Citizens of Heaven

Philippians 3:12–4:1

Read Philippians 3:12–4:1 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and we also eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform these humble bodies of ours into the likeness of his glorious body by means of that power by which he is able to subject all things to himself.
Philippians 3:20–21

Pressing On

The great reversal has been narrated. The credentials have been counted as liabilities. The righteousness from God has been received. And now Paul, with characteristic honesty, names what the Christian life is not. It is not the static possession of a finished spirituality. It is the running of a race that is not yet over.

Not that I have already attained this, he writes, (that is, I have not already been perfected). The Greek verb behind attained, elabon, is the verb for taking hold of, grasping, securing. Paul has not, he says, already grasped what he is pursuing. He is not finished. He has not arrived. And the next word, perfected (teleioō in Greek), refers to completion, the full reaching of a goal. Paul is not completed. Whatever he has attained so far is only the beginning of what is to come.

This is a striking confession from a man who has just listed his Pharisaic credentials and described the great reversal that turned them all into dung. We might have expected Paul, having received the far greater value of knowing Christ, to claim a settled spiritual maturity. He does the opposite. He is not yet what he is going to be. The justified Paul is still on the road. The man whose righteousness is from God by faith is, by that same faith, running toward a goal he has not yet reached.

What is he running toward? But I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me, he says. The two verbs are the same: katalabō, to take hold of, to grasp. Paul is grasping at what has grasped him. The Christ who took hold of Paul on the Damascus road is the Christ Paul is now running to take hold of more fully. The pursuit is a response to a prior pursuit. The believer’s reaching toward Christ is grounded in Christ’s reaching toward the believer. Paul is not generating the desire; he is following it.

This is the proper Lutheran balance. The Christian’s running is a response, not an origination. We do not chase Christ in order to make Him love us. We chase Christ because He has already loved us and laid hold of us. The pursuit, in other words, comes after the gift. And the running of the race is the form that gratitude takes in those who have been seized by Christ.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. The repetition is striking. Paul says it twice: not that I have already attained, I do not consider myself to have attained. He wants to be perfectly clear that he is not claiming to have arrived. The Christian life is a life of not yet. It is the gap between the already of justification and the not yet of glorification. Paul lives in that gap. So does every Christian.

Instead I am single-minded. Behind the NET’s single-minded stand two short Greek words, hen de, “but one thing.” The phrase comes like a hammer. After all the disclaimers, after the careful denials of arrival, Paul tells us what he is doing. One thing. Not many things. Not a hundred small spiritual practices. One thing. The whole of the Christian life, reduced to a single forward motion.

Forgetting the things that are behind. The verb forgetting (epilanthanomenos) does not mean erasing the past from memory. Paul has just remembered his Pharisaic past in extraordinary detail. He has not literally forgotten. What he means is that he refuses to let his past, whether the past of his accomplishments or the past of his failures, determine his present. The credentials he once trusted have been let go. The persecutions he once committed have been left to the mercy of Christ. Neither pride in the past nor regret about the past is allowed to slow Paul’s running. The past is behind him. The race is ahead.

And reaching out for the things that are ahead. The verb behind reaching out, epekteinomenos, is the verb for an athlete in a race, stretching forward at the finish line, the body angled toward the tape. Paul pictures himself as a runner in the final stretch, leaning into the goal, everything in him pointed forward. There is no looking around. There is no looking back. There is only the goal in front of him and the strain of the muscles toward it.

With this goal in mind, Paul says, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. The goal, Paul says, is the upward call. The Greek phrase, anō klēseōs, means the call from above, the summons of God to come up, the invitation to the heavenly assembly. And the prize is the call itself: being summoned, at last, into the full presence of the One who has called. Paul is running toward the moment when the Lord will say, in effect, come up here. He is running toward heaven.

This is one of the great Pauline pictures of the Christian life. The race is real. The straining is real. The forgetting and the forward motion are both required. But the goal is not earned by the running. The goal is the upward call: God’s own summons, His own invitation, His own decision to bring His people home. Paul runs not to make himself worthy of the call but in response to the call that has already been issued. The race ends not in self-vindication but in answering the voice that has been calling all along.

The Lutheran tradition has always been careful here. The Christian life is energetic, strenuous, full of forward motion. The Christian does not sit. The Christian runs. But the running is not the basis of salvation. The running is the form salvation takes in those who have been called. The prize is the call. The runner is the one who has heard the call and is answering it.

