NATURAL BORN CITIZENS

Friday 11 October

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Philippians 3:20 (NKJV)

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens [outsiders without rights of citizenship], but you are fellow citizens with the saints (God’s people), and are [members] of God’s household, Ephesians 2:19 (AMP)

When someone emigrates to a country that is a foreigner, they come with the intention of becoming a citizen of that particular country. In the culture of the day this was vastly different to what we understand today.

In the Greek language which these epistles were written, citizenship could only be offered to someone who was a natural born resident of their country. Nobody else could come in as an outsider or a foreigner and be able to begin a process of naturalisation to become a citizen of their adopted nation.

With this in mind, it shows us something significant about our status in Christ. Apostle Paul is telling us that we are ‘no longer strangers and outsiders’ but citizens of heaven by faith in Christ. But wait a minute, I thought he said that to be a citizen of heaven you had to be born there; Exactly!

If you are in Christ then you are a citizen of heaven by virtue of the new birth. There is no getting around it by the statements Paul makes about citizenship in the cultural context in which they were written.

Please understand this. You are a spirit and spiritually speaking, you only get born once. It happens the day that you receive salvation and therefore citizenship. Those who have not received it are the outsiders that are referred to in Ephesians 2:19.

Why? Because before salvation we were spiritually dead on arrival because of sin. So technically our spirit did not get born. Only our soul and body were born so to speak. The fact is only those who receive salvation are ever born.

If this is true, then it confirms Paul’s line of reasoning that we in Christ are citizens of heaven. Your spirit came from heaven therefore you came from heaven. Our consciousness of this reality means we will never walk in a false identity of who we really are.

Now as citizens of heaven we have rights as privileges that are afforded us by the homeland to which we belong. Are you seeing it? Health, prosperity, peace, joy and every spiritual blessing in Christ are yours to exercise and enjoy now as a blood bought citizen of heaven.

If you are not in Christ I have good news for you. Jesus by His death, burial and resurrection has paid the price for your sin and made it possible for you to become a citizen of heaven too. None of us deserved it but we got what we didn’t deserve. That is His amazing grace.

APPLICATION

Meditate on all these scriptures on our citizenship and let the reality that if you are in Christ, you were spiritually born in heaven and not this earth, sink deep into your consciousness.