In the September 2018 issue of Tabletalk magazine, I contributed an article on what it means to live as dual citizens between the times.
Here is an excerpt on citizenship:
One of the biblical metaphors for thinking through our relationship between the present age and the age to come is citizenship.
Citizenship is a publicly recognized legal status that authorizes someone to be a citizen—that is, a full and functioning member of a civitas, a social and political community, along with the rights and duties that come along with it.
Unlike someone who is merely a subject in a kingdom, a citizen participates in the community to help maintain civic order.
In the book of Acts, we see the Apostle Paul not only acknowledging the concept of his Roman citizenship but also actively appealing to it.
When the police told Paul and Silas that the magistrates authorized their quiet release from jail, Paul became indignant: “They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out” (Acts 16:37).
In Acts 22, Paul successfully protested a flogging at the hands of the magistrates by asking the centurion a simple question: “Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned? . . . I am a citizen by birth” (Acts 22:25, 28). In both cases, the response by the Roman authorities was one of genuine fear, since they had been unjustly violating the rights of one of their citizens (Act 21:38–39; 22:29).
Although Paul had obtained Roman citizenship through his family’s history, he came to have another kind of citizenship as well. Writing to the church in Philippi, he says that for Christians, “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20).
Jesus said His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). When we are born again and are adopted into the family of God, we enter a new kingdom and submit to a new King, having been “delivered . . . from the domain of darkness and transferred . . . to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13).
You can read the whole piece here.
