The church is my first family, but not my only family (1 Timothy 3:15; Ephesians 5:21ff).
The church is my first nation, but not my only nation (1 Peter 2:9; Romans 9:2ff).
My citizenship is in heaven, but that’s not my only citizenship – I am also a citizen in an earthly nation (Philippians 3:20; Acts 16:37).
The New Jerusalem is my first city, but not my only city (Hebrews 12:22; Acts 21:39, 22:3).
The new creation is my truest home, but not my only home — I have a home in the here and now as well (Hebrews 11:14-16; Ephesians 5:21ff).
My first kingdom is Christ’s kingdom, but that’s not the only kingdom to which I belong (Matthew 6:44; Acts 16:37).
Being able to properly distinguish and prioritize my loyalties and loves in terms of the natural and supernatural, or temporal and eschatological, or earthly and heavenly, is crucial in so many ways. Properly ordering and relating these realms is crucial to Christian faithfulness and wisdom.
There are some who dismiss all concern with earthly citizenship and nationhood for Christians. We are citizens of heaven, so why bother with earthly citizenship? They think the church is the only thing that matters; it’s a kind of hyper-ecclesiocentrism, in which the church swallows up the roles and functions of other spheres. Or they think that the “spiritual” is all that matters after conversion to Christian faith. But this veers towards Gnosticism and distorts or truncates the mission of the church. If we are salt and light, if we are to disciple the nations, then we have responsibilities to the earthly nations to which we belong. We cannot sequester ourselves; we are called to engagement. The church does not swallow up the other God-ordained spheres like family and state, but it does disciple the other spheres. The NT emphasizes our earthly responsibilities to the temporal realm – though it also stresses that as Christians we will fulfill these responsibilities in a peculiar way that grows out of our faith. The heavenly is not detached from the earthly; it intersects with it, penetrates it, and ultimately transforms it. After all, we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In the NT, after people are converted, they are still identified by their earthly ethnicity and political affiliation. Paul is a good example of this. After becoming a Christian, he continues to be an ethnic Jew and a Roman citizen. His Christian faith does not dissolve those ties or negate those identities in any way; rather, it changes how he lives out those identities since he is now united to Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Christians who only care about the “upper story” of heavenly citizenship are actually being unfaithful to their calling. They might sound pious but they are actually refusing their Christ-given mission in the world. They are, as the proverb goes, so heavenly minded, they are of no earthly good — and God wants us to be of earthly good.
On the other hand, it’s possible to get so consumed with the earthly realm, that we put allegiance to blood ties (family) or national ties (earthly citizenship) above everything else. We can get so consumed with our own natural families or with temporal political matters that everything else gets squeezed out. The Scriptures are treated not as the story of salvation, but merely as a handbook for family and political living. The church is viewed as dead-weight that slows down the goal of bringing needed political change. But this is actually a reversal of the allegiances and priorities Jesus calls us to. Jesus warned that his gospel would divide families, and when that happens, we must prioritize loyalty to Christ and his people above even the closest natural family bonds. Likewise, Calvin loved his native land of France, but he was willing to be a sojourner in Geneva for the sake of the gospel and the church. He pined for his homeland, but understood that the upward call of the gospel required him to stand apart from France’s apostasy. He would not subordinate faith to national loyalty so he resisted pressures to return to the Roman Catholic fold even though it would have meant a homecoming to France and a much easier life. He prioritized faithfulness to the Bible and the true church above his patriotic inclinations.
Thus, to say “the church is my first nation, but not my only nation” is to say my highest loyalty will always be to Christ and to his people; I am a citizen of the holy nation of the church and that is at the deepest core of my identity. But my “second nation” counts too. She is my earthly homeland. I owe her allegience and service. I have very real obligations to my nation in the earthly realm. I am to be loyal to her – not absolutely, because if she opposes Christ, then I must oppose her – but I am nevertheless commanded to honor and love her in a proper way.
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