I saw some time ago that Michael J. Fox, the actor, who was born in Canada, has what is called “dual citizenship” – that is, he is a citizen of Canada AND of the United States at the same time.  A number of people hold dual citizenship: one of the most popular combinations is to be citizens of both the Unites States and Great Britain (which is ironic to think about on this Independence Day weekend!) 

But did you know that you know someone else who has a dual citizenship?  YOU – if you are a Christian – YOU have a “dual citizenship”!  You are both a citizen of the United States of America– AND a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The scripture clarifies for us some of the confusion and misunderstanding that many Christians have regarding our citizenship.  The Bible word for “citizenship” is “politeuma” (or “politeia”) and it is only used in a couple of places in the New Testament, but in those places it teaches us of our role as “dual citizens”.  The first passage we will look at today is found in Acts 22, and helps us understand our earthly citizenship, and the second in Philippians 3:20, which helps us understand our ultimate, heavenly citizenship. 

 I.  Our Earthly Citizenship – Acts 22

This passage is very germane to the discussion of our citizenship as Christians.  The passage’s context is that the Apostle Paul had been arrested by the Romans because of a disturbance in the temple – the Jews had thrown a fit because he had been proclaiming Christ for Jews AND Gentiles.  The Romans were about to question Paul by scourging, and Paul answers in :25 and following: 

“Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and is uncondemned?”  When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and told him, saying, ‘”What are you about to do, for this man is a Roman.’” The commander came and said to him, “Tell me, are you a Roman?’” And he said, “Yes”.  The commander answered, “I acquired this citizenship with a large sum of money.” And Paul said, “But I was actually born a citizen.”  Therefore those who were about to examine him immediately let go of him, and the commander also was afraid when he found out that he was a Roman, and because he had put him in chains.

     This passage is very instructive to us regarding the way we view our citizenship as Christians.  There are some who think that we must reject our earthly national citizenship because our allegiance is to the Kingdom of Heaven.  For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to salute the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance, or serve in the military; they believe that it is part of their duty under God to reject those things.  Quakers refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance; their allegiance is only to God. 

      Along those lines, I read an article recently by professor David Gushee at Mercer University, in which he identified what he calls the “abdication” option of citizenship among some Christians in America today.  He says that this is a surging trend among Christian academics and activists in which loyalty to Jesus Christ as Lord leaves no room for allegiance to nation at all.  He points out that some Christian writers and thinkers such as: Stanley Hauerwas, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne, advocate that Christians should be loyal to Jesus Christ alone – not the country at all.  They say that our king — our “president”, in effect – is Jesus, and that our nation here is corrupt, and filled with violence and injustice.  The author of the article says that these thinkers are trying to help Christians fall out of love with America so that they might fall in love with Jesus.  Therefore, they reject Christian citizenship.  (Anecdotally, I have heard that some of the zealous ministerial students at Louisiana College have similar attitudes!) Gushee writes: “I think we can do better” than this option – and I agree. 

     This “abdication” model is NOT the model we find in scripture – not from the Apostle Paul!  Paul was asked earlier in this chapter, “Are you a Roman?” and he said, “yes!”  Note that Paul did NOT say, “NO, I have no earthly citizenship; I am just a member of the Kingdom of God.”  He DID claim his Roman citizenship.  And he also claimed the rights and privileges that went with it:  he said that he was born a citizen, and it entitled him to certain protections under the law, which he took advantage of, and for which I am sure he was very grateful at that time!  But the important point here is that the Apostle Paul himself, one the greatest early leaders of the Christian faith, and one through whom the Lord gave us much of our New Testament, DID claim to be a citizen of Rome. 

     And it was not only the privileges that Paul advocated Christians taking advantage of; Paul also taught very specifically that we should fulfill our responsibilities to the government of which we are citizens:  Romans 13 is one of the great statements on that; it opens by saying:

“Every person is to be in subjection the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.  Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God …”

He goes on to delineate some of the very specific duties that we are to perform for our government, in :7,  “Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax (is due) fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”  ( I think it is very interesting to note, that the famous verse “owe nothing to anyone except to love one another” is the very next verse  here.  I know this verse is often quoted by people who advocate staying out of debt, but the actual immediate context refers to the responsibilities one owes to one’s government!  What it is saying, in effect, is, don’t leave unpaid any debt or responsibility to your government – pay your taxes, give honor and respect to the leaders – don’t ‘owe” any responsibilities to the nation in which you live, which you leave unpaid to them.  This is the actual context and meaning of that Romans 13:8!) 

     And of course this has a lot of implications for us: Christians are NOT to be anarchists; we are to be good citizens of the country in which God has chosen to place us.  We are to obey the laws of our government.  Christians are NOT to refuse to pay taxes – just as Romans 13 says, we are to pay “tax to whom tax is due”.  We should not cheat on our taxes. 

