A friend of mine once went across to America, and landing I think at Boston, he knew nobody, but hearing a man say, when somebody had dropped a cask on the quay, Look out there, or else you will make a Coggeshall job of it, he said, You are an Essex man, I know, for that is a proverb never used anywhere but in Essex: give me your hand; and they were friends at once. So there should be a ring of true metal about our speech and conversation, so that when a brother meets us, he can say, You are a Christian, I know, for none but Christians speak like that, or act like that. Thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth, for thy speech betrayeth thee. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Preparing for home

Some years ago a traveller, who had recently returned from Jerusalem, discovered, in conversation with Humboldt, that he was as thoroughly conversant with the streets and houses of Jerusalem as he was himself; whereupon he asked the aged philosopher how long it was since he visited Jerusalem. He replied, I have never been there, but I expected to go sixty years since, and I prepared myself. Should not the heavenly home boas familiar to those who expect to dwell there eternally? (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Citizenship

1. By using this metaphor the apostle appealed to one of the strongest and purest feelings in the breasts of the men of that day. In modern times it is scarcely possible to appreciate the full force of such an appeal. One city will never again exert the influence of Rome, nor kindle a similar enthusiasm. Citizenship will never again be what it was in Rome. As a mother beloved her citizens cared for her, were proud of their connection with her, would spill their blood in her defence. For services endured, to enter Rome in triumph was the highest honour; to be banished for offences against her, the deepest disgrace. All that was worth living and dying for was implied in citizenship. It spoke of privileges to be preserved, traditions to be maintained, glory to be kept untarnished.

2. Such an appeal was appropriately made to the Philippians. Philippi was a military settlement (colonia), and its inhabitants had the privileges of Roman citizens. Here, too, it was that Paul stood on his dignity and right (Act 16:17). Possibly the remembrance of these facts suggested the metaphor, though it would come naturally from the apostle writing from Rome.

I. The metaphor would suggest certain tests by which a citizen of the heavenly city may be distinguished from a mere citizen of the world. A good citizen–

1. Will conform to the laws of his city. Are we obeying the laws of heaven?

2. Will oppose the enemies of his city. Are we fighting against sin, or are we at peace with evil?

3. Will be active and zealous in all that concerns the welfare and advancement of his city. Is the petition, Thy kingdom come an utterance of the lips only, or the acted prayer of our lives?

4. Will subordinate private and personal interests to the interests of his city. Are our lives characterized by self-seeking or self-surrender?

5. Will fear to disgrace the good name and honourable tradition of his city. Do we behave as citizens worthy of the gospel of Christ? (Php 1:27).

II. The metaphor may remind us of the nature of the earthly life. It is a pilgrimage. Man has not reached that perfect home where his full powers can be developed and exercised, and his loftiest expectations realized. The noblest of all ages have felt this. The Republic of Plato is an acknowledgment of it, while the testimony of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs is unanimous (Heb 11:13-16, cf. Gen 43:9; 1Co 29:15; Psa 29:12; Psa 119:19; 1Pe 1:17; 1Pe 2:11). Pilgrims may admire the varied beauty, and enjoy the richness and fertility of the lands through which they pass, but their thoughts and deepest affections will be homewards. They will live in a condition of expectancy, which will determine the character of all their relations to the land of their sojourn. So the citizens of heaven, while thanking God for every good and perfect gift, will nevertheless regard all earthly beauty, richness, and joy but as a type of the spiritual things which God has prepared for those who love Him in the perfect city which eye hath not seen, etc. (L. Shackleford.)

Our heavenly citizenship

I. The means of entrance. There are only three ways by which men can become citizens; by all three are we citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem.

1. By purchase. He who was King of that beautiful city gave up His kingdom for a season that He might buy for us an admission to it.

2. By gift. Thus God speaks to those who take hold of My covenant, even unto them will I give in My house a place and a name. He that overcometh I will write upon him the name of the city of my God.

3. By birth. Because birth is better than purchase or gift we are born again that we should have our settlement no longer in a slavish world, but be born free.

II. The time–Now. It would be much if we could say, Our citizenship will be in heaven; but we can affirm that it is so.

III. The rights.

1. Immunities. Doubtless it is because there are so many immunities that heaven is generally described by negatives–no tears, dividings, sighs, temptations, conflicts, labour, sin, death. And if we could receive it all these immunities are now for us. For if Christ has borne our sins, where can there be any condemnation? What labour can there be that is not rest?

2. Privileges.

(1) It is the privilege of every citizen to be represented. Accordingly Christ has gone into the heavens to do and say what we cannot do and say.

(a) He represents us as a substitute, showing in heaven His wounds and sufferings that we may have none.

(b) As a forerunner, that we may ultimately sit where He sits, and joy as He joys.

(2) A citizen is under the laws of His own state and no other. He may appeal up to this. We are under the law of liberty, and are judged by no man.

(3) A citizen may go in and out. Is he not free of his own state? But ours is a holy liberty.

(4) A citizen has a right to go to the presence of the King. We have free access to the throne of grace.

IV. The obligations.

1. Every mans heart ought to be at his own home, and if heaven be your home your heart is there. You may go up and down in the necessary things of this world, and be like the traveller in a foreign country, always gathering something you can take home. There will be nothing worth much to you which has not something of heaven in it.

2. You must be a loyal subject; and if so you will carry the glory of the kingdom to which you belong as a trust, and try to extend its influence. There will be nothing so dear to you as to make that city and its king dear to somebody. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Citizenship in heaven

There can be no comparison between a soaring seraph and a crawling worm: there ought to be none between Christians and men of the world, only a contrast. If we were what we profess to be we should be as distinct a people as a white race in Ethiopia. There should be no more difficulty in distinguishing the Christian from the worldly than the sheep from the goat.

I. If our citizenship be in heaven then we are aliens here. We have no continuing city, but desire a better country. Yet, though strangers and foreigners on earth, we share all the inconveniences of the flesh. No exemption is granted us from the common lot of mankind. In times of adversity we suffer, and in prosperous times we share the bounty of the God of providence.

1. A good man will not live a week in a foreign land without seeking to do good. The Good Samaritan sought the good not only of the Samaritans but of the Jews. Since we are here to do good and to communicate we must forget not; we must act as recruiters for the better land.

2. It behoves aliens to keep themselves quiet. What business have foreigners to plot against a country of which they are not citizens. So in the world we must be orderly sojourners, submitting ourselves constantly to those in authority, leading peaceable lives, fearing God, honouring the king, submitting to every ordinance of man for the Lords sake.

3. As aliens we have privileges as well as duties. The prince of this world may make his vassals serve him, but he cannot raise a conscription upon aliens. The child of God claims an immunity from the commands of Satan.

4. As we are free from the conscription of the state we are not eligible to its honours. An Englishman at New York is not eligible for the Presidency. It is of ill omen to hear the world say Well done to the Christian man.

5. As aliens it is not for us to hoard up this worlds treasures. The money of this world is not current in Paradise, and when we reach it, if regret is possible, we shall wish that we had laid up more treasure in our fatherland.

II. Though aliens on earth we are citizens of heaven.

1. We are under heavens government. Christ, its King, reigns in us; its laws are the laws of our consciences; our daily prayer is, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

2. We share heavens honours. The glory which belongs to beatified saints is ours, for we are already sons of God, wear the robe of Christs righteousness, have angels for our servitors.

3. We have common rights in the property of heaven. Things present or things to come: all are ours.

4. We enjoy the delights of heaven.

5. Our names are written in the roll of heavens free men.

III. Our walk and acts are such as are consistent with our dignity as heavenly citizens. Among the old Romans, when a dastardly act was proposed, it was thought a sufficient refusal to say Romanus sum. Surely it should be a sufficient incentive to every good thing if we can claim to be freemen of the eternal city.

1. In heaven they are holy; so must we be if our citizenship is not a mere pretence.

2. They are happy; so we must rejoice in the Lord always.

3. They are obedient; so we must follow the faintest monitions of the Divine will.

4. They are active; so, day and night, we should be praising and serving God.

5. They are peaceful; so we should find rest in Christ.

IV. We might read our text as though it said Our commerce is in heaven. We are trading on earth, but the bulk of our trade is with heaven.

1. By meditation.

2. By thought.

3. In our hymns. There is a song which the band is forbidden to play to the Swiss soldiery in foreign lands, because it reminds them of the cowbells of their native hills. If the men hear it they are sure to desert. So there are some of our hymns which make us homesick.

4. By hopes and loves. It is right that the patriot should love his country.

5. Just as people in a foreign land are always glad to have letters from their country, I hope we have much communication with our fatherland, both from and to. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The true Christian

I. The Christian is a pilgrim and a stranger upon earth.

1. This world is not destined to be his home; and in his application of the knowledge of this fact lies the difference between him and other men. Men in general live as if they would live forever. But the very nature of the Christian, his knowledge of his situation, and the prospects he has in view, all conspire to banish from him that delusion.

2. The Christian, being in this situation, is exposed to many hardships. He is far from home, and is deprived of its comforts. He cannot relish the pleasures of the world like the votaries of mammon. He may linger for s moment on his journey in the enjoyment of those pleasures which, being innocent in themselves, he is permitted to enjoy; but neither his own feelings nor his external situation will permit him to continue.

II. The Christian is in the enjoyment of peculiar privileges. Even the boasted privileges of imperial Rome dwindle into nothing in comparison.

1. The inhabitant of any country is under the protection of the government to which he belongs, wherever he is placed. So the Christian is everywhere under the protection of the Almighty. Surely, then, he ought never to be alarmed at the prospect of calamity. Should it come it will work for good.

2. The Christian is indebted to the care and protection of his fellow citizens. He is encompassed by an angelic host who watch his steps and shield him from danger.

3. In becoming a citizen of heaven the Christian is highly honoured. This honour arises out of his own nature and the nature of heaven. In himself man is a degraded being; yet sanctified he becomes the favourite of heaven in the present life, and will be exalted at last to Gods right hand. And what is implied in this exaltation who can tell.

III. The Christian is distinguished by a peculiar mode of conduct.

1. Every true citizen is obviously patriot, no matter whether his country be beautiful or barren, There are few passions so strong as love of country, and none have given birth to nobler actions. The Christian is also a patriot, and in disinterested attachment to his country and readiness to die a martyr in her cause is surpassed by none; and, considering what that country is, no wonder.

2. Every good citizen must observe the laws of his country, and for this the Christian is distinguished. Gods laws are his continual study, are sweeter than honey, their observance is his delight, their transgression his deepest sorrow.

3. Every good citizen must love his fellow citizens, and love to the brethren is a marked characteristic of Christians.

IV. The Christian cherishes an acquaintance and holds communion with heaven.

1. If there be a Christian with whom this is not the case the carnal policy of men will furnish him with an instructive lesson. Men do not emigrate to a land without knowing its nature. The Christian must know something of heaven, and be convinced that its nature is congenial with his own.

2. The employments of the celestial world are in unison with the feelings of its citizens, whether on earth or in heaven. The Christians affections are set not on earth but on things above.

3. Intercourse with heaven is chiefly effected by prayer, and is with the Father and the Son. This intercourse makes the place of it, wherever it may be, the house of God and the gate of heaven.

4. The effects of this communion are most valuable, and felt in adversity. If we have, then, no friend to whom we can unbosom our griefs we are wretched indeed. But the Christian has a Friend whose ear is ever open and whose hand is ever ready.

V. Heaven is the Christians eternal home. (J. Stark.)

Heavenly citizenship

I. Christians are citizens of heaven.

1. By birth. Thus was Paul a Roman citizen. We may well claim for our country the place from which we derived our life.

2. By enrollment. All who are born from above are registered from above. Their names are written in the Lambs book of life. No objection urged against the entry shall be deemed valid.

3. By affinity. As strangers yearn for the home of their birth, so we have instincts and desires which point to a heavenly origin. Thus streams flow towards the ocean, and flames ascend to the sun.

4. Our education is a further evidence. A childs future may be inferred from the instruction which fits him for it. Travellers preparing for a foreign residence learn the language. So Christians are educated for heaven. This is the object of afflictions. Earthly trial is heavenly discipline, and works out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

5. The exercise of our Christian graces indicates where our country is.

(1) Faith is the substance of the heaven hoped for, the evidence of the glory unseen.

(2) Hopes object and realization is heaven.

(3) Charity, while finding scope for exercise here, has for her true home, and her full and everlasting development, the New Jerusalem.

6. Our citizenship is in heaven because our Fathers home is there. Where He dwells we cannot be strangers. Our Father which art in heaven.

7. This, too, is the residence of the King, and therefore the city of His friends and subjects.

8. There our friends are gathering.

9. Heaven is our home, and we are expected there.

II. Heaven being our city, our life should be heavenly. Admiring the beauties with which the Creator has decked the earth; thankfully enjoying the gifts of His providence; humanly feeling for our own and others sorrows; diligently performing our duties, etc., let us bear about us the inspiring assurance that our conversation is in heaven.

1. Let us not, in the pursuit of any earthly object, be so eager as to absorb our thoughts. Let us not be elated by prosperity, nor depressed by adversity.

2. Let us prize our vocation above all our other possessions and privileges. Are men zealous in attaining earthly distinctions? Let us give all diligence to make our calling and election sure. The holy alone are enrolled as citizens of heaven.

3. The honour and interests of our country are committed to us. As an Englishman abroad ought to feel that the honour of his country is compromised by his conduct, and that he must act as a representative of his nation; so let us while strangers and sojourners remember that we are representatives of heaven.

4. As a loyal citizen desires to promote the prosperity of his country so should we try to promote the best interests of the Church. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Heavenly Citizenship

The proper country of a real Christian is not that in which he first drew breath, nor that in which God has fixed the bounds of his earthly habitation.

I. He is citizen of a city of which excellent things are spoken.

1. It is beautiful for situation (Psa 48:2). In this respect no other can be compared to it, for it stands not on earth but in heaven.

2. Its foundations are most gloriously laid (Eph 2:20).

3. Its builder is God (Heb 11:10).

4. It will survive every other city, being eternal in the heavens.

5. Its strength is invincible (Isa 26:1).

6. It is distinguished from every other city by its inhabitants (Heb 12:23), who are all holy (Rev 21:27), and all happy (Rev 21:4; Isa 35:10).

7. But the grand distinction is its King (Rev 22:3-5).

II. How may he be distinguished from the citizens of the world?

1. By the dress he wears. This is how we distinguish inhabitants of different countries. We read that the saints are clothed in white robes, having been washed in the blood of the Lamb. But they were washed and first worn here.

2. By his language. Different nations are distinguished by different tongues. The language spoken in Jerusalem above is that of love and holiness (Psa 149:6), but it was learned and first used here (Eph 4:29; Psa 15:3).

3. By his works. The occupation of the saints in light is the continual service of God (Rev 7:15); so is that of the saints below (Rom 12:1).

4. By his constant communications with his city. (A. Roberts, M. A.)

The happiness of a heavenly conversation

To have our conversation in heaven implies–

I. The serious thoughts and considerations of heaven.

1. The happiness of this state.

(1) It is incomparably beyond any happiness in this world.

(a) None of the comforts of this life are pure and unmixed. There is something of vanity and vexation of spirit in all our enjoyments, either in getting, having, or after them. But the happiness of the next world is without alloy (Rev 22:3-5).

(b) The enjoyments of this life are uncertain. When we think we have fastest hold of them they often slip out of our hands. The very greatness of an estate has been the cause of the loss of both it and its owner; but the happiness of heaven is as unchangeable as the fountain from which it springs.

(c) The enjoyments of the world are unsatisfying. Either we, or the things of this world, or both, are so fantastical that we can neither be well with them nor well without them. If we be hungry, we are in pain; if full, uneasy; if poor, we think ourselves miserable; if rich, really so. Nay, so far from affording satisfaction, the sweetest of them is most apt to satiate and cloy us. If they go off quickly they signify nothing, and if they stay long we are sick of them. But the delights of the other world as they will give us full satisfaction, so we shall never be weary of them.

(2) It is very great in itself. Its chief ingredients are–

(a) Perfection of knowledge. What can be more delightful than to have our understanding entertained with a clear sight of the best and most perfect Being, with the knowledge of all His works, and the wise designs of His providence. The Queen of Sheba thought Solomons servants happy in having the opportunity of standing before him to hear his wisdom; but in the other world it shall be a happiness to Solomon himself to stand before God, to admire His wisdom and behold His glory.

(b) The most delightful exercise of love. What greater happiness can be imagined than to converse freely with the most excellent, without anything of folly, disguise, jealousy, or design upon one another? for then there will be none of those vices and passions of covetousness, hatred, envy, ambition, wrath, and peevishness which now spoil the pleasure and disturb the quiet of mankind. All quarrels and contentions will be effectually hindered, not by force, but by love; and all those controversies in religion, which are now hotly agitated, will then be finally determined, not as we endeavour to aid them now, by canons and decrees, but by a perfect knowledge and convincing light.

(c) And when this blessed society is met together, and thus united by love, they shall all join in gratitude to Him who hath so blessed them.

(3) This happiness shall be eternal. If the happiness of heaven were such as the joys of this world, it were fit they should be as short; but being so excellent it would scarce be a happiness if not eternal, if we could see the end of them at never so great a distance.

(4) It is far above anything we can now conceive.

(a) In this imperfect state we are not capable of a full representation. That would let in joys upon us too big for our narrow capacities, too strong for weak mortality (1Co 13:9-11).

(b) But no sooner shall we enter upon the joys of the other world but our minds will he raised to a strength and activity as much above that of the most knowing persons in this world as the thoughts of the wisest philosopher are above those of s child.

2. The means whereby we may come to be partakers of this happiness–holiness (Heb 5:9; Tit 2:11-12; Heb 12:14).

(1) Holiness is not only a condition but a necessary qualification. This is the force of St. Johns reasoning (1Jn 3:1-3). We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. To see God is to be happy; but unless we be like Him we cannot be happy. The sight and presence of God would be no happiness to the man who is not like God in disposition. From hence he infers every man that hath this hope, etc.

(2) This life is our preparation for the future. It is true that heaven perfects those holy dispositions which are begun here, but it alters no man as to his main state. He that is filthy let him be filthy still. The happiness of heaven consists in such things as a wicked man has no relish for. If a covetous, ambitious, voluptuous man were in heaven lie would be tormented with a continual thirst for which there was no gratification. All the joys of that place are purely spiritual and can only be relished by those who have purified themselves as God is pure.

(3) From all this it appears how necessary it is for us to prepare ourselves for this blessed state by the constant endeavours of holy life. Until this be done we are not meet to be partakers of its felicities.

II. The effect which these considerations should have on our hearts and lives.

1. To convince us of the vanity of this world God has on purpose made it troublesome that there might be no sufficient temptation to reasonable men to take them off from the thoughts of their future happiness; that God and heaven might have no rival here.

2. To make us industrious to be and do good that we may be qualified for future happiness. Men are very industrious to be rich and great: did we value heaven half as much as it deserves we should take infinitely more pains to secure it. And how should the thought that we are hasting towards another world, and that our eternal happiness is at stake quicken our endeavours.

3. To mitigate the afflictions of this life. No matter how rough the way provided it leads to happiness (Rom 8:18). The evils of this life afflict men more or less according as the soul is fortified with considerations proper to support us under them. And when we are safely landed, with what pleasure shall we look back upon those boisterous sins we have escaped.

4. To make us sincere in our professions and actions. Did men firmly believe the reward of another world, their religion would not be only in show and pretence, but in life and reality. For there we shall be rewarded not for what we seemed to be, but for what we really were.

5. To arm us against the fear of death. (Archbp. Tillotson.)

A heavenly mind here

1. Whatever incompatibility there may be between having residence in one world and a conversation in another, Christianity boldly meets it and puts it out of the way. In old English a mans conversation meant not the mere act of his tongue, but his conduct, and so revealed to what kingdom his heart belonged. An American agent or ambassador has a temporary dwelling in Athens. Living on that foreign soil, occupied daily with its affairs, its landscape winning his admiration, and its faces and manners his goodwill, he remembers that his stay is short; he expects to be called back where his treasure is and his heart abides.

2. When our faith commands us to have our conversation in heaven it does not require us to be bad citizens of the world where we now are. We are not bidden to be absent minded. The man may make hearty attachments where he tarries, pay tribute and live cheerfully and helpfully. And yet none the less he desires a better country, a city first in his love and always in his hopes. So Christ teaches that we can be faithful to every present relationship, and yet never forget our celestial patriotism. We can be in the world without minding earthly things.