Live Up to What We Have Attained

After this stunning picture of the racing Christian, Paul makes a brief comment about Christian maturity. Therefore let those of us who are “perfect” embrace this point of view, he says. If you think otherwise, God will reveal to you the error of your ways. Nevertheless, let us live up to the standard that we have already attained.

The word perfect (teleioi) is the adjective from the same root as the verb teleioō that Paul disclaimed for himself a few verses earlier. The NET’s quotation marks around “perfect” catch the wordplay, and the play is intentional. Paul has just said he is not yet perfected (completed). But there is a kind of “perfection,” a maturity (teleiotēs), that mature Christians do possess. It is not the maturity of having arrived. It is the maturity of having recognized that no one has arrived. The mature Christian is the one who knows he is still running. The immature Christian is the one who imagines he has finished.

What is the mark of this maturity? Let those of us who are “perfect” embrace this point of view. This point of view refers back to what Paul has just said about pressing on, forgetting, reaching out, running toward the upward call. The mature Christian is the one who thinks like Paul about his own spiritual condition. He does not boast of attainment. He does not settle for current progress. He keeps his eyes on the goal and his body angled toward the finish line. This thinking (humble, hopeful, forward-leaning) is the mark of Christian maturity.

But Paul knows that not every Christian, at every moment, will see it the same way. So he adds a gracious provision. If you think otherwise, God will reveal to you the error of your ways. There is room, in Paul’s pastoral wisdom, for the slower learner. The Christian who has not yet grasped the doctrine of justification by faith, the Christian who still struggles with confidence in the flesh, the Christian who has not yet learned to regard all things as liabilities: that Christian is not to be dismissed. He is to be left to the patient work of the Spirit. God will reveal to you. The Lord who has begun a good work in His people will, in His own time, complete the work in each of them.

This is one of the most pastorally tender sentences in Paul. He has been hard on the false teachers, hard on the men of mixed motives, hard on the dogs and the evil workers and those who mutilate the flesh. But to a fellow Christian who has not yet seen what Paul sees, he is gentle. God will reveal to you. The work of correction belongs, in the end, to the Spirit. Paul has done what he can to teach. The Spirit will do what only He can do, in His own way and in His own time.

Nevertheless, let us live up to the standard that we have already attained. The exhortation that follows is positive. Whatever a Christian has already received, he is to hold to it and live up to it. He is not to slip backward. He is not to lose the ground he has gained. The Christian life is forward-leaning, but it is also resistant to reversal. We press on, but we also hold our position. The race is forward, but the line is held.

This is Lutheran pastoral wisdom at its finest. Christian growth is real, and it is to be pursued. But Christian growth is not the basis of Christian standing. Even the immature Christian is fully a Christian, fully justified, fully in Christ, held there by the grace that called him in the first place. Maturity will come, in God’s good time. In the meantime, what has been given is to be held; what has not yet been given is to be received from the Spirit’s hand; and the race continues.

Enemies of the Cross

The tone darkens. Paul returns to the warning he began the chapter with, and now he gives it its sharpest expression. Be imitators of me, brothers and sisters, he writes, and watch carefully those who are living this way, just as you have us as an example: the example, that is, of Paul and his coworkers. For many live, Paul writes, about whom I have often told you, and now, with tears, I tell you that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, he continues, their god is the belly, they exult in their shame, and they think about earthly things.

The passage is one of the most painful in Paul’s letters. He weeps as he writes it: with tears. He has spoken often, before this letter, about these people. He does not name them. He does not give us enough detail to identify them with certainty. What we know is what he says about them: they are the enemies of the cross.

Who are they? Some have thought Paul is still talking about the Judaizers of verse 2, the same men he warned against at the chapter’s opening. Others have thought he is describing libertines, Christians who, having heard the gospel of grace, have concluded that morality is now optional. The textual evidence does not decide the question with certainty, and perhaps Paul has in mind both groups, or a single group that combines elements of both. What is certain is the description he gives.

Their end is destruction. The Greek word destruction (apōleia) is a strong word. It is the word for ruin, for waste, for the final loss of the soul. Whatever these men intend, whatever they teach, whatever good things they may seem to be doing, the trajectory of their lives ends in destruction. They are headed somewhere terrible, and Paul wants the Philippians to see the trajectory and avoid it.

