Citizenship and the Goods of This Life

Saint Paul wrote in Philippians 3:20 that our citizenship, as believers incorporated into Christ, is in heaven. This means that the true or ultimate goods of our life are in heaven, not in this world, not in the countries and cultures where we live. Connect this, as Paul clearly did, with his earlier remarks in chapter 3 that he reckoned all his gains prior to or apart from his life in Christ as loss. It is not that he had not achieved much. He enumerated his manifold accomplishments in Jewish social and religious life. Yet he had lost those goods because he followed Christ. Even more, he considered them rubbish compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, of being incorporated into Christ’s death and life, of holding citizenship in heaven.

We then – as followers of Christ, as believers in Christ, as citizens of heaven instead of citizens of this world – must no longer consider the life and things of this world our true or ultimate goods. For the sake of Christ we must lose them, and we must consider them rubbish compared to the surpassing goods of knowing Christ, of living in Christ, where our citizenship is, in heaven. We must lose the life and things of this world in the sense of not reckoning them as ultimate goods. We must let loose of them in heart and spirit as goods we desire, pursue, claim, and count on as of true and lasting worth. We must even be willing to lose them in the sense of actual deprivation through choices we make or through loss and suffering inflicted upon us by the citizenry of this world.

This is not to say there are no goods in this life and world. For those in Christ and even those not in Christ, God graces his creation and creatures with ores of faith, hope, and love, of truth, beauty, and goodness, amid and despite the disorder, deception, and corruption of sin. Yet the goods of this life and world are only genuinely and durably good to the extent they participate in and bear us toward the goods of our life in heaven. They only do this to the extent we perceive, desire, and experience them as goods which we may, and even in a sense must, lose to gain Christ, to know his surpassing death and life. For Christ, through his crucifixion and resurrection, has transported us to his commonwealth; and we hold citizenship there, where we enjoy the true and ultimate goods of life, from first to last.