3. This glory is the original glory of our Christian estate. Till Christ came, the majestic fact that our little human tent is overarched by an infinite heaven of light scarcely anywhere broke through the pagan shadows. Men as a rule looked downward at matter, and their conversation was this worlds wars and lusts. In Asiatic pomp there was not one house of charity; in Alexandrian science not one school of virtue; in Greek beauty no beauty of holiness; in the discipline of Roman armies no heavenly law of righteousness.

4. In the midst of such a society we see Paul saying, Our conversation, etc. The earthly and the heavenly mind, then. The choice between these is what the gospel is pressing on our conscience.

I. What hinders. It is said We must take the world as it is. It is no use flying in the face of an immense majority. Your ideal is lovely and well enough as a seventh-day picture of impossible sanctity. But while we live in an earthly commonwealth, if we expect to get on with it we must keep on pleasant terms with it, and not be over critical as to its principles.

1. If this answer were valid it would settle the whole question on the anti-Christian side. The Church would be an organized failure. Instead of fearless witnessing for Christ and fighting against wrong, we should have a cowardly system of mutual compromises and flatteries.

2. But then even the careless mind has a deeper-toned conviction than this. Most people know that the principal glories of the past have gathered round a few brave and suffering men who have stood out against their times. Inward voices respond in almost every breast to the righteousness of this order of souls.

3. Before they give away their manhood for the sake of getting on with the world, some citizens will inquire to what end the world is getting on.

4. And then, whatever we say or do, the Word of God refuses to be altered, and tells us not only that we can but we must, unless we mean to die eternally, live above the world while we live in it.

5. Besides, falsehood and sensuality were never prevalent enough to incapacitate a man for a clean and godly life, if that soul willed it.

6. Nothing in society or custom takes off the wrong doers sin or its retribution. There lives a God with whom multitudes, usages, etc., are not of the least account. We cannot say at the Divine tribunal, Blame society; I only went with the rest, and was no worse than they. You may presume that offences will come, but woe to that man by whom they come.

II. Christianity means to reach society on a broad scale, but it must reach it through persons gathered one by one into its own heavenly citizenship. It has to do with conviction, affection, faith; and these are properties of individuals before they can be of communities. Christ did not publish a plan of political reform, or a schedule of social science. Meeting his countrymen in little groups, or one by one, He showed them the beauty of the heavenly conversation while they were fishermen or publicans. So began the everlasting empire which soon lifted itself over the palaces of Constantinople and Rome. We all desire ours to be a Christian country; then we must be Christian men.

III. There are those who have not consciously made up their minds to keep Gods commandments out and out, who yet would be shocked at the idea of our social life returning to barbarism; and others nominally Christian who make no pretence to conform their practice to Christs law. But this notion that we are any safer and better for living in a land of professed Christianity whose principles we daily ignore is a delusion whose absurdity is seen as soon as stated. What we need to realize is that every scheme attempting to cure the morals of the people must fall unless it puts the soul into a direct conversation with Him.

IV. In these times the faith is put back not so much by persecution as corruption. We live in days of indulgence and education. Ever since Eves parley it has been the strategy of evil to gain admission without having its character suspected. If the moral sense is obstinate leach it to call evil good. If conscience defies a sword drug it with narcotics. Once radically unsettle a mans mind as to the obligations of duty, and you work a far more comprehensive depravity in him than by only enticing him now and then into single bad actions against which his conscience continues to cry out.

V. So the true confessors of this age are the men and women who exercise their consciences day by day to discern between good and evil; souls that keep so far back within the entrenchments of a heavenly citizenship as to be out of all risk of slipping over into dishonour; men of business who will not take a second look at the tempter for an additional thousand a year; women who choose that good part with Marys friend, rather than wade through ambiguities neck deep to conquests of social ambition; children that would rather be laughed at than disobey.

VI. There are two worlds within us, as well as earth and heaven without us; and one of them is apt to get the mastery. Take as the Divine image of the one, the Saviours sacramental prayer in Joh 17:1-26, or St. Pauls description, at the close of Rom 8:1-39 of the love of God. For the other take any unbelieving sensualists frank testimony: Lord Chesterfields, e.g. I have run the rounds of business and pleasure, and have clone with them all. Shall I tell you that I bear this melancholy situation with resignation? No; I bear it because I must. I think of nothing but killing time, now it has become my enemy, and my resolution is to sleep in the carriage to the end of the journey. Now to say nothing of what happens when the journey ends, and of the waking out of sleep, and of the new question that will rise before a man who has so poorly succeeded in killing time, that time killed him–viz., how to kill eternity–leaving all that, we see the contradiction between the two worlds complete. The warfare between the principles that lie at the roots of them is a deadly warfare, and still it goes on. Take sides then at once with God and heaven. (Bp. Huntington.)

Citizenship and conversation

It is not difficult to see how the citizenship comes to be called conversation. Conversation is being conversant. When we talk together, it is called conversation. Because we are conversant with the subject, therefore it is called conversation. And conversant means going up and down in a thing. That is the literal meaning of the word. And we go up and down, we move about in, and therefore we are conversant with the things, and the people, and the city, to which we belong. So citizenship is called conversation. Our conversation–our familiar habits, our daily life and routine, that with which we have to do,–our conversation, our citizenship, is in heaven. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Heavenly citizenship

As the conversation of the Israelites was in the temple of Jerusalem, however distant they might be from it with regard to the body, because to it their thoughts and affections turned; towards that place they lifted their eyes in prayer when absent, and from thence expected the required succour, no captivity, no misfortune obliterating the memory of that holy sanctuary, the source of all their joys: so also the Christian beholds in heaven the true Ark, the Lord Christ, where all the fulness of the Godhead dwells, not in types and figures as in the Mosaic ark, but in truth and reality. In heaven their faith dwells, their hope rests, elevated above all terrestrial things, penetrating within the veil, anchoring upon the Rock of Ages. There dwells the soul in love; and beholding throughout the rest of the universe nothing but vanity and sin, it retires continually into this heavenly palace, where it may worship the Lord in spirit and in truth (Col 2:1-2). (J. Daille.)

The manifestation of the citizenship

We should, in fact, seek while we are here to keep up the manners and customs of the good old fatherland, so that, as in Paris, the Parisian soon says, There goes John Bull, so they should be able to say in this land, There goes a heavenly citizen, one who is with us, and among us, but is not of us. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The citizenship maintained by communications with the mother country

We send our prayers there as letters to our Father, and we get His letters back in this blessed volume of His word. You go into an Australian settlers hut, and you find a news paper. Where from, sir? A gazette from the south of France, a journal from America? Oh no, it is a newspaper from England, addressed to him in his old mothers handwriting, bearing the postage stamp with the good Queens face in the corner; and he likes it, though it be only a newspaper from some little pottering country town, with no news in it; yet he likes it better, perhaps, than The Times itself, because it talks to him about the village where he lived, and consequently touches a special string in the harp of his soul. So must it be with heaven. This book, the Bible, is the newspaper of heaven, and therefore we must love it. The sermons which are preached are good news from a far country. The hymns we sing are notes by which we tell our Father of our welfare here, and by which He whispers into our soul His continued love to us. All these are and must be pleasant to us, for our commerce is with heaven. I hope, too, we are sending a good deal home. I like to see our young fellows when they go out to live in the bush, recollect their mother at home. They say She had a hard struggle to bring us up when our father died, and she scraped her little together to help us to emigrate. John and Tom mutually agree, the first gold we get at the diggings we will send home to mother. And it goes home. Well, I hope you are sending a great many things home. I hope as we are aliens here, we are not laying up our treasures here, where we may lose it, but packing it off as quickly as we can to our own country. There are many ways of doing it. God has many banks; and they are all safe ones. We have but to serve His Church, or serve the souls which Christ has bought with His blood, or help His poor, clothe His naked, and feed His hungry, and we send our treasures beyond sea in a safe ship, and so we keep up our commerce with the skies. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The certificate of home

A peasant girl intently watching the bears at Berne, allowed her bag containing various homely treasures to slip from her arm. One of the bears immediately seized it and began in a way that would have been extremely comical, but for the poor girls distress, to pull out the articles, one by one, before tearing them to pieces. The keeper not being within reach, no rescue was possible, and for a few moments the poor peasant wept as if her heart would break. At length a bright thought struck her, and putting her hand into the bosom of her dress she drew from it a paper, and exclaimed with joy, It is my certificate of home; thank God this bear has not got that. Now this Heimath Schein, as it is called in Switzerland and Germany, is necessary as a passport. Without it she could not have left her country, and was liable at any time to be imprisoned as unable to prove herself a member of the canton. The Christian, too, has his certificate of home, and need never be inconsolable while he can put his hand upon that, whatever else may have fallen under the power of the destroyer. (Sunday at Home)

.

The influence of heavenly mindedness

As the daily business of the royal observatory is rarely mentioned or thought of in the traffic and bustle of the world, though it stands in intimate and vital relations to navigation and commerce, and so to all the interests of society; so the men and women whose conversation is in heaven, although they may appear unpractical to some thoughtless persons, are able to give the soundest advice, and to exert the most beneficent influence. (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)

Citizenship a revealer

As the spear of Miltons Ithuriel had the power, by its touch, of making evil spirits stand forth in their native blackness and uncomeliness, however skilfully they had disguised themselves as angels of light; so the Christians sense of his relation to heaven reveals to his heart the essential vanity and despicableness of any form of life which is alien from the will of God. The application of the touchstone question, How would such conduct answer in heaven? How would such conduct become one who hopes for heaven, and deems himself a citizen of heaven? – this shows things as they are. (R. Johnstone, LL. B.)

From whence we look for the Saviour

Sometimes I wait through the weary years with great comfort. There was a ship some time ago outside a certain harbour. A heavy sea made the ship roll fearfully. A dense fog blotted out all buoys and lights. The captain never left the wheel. He could not tell his way into the harbour, and no pilot could get out to him for a long time. Eager passengers urged him to be courageous and make a dash for the harbour. He said No; it is not my duty to run so great a risk. A pilot is required here, and I will wait for one if I wait a week. The truest courage is that which can bear to be charged with cowardice. To wait is much wiser than when you cannot hear the fog horn and have no pilot yet to steam on and wreck your vessel on the rocks. Our prudent captain waited his time, and at last he espied the pilots boat coming to him over the boiling sea. When the pilot was at his work the captains anxious waiting was over. The Church is like that vessel, she is pitched to and fro in the storm and the dark, and the pilot has not yet come. The weather is very threatening. All around the darkness hangs like a pall. But Jesus will come, walking on the water, before long; He will bring us safe to the desired haven. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 20. Our conversation is in heaven] – Our city, or citizenship, or civil rights. The word properly signifies the administration, government, or form of a republic or state; and is thus used by Demosthenes, page 107, 25, and 262, 27. Edit. Reiske. It signifies also a republic, a city, or the inhabitants of any city or place; or a society of persons living in the same place, and under the same rules and laws. See more in Schleusner.

While those gross and Jewish teachers have no city but what is on earth; no rights but what are derived from their secular connections; no society but what is made up of men like themselves, who mind earthly things, and whose belly is their god, WE have a heavenly city, the New Jerusalem; we have rights and privileges which are heavenly and eternal; and our society or fellowship is with God the Father, Son, and Spirit, the spirits of just men made perfect, and the whole Church of the first-born. We have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts; and regard not the body, which we know must perish, but which we confidently expect shall be raised from death and corruption into a state of immortal glory.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

For our conversation is in heaven; he here adds a further reason why he would have them to be fellow followers of him, and such-like as he, because though they were not already in heaven, yet their citizenship was there, the privileges of that city did belong to them, who, according to the municipal laws of that corporation (which cannot lose its charter or be discorporated) whereof they were free denizens, made it their business to demean themselves with minds above the earth, Phi 1:27; 2Co 4:18; Eph 2:6; Col 3:1 accounting nothing inconvenient to any one of them, which was for the advantage of the whole community; they set their affections on things above, Joh 14:2; 2Co 12:2-5; Heb 13:14.

From whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; and reason good, for from thence, or from that place, in the heavens, or heaven, they stedfastly expect him who is both Lord and Christ, Act 1:11; 1Co 1:7; 1Th 1:10; 2Ti 4:8; Tit 2:13, to come not only as their judge, 2Ti 4:8, but as their heart-comforting Saviour, Heb 9:28.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

20. our conversationrather,”our state” or “country”; our citizenship: ourlife as citizens. We are but pilgrims on earth; how thenshould we “mind earthly things?” (Phi 3:19;Heb 11:9; Heb 11:10;Heb 11:13-16). Romancitizenship was then highly prized; how much more should the heavenlycitizenship (Ac 22:28; compareLu 10:20)?

isGreek, “hasits existence.”

in heavenGreek,“in the heavens.”

look for the Saviour, theLord Jesus Christ“We wait for (so the same Greekis translated, Ro 8:19) theLord Jesus as a (that is, in the capacity of a) Saviour” (Heb9:28). That He is “the Lord,” now exalted above everyname, assures our expectation (Php2:9-11). Our High Priest is gone up into the Holy of Holies notmade with hands, there to atone for us; and as the Israelites stoodoutside the tabernacle, expecting Aaron’s return (compare Lu1:21), so must we look unto the heavens expecting Christ thence.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

For our conversation is in heaven,…. The Ethiopic version renders it, “we have our city in heaven”; and the words may be truly rendered, “our citizenship is in heaven”; that is, the city whereof we are freemen is heaven, and we behave ourselves here below, as citizens of that city above: heaven is the saints’ city; here they have no continuing city, but they seek one to come, which is permanent and durable; a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God, Heb 11:10: as yet they are not in it, though fellow citizens of the saints, and of the household of God; they are pilgrims, strangers, and sojourners on earth, Le 25:23; but are seeking a better country, an heavenly one, and God has prepared for them a city, Heb 11:16; they have a right unto it through the grace of God, and righteousness of Christ, and a meetness for it in him; and their conversation is here beforehand, while their commoration, or temporary residence, is below; their thoughts are often employed about it; their affections are set upon it, Col 3:2; their hearts are where their treasure is, Mt 6:21; the desires of their souls are towards it, and they are seeking things above, and long to be in their own city, and Father’s house, where Christ is; and to be at home with him, and for ever with him. This is the work and business of their lives now, and what their hearts are engaged in. The Syriac version renders it, “our work is in heaven”; the business, the exercise of our lives, and of our graces, tend that way:

from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; Christ is now in heaven, at the Father’s right hand, Ac 2:33, appearing in the presence of God for his people, and making intercession for them, Heb 7:25; and so will remain, until the time of the restitution of all things; when he will descend from heaven, and be revealed from thence: and this the saints look for, and expect; they have good reason for it; from his own words, from the words of the angels at the time of his ascension, Ac 1:11, and from the writings of the apostles and they expect him not merely as a Judge, under which consideration he will be terrible to the ungodly, but as a Saviour; who as he has already saved their souls from sin, and the dreadful effects of it, from the bondage and curse of the law, from the captivity of Satan, and from eternal ruin and wrath to come, so he will save and redeem their bodies from the grave, corruption, mortality, and death, as follows.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Our citizenship ( ). Old word from (Php 1:27), but only here in N.T. The inscriptions use it either for citizenship or for commonwealth. Paul was proud of his Roman citizenship and found it a protection. The Philippians were also proud of their Roman citizenship. But Christians are citizens of a kingdom not of this world (Joh 18:36). Milligan (Vocabulary) doubts if commentators are entitled to translate it here: “We are a colony of heaven,” because such a translation reverses the relation between the colony and the mother city. But certainly here Paul’s heart is in heaven.

We wait for (). Rare and late double compound (perfective use of prepositions like wait out) which vividly pictures Paul’s eagerness for the second coming of Christ as the normal attitude of the Christian colonist whose home is heaven.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Conversation [] . Only here in the New Testament. Rev., citizenship, commonwealth in margin. The rendering conversation, in the sense of manner of life (see on 1Pe 1:15), has no sufficient warrant; and that politeuma commonwealth, is used interchangeably with politeia citizenship, is not beyond question. Commonwealth gives a good and consistent sense. The state of which we are citizens is in heaven. See on ch. Phi 1:27. Compare Plato : “That city of which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only; for I do not believe that there is such an one anywhere on earth. In Heaven, I replied, there is laid up the pattern of it methinks, which he who desires may behold, and beholding may settle himself there” (” Republic, ” 592).

Is in heaven [] . The use of this word instead of ejsti is is peculiar. See on being, ch. 2 6. It has a backward look. It exists now in heaven, having been established there of old. Compare Heb 11:16; Joh 14:2.

We look for [] . Rev., wait for. See on 1Co 1:7. Used only by Paul, and in Heb 9:28. Compare Rom 8:19, 23, 25; Gal 5:5. It indicates earnest, patient waiting and expectation. As in ajpokaradokia earnest expectation, ch. 1 20, the compounded preposition ajpo denotes the withdrawal of attention from inferior objects. The word is habitually used in the New Testament with reference to a future manifestation of the glory of Christ or of His people.

The Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ [] . Savior has no article, and its emphatic position in the sentence indicates that it is to be taken predicatively with Jesus Christ, and not as the direct object of the verb. Hence render : we await as Savior the Lord, etc. Compare Heb 9:28, “To them that wait for Him will He appear a second time unto salvation.”

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “For our conversation is in heaven” (hemon gar to politeuma en ouranois huparchei) “Because our citizenship exists in the heavens;” where ones citizenship is, is his homeland –a piece, a part of heaven, belongs to every saved person. Joh 14:1-3. Jesus has provided and made appropriate reservation for every saint in heaven, 1Pe 1:3-5; Eph 2:6.

2) “From whence also we look for the Saviour” (eks hou kai sotera apekdechometha) “From where we even tarry or await a Saviour deliverer.” The personal return of Jesus from heaven to the earth to bring forth the resurrection of the righteous dead for the reunion of body and soul, the putting down of sin, establishing his righteous rule over all the earth, and effecting a new heaven and new earth is a valid expectation of the church and true believers, Deu 30:3; 1Th 1:9-10; Act 1:9-11.

3) “The Lord Jesus Christ:” (kurion lesson Christon) “(who -is -the) Lord Jesus Christ:” Jesus is not only Saviour or “deliverer” of the soul from eternal wrath but also from ruin and the grave to reunion of life without cessation in a new body of glory, fitted for a position, place, and service of usefulness and honor for coming ages of the Millennium, and heavenlies, without cessation or end of time and being; this is the fuller import or meaning of the Bible term saved or “redeemed”, with its Biblical implications, affirmations, and declarations, Rom 1:16; Eph 2:8-9; 2Co 1:10; Eph 1:13.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

20 But our conversation is in heaven This statement overturns all empty shows, in which pretended ministers of the gospel are accustomed to glory, and he indirectly holds up to odium all their objects of aim, (201) because, by flying about above the earth, they do not aspire towards heaven. For he teaches that nothing is to be reckoned of any value except God’s spiritual kingdom, because believers ought to lead a heavenly life in this world. “They mind earthly things: it is therefore befitting that we, whose conversation is in heaven, should be separated from them.” (202) We are, it is true, intermingled here with unbelievers and hypocrites; nay more, the chaff has more of appearance in the granary of the Lord than wheat. Farther, we are exposed to the common inconveniences of this earthly life; we require, also, meat and drink, and other necessaries, but we must, nevertheless, be conversant with heaven in mind and affection. For, on the one hand, we must pass quietly through this life, and, on the other hand, we must be dead to the world that Christ may live in us, and that we, in our turn, may live to him. This passage is a most abundant source of many exhortations, which it were easy for any one to elicit from it.

Whence also. From the connection that we have with Christ, he proves that our citizenship (203) is in heaven, for it is not seemly that the members should be separated from their Head. Accordingly, as Christ is in heaven, in order that we may be conjoined with him, it is necessary that we should in spirit dwell apart from this world. Besides,

where our treasure is, there is our heart also. (Mat 6:21.)