Their god is the belly. The belly (koilia) is the seat of physical appetite. The phrase is image-rich. These men have placed their physical appetites on the throne where God belongs. What they really worship, whatever they say with their lips, is the gratification of the body. Whether that means food, or sex, or comfort, or anything else the body craves, the belly has become god. And the worship of the belly is, in the end, the worship of a god who cannot save.

They exult in their shame. The phrase is sharp. The things that ought to make them blush, they boast about. The things that ought to humble them, they hold up as accomplishments. The mark of the truly lost is not merely that they sin but that they glory in their sin. They have become so confused that they have inverted the categories. What is shameful is now their pride. What should be hidden is now their banner.

They think about earthly things. The Greek phrase, ta epigeia phronountes, picks up the verb phronein (to think, to set the mind) that Paul has used throughout this letter. He called the Philippians to have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had (2:5), where the same verb stands behind attitude. He called them to think the things of Christ. These men are doing the opposite. Their minds are set on earthly things. They think the things of earth. They cannot imagine a hope that is not earthly. They cannot imagine a God who is not a function of their own appetites. And in setting their minds on what is earthly, they have set themselves against the cross that came from heaven.

It is worth pausing here. Paul does not call these men unbelievers. He calls them the enemies of the cross of Christ. The implication is that they may have placed themselves within the Christian community in some way: perhaps they call themselves Christians, perhaps they teach in Christian assemblies, perhaps they have been baptized. But the cross is precisely what they will not have. The cross undoes the worship of the belly. The cross undoes the glory in shame. The cross undoes the mind set on earthly things. And so the men whose lives are organized around earthly things must, in the end, be enemies of the cross, even if they would not put it that way themselves.

The warning is severe, but the tears are real. Paul does not warn against these men from a position of superiority. He warns against them from sorrow. Some of these men may once have been his friends. Some may have begun well. Some may even still be sitting in the Christian assemblies, hearing the word, receiving the sacrament. And yet, by the trajectory of their lives, they are walking toward destruction. These were apparently people inside the church, which is why the Confessions warn that those who once believed can fall away through impenitent sin (SA III III).

The Lutheran tradition has always read this passage with great seriousness. The visible church always includes both the wheat and the tares, both the believers and those who only seem to be (AC VIII; Ap VII/VIII). We are not given the authority to decide, finally, who is who. But we are given the responsibility to recognize the marks: to see when a life is being organized around the belly rather than around the cross, to see when shame is being celebrated rather than confessed, to see when minds are set on earthly things rather than on the things of Christ. And when we see these marks, the right response is not contempt but tears, not dismissal but the same kind of patient, sorrowful warning Paul gives here. Even those whose end is destruction are not yet destroyed. The cross they have made themselves enemies of is still the cross preached to them, and through that preaching the Spirit still calls to repentance.

And now Paul turns from the warning to the climactic word of comfort. But our citizenship is in heaven, he writes, and we also eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform these humble bodies of ours into the likeness of his glorious body by means of that power by which he is able to subject all things to himself.

The word citizenship (politeuma) picks up the language from the end of chapter one. Paul has already told the Philippians, back in 1:27, to live as citizens worthy of the gospel; the verb there is politeuesthe, which the NET renders conduct yourselves. Now he names the city of which they are citizens. It is not Rome. It is not Philippi. It is heaven.

The image would have struck the Philippians with particular force. They lived in a Roman colony, a city established as an outpost of Rome on Macedonian soil. The Philippians knew what a colony was. A Roman colony was a piece of Rome planted in foreign territory. The people of the colony held Roman citizenship. They followed Roman law. Their commercial dealings were in Roman coinage. Their identity was Roman, even though their bodies were hundreds of miles from the city of Rome itself. And when great events happened in Rome (the accession of a new emperor, a great festival, a triumph), they celebrated as Romans, even at a distance.

Paul takes this image and turns it. The church is a colony, but the city is not Rome. The city is heaven. The Christians are citizens of heaven, planted in this present world as an outpost of the kingdom of God. Their identity is heavenly, even though their bodies are still on earth. Their commercial dealings are in the coinage of the gospel. Their law is the law of Christ. And when great events happen in heaven, and one great event in particular is coming, they will celebrate as those who have always belonged there.