     It is on the basis of God’s word that I went through my whole last year’s “web purchases” folder on my computer, to add up everything that we had bought over the internet last year, because our state tax form specifically asked us to pay a tax on everything we purchased on the internet, or to indicate that we owe no such tax.  (Now, I am not going to say that there was not a part of me that was tempted to say, “I don’t owe that!” – but as Christians, we are obligated to do the best we can to keep the laws of our land – even regarding our taxes!)  I can’t say I was really excited about doing that; I wasn’t — but we do these things BECAUSE we DO have an earthly citizenship – we are citizens of this country.  And we can be very grateful to God that we are; we have had, and continue to have, many blessings as citizens of theUnited States of America.  As Christians, we do have an earthly citizenship – with its privileges and responsibilities. 

 II.  Our Heavenly Citizenship – Philippians 3:20

     Some time after the episode we read about in Acts 22, Paul found himself in chains in Rome, and from prison he wrote these words:  “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20)

     This is now a second use of this Greek Bible word for “citizenship”.  He says “Our citizenship is in heaven.”  He did not mean that we don’t have any earthly citizenship – we just saw how he himself claimed to be a Roman, and claimed both the benefits and advocated the responsibilities of earthly citizenship.  What he is telling us here is that our HIGHEST and ultimate citizenship is in heaven.  We say the “Pledge of Allegiance” to the flag of the United States of America – and unlike many of those I mentioned earlier I don’t think that it is wrong to do that – but if you are a Christian, you also need to realize that your HIGHEST “pledge of allegiance” is NOT “to the flag of the United States” but is to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! 

     I wonder how many of us really understand that.  In that Mercer article on Christian citizenship, the author spoke not only of the “abdication” option of having NO citizenship in this world, but also of what he called the “apostasy” option, where the Christian citizen’s loyalty to the nation is primary, OVER his loyalty to Christ. He says this kind of Christian citizen is so passionate about America that he acts as if everything that advances America’s cause advances Christ’s kingdom as well.  And of course, that is not true.  We live in a nation which has previously declared itself to be “under God”, and we have been blessed with many freedoms and privileges over the years as a result – but unfortunately things are changing.  And when one’s nation – whatever nation that is – commands us to disobey what God clearly says in His word, then if you are a serious Christian, you must disobey that nation and obey God!  That is a difficult choice, but your highest allegiance must be to the Lord.  Your ultimate citizenship is in heaven. 

     Christians in the early church had to make that choice.  They tried to live by the Biblical principle of “being submissive to the governing authorities” that Paul wrote about in Romans 13, but when the Jewish leaders told them to preach or teach no more in the name of Jesus, they said in Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than men.”  Their ultimate allegiance was to God, not the Jewish leaders. 

     When the Romans tried to get the Christians to burn incense to Caesar and say, “Caesar is Lord” – it was to be an act of civil obedience, intended unite all good members of the Roman Republic.  They would allow one to have one’s own god too, but they insisted that each citizen add Caesar to their worship, by burning a bit of incense and saying, “Caesar is Lord”.  But Christians would NOT participate.  Their cry was “Jesus is Lord!”  NOT Caesar AND Jesus; as Paul wrote: “For us there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ”.  The early Christians went to their deaths by the thousands, because they would not perform that ritual.  Their earthly citizenship in Rome demanded it – but their ultimate citizenship in heaven forbade it.  Their “Lord” was not Caesar, but Jesus. 

     Now we have been blessed to have lived in a country that has not asked us, thus far, to compromise our religious principles.  But those days may be coming to an end.  There are issues right on the horizon right now which may cause to choose whether to obey our earthly government, or our Father in heaven: 

 — Very soon military chaplains may not able to serve unless they advocate the view that there are many ways to God, do not pray in Jesus’ name, and do not preach against homosexuality, etc.  Those men are going to have to make some difficult choices – whether they are going to compromise the word of God in order to placate the government.  I hope they make the right choices, and say, “We must obey God rather than men!’ 

— it has made the news this week that the administrator of the VA cemetery in Houston has forbidden the use of the words “God” and “Jesus” as people come to minister in services there!  Those coming to minister need to assert, “I must obey God rather than men!” 

— Very soon, it may be considered to be a “hate crime” to preach against the sin of homosexuality in theUnited States– as it is in some other nations now.  A minister in Canada was recently brought into court and fined for writing an opinion against homosexuality in the local newspaper – and he was ordered by the court not to teach such doctrines, and to remove them from his website!  These same type of “hate crime” laws are coming our way!  Soon we may face the choice right here in America of either obeying our government and compromising on Biblical issues – or losing our tax status, our tax deductions, or even our liberty and freedom by serving time in prison if we do not.   

     Let me make it clear: we should do all that we conscionably can to obey the laws of our earthly citizenship.  We should not disobey our earthly government lightly, and before we do it, we should search our own hearts to make sure that our understanding is correct, and that our motives are pure.  But when and if it comes down to a matter of obeying God or government, we need to say with the Apostle Paul: “Our (ultimate) citizenship is in heaven”, and our cry must be like that of the apostles in Acts: “We must obey God rather than men.” 

 If you are a Christian, like I am, then you have a “Dual Citizenship”.  You have an earthly citizenship, and you have a heavenly citizenship.  You have privileges and responsibilities in both – but your ultimate, uncontested, absolute allegiance must be to your citizenship in heaven.