our citizenship is in heaven

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." - Matthew 6:19-21 (NIV)

"But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." - Philippians 3:20-21 (NIV)

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time." - 1 Peter 1:3-5 (NIV)

If I say - supposing a friend is coming to visit me - and I say, "I've kept some cold beer in the fridge for you," that doesn't mean my friend has to get into the fridge to drink the beer. It means that when he arrives we get the beer out of the fridge so that he can drink it in the living room.

And when Paul says this new salvation, this new body is waiting for you in heaven, that doesn't mean so that when you go to heaven you will get it, but rather so that it will come from heaven. Heaven is God's space, God's sphere, God's reality, so that when heaven and earth are one, then this salvation which is stored up for you - kept in the cupboard if you like - will be brought out of the cupboard so that it will be yours and you can enjoy it.

- N.T. Wright, Resurrection and the Future World (Mar 07)

Citizens of Heaven - Colonising the Earth

Philippi was a Roman colony. Augustus had settled his veterans there after the battles of Philippi (42 BC) and Actium (31 BC). Not all residents of Philippi were Roman citizens, but all would know what citizenship meant.

(Being citizens of heaven, as the Philippians would know, doesn't mean that one is expecting to go back to the mother city, but rather that one is expecting the emperor to come from the mother city to give the colony its full dignity, to rescue it if need be, to subdue local enemies and put everything to rights.)

The point of creating colonies was twofold. First, it was aimed at extending Roman influence around the Mediterranean world, creating cells and networks of people loyal to Caesar in the wider culture. Second, it was one way of avoiding the problems of overcrowding in the capital itself. The emperor certainly did not want retired soldiers, with time (and blood) on their hands, hanging around Rome ready to cause trouble. Much better for them to be establishing farms and businesses elsewhere.

So when Paul says 'we are citizens of heaven', he doesn't at all mean that when we're done with this life we'll be going off to live in heaven. What he means is that the saviour, the Lord, Jesus the King - all of those were of course imperial titles - will come from heaven to earth, to change the present situation and state of his people.

The key word here is 'transform': 'he will transform our present humble bodies to be like his glorious body'. Jesus will not declare that present physicality is redundant and can be scrapped. Nor will he simply improve it, perhaps by speeding up its evolutionary cycle. In a great act of power - the same power that accomplished Jesus' own resurrection, as Paul says in Ephesians 1:19-20 - he will change the present body into the one that corresponds in kind to his own, as part of his work of bringing all things into subjection to himself. Philippians 3, though it is primarily speaking of human resurrection, indicates that this will take place within the context of God's victorious transformation of the whole cosmos.

- N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

yes, we are to 'store up for [ourselves] treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal' (Matthew 6:20, NIV). yes, 'our citizenship is in heaven' (Philippians 3:20, NIV). yes, we have 'an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for [us]' (1 Peter 1:4, NIV).

but we do not go to heaven to receive our reward in heaven. Jesus came from heaven to earth in the first coming, and He will come from heaven to earth again in the second coming - bringing our reward with Him - to give us our reward on earth.

"Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done." - Revelation 22:12 (NIV)