We also eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. The verb eagerly await (apekdechometha) is a compound verb that intensifies the basic verb for waiting. It means eager waiting, expectant waiting, the kind of waiting that leans forward toward what is coming. The Philippians wait for their Savior the way a colony waits for the arrival of a great Roman commander, or for the celebration of an emperor’s triumph. They wait with expectation. They wait with confidence. They wait knowing that their Savior is coming.

And the title Savior is itself a politically loaded word. The Roman emperors of the first century, especially Augustus and his successors, had been called Savior by their grateful or sycophantic subjects. The cult of the divine emperor was widespread. To call Jesus Savior, in Caesar’s empire, was to declare that the real Savior was not in Rome but in heaven. The Philippians, surrounded by the imperial cult, knew exactly what they were saying when they confessed the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. They were declaring an allegiance that ran deeper than Caesar’s.

Who will transform these humble bodies of ours into the likeness of his glorious body. Paul names what the Savior will do when He comes. He will transform our bodies. The verb transform (metaschēmatizei) is the verb for changing the form of something, taking what is in one configuration and reshaping it into another. The transformation in view is not the destruction of the body. The body is not abandoned. The body is transformed. What is humble (tapeinōseōs: lowly, low in status, subject to weakness and decay) becomes glorious (doxēs: of glory, in the radiance of God’s own glory).

This is the Christian hope of bodily resurrection. The body that suffers, the body that grows old, the body that will eventually be buried: that body will not be left in the ground. It will be raised. And it will be raised as the same body, yet transformed, conformed to the glorious body of Christ Himself, the resurrection body in which He now sits at the right hand of the Father.

The Lutheran Confessions are clear about this. We confess in the Apostles’ Creed the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting (AC XVII). We do not confess merely the immortality of the soul, in the manner of Greek philosophy. We confess the resurrection of the body: this body, the body that was baptized, the body that received the sacrament, the body that lived out its vocation in a particular place at a particular time (FC SD I). That body will be raised. And it will be raised glorious, conformed to the image of the One who has gone before us into resurrection.

By means of that power by which he is able to subject all things to himself. The transformation will be accomplished by the same power that subjects all things to Christ. This is no small power. The power that will raise our bodies is the power that will, at the same moment, complete Christ’s lordship over every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth. The same power that brought Him out of the tomb will bring us out of ours. The same power that exalted Him to the highest place will, when all things are gathered into His hand, transform every member of His body into the likeness of His glory.

This is the destination toward which Paul has been pressing on. This is the upward call. This is what the citizens of heaven are waiting for. Not a return to Eden. Not an escape from the body into a disembodied bliss. The resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come: a glorified existence in glorified bodies, in the presence of the glorified Christ, in the new creation that He will bring.

And so Paul ends this section with a benediction that is also a command. So then, my brothers and sisters, dear friends whom I long to see, he writes, my joy and crown, stand in the Lord in this way, my dear friends! The terms of endearment pile up. My brothers and sisters. Dear friends whom I long to see. My joy and crown. My dear friends. Paul rarely speaks this tenderly. He is writing to a church he genuinely loves, and as the chapter ends he lets the love spill onto the page.

Stand in the Lord in this way. The verb (stēkete) is the same one he used in 1:27, when he hoped to hear that they were standing firm in one spirit. He returns to it now, at the end of all this teaching about the far greater value of knowing Christ and the upward call and the heavenly citizenship. In this way: stand firm in what I have just told you. Stand firm in the righteousness from God by faith. Stand firm in pressing on toward the goal. Stand firm against the enemies of the cross. Stand firm in the hope of the resurrection. Stand in the Lord.

The Christian life is, in the end, a stand. We stand on what Christ has done. We stand in the righteousness He has given. We stand in the hope He has promised. And we stand together, as the citizens of a city we have never yet seen, waiting for the Savior who will come from there.

Gathering the Threads

Philippians 3:12–4:1 brings the great Pauline center of the letter to its eschatological climax. Having received the righteousness from God in 3:1–11, the Christian now runs toward the goal: pressing on, forgetting what is behind, reaching out to the upward call, living up to what has been attained, watching for the enemies of the cross, awaiting the Savior whose coming will transform every humble body into the likeness of His glorious one. The passage ends with the warmest exhortation in the letter: stand in the Lord in this way, my dear friends!