Christ, who is our blessedness and glory, is in heaven: let our souls, therefore, dwell with him on high. On this account he expressly calIs him Savior. Whence does salvation come to us? Christ will come to us from heaven as a Savior. Hence it were unbefitting that we should be taken up with this earth (204). This epithet, Savior, is suited to the connection of the passage; for we are said to be in heaven in respect of our minds on this account, that it is from that source alone that the hope of salvation beams forth upon us. As the coming of Christ will be terrible to the wicked, so it rather turns away their minds from heaven than draws them thither: for they know that he will come to them as a Judge, and they shun him so far as is in their power. From these words of Paul pious minds derive the sweetest consolation, as instructing them that the coming of Christ is to be desired by them, inasmuch as it will bring salvation to them. On the other hand, it is a sure token of incredulity, when persons tremble on any mention being made of it. See Rom 8:0. While, however, others are transported with vain desires, Paul would have believers contented with Christ alone.

Farther, we learn from this passage that nothing mean or earthly is to be conceived of as to Christ, inasmuch as Paul bids us look upward to heaven, that we may seek him. Now, those that reason with subtlety that Christ is not shut up or hid in some corner of heaven, with the view of proving that his body is everywhere, and fills heaven and earth, say indeed something that is true, but not the whole: for as it were rash and foolish to mount up beyond the heavens, and assign to Christ a station, or seat, or place of walking, in this or that region, so it is a foolish and destructive madness to draw him down from heaven by any carnal consideration, so as to seek him upon earth. Up, then, with our hearts (205), that they may be with the Lord.

(201) “ Toutes leurs inuentions et facons de faire;” — “All their contrivances and modes of acting.”

(202) “ Que nous soyons diuisez et separez d’auec eux;” — “That we be divided and separated from them.”

(203) Politiam — a term corresponding to that employed in the original,.—Ed.

(204) “ Que nous soyons occupez et enueloppez en terre;” — “That we should be occupied and entangled with the earth.”

(205) Sursum corda Our Author most probably alludes to the circumstance, that this expression was wont to be made use of among Christians in ancient times, when the ordinance of the supper was about to be administered. See Calvin’s Institutes, vol. 3, p. 440 — Ed.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

Php. 3:20. For our conversation is in heaven.Our is emphatic, contrasting with the earthly things just named. Conversation is that to which we most readily turn, as the needle trembles to the pole. Our hearts are with our treasure, and that is far away from earthly things. They that say such things declare plainly that they seek a city; it is the souls Heimweh, the yearning for the homeland. We must not understand the words to mean Our mode of speech is like that in heaven, nor Our habit of life is heavenly. The word for conversation means the commonwealth, the general assembly and Church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven (Heb. 12:23). From whence also we look for the Saviour.From that heaven, whither the Forerunner is for us entered, He shall come in like manner. Meanwhile we stand in readiness to receive Him. The word for look for (R.V. wait for) graphically depicts the attitude of waiting.

Php. 3:21. Who shall change our vile body.R.V. much better, Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation. We are not to consider the body as the cause of sin, as something outside the redemption wrought by Christ, the Saviour of the body. The fashioning anew will not lose any essential part of the body. As the colours in a kaleidoscope change form at each movement, but are yet always the same, so in the change of the body there will be transition but no absolute solution of continuity. The body of our humiliation is the frail tenement in which the exile spirit sojourns (2Co. 5:1-8); it is the soon-wearied companion of an eager spirit (Mat. 26:41); it returns to the dust as it was (Ecc. 12:7). That it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.R.V. that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, as contrasted with the body of His humiliation (Php. 2:8), the body in which He tabernacled amongst us (Joh. 1:14). The power whereby He is able to subdue all things.He has power, not only to raise and glorify the body, but to subdue and renovate all things.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Php. 3:20-21

Christian Citizenship

I. Has its centre of life and privileges in heaven.For our conversation [citizenship] is in heaven (Php. 3:20). To show the contrast between the earthly things which absorb the thought of the worldly, and the things of heaven, the apostle proceeds to indicate that the life of the believer, even on earth, is associated with the privileges and blessings of the heavenly commonwealth, of which he is a member. In this world the Christian is but a strangerliving in temporary exile. His city, his home, is in heaven. Longing to enter into possession of all the privileges of the heavenly franchise, earthly things have no attraction for him, and he seeks to act in harmony with his high destiny

II. Is assured of the deliverance of its members from the perils and hardships of earth.From whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ (Php. 3:20). The apostle characterises Jesus as Saviour, or as expected in the character of Saviour, and thus suggests an awful contrast, in point of destiny, between himself and those like-minded with him, and the party reprobated by him in the two preceding verses. Their end is destruction, but ours is salvation; to the one He descends as Judge, but to us as Saviour. If there be such visible difference in present character, there is a more awful contrast in ultimate destinythe two poles of humanityeverlasting punishment; eternal life (Eadie). The great Deliverer will emancipate us from the thraldom, suffering, and sorrow of the present world, and complete in its fulness the salvation which is now in process.

III. Has the confident hope of future dignity and blessedness.

1. The body of humiliation shall be transformed into the likeness of Christs glorified body. Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body (Php. 3:21). The body of our humiliation connects us with the soil, out of which it was formed, and by the products of which it is supported, on which it walks, and into which it falls at death. It keeps us in constant physical connection with earth, whatever be the progress of the spirit towards its high destinyits commonwealth in heaven. It limits intellectual power and development, impedes spiritual growth and enjoyment, and is soon fatigued with the souls activity. In it are the seeds of disease and pain, from functional disorder and organic malady. It is an animal nature which, in spite of a careful and vigilant government, is prone to rebellious outbreaks. But this body is reserved to a high destiny: it shall be like Christs heavenly body. The brightness of heaven does not oppress Him, neither shall it dazzle us. Our humanity dies indeed, and is decomposed; but when He appears, it shall be raised and beautified. These bodies shall cease to be animal without ceasing to be human bodies, and they shall become spiritual bodiesetherealised vehicles for the pure spirit that shall be lodged within them (Eadie, passim).

2. This transformation shall be effected by the divine power that controls the universe.According to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself (Php. 3:21). While omniscience is the actual possession or exercise of all knowledge, omnipotence is universal ability, which may or may not yet have put forth all its energies, for what is possible to it may not have been effected by it. But Christ shall put forth His power, as we know from other sources, and death itself shall be swallowed up in victorythat which has swallowed up all humanity shall be surrounded by a wider vortex and be itself engulfed. This body of our humiliation has some surviving element, or some indissoluble link, which warrants the notion and shall secure the consciousness of identity, in whatever that identity may consist (Eadie). If mans art and device can produce so pure and white a fabric as paper from filthy rags, what shall hinder God by His mighty power to raise the vile body from the grave and refine and fashion it like unto the glorious body of Christ? Not a resurrection, says Neander, as a restoration merely of the same earthly body in the same earthly form; but a glorious transformation, proceeding from the divine, the all-subduing power of Christ; so that believers, free from all the defects of the earthly existence, released from all its barriers, may reflect the full image of the heavenly Christ in their whole glorified personality, in the soul pervaded by the divine life and its now perfectly assimilated glorified organ.

Lessons.

1. The Christian citizen is but a sojourner on earth.

2. His conduct on earth is regulated by a heavenly life.

3. He looks for his highest honours and enjoyments in the future.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Php. 3:20. Christian Citizenship.

I. The heavenly citizenship of Christians.

1. The city to which they belongheaven.

2. When are true Christians made citizens of this heavenly state? When they are pardoned.

3. What are the privileges connected with this state of relation to the heavenly city?

(1) Freedom.

(2) Admits to honourable employment and office.

(3) Fellowship and communion with the whole body of Israel.

4. A right to the common propertythe inheritance of the saints in light.

II. The conduct manifested by true Christians, and corresponding with their privilege.

1. Holiness.

2. Boast of the institutions of the heavenly city.

3. Are bold and courageous.

4. It will be seen in our spirit.

5. Our affections are in heaven.R. Watson.

Php. 3:21. The Resurrection of the Human Body.

I. We must be reminded of our sinful condition.

1. Our body is called a body of humiliation, because it, as well as the spirit, is the seat of sin.

2. If we consider the immense labour necessary to provide for its wants.

3. If we consider it as a clog to our devotion.

4. It must be still further humbled by death.

II. The transformation of this humbled body.

1. There can be no deformity.

2. The excessive care necessary for the support of the body shall exist no more.

3. It shall be an assistant and no longer a hindrance to the operations of the deathless spirit.

III. The means by which the transformation will be effected.The power of God answers all objections, removes all difficulties.

Lessons.

1. It becomes us to aspire to as much of the glory of the future state as can be attained.

2. This subject affords encouragement to us on the loss of our friends.

3. Ought to fortify our minds against the fear of death.Ibid.

The Glorious Destiny of the Human Body.If we are in Christ, He will gather up what is left, He will transfigure it with the splendour of a new life, He will change our body of humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto the body of His glory. Sown in the very extreme of physical weakness, it will be raised in a strictly superhuman power; sown a natural body controlled on every side by physical law, it will be a true body still, but a body that belongs to the sphere of spirit. Most difficult indeed it is even to the imagination to understand how this poor body, our companion for so many yearspart of our very selvesis to be first wrenched from us at death and then restored to us if we will, transfigured by the majestic glory of the Son of God. Little can we understand this inaccessibility to disease, the radiant beauty, the superiority to material obstacles in moving through space, the spirituality, in short, which awaits without destroying it.

Heavy and dull this frame of limbs and heart.
Whether slow creeping on cold earth, or borne
On lofty steed
Or loftier prow, we dart
Oer wave or field,
Yet breezes laugh to scorn
Our puny speed,
And birds, and clouds in heaven,
And fish like living shafts that pierce the main,
And stars that shoot through freezing air at even.
Who would not follow, might he break his chain?
And thou shalt break it soon.
The grovelling worm
Shall find his wings, and soar as fast and free
As his transfigured Lord, with lightning form
And snowy vest. Such grace He won for thee
When from the grave He sprang at dawn of morn,
And led, through boundless air, thy conquering road,
Leaving a glorious track where saints newborn
Might fearless follow to their blest abode.

H. P. Liddon.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

20. For our citizenship is in heaven; whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21. who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself.

Translation and Paraphrase

20. (We must not be like these,) for our state (wherein we have our citizenship) is in the heavens, from whence we also (steadfastly) look for a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
21. who (Christ) shall change our lowly (physical) body (so that it will be like in form to his glorious body), and this he will do (in a manner) in accord with the working which he powerfully exercises (all of the time), (even to the point of) subjecting all things to himself.

Notes

1.

Our citizenship (KJV conversation) is in heaven. This is given as another reason for our imitating men like Paul (Php. 3:17). Paul lived by the laws of the kingdom of heaven; we are also citizens of heaven; therefore we should imitate Paul.

(The term conversation, as used in the KJV, does not mean speech. It has the meaning of conduct, or of turning to and fro in lifes activities.)

2.

The word citizenship (Gr. politeuma) means a system of laws governing a state, or the state or commonwealth itself. Thus the translations in R.S.V. and A.S.V.m. render it commonwealth. Phillips version, and the New English render it We are citizens of heaven. James Moffatt has a famous translation of the verse: We are a colony of heaven. Our citizenship is not to be in heaven in the future; its there now.

3.

The Philippians would find such terms as citizenship and colony meaningful, because Philippi was a Roman colony and the people there prided themselves on being Roman citizens.

As the Romans colonized and took over the world of their time, so Christians need to colonize and take over the cities and nations of the earth by gospel infiltration.

4.

From heaven, where our citizenship is, we look for a savior to come back, the Lord Jesus Christ.

To the Christian Christ will come as a savior; to the world he will come as the judge.
The word look (apekdechomai) means to assiduously and patiently wait for.

5.

The hope of Christs second coming is a dominant theme in the New Testament. Act. 1:11; 1Th. 4:13-18; 1Th. 5:1-2; Heb. 9:28; Tit. 2:13. It should be the dominant hope of every Christian.

6.

Christ shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation. Fashion anew (KJV change; Gr. metaschematizo) means to change the appearance of. (See p. 52). While the expression fashion anew does not in itself carry the idea of transforming the intrinsic nature of anything, it is here followed by the word conformed (KJV, fashioned; Gr. summorphos) which does indicate a basic transformation in the nature of the thing being referred to. Our bodies are to be thus changed.

Our bodies are now vile objects of humble character. (See note 7 below.) Christ will soon change them both externally and inwardly that they will become like his own glorious body. (See Rom. 8:29 and note 8 below). We shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. (1Co. 15:51-52).

7.

Our vile body (KJV) is a description of our bodies as they now are, lowly and humble. This Biblical use of the word vile does not carry the connotation of evil that we now associate with it. It only means lowly.

Certainly our bodies now are lowly bodies of humiliation. They are subject to disease, to old age, to cancer, to infections, to allergies, to sores, to disfigurement, and to death. At the time of Christs coming our bodies will become glorious, powerful, honorable, spiritual, and immortal. (1Co. 15:42-44; 1Co. 15:53-54).

8.

Christs own glorious body, which he now has, and which ours will be made like, is described (at least to a degree) in Rev. 1:13-16. He is no longer a disfigured root out of dry ground, with marred visage, and no beauty that we should desire him, the man of sorrows. (Isa. 52:14-15; Isa. 53:1-3).

9.

The transformation that Christ will make in our bodies will be done easily and powerfully. It shall be done in a manner corresponding to the working which Christ customarily does as he subjects all things in the universe unto himself.

Therefore the resurrection of the dead and the transformation of human bodies need not surprise us. These acts will be in perfect harmony with the power that Christ is now using, and shall continue to us as he triumphantly subjects all things unto himself. (1Co. 15:25-27; Heb. 2:6-9).

Php. 4:1 seems to be more of a conclusion to chapter three than an introduction to chapter four. Nevertheless, it will be discussed in the notes on the next chapter.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(20) Our conversation.The original may signify either our city or our citizenship is in heaven. But both the grammatical form and the ordinary usage of the word (not elsewhere found in the New Testament) point to the former sense; which is also far better accordant with the general wording of the passage. For the word is is the emphatic word, which signifies actually exists; and the reference to the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ is obviously suggested by the thought that with it will also come the manifestation of the Jerusalem which is above . . . the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26); as in Rev. 21:2, I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven. The force of the passage would, however, in either case be much the same. Their mind is on earth; our country is in heaven, and to it our affections cling, even during our earthly pilgrimage. It is impossible not to remember the famous words of Plato of his Divine Republic, In heaven, perhaps, the embodiment of it is stored up for any one who wills to see it, and seeing it, to claim his place therein (Rep. ix., p. 592B). But the infinite difference between the shadowy republic of the philosopher, to which each has to rise, if he can, by his own spiritual power, and the well-centred kingdom of God, is suggested by the very words that follow here. The kingdom is real, because there is a real King, who has given us a place there, who will one day be manifested to take us home. It should be noted that the city is spoken of as ours already. As all the citizens of Philippi, the Roman colony, were citizens of the far distant imperial city, so the Philippian Christians even now were citizens of the better country in heaven. (See Eph. 2:19.)

We look for.Properly, we eagerly wait for. The word is a peculiar and striking expression of longing, found also in Rom. 8:19; Rom. 8:28; Rom. 8:25, The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God (where see Note).

The Saviour.The title is emphatic in relation to the hope of perfected salvation which follows. But we note that the use of the word Saviour by St. Paul is peculiar to the later Epistles, and especially frequent in the Pastoral Epistles. It is found also again and again in the Second Epistle of Peter.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

20. For our conversation Rather, our country, our citizenship. The persons just described belong to the earth, and walk in earthliness; do you walk as we walk, for our country is in heaven. We belong to the heavenly commonwealth; we obey its laws; we think, feel, and live in accordance with them. Heaven has locality, as the place where the glorified Jesus is, and from which he shall come at his second advent.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘For our citizenship is in heaven, from where also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,’

Paul now contrasts with the descriptions just given the viewpoint and mindset of the Christian. Rather than ‘minding earthly things’, they recognise that their citizenship is in Heaven (in contrast with being in Rome). In other words, as it has been so aptly put, ‘they are a colony of Heaven’. As representatives of Heaven, following Heaven’s laws, subject to Heaven’s justice, supported by Heaven’s power and acting on Heaven’s behalf in the area where they are (compare what was said in the introduction about a Roman ‘colony’), they await the coming of their Heavenly King, their Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ. They are a ‘military camp of the saints and the beloved city’ (the heavenly Jerusalem – Gal 4:22-31; Heb 12:22), surrounded by the enemy, but knowing that they have nought to fear, because their Lord and Saviour is coming to finalise their salvation and set all right (Rev 20:9).

‘A Saviour.’ In the New Testament the title Saviour is used of God and of Jesus Christ on an equal basis. It signifies the Saviour of the Old Testament Who will deliver His people (e.g. Psa 106:21; Isa 43:3; Isa 43:11; Isa 45:21; Isa 60:16; Jer 14:8; Hos 13:4), but was also used of Caesar in an earthly sense, thus indicating that while great Caesar reigned on earth, God and the Lord Jesus Christ reign in Heaven. It is particularly apt therefore in Philippians where citizenship in Heaven is seen as being superior to that in Rome. Prior to this the word Saviour had only been used once by Paul, in Eph 5:23, but it would be commoner in the Pastorals (1 Timothy three times of ‘God’; 2 Timothy once of ‘Jesus Christ’; Titus six times, three of ‘God’ and three of Jesus Christ). It occurs also in Luk 1:47; Luk 2:11; Joh 4:42; Act 5:31; Act 13:23; 1Jn 4:1; Jud 1:25; 2 Peter – 5 times).

Alternately we may see politeuma (citizenship) as signifying ‘our commonwealth (colonial rule) is in Heaven’, with the emphasis being on the source of rule. The consequence is little different. Each church on earth is still seen as an outpost or military camp under Heaven’s rule. ‘From where (which) –.’ That is from the commonwealth of Heaven.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Php 3:20. For our conversation is in heaven; They who have occasion to make use of this text, commonly attempt to mend our translation, asserting that the word should not be rendered conversation, but citizenship. Thus Beza, the common French translation, and that printed at Mons, have rendered it. Diodati agrees with ours, but puts citizenship in the margin. The Vulgate, Syriac, Low Dutch, and Castalio render it as we do; and after all that the critics have said upon this matter, our own rendering seems preferable to the other. It must be confessed that the word, being derived from , a city, is often used to signify such actions as relate to the administration and government of it; but nothing is more common, than for words in time to be used in a laxer and more general sense than their etymology will account for. This is clearly the case in the verb , which in like manner related at first to a civil administration, but was afterwards used to signify any manner of living and conversing: so it is used by St. Paul, ch. Php 1:27 and so Act 23:1 and in this sense it is also applied by the classics. Now the rendering in our translation appears best for these reasons, 1. As it stands here in opposition to the foregoing character, and especially the last part of it,who mind earthly things. It is most agreeable therefore to understand him to describe his own character, as one who minded heavenly things, or whose conversation was about them. 2. This is confirmed by the parallel place, Col 3:1-2. For our conversation is in heaven, will be the same as, we seek or mind the things above. 3. This suits best with his design, as he is recommending himself to them as an example of walking, or of conversation, Php 3:17. Be ye followers together of me, and mark, or observe with attention, those who walk so, as you have us for an example; and in this 20th verse he gives a reason why they should follow his example,because it was through grace a very good one; for our conversation, that is our walking, is in heaven; and that this 20th verse is clearly connected with the 17th, appears by the conjunction , or for, at the beginning of it; the 18th and 19th verses being to be read in a parenthesis. 4. This conversation in heaven comprehends briefly all that he had said of himself, Php 3:10-14, and as in those verses he makes not the least allusion to a citizenship, but his whole discourse is concerning the manner of his life and conversation: it is but reasonable to understand him as speaking of that alone in this verse.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Phi 3:20 . After Paul has, by way of confirmation and warning, subjoined to his exhortation given in Phi 3:17 the deterrent example of the enemies of the cross of Christ in Phi 3:18 f., he now sketches by the side of that deterrent delineation in outlines few, but how clear! the inviting picture of those whom, in Phi 3:17 , he had proposed as .

] The train of thought runs thus: “Justly I characterize their whole nature by the words ; for it is the direct opposite of ours; our , the goal of our aspiration, is not on earth, but in heaven.” therefore introduces a confirmatory reason , but not for his having said that the earthly mind of the necessarily involves such a walk (Hofmann); for he has not said this, and what follows would not be a proof of it. The apostle gives, rather, an experimental proof e contrario , and that for what immediately precedes, not for the remote (Weiss).

] emphatically placed first; contrast of the persons. These , however, are the same as the in Phi 3:17 , consequently Paul himself and the .

