The saints of old “acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). This is no less true for Christians today; as Paul writes, “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). But though we are on the road to that homeland, we are not there yet.

It is from this understanding of Christians as pilgrims–wayfaring strangers on the road to their true home but living in the meantime in a foreign land–that Rev. Jason J. Stellman has written Dual Citizens: Worship and Life Between the Already and the Not Yet.

Stellman wrestles with the implications of the Christian’s dual citizenship in the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, showing that the great challenge for believers today is maintaining their distinctiveness as redeemed people. Believers are free to participate in culture (though the Bible guides the way they participate), but they must not so immerse themselves in it that they obscure their true identities.

Dual Citizens is a call for believers to see the present from the standpoint of the future, for doing so will enable them to see their lives, with all their trials and triumphs, as part of God’s great unfolding story.

Dr. Michael Horton, professor at Westminster Seminary California, has answered three common questions asked of Two Kingdom Theology on the White horse Inn blog.  The three posts have been combined into one essay, and made available in pdf  format.

R. Scott Clark at the Heidelblog talks about a new book that looks as though it will be helpful for L&G readers in understanding the doctrine of the two kingdoms:

New and just in to the Bookstore at WSC, The author, Jason Stellman, is pastor of Exile PCA in the Seattle metro and author of the frequently provocative blog, De Regnis Duobus. He’s also a WSC grad and a former student. He has a great haircut!  The blurb says: New covenant believers live between “the already” and “not yet,” a point in redemptive history between the partial and complete fulfillment of God‘s promises. This means they are exiles and pilgrims in the divinely ordained overlap of the ages. As Rev. Jason J. Stellman argues in his book Dual Citizens: Worship and Life Between the Already and the Not Yet, this biblical motif shapes the identity of Christians at every turn and affects their every activity in both the sacred and secular realms. Stellman explores the Christian pilgrimage with deep biblical insight, humor, and relevance to our contemporary context, revealing how Christians are to think of themselves and their role this side of heaven.

From the pen of Michael Horton:

It was confusing to grow up singing both “This World Is Not My Home” and “This Is My Father’s World.” Those hymns embody two common and seemingly contradictory Christian responses to culture. One sees this world as a wasteland of godlessness, with which the Christian should have as little as possible to do. The other regards cultural transformation as virtually identical to “kingdom activity.”

Certainly the answer does not lie in any intrinsic opposition of heaven and earth. After all, Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Rather, the answer is to be sought in understanding the particular moment in redemptive history where God has placed us. We are not yet in the Promised Land, where the kingdom of God may be directly identified with earthly kingdoms and cultural pursuits. Yet we are no longer in Egypt. We are pilgrims in between, on the way.

In Babylon, God commanded the exiles to “build houses and settle down,” pursuing the good of their conquering neighbors (Jer. 29). At the same time, he prophesied a new city, an everlasting empire, as the true homeland that would surpass anything Israel had experienced in Canaan.

So both of my childhood hymns tell the truth in their own way: We are pilgrims and strangers in this age, but we “pass through” to the age to come (not some ethereal state of spiritual bliss), which, even now in this present evil age, is dawning.

The challenge is to know what time it is: what the kingdom is, how it comes, and where we should find it right now.

Is Christianity a Culture?

In the Old Covenant, the kingdom of God was identified with the nation of Israel, anticipating the Last Day by executing on a small scale the judgment and blessings that will come one day to the whole world. Yet Jesus introduced a different polity with the New Covenant. Instead of calling on God’s people to drive out the Canaanites in holy war, Jesus pointed out that God blesses both believers and unbelievers. He expects his people to love and serve rather than judge and condemn their neighbors, even their enemies (Matt. 5:43–48; see also Matt. 7:1–6). The wheat and the weeds are to be allowed to grow together, separated only at the final harvest (Matt. 13:24–30). The kingdom at present is hidden under suffering and the Cross, conquering through Word and sacrament, yet one day it will be consummated as a kingdom of glory and power. First the Cross, weakness, and suffering; then glory, power, and the announcement that the kingdoms of this world have been made the kingdom of Christ (Rev. 11:15; see also Heb. 2:5–18).

So what is the relationship of Christians to culture in this time between the times? Is Jesus Christ Lord over secular powers and principalities? At least in Reformed theology, the answer is yes, though he is Lord in different ways over the world and the church. God presently rules the world through providence and common grace, while he rules the church through Word, sacrament, and covenantal nurture.

This means that there is no difference between Christians and non-Christians with respect to their vocations. “We urge you, brothers, to [love one another] more and more,” Paul writes. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody” (1 Thess. 4:10–12). There are no calls in the New Testament either to withdraw into a private ghetto or to “take back” the realms of cultural and political activity. Rather, we find exhortations, like Paul’s, to the inauspicious yet crucial task of loving and serving our neighbors with excellence. Until Christ returns, believers will share with unbelievers in pain and pleasure, poverty and wealth, hurricanes and holidays. A believer, however, will not be anxious about the future and will not “grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope,” as Paul adds (1 Thess. 4:13), but will be energized in the most mundane daily pursuits by the knowledge that God will raise the dead and set everything right (1 Thess. 4:14–18). We groan inwardly for that final redemption with the whole of creation, precisely because we already have within us the Spirit as a down payment and guarantee (Rom. 8:18–25).

The earthly citizenship to which Jesus, Paul, and Peter referred is therefore a common sphere for believers and unbelievers. The second-century Epistle to Diognetus offers a self-portrait of the early Christian community:

For Christians are distinguished from the rest of men neither by country nor by language nor by customs. For nowhere do they dwell in cities of their own; they do not use any strange form of speech. … But while they dwell in both Greek and barbarian cities, each as his lot was cast, and follow the customs of the land in dress and food and other matters of living, they show forth the remarkable and admittedly strange order of their own citizenship. They live in fatherlands of their own, but as aliens. They share all things as citizens and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign land. … They pass their days on earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven.

So Christians are not called to make holy apparel, speak an odd dialect of spiritual jargon, or transform their workplace, neighborhood, or nation into the kingdom of Christ. Rather, they are called to belong to a holy commonwealth that is distinct from the regimes of this age (Phil. 3:20–21) and to contribute as citizens and neighbors in temporal affairs. “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). The church, therefore, as the communion of saints gathered by God for preaching, teaching, sacrament, prayer, and fellowship (Acts 2:46–47), is distinct from the broader cultural activities to which Christians are called in love and service to their neighbors. In our day, this pattern is often reversed, creating a pseudo-Christian subculture that fails to take either calling seriously. Instead of being in the world but not of it, we easily become of the world but not in it.

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