The Lutheran shape of this teaching is once again unmistakable. The not yet of glorification is held in proper tension with the already of justification. The Christian has the righteousness from God; he has not yet been brought to its final completion. He is justified; he is also being sanctified; he will, one day, be glorified. He runs not to earn what he has but to receive more fully what has been promised. And the running is itself the work of the Spirit in him, conforming him daily to the image of the One who has gone before.

The doctrine of vocation runs alongside the eschatology. Christians are citizens of heaven even while they live in the earthly cities to which God has called them. Their heavenly citizenship does not exempt them from their earthly callings; it transforms them. The mother in her kitchen, the worker at his trade, the citizen at his civic duty: each of them is a colonist of heaven, planted by God in his particular place to embody, in that place, the life of the city to which he ultimately belongs. God’s two ways of ruling, the right-hand kingdom of the gospel and the left-hand kingdom of civil life, find their meeting point here (AC XVI). The Christian belongs to heaven, but he serves in the world.

And the resurrection of the body gets its full Pauline statement. The body is not despised. The body is not abandoned. The body, in all its lowliness, will be transformed, by the same power that subjects all things to Christ, into the likeness of His glorious body. This is not Greek immortality. This is biblical resurrection. The Lutheran Confessions, against every spiritualizing heresy that has ever sought to deny the body, hold to the resurrection of this body, transformed into glory. Paul is teaching us, in this passage, what we will confess every time we recite the Creed.

Beneath all of it is the simple posture of waiting. The Christian eagerly awaits the Savior. The verb is intense: eager, expectant, leaning forward. We do not invent our own salvation. We do not generate our own glorification. We wait for it, with the same eager waiting with which a colony waits for the arrival of its lord. And the Lord we wait for is the same Lord who has already met us at our baptism, who feeds us in the Supper, who walks with us in the Word, and who will, at the appointed hour, come from heaven to bring us home.

For Discussion

This session shows what the justified life looks like in motion: pressing forward, holding firm, watching for danger, and waiting for the Lord. The questions below invite you to think about your own running, your own watching, and your own waiting.

Paul says, not that I have already attained this (that is, I have not already been perfected). How does Paul’s honest disclaimer of arrival shape the way you think about your own spiritual progress? Where in your own life have you been tempted to settle into a feeling of having arrived, and how does Paul’s example call you back to the race?
The one thing (hen) to which Paul is single-minded is forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead. What things in your own past, whether failures or successes, have you let determine your present? What would it look like to leave them behind for the sake of pressing on toward Christ?
Paul speaks gently to those who think otherwise, trusting that God will reveal it to you. Where in your own life have you been on the slower end of learning, and how has God patiently revealed His truth to you over time? How might Paul’s gentleness shape the way you treat fellow Christians who have not yet seen what you see?
Paul names the marks of the enemies of the cross of Christ: their god is the belly, they exult in their shame, and they think about earthly things. Without naming names, what do you see in our own time and our own culture that fits this description? How does Paul’s posture of tears rather than contempt shape the way you ought to respond?
Our citizenship is in heaven. What practical difference does this declaration make in the way you live your day-to-day life? Where does your heavenly citizenship come into conflict with your earthly one, and how do you navigate the conflict?
The final word of the passage is stand in the Lord in this way. What does it mean for you, today, in your particular circumstances, to stand firm? What are the pressures that would push you off your stand, and what is the way Paul means, the basis on which you stand?

Looking Ahead

In Session 7 we move into Philippians 4:2–9, where Paul gives the church its closing exhortations. He will address two women, Euodia and Syntyche, calling them to agree in the Lord. He will tell the Philippians, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, rejoice! He will tell them not to be anxious about anything, to take everything to God in prayer, and to receive the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. And he will close with one of the most beautiful lists in his letters (whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable) as the food on which the Christian mind is to feed.

Read Philippians 4:2–9 before our next session.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, who has laid hold of us by Your grace, grant us to lay hold of You by faith. Make us a people who forget the things that are behind and reach out for the things that are ahead, striving toward the prize of Your upward call. Keep us mature in the knowledge that we have not yet arrived, and patient with those who have not yet seen what You have shown us. Save us from being enemies of the cross: from making a god of the belly, from exulting in shame, from minds set on earthly things. And as citizens of heaven, eagerly awaiting You as our Savior, transform these humble bodies of ours, when You come in glory, into the likeness of Your glorious body, by the power by which You subject all things to Yourself. To the praise of Your name, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.