] the commonwealth , which may bear the sense either of: the state ( 2Ma 12:7 ; Polyb. i. 13. 12, ii. 41. 6; Lucian, Prom . 15; Philo, de opif . p. 33 A, de Jos . p. 536 D); or the state-administration (Plat. Legg . 12, p. 945 D; Aristot. Pol . iii. 4; Polyb. iv. 23. 9; Lucian, Dem. enc . 16), or its principles (Dem. 107. 25, 262. 27; Isocr. p. 156 A); or the state-constitution (Plut. Them . 4; Arist. Pol . iii. 4. 1; Polyb. v. 9. 9, iv. 25. 7), see generally Raphel, Polyb. in loc.; Schweigh. Lex. Polyb . p. 486; Schoemann, ad Plut. Cleom . p. 208. Here, in the first sense: our commonwealth , that is, the state to which we belong, is in heaven . By this is meant the Messiah’s kingdom which had not yet appeared , which will only at Christ’s Parousia (comp. . . . which follows) come down from heaven and manifest itself in its glory on earth. It is the state of the heavenly Jerusalem (see on Gal 4:26 ; comp. Usteri, Lehrbegr . p. 190; Ritschl, altkath. Kirche , p. 59), of which true Christians are citizens (Eph 2:19 ) even now before the Parousia in a proleptic and ideal sense ( , Rom 5:2 ; comp. Rom 8:24 ), in order that one day, at the (2Th 2:8 ), they may be so in complete reality (comp. Heb 12:22 f., Heb 13:14 ), as (1Pe 5:1 ; Col 3:4 ), nay, as (2Ti 2:12 ; comp. Rom 8:17 ; 1Co 4:8 ). Hence, according to the necessary psychological relation, “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mat 6:21 ), they , not , but (Col 3:1 f.), which serves to-explain the logical correctness of the in its relation to . . Others, following the Vulgate ( conversatio ), render it: our walk , making the sense, “tota vita nostra quasi jam nunc apud Deum naturasque coelestes puriores versatur, longe remota a eorumque captatione” (Hoelemann). So Luther (who up till 1528 rendered it “citizenship”), Castalio, Erasmus, Calvin, Grotius, and many others, including Matthies, van Hengel, de Wette; while Rheinwald mixes up interpretations of various kinds. This rendering is not justified by linguistic usage, which indeed vouches for (Phi 1:27 ) in this sense, and for (Clem. Cor . I. 54: , Ep. ad Diogn. 5), but not for , not even in Eus. H. E . v. prooem . Nor does linguistic usage even permit the interpretation: citizenship . So Luther, in the Postil. Epist. D . 3, post f. pasch.: “Here on earth we are in fact not citizens.; our citizenship is with Christ in heaven , there we are to remain for ever citizens and lords;” comp. Beza, Balduin, Erasmus Schmid, Zachariae, Flatt, Wiesinger, Ewald, Weiss, and others. This would be , Act 22:28 ; Thuc. vi. 104. 3; Dem. 161. 11; Polyb. vi. 2. 12; 3Ma 3:21 . Theophylact’s explanation, (which is used also for heaven by Anaxagoras in Diog. L. ii. 7), must be referred to the correct rendering state (comp. Hammond, Clericus, and others [172] ), while Chrysostom gives no decided opinion, but Theodoret ( ) and Oecumenius ( ) appear to follow the rendering conversatio .

. . .] And what a happy change is before us, in consequence of our thus belonging to the heavenly state! From the heaven (scil. , comp. 1Th 1:10 ) we expect, etc. The neuter , which is certainly to be taken in a strictly local sense (in opposition to Calovius), is not to be referred to . (Wolf, Schoettgen, Bengel, Hofmann); but is correctly rendered by the Vulgate: “ unde .” Comp. on , Col 2:19 , and Bornemann, ad Xen. Anab . i. 2. 20: , .

, also , denotes the relation corresponding to the foregoing (namely, that our is to be found in heaven), not a second one to be added (Hofmann).

] placed first with great emphasis, and that not as the accusative of the object (Hofmann), but hence without the article as predicative accusative: as Saviour , namely, from all the sufferings and conflicts involved in our fellowship with the cross of Christ (Phi 3:18 ), not from the (Weiss), which, indeed, the have not at all to fear. Comp. on the subject-matter, Luk 18:7 f., Luk 21:28 ; Tit 2:13 ; 2Ti 4:18 .

.] comp. 1Co 1:7 ; Tit 2:13 . As to the signification of the word: perseveranter expectare , see on Rom 8:19 ; Gal 5:5 .

[172] The Gothic Version has: “unsara buins” (that is, building, dwelling).

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2156
OF FOLLOWING GOOD EXAMPLES

Php 3:17; Php 3:20. Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.For our conversation is in heaven.

GREAT is the force of example, either to vitiate or improve the morals of those around us. There are few, even of real Christians, who do not, in some considerable degree, yield to its influence. The church at Philippi was, on the whole, distinguished for its attainments: yet even there, hypocrisy was found, and error had its advocates. The example of some worldly and sensual professors was likely to prove extremely injurious: while therefore the Apostle declares his grief occasioned by their misconduct, he exhorts the Church to unite in following rather the example that he had set them, and to notice with approbation all who conducted themselves agreeably to his advice.
The words that are in verses 18 and 19, being included in a parenthesis, those which are united in the text are properly connected with each other. In discoursing on them, we shall consider,

1.

The Apostles example

St. Paul considered himself as a citizen of heaven [Note: might have been translated our citizenship.]

[To be a citizen of Rome was deemed a high honour; and it was an honour which Paul possessed by virtue of his being a native of Tarsus, on which city this privilege had been conferred [Note: Act 22:28.]. But Pauls name was enrolled in a more glorious city, even in heaven itself [Note: Luk 10:20.]. He belonged to the society of saints and angels, who were united under Christ, their common head [Note: Eph 1:10; Eph 3:15.]: and he had a communion with them in all their honours, their interests, and their enjoyments [Note: Eph 2:6.].]

In the exercise of his rights, he had his daily converse in heaven
[As a person is daily conversant with that society to which he belongs, maintaining fellowship with them, and ordering his life according to their rules, so the Apostle lived, as it were, in heaven: his thoughts and affections were there continually: and he was emulating those around the throne by his constant endeavours to glorify God, and by walking habitually in the light of his countenance.]
While he mentions his example, he shews us,

II.

The use that we should make of it

We should imitate him ourselves
[We are already joined to the society in heaven [Note: Heb 12:22-23.], provided we be united unto Christ by faith: and it behoves us to walk worthy of our high calling. Though we are in the world, we are not to be of it. We have here no continuing city: we are to be in this world as pilgrims only and so-journers: we must ever consider ourselves as strangers and foreigners, who, though living on earth are indeed fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God [Note: Eph 2:19.]. If we were travelling in a foreign land, we should regard the concerns of that land rather as objects of curiosity, than as matters in which we felt any deep interest: whereas the affairs of our own country, where our estates were situated, and our relations lived, would be regarded by us as matters of great moment. Thus should we be indifferent, as it were, to all the vanities of this life, and be wholly intent on our spiritual and eternal interests. We should be maintaining communion with our Head in heaven [Note: 1Jn 1:3.], and growing up into a meetness for the exercises and enjoyments of the invisible world.]

We should also mark those who do imitate him
[All of us should unite [Note: .] in following his example, and emulate each other in his holy employment. And, when any make higher attainments than ourselves we should not be ashamed to imitate them: we should observe [Note: .] particularly what it is wherein they excel us, and how it is that they have been enabled to outstrip us. We should endeavour to encourage them; and together with them to press forward towards perfection [Note: Pro 15:24.].]

We may make use of this subject,
1.

For reproof

[How widely do the greater part of Christians differ from the Apostle! Nor is it only the profane, or the formal, that are condemned by his example, but even the godly also. Let all of us then be ashamed of the low sense we entertain of our privileges, and of the coldness with which we prosecute our eternal interests. Let us seek to have our views and dispositions more conformed to those of the saints of old; that at the second coming of our Lord we may behold him both with confidence and joy [Note: ver. 20, 21. with 1Jn 2:28.].]

2.

For encouragement

[It is not to Apostles that these attainments are confined: they were common to many others in the Church at Philippi, who, together with the Apostle, are proposed as patterns unto us. Let none then imagine that this blessed state is beyond their reach; but rather let all aspire after it, as the one object of their ambition [Note: ver. 13, 14.]. Let all seek to know what a gloriously rich inheritance [Note: Eph 1:18.] they are even now permitted to enjoy; and, having by faith gained access into this grace, let them stand in it, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God [Note: Rom 5:2.].]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:

Ver. 20. For our conversation ] Our civil conversation, or our burgessship, a while we live by heaven’s laws, and go about our earthly businesses with heavenly minds; this a carnal man cannot skill of. b A fly cannot make of a flower what a bee can. There is a generation whose names are written in the earth, Jer 17:13 ; these make earth their throne, heaven their footstool, Isa 66:1 , and are loth to die, because they have treasures in the field. But the saints, though their commoration be on earth, yet their conversation is in heaven; as the pearl grows in the sea, but shines in the sky; as stars, though seen sometimes in a puddle, yet have their situation in heaven; as a wise man may sport with children, but that is not his main business. Corpore ambulamus in terra corde habitamus in caelo, saith Austin. Our bodies are on earth, our hearts in heaven (as his was that did even eat and drink and sleep eternal life). We live by the same laws as saints and angels in heaven do. If Satan offer us outward things in a temptation (as he did Luther a cardinalship), we send them away from whence they came, as Pelican sent back the silver bowl (which the bishop had sent him for a token) with this answer, Astricti sunt quotquot Tiguri cives et inquilini, bis singulis annis, solenni iuramento, &c. We, the citizens and inhabitants of Zurich, are twice a year solemnly sworn to receive no gift from any foreign prince; so we, the citizens of heaven, are bound by solemn and sacred covenants not to accept Satan’s cut-throat kindnesses. Serpens ille capite blanditur, ventre oblectat, cauda ligat. (Rupert.)

” – Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

We like not the devil’s donatives.”

a The status and privileges of a burgess; the ‘freedom’ of a borough, citizenship. D

b . Ut municipes caelorum nos gerimus. Sic reddit Piscator.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

20 .] For (I may well direct you to avoid : for our state and feelings are wholly alien from theirs) our (emphatic) country (the state , to which we belong, of which we by faith are citizens, , Thl.; meaning the Kingdom of God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal 4:26 . Col 3:1 ff.). This objective meaning of the word is better than the subjective one, ‘ our citizenship ’ ( , Act 22:28 ; but they seem sometimes to be used indifferently, see Palm and Rost’s Lex., and Aristot. Pol. iii. 4, , cf. however, on the other side, Ellicott: and his note through out), or, ‘ our conversation ,’ as vulg. E. V., which rendering seems to want precedent. Conyb. renders it ‘ life :’ but this is insufficient, even supposing it justifiable, as giving the English reader the idea of , and so misleading him. I may remark, in passing, on the unfortunate misconception of St. Paul’s use of the plural, which has marred so many portions of Mr. Conybeare’s version of the Epistles, and none more sadly than this, where he gives the Apostle’s noble description of the state and hopes of us Christians, as contrasted with the . , all in the singular ‘ For my life, &c. , from whence also I look, &c. ’) subsists (the word is more solemn, as indicating priority and fixedness, than would be: see notes, ch. Phi 2:6 , and Act 16:20 ) in the heavens, from whence ( does not refer to , as Beng., al. nor = , nor to be rendered ‘ ex quo tempore ,’ as Erasm., but is adverbial, ‘ unde ,’see Winer, 21. 3, and cf. Xen. Anab. i. 2. 20, , ) also (additional particular, following on heaven being our country) we wait for (expect, till the event arrives: see note on Rom 8:19 , and a dissertation in the Fritzschiorum Opuscula, p. 150 ff.) a Saviour (emphatic: therefore we cannot . , because we are waiting for one to deliver us from them. Or, as Saviour (Ellic.): but perhaps the other is preferable, as being simpler), ( viz. ) the Lord Jesus Christ ,

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Phi 3:20-21 . HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS AND ITS PROSPECT.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Phi 3:20 . . “Our commonwealth.” (Tertull., municipatus . Cyp., Iren., conversation .) The thought is certainly suggested by . . in Phi 3:19 (this is the force of ). This world has a characteristic spirit of its own. Worldliness is the common bond of citizenship in it. There is another commonwealth, not of the world (Joh 18:36 ), which inspires its members with a different tone of life. They “seek the things above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God”. Cf. 4 Ezr. 8:52, Vobis enim apertus est paradisus praeparata est habundantia, aedificata est civitas . The stability and security of the pax Romana (one of the most favourable influences for Christianity) filled the thought of the time with high conceptions of citizenship and its value. This would specially appeal to the Philippians, who must have prided themselves on possessing the jus Italicum with all its privileges (see Marquardt, Rmische Staatsverwaltung , Bd. i., pp. 363 365). Again and again Paul himself found his Roman citizenship a sure protection. Perhaps the unjust treatment he had received in that capacity at Philippi (Act 16:22-23 ; Act 16:37-39 ) resulted in securing for the young Christian community a certain immunity from persecution through the favour of the magistrates who might fear the consequences of their gross violation of justice. The word had been adopted by the Jews from Greek civic life long before this letter was written (see Hicks, Classical Review , i., 1, pp. 6 7, on the whole subject of political terms in N.T.). Cf. Philo, de Conf. Ling. , p. 78 (ed. Wendl.), , ; Aug., de Civ. D. , xi., 1 (quoted by Wohl [4] . ); the Latin Mediaev. Hymn, Urbs Jerusalem beata, Dicta pacis visio, Quae construitur in caelis, Vivis ex lapidibus ; and see Heb 10:34 , Jas 4:4 , 1Jn 2:17 . . is used = “commonwealth” in 2Ma 12:7 and Inscriptions. There is a good discussion of Paul’s relation to the state in Hltzm [5] . , N.T. Th. , ii., p. 157 ff. . Paul had no earthly home. . It is perhaps used to add dignity to the thought, or, possibly, to emphasise the idea of substantial existence and reality. Cf. in chap. Phi 2:6 . . It seems needless to make this an adverb. refers quite directly to (so also Beng., Hfm [6] . , Lips [7] . , Holst., etc.). marks the reasonableness of looking for the Saviour from the heavenly commonwealth. Because their . is in heaven they have a claim on the Saviour, just as the Philippians might rightfully look for protection to Rome. . Used, no doubt, in the technical sense of Christ’s deliverance at His coming (so also Kl [8] . ), but strangely rare until the Pastoral Epistles. It corresponds to Paul’s use of . . The compound emphasises the intense yearning for the Parousia. It is no wonder that early Christian thought centred round that time. There was nothing to root their affections in the world ( Cf. Gal 1:4 ). The dominant influence of this expectation in Paul’s thinking and working is only beginning to be fully recognised. See some suggestive paragraphs in Wernle’s Der Christ u. die Snde bei Paul. , pp. 122 123. . . . This order is always found in the phrase.

[4] Wohlenberg.

[5] tzm. Holtzmann.

[6] Hofmann.

[7] Lipsius.

[8] . Klpper.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

conversation. Greek. politeuma, Only here in N.T. It sec, in the Septuagint and in 2 Macc. 12.7. The seat of the government of which we are citizens (Greek. polites), and of which we have both rights and responsibilities. Compare the verb, Php 1:27.

is = exists even now. Greek. huparcho. See Luk 9:48.

heaven = heavens. See Mat 6:9, Mat 6:10.

from. App-104.

whence = which, singular, referring to politeuma.

also. To follow “Saviour”.

look for = eagerly wait for. Greek. apekdechomai. See Rom 8:19.

Jesus Christ. App-98.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

20.] For (I may well direct you to avoid :-for-our state and feelings are wholly alien from theirs) our (emphatic) country (the state, to which we belong, of which we by faith are citizens,- , Thl.; meaning the Kingdom of God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal 4:26. Col 3:1 ff.). This objective meaning of the word is better than the subjective one, our citizenship (, Act 22:28; but they seem sometimes to be used indifferently, see Palm and Rosts Lex., and Aristot. Pol. iii. 4, , cf. however, on the other side, Ellicott: and his note through out), or, our conversation, as vulg. E. V., which rendering seems to want precedent. Conyb. renders it life: but this is insufficient, even supposing it justifiable, as giving the English reader the idea of , and so misleading him. I may remark, in passing, on the unfortunate misconception of St. Pauls use of the plural, which has marred so many portions of Mr. Conybeares version of the Epistles, and none more sadly than this,-where he gives the Apostles noble description of the state and hopes of us Christians, as contrasted with the . ,-all in the singular-For my life, &c.,-from whence also I look, &c.) subsists (the word is more solemn, as indicating priority and fixedness, than would be: see notes, ch. Php 2:6, and Act 16:20) in the heavens, from whence ( does not refer to , as Beng., al.-nor = , nor to be rendered ex quo tempore, as Erasm., but is adverbial, unde,see Winer, 21. 3, and cf. Xen. Anab. i. 2. 20, , ) also (additional particular, following on heaven being our country) we wait for (expect, till the event arrives: see note on Rom 8:19, and a dissertation in the Fritzschiorum Opuscula, p. 150 ff.) a Saviour (emphatic: therefore we cannot . , because we are waiting for one to deliver us from them. Or, as Saviour (Ellic.): but perhaps the other is preferable, as being simpler), (viz.) the Lord Jesus Christ,

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Php 3:20. , our) whom you have as a type or example [Php 3:17].-, for) This gives the reason why the Philippians ought to imitate them.- ) the community, country, city, or state: for , has its existence, follows. Therefore it is the antecedent to , from which.[49]-, the Saviour) This furnishes the ground on which we rest our expectation, 2Ti 4:18.-, the Lord) now exalted, ch. Php 2:11. This furnishes the confirmation of this expectation.

[49] , implied in , might seem otherwise to be the word to which refers.-ED.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Php 3:20

Php 3:20

For our citizenship is in heaven;-This is in contrast with those who are actuated by these sordid, groveling, earthly motives. The believer is now in this present world, a citizen in the heavenly commonwealth, those who are in Christ, whose “life is hid with Christ in God (Col 3:3), for whom to live is Christ (Php 1:21), and who have been crucified with Christ and live their present life by faith in him (Gal 2:20), and are now members of the heavenly commonwealth and live and act under its laws. Their allegiance is rendered to it. They receive their impulse to action and conduct from it. Their connection with it is the basis of their life of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17), as distinguished from the life of those whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. They are fellow- citizens with the saints, and of the household of God (Eph 2:19). The commonwealth of believers is an actual fact on earth, because it is one with the Jerusalem that is above. (Gal 4:26).

whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:-[The consummation of this citizenship, however, is yet to come. As members of the heavenly commonwealth they are still pressing on in obedience to the upward call (Php 3:14), hence they are in an attitude of earnest expectation.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Saviour

See note, (See Scofield “Rom 1:16”).

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

Citizenship in Heaven

For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation (A.V., our vile body), that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself.Php 3:20-21.

1. St. Paul, in these words, is strengthening the Christians at Philippi, by setting before them the greatness of their calling and of their destiny. They had much need of encouragement; for a time of sore and peculiar trial was then upon them. They had to endure not only bitter persecutions and the assault of Antichrists, wielding the powers of the world to wear out the saints of the Most High, but a still more dangerous, because more subtle, trial. They were being tried by false and sensual men mingling in the communion of the Church. There were among them false teachers, who mixed up the law of Moses with the gospel of Christ; double-minded men, steering between both; striving to escape persecution, and yet desiring to obtain the reputation of Christians. These were very dangerous tempters, who entered the Church in disguise, defiling it, and destroying souls for whom Christ died.

There was one special mark by which such men (as we see from both St. Paul and St. John) might be known; they lived evil lives. Therefore St. Paul here sets before the Philippians a contrast of carnal and spiritual Christians, and of the earthly and the heavenly life. After saying, Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things; he adds, For our citizenship is in heaven.

St. Paul draws a contrast between the principle that animated the lives of these sensual worldlings and the principle that animated his own life and the lives of his fellow-Christians. They mind earthly things. Our citizenship is in heaven. They have their view bounded by the earthly horizon; they believe in and live for what they can see and touch and tastefor what St. John so significantly describes as all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye and the vain glory of life. The controlling influences which mould our lives are heavenly. The country of our allegiance is above. We draw our inspiration from the recollection of it.

