Philippians 3:17-21
Our Citizenship Is in Heaven
17Join one another in following my example, brothers, and carefully observe those who walk according to the pattern we set for you.
18For as I have often told you before, and now say again even with tears: Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
19Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things.
20But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
21who, by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself, will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow my example, he tells them, and do it together. It is a bold thing to ask from a man who has just been insisting he has not arrived, and it only holds together because of what he means by it. He is not offering himself as a finished article to be copied. He is asking them to walk the way he is walking, and then to keep their eyes on the people around them who are walking the same way. Watching a life takes longer than collecting opinions, and it is much harder to fake.
Then the tone changes completely. He has told them this before, he says, and he is saying it again now in tears, about people who live as enemies of the cross of Christ. He is crying while he writes, and he tells them so rather than keeping it to himself.
Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things.
That is a description of appetite rather than of argument. These are not people who out-reasoned him or won a debate about doctrine. They wanted what they wanted, they arranged their lives around getting it, and the things they were proudest of were the things they should have been quietest about.
Then comes the line this church would have felt somewhere below the ribs.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Philippi was a Roman colony. The people there lived a long way from Rome. Belonging somewhere else while living here was not an idea to them. It was their address. So Paul takes the thing they already understood and moves it up one. Then he does something unexpected with the waiting. They are not waiting to go home. They are waiting for somebody to come from home to them.
who, by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself, will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.
Lowly bodies. He does not dress them up as anything else, and nobody at this table needs him to: tired, breakable, and going to fail in the end. What he promises is not that we get out of them. It is that they are changed, by the same power that puts everything else where it belongs.
How We Know
Verse 20 uses citizenship as a picture, and it lands in that particular town for a reason the letter never explains. Acts supports how much the word carried there; the reason itself is stated nowhere and background cannot supply it.
Acts 16:12 calls Philippi a Roman colony and the leading city of its district. Acts 16:19-21 has the men who dragged Paul before the magistrates object that he is promoting customs unlawful for Romans to practice. Acts 16:37 has Paul refuse a quiet release by telling the officers they had beaten Roman citizens without a trial, and 16:38 says they were alarmed to hear it.
So citizenship was not an abstraction in Philippi. It was the thing that decided how you were treated, and the letter reaches for it without saying why.
Questions
1 Paul tells them to follow his example, and he has just finished saying he has not arrived. So what is he asking for?
AnswerNot that they copy a man who has finished. He wants them walking the way he is walking, and watching the people around them who walk that way rather than only listening to what people say.
2 How does Paul feel about the people he calls enemies of the cross?
AnswerHe is in tears about them. He says so in the middle of the sentence where he names them, and he has told them the same thing before. There is no sense of scoring a point off anybody.
3 Where do you feel most like a stranger who does not belong? Philippi would have heard "our citizenship is in heaven" differently from the way we hear it. Why?
AnswerBecause Philippi was a Roman colony. They lived a long way from Rome. Belonging to somewhere else while living here was not a picture to them, it was the arrangement they lived in every day.
4 What are we waiting for, and what does Paul say happens to our bodies?
AnswerNot to go home. We are waiting for a Savior to come here from there. And the promise about our lowly bodies is not that we escape them but that they are transformed to be like his glorious body.
What This Means for Us
We are waiting for somebody to come to us, which is not how most people picture the Christian life. Not gritting our teeth here until the day we get out. Expecting a knock at the door.
And there is the honesty about the meantime. Lowly bodies. Paul does not tell them their bodies are fine, or that they ought to feel better about them; he calls them what they are and then says what will happen to them. So if somebody here is worn out in their body tonight, that can be said out loud, and the second half can be said straight after it.
Prayer
Father, our bodies are wearing out and we do not like it. Thank you that you have not asked us to pretend otherwise, and that the promise is not escape but transformation. Keep us looking up the road for the one who is coming. Amen.