Resident Aliens

So you’re taking the family road trip, and America’s interstate highway system is the pathway to your destination—to Niagara Falls, the Outer Banks, or Acadia National Park. After a few hours scrunched in the car, it’s time to stretch the legs at one of those wonderful Rest Areas.

Here’s what you DON’T do at the Rest Area: unload the trunk, haul in the bags, lock the car, and settle in. You DON’T unroll your sleeping bags, put on pajamas, and curl up for the night at the Rest Area. Of course not; it’s just a quick stop. The Rest Area isn’t your destination.

So too, this world is NOT our home, we’re only passing through. We’re citizens of another “country,” a heavenly kingdom. Our passport may be stamped to show we’ve visited this world, but it’s not our final destination. You could say we’re “resident aliens” here. According to the IRS, resident aliens are “non-U.S. citizens currently residing in the United States.” They live here, but they have citizenship elsewhere. So too, Christians live in this world, but our citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20). That’s why it’s so ridiculous when Christians unpack and settle in here at the Rest Stop—how bizarre to act as if this were our final destination!

.

"If my people..."

It gets messy sorting out the believer’s allegiance to God and country. Let’s take the “If my people” text as case study. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chron 7:14). My people… their land… How is this word to ancient Israel relevant for God’s people in the world today?

In Old Testament times God’s people lived under “theocracy”: devotion to God and allegiance to government were one and the same thing; there’s no separation between religion and public life, between “church and state.” American Christians are at times prone to think we should have a theocracy today—that the rule of God can somehow be restored in the U.S.A. But that’s not a biblical hope. With the coming of Christ and his giving of the Great Commission, the Lord brought theocracy to an end.

God’s people today is an inter­national, inter-racial, worldwide people—called the church—that can’t be con­tained in any one nation-state. So a promise about the “land” of ancient Israel cannot be neatly transferred to our country today. Rather, the application of 2 Chronicles 7:14 would center on the church—that group who, today, are God’s people: “my people.” If we as Christians scattered in fellowships all around the world repent and pray and humbly seek God, then he will respond and renew his people—the church. And so, the text relates to the revival of the church, not the improvement of living conditions in any particular country.

.