No line of modern poetry has been oftener quoted with thoughtless acceptance than Wordsworths:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

It is wholly untrue in the implied limitation; if life be led under heavens law, the sense of heavens nearness only deepens with advancing years, and is assured in death. But the saying is indeed true thus far, that in the dawn of virtuous life every enthusiasm and every perception may be trusted as of Divine appointment; and the maxima reverentia is due not only to the innocence of children, but to their inspiration. And it follows that through the ordinary course of mortal failure and misfortune, in the career of nations no less than of men, the error of their intellect, and the hardening of their hearts, may be accurately measured by their denial of spiritual power.1 [Note: Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, viii., Letter 92 (Works, xxix. 457).]

2. The Apostle chooses a most appropriate figure. This letter of St. Paul to the Philippian Christians was written to the inhabitants of a Roman colony, or free city, such as Philippi was. Its inhabitants would, therefore, fully understand the figure of the Apostle when he called upon them to remember their high position as citizens, not of a mere mundane sovereignty, but of a Heavenly Kingdom. Our citizenship is in heaven. Was the Roman citizen a free manso were they. They had been made free from sin, and become servants to God; they were therefore to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free. Had the Roman citizen acquired his freedom by purchaseso had they; they had been redeemed not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. Did the Roman citizen enjoy immunity from the fear that hath torment, conscious that the law had no terrors for him so long as he used it lawfullyso was it with these Philippian Christians; as long as they were led by the Spirit they were not under the law; the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made them free from the law of sin and death. Was the Roman citizen enfranchised by virtue of adoption into the family of his masterso was it with them; they had received the adoption of sons, whereby they were able to cry, Abba, Father. Had the Roman citizen a right of personal access to the Emperor, and an appeal to his righteous judgmentso had they the right of entry before the King of kings; they might draw nigh with a true heart, in full assurance of faith. Was the Roman citizen a member of the greatest of earthly empiresthe Philippian Christian was more than this, he was a citizen of heaven, and a subject of the only Potentate, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see, to whom be honour and power everlasting.

The term used by Paul has nothing to do with what we in the present day commonly mean by conversation (the word used in the Authorized Version), that is, talking. It means rather our life, that is, not the way of life in which we choose to live, but the state of life for which God made us, to which we belong, whether we choose it or not. More plainly still, it is the country or nation or city of which we are members and citizens, in which we are natives. It is that city of Jerusalem above, of which St. Paul writes to the Galatians, which is the mother of us all, the city of God. We belong to a great commonwealth, and that commonwealth is in heaven. Not we shall belong, but we do now belong to the heavenly commonwealth. This is not some slight or accidental honour added to our life. It is the very frame and truth of our life itself. We belong to it first and foremost, not by an afterthought. Heaven comes first, not earth. We are first citizens of heaven, and last citizens of heaven, and citizens of heaven all the while between: earth comes in only by the way; it has no deep and lasting rights over us.1 [Note: F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons, 2nd Ser., 151.]

Not only have the words, Our conversation is in heaven, lost for thousands of readers their original English meaning, but they had never conveyed the real point of St. Pauls phrase with its quite definite reference to a political Citizenship or Commonwealth or Empire. A Roman citizen, proudwe see it again and again in the story of his lifeproud of his privilege, is in custody at Rome waiting his trial by the Emperor. The whole conditions of that trial turned upon his citizenship, and he is writing to men and women in an enrolled Roman ColonyPhilippiwho were hardly less proud than he of their Roman citizenship, their fellowship in the Imperial capital of the world.

What he says is, Some Christians, even in these testing days, have been lowering the Christian ideal. They are easy-going or even sensual and self-indulgent. That ought, for us, members of Christs Commonwealth, citizens of His Kingdom, to be impossible. For we have learned better, our link of fellowship is an ennobling thing; it uplifts, it steadies us. Our citizenship is in heaven.1 [Note: Archbishop Davidson, The Christian Opportunity, 41.]

I

The City to which we Belong

1. We belong to a city or state, which is out of sight. St. John, in the last great prophecy given through him to the Church, saw that city, builded four-square, perfect every way, on twelve foundations, having in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb. It was built at unity with itself, perfect in structure and in symmetry, its length as great as its breadth; its walls of all manner of precious stones, and its streets of pure gold, clear as glass: a wonderful vision, full of mystery, and of meaning partly revealed, partly hidden, and by hiding made even more glorious and majestic. It sets before us the unity, multitude, perfection, glory, and bliss, of Christs saints gathered under Him in the Kingdom of God. Of this city and company, the whole Church on earth, and, in it, the Christians in Philippi, were citizens and partakers. St. Paul tells them this, to remind them that they were no longer isolated one from another, but incorporated into one body. Sin, as it rends man from God, so it rends man from man. It is the antagonist of all unitya power of dissolution and of isolation. But the grace of Christ, by its first gift, binds again the soul of man with God, and the spirits of all the regenerate in one fellowship. We are taken out of a dead world, to be grafted into the living Church. Therefore St. Paul told the Christians in Ephesus, that they were no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God. They were thereby made subjects and servants of the King of saints, the Lord of the holy city. It became their own inheritance. Its courts were their resting-places, pledged to them and sure. Their names were written among those who should walk in the light of God and of the Lamb.

An American agent or ambassador has a temporary dwelling in Athens. Living on that foreign soil, occupied daily, for the time, with its local affairs, respectful to its institutions, a good neighbour, he never forgets his allegiance to a distant republic. The landscape about him may show a beauty that wins his admiration; the Greek faces and manners and hospitalities may gain his good-will; yet they are not those of his native land. He remembers that his stay is short; sometimes he is homesick; he expects to be called back, not long hence, where his treasure is laid up and his untravelled heart abides; he is a stranger and sojourner, away from home. This simple comparison answers the better because it shows that when our faith commands us to have our conversation in heaven it does not require us to be bad citizens of the world where we now are. We are not bidden to be absent-minded; if we were we should do poor work here, and lead ineffectual lives. The man may form hearty attachments where he tarries; he may pay willing tribute to the city that temporarily befriends him; he may live cheerfully and helpfully, neither a complaining guest nor a fastidious and sullen recluse. And yet, none the less, as the Epistle to the Hebrews so grandly says of the patriarch who is the type of the Christian believer, he desires always a better country, which he knowsa city first in his honour, dearer to his love, and always in his hopes. So Christ, by His doctrine and spirit, reconciles a regular and happy labour among the fields and streets and markets of this world with a constant recollection that we have an eternal citizenship above it.1 [Note: F. D. Huntingdon, Christ in the Christian Year, 243.]

Are we not strangers here? Is it not strange that we so often meet and part without a word of our home, or the way to it, or our advance toward it?2 [Note: Archbishop Leighton.]

2. Citizenship implies honour and privilege. Both in Rome and in its colonies the privileges of citizenship were great, and greatly prized. Rome was the centre and mistress of the civilized world. The Roman citizen was not only safe wherever he went, but honoured and admired. He held himself to be the equal of tributary princes and kings, if not their superior. He was eligible for the highest offices of the State. He had a voice in the election of the ministers and rulers of the Commonwealth, even up to the godlike Imperator himself. He was exempted from many burdens, taxes, benevolences, exactions, imposed on the subject races. He could neither be scourged uncondemned nor examined by torture. Even if found guilty of the foulest crime, he could no more be crucified than an Englishman could be impaled; while, if he were cast in any civil suit, he had a right of appeal to Csar. If he were a man of any energy and intelligence, he had boundless opportunities of acquiring wealth; if he were poor and indolent, bread and games were provided for him at the public expense, baths were built for him, and theatres; the public gardens and walks were open to him; he might enrol himself among the clients, and so secure the protection, of some wealthy and powerful noble; he could take his share in the imperial doles and largesses, which were of constant recurrence. All this he might do and claim, not as a favour, but as a right, simply because he was a citizen.

What St. Paul virtually says to the Christian citizens of Philippi is: You possess, and are proud to possess, the citizenship of Rome; but, remember, you have a still higher and nobler citizenship. Heaven is your true home, the Kingdom of Heaven your true commonwealth, the spirit of heaven your true spirit. You are members of that great spiritual and eternal Kingdom of which Christ is Imperator and Lord. And this citizenship confers on you both rights and dutiesrights of access and appeal to the heavenly King, exemption not from base punishments alone, but also from base and degrading lusts. You are guarded from the malice and violence of the principalities and powers of evil and of an evil world. You are fed and cherished by the bounty and grace of the King eternal, immortal, invisible. You owe Him allegiance therefore, and a constant heartfelt service. Take pride in Him, then, and in the ties that bind you to Him. Fight for your privileges and immunities; play the man; prove yourselves good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Assert and maintain your spiritual freedom. Subordinate your private interests to the public welfare. Labour to extend the borders of the Divine Kingdom. Let this heavenly citizenship be more and dearer to you than the civic rights and exemptions in which you are wont to boast.

On a cold, windy day in November, a gentleman spoke kindly to a poor Italian whom he had often passed without a word. Seeing him shiver, he said something about the dreadful English climate, which to a son of the sunny south must have seemed terribly cruel that day. But to his surprise the man looked up with a smile, and in his broken English said, Yes, yes, pritty cold; but by-and-by! tink of dat. He was thinking of warm skies and flowers and songs in the sunny land to which he hoped soon to return, and he little imagined how all that day and for many a day his words would ring in the Englishmans heart: By-and-by, tink of dat.1 [Note: Alfred Rowland.]

3. There were three ways by which a person obtained citizenship. The first was by birth. If a person was born in a city, he was free to the rights and privileges which belonged to that city. He was a citizen. Thus St. Paul said, I was free born. And every Christian has had two births, a natural and also a spiritual birth. The second mode of becoming a citizen was by gift. It was a privilege, in the power of a State, then as it is now, to confer, and was sometimes conferred, in honour or in love. And thirdly it could be bought. As we read: 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. By all these three privileges every Christian has got his freedom, or citizenship. He is born again of water and of the Spirit. It has been purchased for him at no less a price than the blood of the Son of God. And it is bestowed upon him by the will and bounty of the King of kings.

In Switzerland and Germany people have what they call a Heimatscheina certificate of home. This is necessary as a passport; without it they cannot leave their country, and would be liable at any moment to be imprisoned because unable to prove themselves members of a canton. A peasant girl was one day watching the bears at Berne, and let slip out of her hands a bag containing some homely treasures. The bag fell into the bears den, and one by one they pulled out the articles contained in it and destroyed them. The girl wept for a while, and then put her hand into her bosom and drew out thence her certificate of home, exclaiming with joy, Thank God! the bears have not got this. In the sealing of Gods Spirit we have the certificate of our heavenly home, and no one can take it from usthe freedom of heaven is ours for ever.1 [Note: A. C. Price, Fifty Sermons, xi. 270.]

4. Heavenly citizenship is a present possession and confers lasting benefit. The heaven of which St. Paul speaks must indeed belong most truly to the far distant future; if it did not, what would be the meaning of the hopes of a better world which lie so deep in all our hearts? But it must be a heaven which is not only above us, but with us now, all our lives through; and it must be a heaven which can have no charm for those who are besotted with the things of eye and palate and touch. And, if so, God Himself, and nothing lower than God, must be the very heart and life of the true heaven, St. Pauls heaven. We could not more truly describe it than by saying that it is the presence of God. Where He is, there is heaven: and where He is not, there is hell. Our common thoughts of heaven are not too high or too happy; on the contrary they are too poor and mean. In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

The only proof of a future heaven is the present heaven constituted by the indwelling of Christ in a mans own soul. The citizen of heaven carries his credentials with him. His passport is Gods writing upon his heart. The assurance that heaven shall be ours is not to be found in an other-worldliness which ignores the present, but in the effort to make the heaven within shed its light abroad and so transform the earth into its likeness.2 [Note: A. H. Strong, Miscellanies, ii. 172.]

If thou art a believer, said John Eliot, the apostle of the Indians in the seventeenth century, thou art no stranger to heaven while thou livest; and when thou diest, heaven will be no strange place to thee; no, thou hast been there a thousand times before. The soul of man, wrote Sir Thomas Browne, may be in heaven anywhere, even within the limits of his own proper body; and when it ceaseth to live in the body, it may remain in its own soul, that is its Creator. Thy joys of heaven will begin, wrote Theodore Parker, as soon as we attain the character of heaven, and do its duties; that may begin to-day; it is everlasting life to know God, to have His Spirit dwelling in you, yourself at one with Him.1 [Note: W. Sinclair.]

5. We must live as becomes citizens of heaven. The secret of a heavenly life on earth is to do the common everyday works of ordinary men, but to do them in an uncommon spirit, to do them in a spirit of intense and continual devotion to God; whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, to do all to the glory of God. Parents are to teach their children that they may be fitted to do what God shall call them to. Masters are to rule their households as if they were looking after souls put into their charge by God. Servants are to do their work heartily, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as unto the Lord. Men of business, merchants, tradesmen are to set themselves to gather wealth, that they may have more to spend for God. Kings and those in authority are to govern so as to encourage peace, order, and religion. Every power of body and mind, every advantage we possess, our rank and place, our name and station, our influence over others, the charm of winning manners, skill in any art (be it music, or painting, or any other), the gift of noble birth, or situations of authority, all these are to be rendered unto God, used earnestly, honestly, sincerely, in making Him more known, loved, and obeyed.

Dante, in his Divine Comedy, caught the substance of the truth when he made the angels who in heaven are nearest to God to be engaged at the same time in lowly ministration to the needy on earth. Dante only interpreted Jesus words: See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven. To be a citizen of heaven, therefore, implies active service to every good cause, the betterment of all social conditions, the sending of the gospel to the heathen nations, the effort to bring to the knowledge of the truth our families, our communities, and all mankind. To be a citizen of heaven is, like Christ, to realize heaven in our own souls, and then to establish it outside of us by going about and doing good.2 [Note: A. H. Strong, Miscellanies, ii. 170.]

(1) We should cheerfully obey the laws of heaven. According to the Apostle, the standard of our living, and its sanctions, and its way of thinking and proceeding, and, in a word, our city, with its interests and its objects, being in heaven, the earnest business of our life is there. We have to do with earth constantly and in ways most various; but, as Christians, our way of having to do with the earth itself is heavenly, and is to be conversant with heaven. What we mainly love and seek is in heaven; what we listen most to hear is the voice that comes from heaven; what we most earnestly speak is the voice we send to heaven; what lies next our heart is the treasure and the hope which are secure in heaven; what we are most intent upon is what we lay up in heaven, and how we are getting ready for heaven; there is One in heaven whom we love above all others; we are children of the kingdom of heaven; it is our country and our home; and something in us refuses to settle on those things here that reject the stamp of heaven.

The great states of old had their strongly-defined popular characteristics. Athens was learned. Sparta was brave. Corinth was luxurious. What is to be the strongly-marked feature of those who belong to the Christian commonwealth? Why, expressed in one word, it is holiness. As he that hath called you is holy, so be ye holy, in all manner of conversation. Priests in His temple, our robes should be clean. Soldiers in His service, our arms should be bright. Saints in His earthly courts, we should bring no spots to our feasts of charity. Having hope of admission to the city of the living God, we should purify ourselves even as He is pure. And thus Gods will is done on earth as it is done in heaven.

(2) We should carry the atmosphere of heaven wherever we go.

We read that in certain climates of the world the gales that spring from the land carry a refreshing smell far out to sea, and tell the watchful pilot that he is approaching some desirable and fruitful coast for which he has been waiting, when as yet he cannot discern it with his eyes. Just in the same way it fares with those who have steadily and loyally followed the course which God has pointed out to them. We sometimes find that they are filled with peace, hope, and happiness, which, like those refreshing breezes and reviving odours to the seaman, are breathed forth from Paradise upon their souls, and give them to understand with certainty that God is bringing them into their desired haven.

I remember Mr. Gladstone, some fifteen or twenty years ago, giving commendation to a little instrument then devised for the enrichment of the vocal organs. It was a form of inhaler, and by some happy combination of elements it was supposed to enswathe the vocal chords with the fine, enriching air of Italy. It is possible for our mind and soul to do their work in the sweet, clear air of heaven. We can be breathing mountain air even while we are trudging through the valley. And this air, after all, is our native air; when we are away from this we are in circumstances that poison, and vitiate, and destroy. But we can exercise the privileges of a higher citizenship, and we can draw in breath in the fear of the Lord.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett, in The British Congregationalist, Feb. 28, 1907.]

(3) If heaven is our true home, we shall find our delight in learning more about it. Our hearts will be centred there.

Some years ago a traveller who had recently returned from Jerusalem, was in the society of Humboldt, and was greatly astonished to find that the old philosopher knew as much about the streets and houses in Jerusalem as he did himself. He asked Humboldt how long it was since he had visited Jerusalem, and received this reply: I have never been there, but I expected to go sixty years since, and I prepared myself. Should not the heaven to which we expect to go be just as familiar to us, so far at least as what the Bible has told us of it is concerned?2 [Note: A. C. Price, Fifty Sermons, xi. 271.]

The progressive apprehension of the Divine idea must be closely connected with the hope of its fuller manifestation, and to one who is full of sympathy with his fellow-men, the most welcome manifestation would be in the political life of mankind. In the days when, not in fancy but in sober seriousness, Vane built his splendid political theories, and Cromwell seemed about to embody them in act, when even the common people saw the dominion of the saints at hand, Milton might well see in his minds eye a noble and puissant nation rousing itself, like a strong man after sleep, and even rise in thought from the perfection of earthly politics to the city of the heavenly host. But it is hard for men who are versed in political theories which have all been found wanting, and whose eyes are dimmed with the dust that rises from the hubbub of modern life, to see the history of mankind orbing itself to a perfect end.3 [Note: Thomas Hill Green, 31.]

II

The King whose Coming we Await

1. The spiritual commonwealth must have a head; the city must have a King. Now Jesus Christ sits in the place of power: He holds the reins of government. And we look to Him to come, according to His promise, to remove present disabilities and bring us into the full enjoyment of our privileges. From whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The expectation of the coming of Christ out of the world of supreme truth and purity, where God is known and served aright, to fulfil all His promises,this is the Churchs and the believers great hope. It is set before us in the New Testament as a motive to every duty, as giving weight to every warning, as determining the attitude and character of all Christian life. In particular, we cannot deal aright with any of the earthly things committed to us, unless we deal with them in the light of Christs expected coming. This expectation is to enter into the heart of every believer, and no one is warranted to overlook or make light of it. His coming, His appearing, the revelation of Him, the revelation of His glory, the coming of His day, and so forth, are pressed on us continually. In a true waiting for the day of Christ is gathered up the right regard to what He did and bore when He came first, and also a right regard to Him as He is now the pledge and the sustainer of our souls life: the one and the other are to pass onward to the hope of His appearing.

Whenever you are met by those enigmas of life which perplex many of our deepest thinkers in these days, remember the Promise of His Coming! Yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Be ye therefore patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness. Say unto God, O how wonderful art Thou in Thy works! How wonderful it will be to see this enigma solvedthis perplexing aspect of Thy dealings made plainthis mystery of iniquity explained! How glorious will it be to see order and law, instead of a lawless world; angels and archangels, principalities and powers, in a wonderful order; loving to obey, or ruling with temperate and loving discipline!

O the majesty of law! was the thought of the great theologian Hooker, when he was dying. When those around him asked him what he was looking forward to, he said: I look forward to seeing law and order reigning everywhere, in the new Kingdom of God. When iniquity seems to abound, and the Church is divided, and heresies are increasing, then look up and say: O my Lord, I know that Thou art coming; for Thou didst foretell this. Thou didst say that when Thy Advent should be drawing near, the faith of Thy Church would hardly exist; that the love of many would wax cold. Thou hast told me that evil will never be crushed, until the Day dawn, and, instead of the withering blight of the dark shadow of Death, there shall be seen the light and the glory of Thy Advent Kingdom. O come then, Lord Jesus! Come quickly! And when you cannot think or feel or pray, or realize anything, or care about anything, at least be true. Do not say words to God that you do not mean. Be silent, but kneel down and worship; or simply say: O God, help me to say, Come quickly, Lord Jesus!1 [Note: Bishop G. H. Wilkinson, For Quiet Moments, 10.]

2. This brings us face to face with the great motive of a true Christian lifedevotion to a person, the person of Him who is our Redeemer and our King. This is the great secret of loyalty to the city of God. It is not loyalty to an idea however lofty, to a system however beneficent, to a society however Divine, for the loyal Christian is the man who loves the city because he loves its Lord, and who seeks the good of the city because he believes that thus, and thus alone, can he

Fulfil the boundless purpose of our King.

You remember the old story of the Scottish knight, with the kings heart in a golden casket, who, beset by crowds of dusky, turbaned unbelievers, slung the precious casket into the serried ranks of the enemy, and with the shout, Lead on, brave heart; I follow thee! cast himself into the thickest of the fight, and lost his life that he might save it. And so, if we have Christ before us, we shall count no path too perilous that leads us to Him, but rather, hearing Him say, If any man serve me, let him follow me, we shall walk in His footsteps and fight the good fight, sustained by His example.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

It seems to me as if, were I a layman in the days when some doctrine had got loose, as it were, into the wind and was being blown across the common and up and down the streets, I should go to church on Sunday, not wanting my minister to give me an oracular answer to all the questions which had been stated about it, but hoping that out of his sermon I might refresh my knowledge of Christ, get Him, His nature, His work, and His desire for me once more clear before me, and go out more ready to see this disputed truth of the moment in His light and as an utterance of Him. Preaching Christ? That old phrase, which has been so often the very watchword of cant, how it still declares the true nature of Christian teaching! Not Christianity, but Christ! Not a doctrine but a Person! Christianity only for Christ! The doctrine only for the Person.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks, 126.]

3. The King can accomplish through the organized commonwealth more than he could accomplish by separate individuals. There are scientific museums where you may see a jar of water, another filled with charcoal, a bottle of lime, another with phosphorus and so forth. These, you are told, are the constituents of a human body. These are the materials out of which a body is made up. But in which of them do we find the properties of flesh and blood, to say nothing of the wonderful gifts, the marvellous endowments, of those bodies which God has given us. In a similar way a community of Christian men and women, knowing what is good, believing what is true, living pure lives, and breathing the spirit of heaven, would be not merely an aggregation of Christian people, but a Christian city distinctly different in its corporate life and corporate action from a city composed of equally able citizens who know nothing about Christ. They would be able to spread enlightenment, and to promote peace and happiness which would make their city a foretaste of that which shall never pass away. Noble deeds have been done when a thought or an emotion has taken possession of a community. What might we not hope for from a single city filled with Divine enthusiasm and moved by the spirit of God.

The poet Cowper saw in the rapid growth of Englands power, even in his day, the earnest of a world-wide rule far eclipsing that of Rome. You remember how he pictures the British warrior-queen, who has suffered direct indignity at the hands of the Roman conquerors, consulting the Druid, hoary chief, as to her countrys wrongs, and listening to the burning words in which he portrayed, not only the destined fall of Rome, but also the future glory of her own land. Cowper was a patriot as well as a poet, jealous of Englands liberties, conscious of Englands destiny, anxious for Englands good, and in Boadicea he claims that all who bear the name of Briton are inheritors of a more than Roman empire, and (let us not forget) of a more than Roman responsibility.2 [Note: T. W. Drury, The Prison-Ministry of St. Paul, 44.]

4. Yet Christ reaches and moves society through the individual. The Saviour did not publish a plan of political reform, or a schedule of social science. Meeting His countrymen in little groups, or one by one, as they came, He showed them what was in His heart, and showed them the ineffable beauty of a holy and blessed conversation with His Father, while they were yet fishermen and publicans, and reapers and water-carriers, about their houses and fields. So began the everlasting empire and the everlasting age of righteousness through love, which was in time to lift itself over the palaces at Constantinople and Rome. Before men knew it, He had planted a kingdom to fill and possess the earthplanted it just where alone it could be planted, in the living heart and will of certain individuals who had ceased minding earthly things, or minded heavenly things far more. And so, precisely, He meets us to-day. With all His spirit of sacrifice and mighty power of redemption, with the cross on His shoulders and the scar in His side, He comes to each one of us, and speaks.

Individuals, feeling strongly, while on the one hand they are incidentally faulty in mode or language, are still peculiarly effective. No great work was done by a system; whereas systems rise out of individual exertions. Luther was an individual. The very faults of an individual excite attention; he loses, but his cause (if good and he powerful-minded) gains. This is the way of things: we promote truth by a self-sacrifice.1 [Note: Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 111.]

Christianity has done more to produce individuality, and the development of personality, than any other force that has appeared in the world. It has accomplished what paganism had never succeeded in doing. Even when we reach the climax of ancient civilization, in Greece and Rome, there is no adequate sense, either in theory or practice, of human personality as such. That is the dictum of Dr. Illingworthno mean authority on the subject. He does not scruple to affirm that the advent of Christianity created a new epoch both in the development and recognition of human personality. This, he asserts, is a point of history which admits of no denial. And if any would inquire how it was brought about that this new sense of the worth of living, this quickened appreciation of the value of every individual with all that is involved of interest in life and its conditions, took possession of Christians, as it undoubtedly did, the answer that has to be given is wonderful enough. As dying, and behold, we live.

I live, yet not I. It was the result, not of conscious self-culture, but of deliberate self-sacrifice. The less they considered self, the more freely they spent themselves in the service of their Master and His cause, the more fully and vividly they became aware of an inward transformation, of a deepened and heightened consciousness of enlarged sympathy and increased power; they were already entering into life.1 [Note: A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 139.]

III

The Change that will come over our Body

1. When Christ comes He will transfigure our bodies. St. Paul might have dwelt on many great blessings the full meaning of which will be unfolded when Christ comes; for He is to conform all things to Himself. But St. Paul prefers to signalize what shall befall our bodies; for that makes us feel that not one element in our state shall fail to be subjected to the victorious energy of Christ. Our bodies are, in our present state, conspicuously refractory to the influences of the higher kingdom. Regeneration makes no improvement on them. In our body we carry about with us what seems to mock the idea of an ethereal and ideal life. And when we die, the corruption of the grave speaks of anything but hope. Here, then, in this very point the salvation of Christ shall complete its triumph, saving us all over and all through. He shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.

The doctrine of the resurrection corresponds to the mysterious duality of human nature. The body is, after all, the home of the soul, endeared, even like the actual home, by the very sorrows that have been endured within it; and we can conceive of nothing entered upon in separation from it that is worthy to be called life. It has not entered into our hearts to conceive what God shall fashion for them that love Him. It is enough that when that which is perfect is come, that which was in part shall be done away. As we have borne the image of the earthy we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. All our purified powers and faculties will harmonize with their transfigured expression. By the influx of Christs endless life, the soul shall be endued with a symbol and instrument conformed to the glory of its Redeemer. Yet even then, looking back in remembrance, each saint will confess: It was good for me that I was humiliated.

The meaning that St. Paul has in his mind, and expresses in the language of the Greek, is thisChrist shall change the temporary fashion of the body of our humiliation into the abiding form of His glory. There are two conceptions of the body. The body of humiliation wears only a temporary fashion, whereas the body of glory wears an abiding form; and the work of the Lord Jesus is to stamp upon the body of our low estate, which only for a time bears the marks of its low estate, the abiding, the eternal form of the body of His glory. That is the Christian view of the body. How profound it is, and how continually it has been overlooked. The mere fact that our translators originally used that form our vile body, is in itself a proof of the way in which the true view of the body had been overlooked, and was overlooked for so many ages. In the earliest times when men began to think, they were conscious of the difficulties that arose owing to the limitations which their bodily weakness imposed upon them. As soon as human thought turned into a moral system at all, men were divided into two classes of thinkers embodied in the old systems of the Epicureans and the Stoicsthose who allowed their body to master them, and those who determined to master their body. The latter school attempted to accomplish their object by despising and condemning the body as something low and essentially degraded. That idea lived long; and that idea was in the minds of our translators when they shortened St. Pauls language and used the form of our vile body as being the obvious antithesis to his glorious body. In so doing they omitted, they had not before them, the true Christian conception of the body and its place.1 [Note: Bishop Mandell Creighton.]

It must have required some courage, in a time when more and more the stern Roman spirit was being affected by Greek modes of thought, to hint at humiliation in connexion with the human body. Look at that Apollo, with his exquisite limbs and perfect features, unruffled with care, untouched by pain, transplanted, as it were, from another world, and by absolute right taking up the soil of anything lesser, crushing out anything less developed, drawing in all pleasures of sensuality and voluptuousness of life into the fuller development of perfect symmetry! Look at the builders of the Parthenon, and then talk of a body of humiliation! Look at the athletes in their games, with those splendid muscles and splendid limbs! Look at the Epicureans, in the full flight of unbridled satisfaction! What place is there here for humiliation?1 [Note: Canon Newbolt.]

(1) The needs of the body impose certain limitations on the soul.Improve the social order as we may, this world will remain a hard, stern place, a valley of humiliation for most of its inhabitants. We submit to our daily drudgery as a matter of course. We have no alternative. We have been drilled into it by the patient toil of a hundred generations. We even learn to say, Blessed be drudgery. But sometimes, as we consider Gods lilies which toil not neither spin, and His birds which have neither storehouse nor barn, the thought dawns upon us that to eat bread in the sweat of the brow is not the permanent destiny of sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty.

(2) The infirmities and pains of the body form part of our humiliation.We can trace little direct connexion between a mans misdeeds and his sicknesses and sufferings. Disease and decay come upon the holiest saints, as surely as they visit the worst sinners. No optimist gospel of healthy-mindedness can ever persuade us that we are not part of a groaning and travailing creation. We are made subject unto vanity against our will. And sooner or later the final humiliation lies in wait for us, one by one. As Pascal said: The last act is always tragedy: On mourra seulwe shall die alone.

(3) The body hides and isolates the spirit.It hinders complete expression. The lover finds no words to utter his tenderness. The artist has no power to portray his haunting vision. The dull, plain-spoken man can never make himself properly understood, as he longs and strives to be. We gaze out wistfully through the windows of our isolation, we call and signal to each other across the severing spaces, but we cannot penetrate the barriers of personality to touch the real self who dwells captive there. Each of us must live his truest life in solitude, aloof and apart from his kind. And when we suffer the penalty of loneliness and fall into mutual misunderstanding or estrangement, when even Christians cannot be brought to realize the wrongs which they are inflicting on each other, this also is part of our humiliation.

In Little Dorrit the horror and curse of long confinement arrived when the debtor had grown naturalized and acclimatized in his prison, and felt proud to be called the father of the Marshalsea. These physical appetites and necessities of ours have, in themselves, nothing common or unclean. They possess no inherent evil. But in their quality and character they are of the earth, earthy. And mans supreme instinct is that which makes him always a stranger and pilgrim upon earth, encamped here, but never properly domesticated, because his heart and his treasure are otherwhere. The romance of literature is filled with pictures of strange humiliation. The banished duke keeping court on the greensward in Arden, the foundling princess bred up under a shepherds roof in Bohemia, are like parables of the spirit of man in exile, waiting for the times of the restitution of all things when mortality shall be swallowed up of life.1 [Note: T. H. Darlow, Via Sacra, 35.]

2. The Apostles ultimate hope was the resurrection body, not a continuance in a condition of disembodiment; his desire was, not to be unclothed, but to be clothed upon. St. Paul speaks of our body of humiliation as an earthly house, earthly in its origin, earthly in its tendency, earthly in its destiny, but it is the house of a tabernacle. Like that which the Jews had during their years of wandering, it is not a permanent dwellingit is to be dissolved. When life, that strange undefined principle which directs our material existence, is withdrawn, the body yields to chemical action and other forces, and those elements which compose our frames return to their native clay. But Dust thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoken of the soul. In the case of every human spirit God will give it a body suitable to its new surroundings. Perfect glory cannot be enjoyed by complex beings such as we are till we have bodies given to us in which perfect happiness can be realized; and the promise of our Lord is fulfilled, I will come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

I remember once meeting a student of the Word who told me that one of his greatest ambitions concerning the world to come was to meet Isaiah and have communion with him! I could quite well understand it. The man had been spending weeks and months in the company of that great prophet, until Isaiah had become exalted in the students mind as a great and commanding hero. But Paul had the same intense desire concerning his Lord, and I think if we turned our thoughts upon the Lord with even a little of the Apostles intensity we should have the same great and inspiring expectation. They say that Samuel Rutherford used to fall asleep speaking of Christ, and that if during the hours of sleep his unconscious lips muttered anything it was found to be about his Lord. We need to practise ourselves in these things. The more we consort with the Lord, the more we love His appearing when He comes to us, as it were, incognito, the more we shall be fired with the consuming expectancy to see Him as He is.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett, in The British Congregationalist, Feb. 28, 1907.]

(1) The resurrection of the dead is an individual promise.It is a hope to us one by one; not like those grand promises which are made to the Church at large, in which we may, each of us, doubtless, have our share, but in which we seem to share only all together. The promise of the resurrection is to each single soul which feels and enjoys its own life, which looks forward with sadness to losing it, to which its own life is the most precious possession in the world. It tells each one of us that this precious life will not be lost; that in due time, to each possessor of it here, it will be restored again, and for ever. We look on one another; we look on each others faces, on the faces which we have known so long, which we love and delight in; and we know that each must die. We know that we who look at them, who are filled with love and pity and sadness while we look, must die either after them or before them. But as truly as each shall die, so truly shall each be made alive again. So has He said, who is the resurrection and the life. So it must be if He is true.

The longer I live, the more clearly I see how all souls are in His handthe mean and the great. Fallen on the earth in their baseness, or fading as the mist of morning in their goodness;still in the hand of the potter as the clay, and in the temple of their master as the cloud. It was not the mere bodily death that He conqueredthat death had no sting. It was this spiritual death which He conquered, so that at last it should be swallowed upmark the wordnot in life, but in victory. As the dead body shall be raised to life, so also the defeated soul to victory, if only it has been fighting on its Masters side, has made no covenant with death; nor itself bowed its forehead for his seal. Blind from the prison-house, maimed from the battle, or mad from the tombs, their souls shall surely yet sit, astonished, at His feet who giveth peace.1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters (Works, v. 456).]

Hail, garden of confident hope!

Where sweet seeds are quickening in darkness and cold;

For how sweet and how young will they be

When they pierce thro the mould.

Balm, myrtle, and heliotrope

There watch and there wait out of sight for their Sun:

While the Sun, which they see not, doth see

Each and all one by one.2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Songs for Strangers and Pilgrims.]

(2) The resurrection is a rising into a higher and more glorious life, to a life as far beyond this in glory as He Himself exceeds in the glory of His raised body all that is greatest and most beautiful on earth. It is not a mere coming back again to this life. This life has many charms and many delights; and if sin were not here men might well be content with such blessings as God has given us here. But it is not to the blessings and happiness of this life that that resurrection is to be. As far as the glory of heaven is greater than that of earthas far as it is more blessed to be with God, and to know and feel His presence, than to have Him hidden from us behind a veilso much greater is the blessedness and glory to which they who shall be accounted worthy of that world are to be raised.

I was once spending a few weeks in a small seaside parish in Durham, and while walking on the beach, which was sheltered by high and massive cliffs, I picked up a piece of coal. It was not rough and angular as it came from the mine, but round, and smooth, and polished; still coal, but oh how altered and how changed! I showed it to a friend and inquired into its probable recent history and learned that it must have fallen from some passing ship or perhaps it had dropped into the wide sea when some vessel was being laden or unladen. But whence the change? When apparently lost beneath the waves it had been rolled about in the bosom of the deep, wafted hither and thither by its stormy waters till at last it found a resting-place on the peaceful shore So it is with the people of God. The temptations and troubles of life are means in Gods hand for chipping off the angles and smoothing the rough edges which mar our characters, and thus by slow degrees we are fitted to fill our allotted places, and perhaps do our allotted work in the distant land of glory.1 [Note: W. G. Rainsford.]

3. The model after which we shall be fashioned is Christs glorious body. The body of our low estate, wearing a temporary fashion, is yet capable of receiving a permanent form which is made visible in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because in Him the universal law that applies to mans life in every portion of it was made manifest, expressed in a Personas, indeed, all truth that is to be vital, truth that is to be operative, truth that is to inspire, must necessarily be expressed. Examples do not move us; aphorisms do not touch us; we are taught by a Person, we are taught by character, and we are carried on by seeing truth expressed in a form in which it is vital, operative and active. The Lord Jesus Christ is the universal Lord of all that concerns mans body, soul, spirit, life. The Lord Jesus Christ in His own Person covers the whole realm of human nature, penetrates into every part of its sphere. We know that the conception of self, of soul, or spirit, cannot be realized by us apart from the body in which it dwells. The body influences it, expresses it. We know one another only through our outward semblance and appearance. We cannot separate the particular elements of man which constitute him a soul; we cannot find where his spirit lives. Mans human nature is one and indivisible; we cannot arrive at our spiritual self by a process of abstraction; we cannot take from a man so much and say, That is mere material, and therefore behind that material lies something else. We cannot raise man or mans nature above the body and its limitations.

Our nature, as a whole, has been ennobled as well as invigorated by the Son of God. Bending from His throne of Heaven, in the immensity of His love, He has taken it upon Him in its integrity. He has taken body and soul alike, and joined it by an indissoluble union to His own eternal Person. That body which was born of Mary, which lived on this planet for thirty-three years, which was spat upon, which was buffeted, which was scourged, which was crucified, which underwent the stiffness and coldness of death, and was raised again in glorythat body exists somewhere still in space at the right hand of God the Father Almighty (so our poor human language struggles to speak out the tremendous truth), and thereby it confers on all who are partakers in human flesh and blood a patent of nobility of which our race can never be deprived. Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same. Yes, He has ennobled us, and yet, while this life lasts, how great is the interval between our condition and His! How unlike is that body of glory which rose from the tomb on Easter morning to our bodyunlike in its indescribable beauty, in its freedom of movement, in its inaccessibility to decay, in its spirituality of texture.1 [Note: H. P. Liddon.]

4. The power by which Christ shall subdue all things unto Himself, will be sufficient to change our mortal bodies. If we are in Him He will gather up what death has left; He will transfigure it with the splendour of a new life; He will change our body of humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto the body of His glory. Sown in corruption, it will be raised in incorruption; sown in dishonour, it will be raised in glory; sown in the very extreme of physical weakness, it will be raised in a strictly superhuman power; sown a natural body, controlled on every side by physical law, it will be a true body still, but a body that belongs to the sphere of the spirit. Most difficult indeed it is even to the imagination to understand how this poor body, our companion for so many yearsrather, indeed, part of our very selvesis to be first wrenched from us at death and then restored to us if we will, transfigured thus by the majestic glory of the Son of God.

There was a time when science rather mocked at the possibility of the resurrection. That is changed now, I think. At least I have heard the utterance of a great biologist who said, If there is a resurrection, it must be a resurrection of the body. Body and spirit are so intimately connected that the one cannot be conceived as existing for ever in a perfect state without the other.2 [Note: Bishop M. Creighton, The Mind of St. Peter, 107.]

The Catholic Faith proclaims the Resurrection of the Body. What does it mean? It means that for every child of man the hour is coming when the bodythe frail and crumbling temple of the soulshall pass from the home of corruption to conditions of an evident and sensible existence, endowed with movement, gifted with life; the form will be the same as in the days of the old life long ago. And if it be asked by what power this overwhelming miracle is wrought, the answer is, in apostolic phrase, by the glory of God. It was Christ who brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel; it was also Christ who clearly taught and evidenced the fact that the body shall rise again, whilst He also evidenced the truth in His own Divine Person that in very deed it must die. That death may be sad, may be tragic. It is. The heart sinks and withers beneath the thought that the form so dear to it, so expressive of the light and beautiful soul, should be, must be, the slave of corruption. But this, at least, is a consoling consequence. If the whole man has had to pay the penalty of sin, the body in its dissolution, the soul in its disembodiment, Reason herself demands, what Revelation asserts, that the whole man should share the victorythe body by a splendid reconstruction, the soul by restoration to its ancient home. Gods promise of mans entire beatitude is a pledge that this article of the Christian creed is true. The Church does not trouble herself with any details about particles of matter, about its mysterious onward march in bodies she has nothing to say; but she does assert continuous identity, and she has on her side two important teachers: (1) the affections and yearnings of the human heart, and (2) which is more to the pointDivine Revelation.

(1) There is an infinity about pure human affection which points to another life. Here we have time enough given us just to have great hopes and strong loves, and then what seemed so stable has vanished like a morning dream. They vanishthey do not end. The practical instincts of pure affection and noble aspiration point imperiously to a better world. As well say that the evidence of the affections goes for nothing as that the robins song does not speak of autumn, or the coming swallow of the spring; as well say your strong desire for happiness with those you love, your deep longing for continued converse with souls blessed and beautiful, but gone, goes for nothing, as that discord in resolution does not delight you because it teaches of the coming mystery of harmonious union, or that the first faint shafts of the eastern colour do not herald the morning dawn.

(2) Better still, Revelation. Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. And best of all, the Revelationthe quiet form of Good Friday night, the Risen Jesus on Easter Day! As certainly as sleep implies awaking, sosince Jesus was buried and rose againthe grave means resurrection from the dead, means, in fact, that here we work and there we wait, wait for the great awaking.1 [Note: Canon W. J. Knox Little.]

Dreary were this earth, if earth were all,

Though brightend oft by dear affections kiss;

Who for the spangles wears the funeral pall?

But catch a gleam beyond it, and tis bliss.

Heavy and dull this frame of limbs and heart,

Whether slow creeping on cold earth, or borne

On lofty steed, or loftier prow, we dart

Oer wave or field; yet breezes laugh to scorn

Our puny speed, and birds, and clouds in heaven,

And fish, like living shafts that pierce the main,

And stars that shoot through freezing air at even

Who but would follow, might he break his chain?

And thou shalt break it soon; the grovelling worm

Shall find his wings, and soar as fast and free

As his transfigured Lord with lightning form

And snowy vestsuch grace He won for thee,

When from the grave He sprung at dawn of morn,

And led through boundless air thy conquering road,

Leaving a glorious track, where saints new-born

Might fearless follow to their blest abode.

But first, by many a stern and fiery blast

The worlds rude furnace must the blood refine,

And many a gale of keenest woe be passd,

Till every pulse beat true to airs divine.

Till every limb obey the mounting soul,

The mounting soul, the call by Jesus given.

He who the stormy heart can so control

The laggard body soon will waft to heaven.1 [Note: J. Keble, The Christian Year.]

Citizenship in Heaven

Literature

Bersier (E.), Twelve Sermons, 255.

Butler (H. M.), University and other Sermons, 1.

Church (R. W.), Cathedral and University Sermons, 115.

Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, 3rd Ser., 139.

Darlow (T. H.), Via Sacra, 29.

Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons, 2nd Ser., 147.

Huntingdon (F. D.), Christ in the Christian Year, 243.

Jordan (T.), Christ the Life, 38.

Kay (J.), Paulus Christifer, 179.

Little (W. J. K.), The Perfect Life, 187.

Mackennal (A.), The Healing Touch, 246.

Manning (H. E.), Sermons, iii. 182.

Murphy (J. B. C.), Homely Words for Lifes Wayfarers, 133.

Paget (F. E.), The Living and the Dead, 223.

Plumptre (E. H.), Theology and Life, 130.

Pusey (E. B.), Sermons from Advent to Whitsuntide, 328.

Simpson (J. G.), The Spirit and the Bride, 249.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, viii. (1862), No. 476; xvii. (1871), No. 973.

Strong (A. H.), Miscellanies, ii. 159.

Wilberforce (B.), The Hope that is in Me, 80.

Cambridge Review, xi. Supplement No. 276 (Dickinson).

Christian World Pulpit, xl. 115 (Ingram); xlvi. 220 (Scott); lxviii. 86 (Crozier).

Church of England Pulpit, xlv. 245 (Eland); xlvi. 193 (Jordan); xlvii. 51 (Creighton).

Churchmans Pulpit: Ascension Day, viii. 447 (Lawrence); Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity, xiii. 288 (Grimley).

Expositor, 2nd Ser., iii. 303 (Cox); 3rd Ser., i. 361 (Evans).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

our: Phi 1:18-21, Psa 16:11, Psa 17:15, Psa 73:24-26, Pro 15:24, Mat 6:19-21, Mat 19:21, Luk 12:21, Luk 12:32-34, Luk 14:14, 2Co 4:18, 2Co 5:1, 2Co 5:8, Eph 2:6, Eph 2:19, Col 1:5, Col 3:1-3, Heb 10:34, Heb 10:35, 1Pe 1:3, 1Pe 1:4

conversation: Gr. Isa 26:1, Isa 26:2, Gal 4:26, Eph 2:19, Heb 12:22, Rev 21:10-27

from: Act 1:11, 1Th 4:16, 2Th 1:7, 2Th 1:8, Rev 1:7

we look: Phi 1:10, 1Co 1:7, 1Th 1:10, 2Ti 4:8, Tit 2:13, Heb 9:28, 2Pe 3:12-14

Reciprocal: 1Sa 8:20 – General Psa 84:10 – For Luk 12:34 – where Joh 6:39 – but Joh 11:25 – I am Act 5:31 – a Saviour Rom 8:23 – waiting 1Co 15:42 – is 1Co 15:43 – in dishonour 1Co 15:48 – and as 2Co 5:6 – whilst Phi 4:1 – Therefore 1Th 4:14 – God 2Th 3:5 – and into Heb 11:10 – he looked Heb 11:16 – for Heb 13:14 – General 1Pe 1:15 – in 1Pe 3:2 – behold 2Pe 3:11 – in all 2Pe 3:14 – seeing

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP

Our conversation [or citizenship] is in heaven.

Php 3:20

If we pondered more deeply the cost of our redemption we should prize more highly the privileges of our citizenship.

I. The privileges of our citizenship are many and varied.

(a) Pardon, cleansing is the first; no unpardoned or uncleansed one is a citizen of that kingdom. It is the blood which cleanses, the blood of the Eternal Son of God.

(b) Victory over self and sin is another; grace to conquer and to subdue evil, to become masters where once we were bond-slaves, to rule by Divine grace that which once tyrannised over us.

(c) Inheritance is another privilege. We are heirs of that bright and boundless inheritance, incorruptible, undefined, and fadeless.

(d) Peace is another privilege. Peace with God and the peace of God, holding, abiding in our souls.

II. What are our responsibilities?

(a) Loyalty. We are called upon to be loyal subjects of our Heavenly King, yielding Him the reverence due unto His Name and obedience to the laws He has promulgated.

(b) Love. We must love, we shall only be loyal in proportion as we love; we shall only love in proportion as we trust. We must love Him Who is Love, and Who so loved us as to redeem us at such tremendous cost.

(c) Holiness of life and conduct, showing itself in purity of heart and earnestness of life; the holiness of lives fully yielded and consecrated for life and service.

Rev. H. Foster Pegg.

Illustration

A beautiful apologue will illustrate our meaning. A summers day, the glorious sun overhead filling all things with light and gladness; the wide sea looking like a sheet of glass, upon which the ripple caused by a flys wing would be observed; the sky revealing its unclouded azure depths save for one tiny fleecy cloud, not larger apparently than a hands breadth, floating gracefully and lazily. The sea looked up and said, They tell me that that cloud was once a part of myself; I should like to get up there. So the sea turned and lifted herself in huge waves towards the heavens, but all in vain. Presently, baffled, weary, the sea lay still again. Then the sun looked down and said, Sea, why are you so downcast? Said the sea, I have been trying to get up there and failed. Then the sun said, Sea, lie still, and I will draw you up here. So the sea lay still, and presently the whole sky was filled with fleecy clouds, and the sea clapped her hands and said, I am up there! I am up there! You see the meaning of this simple apologue. Our citizenship is a lofty privilege and a far-reaching responsibility. The life which pertains to such cannot be attained by our struggles or efforts; but there is a power promised which will enable us to rise to our heavenly citizenship and to live worthily of our high calling, for our citizenship is in heaven.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

(Php 3:20.) -For our country is (or exists) in heaven. The noun has a variety of meanings, among which we may choose:-

1. Our English version, following the Vulgate, renders it -conversation, that is, mode or form of life, vitoe ratio; or, as van Hengel gives it-vivendi ratio. His general rendering is approved by Calvin, Grotius, Matthies, and De Wette. The translation is so far favoured by the context-They mind earthly things, and are totally opposed to us, for our life is in heaven. One course of conduct is placed in contrast with another. Still the language so interpreted would be peculiar. The apostle says, in Col 3:3, Our life is hid with Christ in God, but he refers to the principle of life, and not certainly to its present manifestations. It is one thing to say that the origin of our life is in heaven, but very different to say that its actual mode, habit, or manner is in heaven. If you explain this by saying that its law is in heaven, then you affix a new meaning to the noun, or blend, like Rheinwald, several assumed meanings together. Nor does the word ever seem to have such a sense in any place where it occurs; the meaning is alleged from the verb , which sometimes signifies to be or live as a citizen. See under Php 1:27.

2. The noun denotes often what is termed policy-that course of action or those measures by which the administration of a state is conducted, as frequently in Plato and Demosthenes. From its connection with we would infer this to be a frequent sense. Such measures imply a certain form or constitution, and then we have such a phrase as , or, as in Josephus- . Contra Rev 2:6. The words have, in this way, been rendered municipatus noster, as by Tertullian. But-

3. The word passed into another meaning, and that not very different from -a state or organized commonwealth. Such is a common tropical change-the measures of a government-the nature of such a government-and then the state so constituted and governed. Not exactly, but somewhat similarly, , though from , signifies an organized priestly caste, and not sacerdotal routine. Exo 19:6. may mean, as it does often, state or country. It has this meaning in Polybius, as applied by him to Rome and Carthage- , . Php 1:13. The Hellenistic writers, Philo and Josephus, also use it in this way-the former writing thus, . De Op. p. 33; and the other has similar phraseology. Contra Rev 2:21. In 2Ma 12:7, we have likewise this phrase-As if he would come back to extirpate- . Theophylact thus explains- , . Similarly says Philo of the souls of the wise, De Confus. Ling.- , , . This citation virtually explains the meaning-not our citizenship-Brgerrecht-but our city is in heaven. The confederacy to which we belong, or the spiritual state in which we are enrolled as citizens, is in heaven, and is no doubt that Jerusalem which is above all. Gal 4:26. In that beautiful fragment-the letter to Diognetus, it is said of Christians- , -they live on earth, but they are citizens in heaven. The idea was not unknown to the ancient philosophy. Thus Anaxagoras is reported by Diogenes Laertius to have replied to one who charged him with want of love of country- , . Heraclitus, Ad Amphidamanta, says also – , .

And this translation is quite in keeping with the context. The particle connects it with what precedes, as if the train thought of were-they mind earthly things, and therefore are enemies of the cross; but, on the other hand, ye have us for an example-for our country is in heaven, and therefore, though earthly things are around us, we do not mind them. The double interweaves the thoughts. Walk as ye see us walking, for many walk most unworthily;-walk as ye see us walking, for our country is in heaven. The second seems to have this force, while it more specially and closely brings out the contrast between the apostle’s life and that of the persons whom he reprobates. He does not use a simple adversative, but at once assigns a reason by introducing a contrasted statement. The verb gives peculiar force to the assertion. See under Php 2:6. The plural form of has no specific difference of meaning attached to it.

The apostle then says, our city is in heaven. This is certainly true of Christians. Their true country is not on earth. Here they are strangers in a strange land-living in temporary exile. On the earth, they are not of it-among earthly things, they are not attracted by them. The census of the nation includes them, but their joy is that God shall count them, when He writeth up the people. They do not abjure citizenship here; nay, like the apostle, they may sometimes insist on its privileges, yet they are denizens of another commonwealth. Like him, too, they may have a special attachment to their brethren, their kinsmen according to the flesh; but they have ties and relationships of a more sacred and permanent character with their fellowcitizens, the living in Jerusalem. The persons reprobated by the apostle minded earthly things, and the surest preservative against such grovelling inconsistency is the consciousness of possessing this city in heaven. For as we cherish our franchise, we shall long to enjoy it, and be so elevated by the prospect as to nauseate sensual pursuits and mere animal gratifications. He who has his home in the future will be only a pilgrim for the present, and cannot stoop to what is low and loathsome, for his heart is set on the inheritance into which nothing can enter that defileth. The apostle turns now to the second advent-

, – whence also we await the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. The phrase might agree with in form, and Bengel and others assume this, but this can scarcely be supposed to be the reference. The abode of Jesus is always spoken of as the heavens-the heavens received Him, and out of the heavens He comes again. is a spiritual idea, but implies a locality, out of which Jesus is expected to descend. The refers to , and forms a species of adverb. Winer, 21, 3. The indicates the harmony of this sentiment with the one expressed in the previous clause, and precedes , which has the emphasis- the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. The apostle uses the full title. He is in heaven the exalted Governor or Lord, and cometh in lordly grandeur; but that glory has not deified His humanity-it only envelops it; He is still Jesus, the same Jesus taken up from us into heaven; and as His commission has not ceased, though His abode on earth has terminated, He is Christ. Nay more, He is expected as Saviour-. He has not resigned this function, and He comes to complete it. Salvation has been in process, now it is to be in fulness. The work ascribed to the Lord Jesus in the next verse, is the last and completing act. And therefore it is as Saviour that He comes, to fit man in his entire nature for glory-to accomplish the deliverance of his body from the penalty of death, and assimilate our whole humanity to His own as its blessed prototype. Salvation has this pregnant meaning in Rom 13:11, and Heb 9:28. See also under Eph 1:13-14. The middle verb denotes earnest or wishful expectation-we await. 1Co 1:7; Rom 8:19. See under Php 1:20. The advent has been promised, and as it will secure such blessed results we cannot be indifferent to it; nay, though it be one of transcendent awfulness, we are not alarmed at the prospect-Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus.

Now, we should have expected the verse we have considered to run thus-Our country is in heaven, in which we hope soon to be, or some such expression. But he says-from which also, as Saviour, we expect the Lord Jesus Christ. The result, however, is the same, for the Lord Jesus comes to prepare His people through the resurrection for entering by the gate into the city. But the mode in which the apostle states these ideas serves two purposes. First, he characterizes Jesus as Saviour, or as expected in the character of Saviour, and thus suggests an awful contrast, in point of destiny, between himself and those like-minded with him, and the party reprobated by him in the two preceding verses. Their end is destruction, but ours is salvation;-to the one He descnds as Judge, but to us as Saviour. If there be such visible difference in present character, there is more awful contrast in ultimate destiny- –the two poles of humanity-everlasting punishment-life eternal. Thus, in his own way, the apostle inserts a quiet antithesis. And then, secondly, he describes Jesus as giving our body a likeness to His own- a change which in its nature, necessity, and results, conveyed a reproof to such as worshipped their animal appetites and found supreme gratification in such indulgence, and a lesson to them also, not the less striking, if any of them imagined that the body was but a temporary possession, whose lowest instincts might be indulged to satiety, as if the spirit alone were capable of entering, through its essential immortality, into the heavenly world. For that body which gives man at present so many earthly affinities was destined to a heavenly abode, so that from its connection with Jesus it should be preserved in purity, while from the process of refinement to pass over it, it shall be divested of those very qualities or susceptibilities of abuse for which it was deified by the enemies of the cross. For the work of Jesus is thus told-

Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians

Php 3:20. Conversation is from POLITEUMA, which is not used anywhere else in the Greek New Testament. Thayer defines it, “a state, commonwealth.” Robinson defines it in virutally the same way, then adds the following explanation of his definition: “Figuratively, of Christians in reference to their spiritual community, the New Jerusalem in heaven.” The idea is well expressed by some words of an old hymn: “I’m but a stranger here; Heaven is my home.” (See Hebrews 1.1:13-16; 13:14; 1Pe 2:11.) Our stay on the earth should be used in preparing for the eternal residence in our true Home, for this world is to pass away. From whence denotes that Jesus is now in that Country, but will come from it sometime to call His own from the earth.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Php 3:20. for our citizenship is in heaven. So those whose hearts are on the earth are to be marked and avoided. We can have no communion with such men. We must pass amongst them, while we live here, as though they were alien unto us, and we merely pilgrims and strangers in their midst. They are at home here. They have their reward. In citizenship the idea is not that of the Authorised Version, conversation, which is generally the rendering of a different Greek word, signifying manner of life. The apostle means that it is in heaven only that the true Christian can claim (or ought to claim) his rights as a citizen; till he has reached that land, his wanderings are not over. And this is made emphatic in the Greek, where our citizenship stands first in the sentence. The verb rendered is is a strong verb, and indicates that the home is there already, though we have not yet reached it Christ has gone before and has prepared mansions (i.e. resting-places) for His people, in which they shall abide continually, being pilgrims no longer.

from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. The verb is always used in the New Testament of that longing for salvation which is expected at the coming of Christ. But this is a longing which, as faith assures those who feel it, will be gratified at last.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

As if the apostle had said, “As you love your souls, follow not those false teachers afore described, for they are citizens of the world: but imitate and follow us, who are citizens of heaven, where our head is, where our heart is, where our happiness is. It is true we live here below, but we belong to the corporation and society above, our citizenship is in heaven; for we have an high esteem of that happiness, and our chief concern is to make sure of it, and we please and delight ourselves with the joyful expectation of it, and we live answerably to our expectation; as we hope hereafter to love like the angels in glory, so we now endeavour to live like the angels in holiness.”

Learn hence, All the faithful, both ministers and people, have a right to heaven, as to their city; they are therefore with their hearts and affections to be daily aspiring after it, and live in hopes of getting, ere long, the full possession of it.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Citizens of Heaven

The Philippian brethren would have understood very well what the apostle meant when he said a Christian’s citizenship is in heaven. Remember that many of the people at Philippi were Roman citizens. A baby born at Philippi should have had its name recorded in Rome. They would have enjoyed the rewards of Roman citizenship, though away from Rome.

Wiersbe states, “The spiritually minded believer is not attracted by the ‘things’ of this world. He makes his decisions on the basis of eternal values and not the passing fads of society.” Lot chose the fertile plain of Jordan because of its productive value. He did not take time to consider the moral decay which finally cost him everything ( Gen 13:5-13 ; Gen 18:16-33 ; Gen 19:1-28 ). Abraham, on the other hand, let God be his guide because his mind was set on heaven ( Heb 11:8-10 ). In similar fashion, the Christian should long for heaven and live as if it was his goal ( 2Co 5:1-10 ). Paul concludes the verse by saying that Christians look forward to Christ’s second coming. If more emphasis were placed upon the Lord’s return, greater commitment and joy would be ours ( Php 3:20 ; Mat 25:1-13 ; 1Th 4:13-18 ).

The Lord will, at his coming, change this mortal body into an immortal one fitted for heaven ( Php 3:21 ; 1Co 15:42-53 ; 1Jn 3:2 ). Instead of “lowly body” as we find here, it would be better to put “the body of our humiliation,” as the American Standard Version does. The body is not despised by God. However, it is in our physical body that sin has been committed and the terrible reward of death was faced ( Rom 7:23-24 ). Paul assures us that the same power Christ has to cause his enemies to submit to his will enables him to effect a great change in our bodies.

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

Php 3:20-21. For our conversation is in heaven We that are true Christians are of a very different spirit, and act in a quite different manner. The original expression, , rendered conversation, is a word of a very extensive meaning, implying our citizenship, our thoughts, our affections, are already in heaven; or we think, speak, and act, converse with our fellow-creatures, and conduct ourselves in all our intercourse with them, as citizens of the New Jerusalem, and as being only strangers and pilgrims upon earth. We therefore endeavour to promote the interests of that glorious society to which we belong, to learn its manners, secure a title to its privileges, and behave in a way suitable to, and worthy of our relation to it; from whence also we look for the Saviour To come and carry us thither according to his promise, (Joh 14:3,) namely, our spirits, at the dissolution of this earthly tabernacle; yea, and afterward to transform our vile body, , the body of our humiliation; which, in consequence of the fall of our first parents, sinks us so low, is subject to, and encompassed with, so many infirmities, is such a clog to our souls, and so greatly hinders our progress in the work of faith and labour of love: this body we expect he will transform into the most perfect state and the most beauteous form, when it will be purer than the unspotted firmament, brighter than the lustre of the stars, and, which exceeds all parallel, which comprehends all perfection, like unto his glorious body Of which an image was given in his transfiguration, yea like that wonderfully glorious body which he wears in his heavenly kingdom, and on his triumphant throne. So that here, as Rom 8:23, the redemption of the body from corruption, by a glorious resurrection, is represented as the especial privilege of the righteous. According to that mighty working That energy of power; whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself To show himself to the whole intelligent creation of God completely victorious over all his enemies, even over death and the grave, the last of them.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

ARGUMENT 15

HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP

20. For our citizenship is in the heavens. O blessed consolation, that I am not a citizen of this vain, vile world, but of heaven! We are all sojourners here: the saints, citizens of heaven; and the sinners, citizens of hell. Truly it has been said, that every man speaks the language of his own country. Christians in prayer and praise speak the language of heaven, while sinners in profanity and obscenity speak the language of hell. All the governments of earth consider it a sine qua non to protect their own citizens. About forty years ago, while cruel Austria was crushing the political life out of downtrodden Hungary, the citizens of the latter fled into all the countries of Europe, and many to America. Among the latter, Martin Cozta came to our country, passing through the ceremonies of naturalization, became a citizen of the United States. After this, having returned to Hungary to bring his father and mother, and being arrested by the Austrian authorities at Smyrna on the Mediterranean, as a rebel and refugee, he was cast into prison under sentence of death. In this awful dilemma he sends for Captain Ingram, who happened to be in that port in command of the United States war-sloop St. Louis. When the captain waits on him, he hands him his naturalization papers, satisfying him that he is an adopted citizen of the United States. The captain appeals to the Austrian authorities for his release in vain. They treat him with contempt, bidding him to help himself. But what can he do with a single sloop and a hundred men in presence of the Austrian general in command of an army of one hundred thousand? The heroic captain, true to his oath to protect United States citizens in every land and clime, clears his sloop, and prepares to fire on the Austrian fleet. They see the emergency pending, and release Martin Cozta. They could not afford to get into war with the United States over one little man. All the nations of Greece rallied, sailed over the Aegean Sea, and besieged old Troy ten long years, winding up in its capture and destruction, through the famous stratagem of the wooden horse invented by Ulysses. All this, because Paris, the son of Priam, the king of Troy, had come over to Greece, and purloined Helen, the beautiful wife of Menelaus. If the governments of earth thus so wonderfully protect their citizens, how much more does the government of heaven protect every saint in all the world? Truly the angel of the Lord encampeth around and about them that fear him, and delivereth them.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

3:20 {9} For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:

(9) He sets against these fellows true pastors who neglect earthly things, and aspire to heaven only, where they know that even in their bodies they will be clothed with that eternal glory, by the power of God.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

The forward look 3:20-21

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

The reason we should follow Paul’s example and not that of these sensualists is that as Christians we have a citizenship in heaven as well as one on earth. Our heavenly citizenship and destiny are far more important than our brief earthly sojourn (cf. Gal 4:26; Heb 11:10). The Roman citizenship the Philippians enjoyed meant a great deal to them (Act 16:12; Act 16:21). All believers need to learn to live as foreigners and pilgrims on this earth (Heb 11:13; 1Pe 2:11). [Note: See John A. Witmer, "The Man with Two Countries," Bibliotheca Sacra 133:532 (October-December 1976):338-49.]

"Jews expect perfection now by keeping the Law; Christians yearn for the future at which time perfection will be achieved." [Note: Hawthorne, p. 170.]

The Greek word apekdechometha, translated "look for," is a strong compound.

"The compound emphasizes the intense yearning for the Parousia . . ." [Note: H. A. A. Kennedy, "The Epistle to the Philippians," in The Expositor’s Greek Testament, 3:463.]

"The expectation of the Lord’s personal and imminent return gave joy and power to the early Christians and to the Christian communities." [Note: James Montgomery Boice, Philippians, p. 247.]

"One of the greatest incentives to holiness in the New Testament is that we might be ready for him when he returns." [Note: Motyer, p. 228.]

Furthermore it is from our heavenly kingdom that a Savior will come to deliver us out of this present evil world and take us to our home with Him above (Joh 14:1-2). The prospect of our Lord’s return should motivate us to live as citizens of heaven even while we are still on earth (1Jn 3:2-3).

". . . Paul prefers ’justification’ to describe what has already been done in the Christian by God’s action in Christ, while he reserves ’salvation’ for what yet remains to be done (Beare; cf. Rom 5:9-10)." [Note: Hawthorne, p. 172.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 16

OUR CITY AND OUR COMING KING.

Php 3:20-21 (R.V.)

To live amid the things, of earth, and in constant converse with them, a life in the power of Christs resurrection, and in the fellowship of His sufferings, was the Apostles chosen course; in which he would have the Philippians to follow him. For a moment he had diverged to sketch, for warning, the way of the transgressors, who spend their lives intent on the things that pass away. Now he brings the argument to a close, by once more proclaiming the glory of the high calling in Christ. As the Christian faith looks backward to the triumph of Christs resurrection, and to the meekness of His suffering, and receives its inspiration from them, so also it looks upward, and it looks forward. It is even now in habitual communion with the world on high; and it reaches on towards the hope of the Lords return.

“Our citizenship is in heaven.” The word here used {Php 1:27} means the constitution or manner of life of a state or city. All men draw much from the spirit and laws of the commonwealth to which they belong; and in antiquity this influence was even stronger than we commonly find it to be in our day. The individual was conscious of himself as a member of his own city or state. Its life enfolded his. Its institutions set for him the conditions under which life was accepted and was carried on. Its laws determined for him his duties and his rights. The ancient and customary methods of the society developed a common spirit, under the influence of which each citizen unfolded his own personal peculiarities. When he went forth elsewhere he felt himself, and was felt to be, a stranger. Now in the heavenly kingdom, which had claimed them and had opened to them through Christ, the believers had found their own city; and finding it, had become, comparatively, strangers in every other.

A way of thinking and acting prevails throughout the world, as if earth and its interests were the whole sphere of man; and being pervaded by this spirit, the whole world may be said to be a commonwealth with a spirit and with maxims of its own. We, who live in it, feel it natural to comply with the drift of things in this respect, and difficult to stand against it; so that separation and singularity seem unreasonable and hard. We claim for our lives the support of a common understanding; we yearn for the comfort of a system of things existing round us, in which we may find countenance. It was urged against the Christians of the early ages that their religion was unsocial-it broke the ties by which men held together; and doubtless many a Christian, in hours of trial and depression, felt with pain that much in Christian life offered a foundation for the reproach. On the other hand, those who, like the enemies of the cross, refer their lives to the worlds standard, rather than to Christs, have at least this comfort, that, they have a tangible city. The world is their city: therefore also the prince of it is their king. But the Apostle, for himself and his fellows, sets against this the true city or state-with its more original and ancient sanctions; with its more authoritative laws; with its far more pervading and mighty spirit, for the Spirit of God Himself is the life which binds its all together; with its glorious and gracious King. This commonwealth has its seat in heaven; for there it reveals its nature, and thence its power descends. We recognise this whenever we pray, “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” This, says the Apostle, is our citizenship. The archaism of the Authorised Version, “Our conversation” (that is, our habitual way of living) “is in heaven,” expresses much of the meaning; only the “conversation” is referred, by the phrase employed in the text, to the sanctions under which it proceeds, the august fellowship by which it is sustained, the source of influence by which it is continually vitalised. Our state, and the life which as members of that state we claim and use, is celestial. Its life and strength, its glory and victory, are in heaven. But it is ours, though we are here on earth.

Therefore, according to the Apostle, the standard of our living, and its sanctions, and its way of thinking and proceeding, and, in a word, our city, with its interests and its objects, being in heaven, the earnest business of our life is there. We have to do with earth constantly and in ways most various; but, as Christians, our way of having to do with the earth itself is heavenly, and is to be conversant with heaven. What we mainly love and seek is in heaven; what we listen most to hear is the voice that comes from heaven; what we most earnestly speak is the voice we send to heaven; what lies next our heart is the treasure and the hope which are secure in heaven; we are most intent upon is what we lay up in heaven, and how we are getting ready for heaven; there is One in heaven whom we love above all others; we are children of the kingdom of heaven; it is our country and our home; and something in us refuses to settle on those things here that reject the stamp of heaven.

Does this go too high? Does some one say, “Something in this direction attracts me and I reach out to it, but ah! how feebly”?-then how strongly does the principle of the Apostles admonition apply. If we own that this city rightfully claims us, if we are deeply conscious of shortcoming in our response to that claim, then how much does it concern us to allow no earthly thing that by its own nature drags us down from our citizenship in heaven.

It is in heaven. Many ways it might be shown to be so; but it is enough to sum up all in this, that One has His presence there, who is the Life and the Lord of this city of ours, caring for us, calling us to the present fellowship with Him that is attainable in a life of faith, but especially (for this includes all the rest) whom we look for, to come forth from heaven for us. He has done wonders already to set up for us the grace of the kingdom of heaven, and He has brought us in to it; He is doing much for us daily in grace and in providence, upholding His Church on earth from age to age; but this “working” is proceeding to a final victory. He is “able to subject all things to Himself.” And the emphatic proof of it which awaits all believers, is that the body itself, reconstituted in the likeness of Christs own, shall at last be in full harmony with a destiny of immortal purity and glory. So shall the manifestation of His power and grace at last sweep through our whole being, within and without. That is the final triumph of salvation, with which the long history finds all its results attained. For this we await the coming of the Saviour from heaven. Well therefore may we say that the state to which we pertain, and the life which we hold as members of that state, is in heaven.

The expectation of the coming of Christ out of the world of supreme truth and purity, where God is known and served aright, to fulfil all His promises, -this is the Churchs and the believers great hope. It is set before us in the New Testament as a motive to every duty, as giving weight to every warning, as determining the attitude and character of all Christian life. In particular, we cannot deal aright with any of the earthly things committed to us, unless we deal with them in the light of Christs expected coming. This expectation is to enter into the heart of every believer, and no one is warranted to overlook or make light of it. His coming, His appearing, the revelation of Him, the revelation of His glory, the coming of His day, and so forth, are pressed on us continually. In a true waiting for the day of Christ is gathered up the right regard to what He did and bore when He came first, and also a right regard to Him as He is now the pledge and the sustainer of our souls life: the one and the other are to pass onward to the hope of His appearing.

Some harm has been done, perhaps, by the degree in which attention has been concentrated on debatable points about the time of the Lords coming, or the order of events in relation to it; but more by the measure in which Christians have allowed the worlds unbelieving temper to affect on this point the habit of their own minds. It must be most seriously said that our Lord Himself expected no man to succeed in escaping the corruption of the world and enduring to the end, otherwise than in the way of watching for his Lord. {see Luk 12:35-40 -but the passages are too numerous to be quoted}

And the Apostle lays an emphasis on the character in which we expect Him. The word “Saviour” is emphatic. We look for a Saviour; not merely One who saved us once, but One who brings salvation with Him when He comes. It is the great good, in its completeness, that the Church sees coming to her with her Lord. Now she has the faith of it, – and with the faith an earnest and foretaste, – but then salvation comes. Therefore the coming is spoken of as redemption drawing nigh, as the time of the redemption of the purchased possession. So also in the Epistle to the Galatians the end of Christs sacrifice is said to be to “deliver us from this present evil world.”

Doubtless it is unwise to lay down extreme positions as to the spirit in which we are to deal with temporal things, and especially with their winning and attractive aspects. Christian men, at peace with God, should not only feel spiritual joy, but may well make a cheerful use of passing mercies. Yet certainly the Christians hope is to be saved out of this world, and out of life as he knows it here, into one far better-saved out of the best and brightest state to which this present state of things can bring him. The Christian spirit is giving way in that man who, in whatever posture of his worldly affairs, does not feel that the present is a state entangled with evil, including much darkness and much estrangement from the souls true rest. He ought to be minded so as to own the hope of being saved out of it, looking and hasting to the coming of the Lord.

If we lived out this conviction with some consistency, we should not go far wrong in our dealings with this present world. But probably there is no feature in which the average Christianity of to-day varies more from that of the early Christians, than in the faint impressions, and the faint influence, experienced by most modern Christians in connection with the expectation of the Lords return.

As far as individual life goes, the position of men in both periods is much the same; it is so, in spite of all the changes that have taken place. Then, as now, the mirage of life tempted men to dream of felicities here, which hindered them from lifting up their heads to a prospect of redemption. But now, as then, counter-influences work; the short and precarious term of human life, its disappointments, its cares and sorrows, its conflicts and falls, conspire to teach even the most reluctant Christian that the final and satisfying rest is not to be found here. So that the difference seems to arise mainly from a secret failure of faith on this point, due to the impression made by long ages in which Christ has not come. “Where is the promise of His coming? All things continue as they were.”

This may suggest, however, that influences are recognisable, tending to form, in modern Christians, a habit of thought and feeling less favourable to vivid expectation of Christs coming. It does not arise so much in connection with individual experience, but is rather an impression drawn from history and from the common life of men. In the days of Paul, general history was simply discouraging to spiritual minds. It led men to think of all creation groaning together. Civilisation certainly had made advances; civil government had conferred some of its benefits on men; and lately, the strong hand of Rome, however heavily it might press, had averted or abridged some of the evils that afflicted nations. Still, on the whole, darkness, corruption, and social wrong continued to mark the scene, and there was little to suggest that prolonged effort might gradually work improvement. Rather it seemed that a rapid dispensation of grace, winning its way by supernatural energy, might well lead on to the winding up of the whole scene; sweeping all away before the advent of new heavens and a new earth. But, for us, nineteen hundred years have well-nigh passed. The Christian Church has been confronted all that time with her great task; and however imperfect her light and her methods have often been, she has set processes a-going, and pressed on in lines of action, in which she has not been without her reward. Also the public action of at least the European races, stimulated and guided by Christianity, has been inspired by faith in progress and in a reign of justice, and has applied itself to improve the conditions of men. How much of sin and pain still afflicts the world is too sadly evident. But the memory of the successive lives of saints, thinkers, men of public spirit and devoted public action, is strong in Christian minds to-day-it is a long, animating history. And never more than at the present time did the world press itself on the Christian mind as the sphere for effort, for helpful and hopeful achievement. All this tends to fix the eye on what may happen before Christ comes; for one asks room and time to fight the battle out, to see the long co-operant processes converge upon their goal. The conflict is thought of as one to be bequeathed, like freedoms battle, from sire to son, through indefinite periods beyond which men do not very often look. And, indeed, the amelioration of the world and remedy of its ills by works of faith and love are Christlike work. The world cannot want it; the fruit of it will not be withheld; and the hopeful ardour with which it is pursued is Christs gift to His people. For Christ Himself healed and fed the multitudes. Yet all this shall not replace the coming of Christ, and the redemption that draws nigh with Him, The longing eyes that gaze into the prospects of public-spirited beneficence and Christian philanthropy, do well; but they must also look higher up and further on.

One thing must be said. It is vain for us to suppose we can adjust beforehand, to our own satisfaction, the elements which enter into the future, so as to make a well-fitted scheme of it. That was not designed. And in this case two ways of looking at the future are apt to strive together. The man who is occupied with processes that, as he conceives, might eventuate in a reign of goodness reached by gradual amelioration, by successive victories of the better cause, may look askance on the promise of Christs coming, because he dislikes catastrophe and cataclysm. First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, is his motto. And the man who is full of the thought of the Lords return, and deeply persuaded that nothing less will eradicate the worlds disease, may look with impatience on measures that seem to aim at slow and far results. But neither the one mode of view nor the other is to be sacrificed. Work is to be done in the world on the lines that promise best to bless the world. Yet also this faith must never be let down-the Lord is coming; the Lord shall come.

How decisive the change is which Christ completes at His coming-how distinctive, therefore, and unworldly, that citizenship which takes its type from heaven where He is, and from the hope of His appearing-is last of all set forth. Paul might have dwelt on many great blessings the full meaning of which will be unfolded when Christ comes; for He is to conform all things to Himself. But Paul prefers to signalise what shall befall our bodies; for that makes us feel that not one element in our state shall fail to be subjected to the victorious energy of Christ. Our bodies are, in our present state, conspicuously refractory to the influences of the higher kingdom. Regeneration makes no improvement on them. In our body we carry about with us what seems to mock the idea of an ethereal and ideal life. And when we die, the corruption of the grave speaks of anything but hope. Here, then, in this very point the salvation of Christ shall complete its triumph, saving us all over and all through. He “shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory.”

For the Apostle Paul the question how the body is to be reckoned with in any lofty view of human life had a peculiar interest. One sees how his mind dwelt upon it. He does not indeed impute to the body any original or essential antagonism to the souls better life. But it shares in the debasement and disorganisation implied in sin; it has become the ready avenue for many temptations. Through it the man has become participant of a vivid and unintermittent earthliness, contrasting all too sadly with the feebleness of spiritual impressions and affections, so that the balance of our being is deranged. Nor does grace directly affect mens bodily conditions. Here, then, is an element in a renewed life that has a peculiar refractoriness and irresponsiveness. So much is this so that sin in our complex nature easily turns this way, easily finds resources in this quarter. Hence sin in us often takes its denomination from this side of things. It is the flesh, and the minding of the flesh, that is to be crucified. On the Other hand, just because life for us is life in the body, therefore the body with its members must be brought into the service of Christ, and must fulfil the will of God. “Yield your bodies a living sacrifice.” “Your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost.” A disembodied Christianity is to the Apostle no Christianity. There may be difficulties, indeed, in carrying this consecration through, elements of resistance and insubordination to be overcome. If so, they must be fought down. “I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest I prove a castaway.” To be thorough in this proved hard even for Paul. “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”-a text in which one sees how the “body” offered itself as the ready symbol of the whole inward burden and difficulty. So the body is dead because of sin: dying, fit to die, appointed to die, and not now renewed to life. “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Then, limits now imposed on right thinking, right feeling, right acting, shall be found to have passed away. Till then we groan, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body; but then shall be the manifestation of the sons of God. To Paul this came home as one of the most definite, practical, and decisive forms in which the triumph of Christs salvation should be declared.

The body, then, by which we hold converse with the world, and by which we give expression to our mental life, has shared in the evil that comes by sin. We find it to be the body of our humiliation. It is not only liable to pain, decay, and death, not only subject to much that is humbling and distressing, but it has become an ill-adapted organ for an aspiring soul. The bodily state weighs down the soul, when its aspirations after good have been rekindled. It is not wholly unconnected with our physical state that it is so hard to carry the recognition of God and the life of faith into the comings and goings of the outward life; so hard to wed the persuasions of our faith to the impressions of our sense. But we look forward to our Lords coming with the expectation that the body of our humiliation shall be transfigured into the likeness of the body of His glory. In this we discern with what a pervading energy He is to subdue all things to Himself. Love in righteousness is to triumph through all spheres.

We have more than once acknowledged how natural it is to dream of constructing a Christian life on earth with all its elements, natural and spiritual, perfectly harmonised, each having its place in relation to each so as to make the music of a perfect whole. And in the strength of such a dream, some look down on all Christian practice as blind and narrow, which seems to them to mar life by setting one element of it against another. It must be owned that narrow types of Christianity have often needlessly offended so. Nevertheless we have here a new proof that the dream of those who would achieve a perfect harmony, in the present state and under present conditions, is vain. A perfect Christian harmony of life cannot be restored in the body of our humiliation. The nobler part is to own this, and to confess that amid many undeserved good gifts, yet, in relation to the great hope set before us, we groan, waiting for the redemption; when Christ who now fits us to run the race and bear the cross, shall come and save us out of all this, changing the body of our humiliation into the likeness of the body of His glory.

Against the ways of Jewish self-righteousness, and against the impulses of fleshly minds, the Apostle had set the true Christianity-the methods in which it grows, the influences on which it relies, the truths and hopes by which it is mainly sustained, the high citizenship which it claims and to the type of which it resolutely conforms. All this was possible in Christ, all this was actual in Christ, all this was theirs in Christ. Yet this is what is brought into debate, by unbelief and sin; this against unbelief and sin has to be maintained. Some influences come to shake us as to the truth of it-“It is not so real after all.” Some influences come to shake us as to the good of it-“It is not after all so very, so supremely, so satisfyingly good.” Some influences come to shake us as to our own part in it-“It can hardly control and sustain my life, for after all, perhaps-alas, most likely-it is not for me, it cannot be for me.” Against all this we are to make our stand, in and with our Lord and Master. He is our confidence and our strength. How the Apostle longed to see this victory achieved in the case of all these Philippians, who were the treasure and the fruit of his life and labour! Be decided about all this, be clear about it, east every other way of it from you. “Therefore, my dearly beloved brethren, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.”

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary