67: Citizenship (Belief-Based Identity, Part 7)

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Season 1, episode 67. Today we are continuing our discussion about our new covenant identity.

Hello, Father.

[00:30] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:32] Stephanie: How are you today?

[00:33] Marcus: I’m doing well, actually. It’s been a beautiful, sunny day. It’s in September when we’re doing this, right? Probably October when this is coming out?

[00:41] Stephanie: It is the week of the conference.

[00:43] Marcus: Wow. Okay. There you go.

[00:45] Stephanie: Yeah. Which we’re going to talk about in just a minute, but I want to start with an icebreaker. This listener wants to know, what is your favorite candy bar?

[00:56] Marcus: My favorite candy bar. So back in the day when I was a little kid, a little chunky kid, that ran to the store with my dime to go buy candy bars, it was the Three Musketeers. That creamy whipped chocolate in the middle was my favorite one. Honestly, now that I’m like a grown up, I’m not that thrilled with them. But I remember as a kid, that was definitely the deal.

[01:27] Stephanie: Now that you say that, I remember it. I was expecting you to say maybe like, Almond Joy or something.

[01:32] Marcus: Well, yeah, Almond Joy as an adult has probably been my favorite candy bar.

[01:38] Stephanie: Yeah. And I can’t go wrong with Reese’s. Put peanut butter and chocolate together or just a straight chocolate bar, it’s good stuff.

[01:49] Marcus: As long as there’s chocolate in there somewhere I’m usually okay.

[01:53] Stephanie: Indeed. All right, let’s talk about the 35th anniversary conference happening this week. Whoa. It’s here. We’ve been talking about it. We’ve been planning for it. As this episode is releasing we are probably currently up there and being crazy people, and God is good. So this is going to be so much fun. I’m so looking forward to getting to hug people who are there in person. And I’m also going to be interacting with people who are online and that’s going to be fun. So if you have been considering it, praying about it, or procrastinating, it is this week, and you can still join online. So welcome.

[02:39] Marcus: Yeah, it’s going to be fun. And that is the best part about conferences, seeing people. And for us, because our staff is completely virtual, we get the double benefit of finally get to see all of the staff in one place. So that’s going to be fun. And I know for me, I’ve got so many extra meetings and lunches and coffees and things scheduled with people. It’s one of the highlights when you can finally get together with everybody in person.

[03:10] Stephanie: Indeed. Indeed. And maybe we’ll have some candy bars.

[03:14] Marcus: Maybe. I think we’re talking about it. There is a candy factory literally across the street from the property. For those who can’t make it and it’s only online, the content is going to be great.

[03:27] Stephanie: The content is going to be great. I’ve been going through the speaker notes and putting things together.  I’m so excited for all the content and all the community. Huzzah!

[03:36] Marcus: Huzzah!

[03:37] Stephanie: All right, for today’s content we are continuing with the new covenant. We’ve been working through your acrostic PACT, and it is time to unpack the “C” for citizenship. So first to review, the core elements of the new covenant can be remembered with this acrostic. In Christ we are pardoned, adopted, made citizens of the kingdom, and given a new title, saint. So let’s talk more about citizenship.

[04:05] Marcus: All right, citizenship. So the Greek word for citizen is Oikonomia, from which we get the English word economy. At the anchor of it is Oikos, which is the idea of house, but it goes beyond house to the idea of a family system. So a whole family system was the Oikos. So it’s like the house of Gucci, the house of, I don’t know, the house of Warner, cause we’re kind of similar like that. An economy had to do with a system and it was usually a family system. It could extend to a tribal system. So this idea of citizenship when it comes to our Christian life basically comes down to one core idea, we are not of this world any longer. We are now in the kingdom of God. So our citizenship has changed from being citizens of the world to being citizens of the kingdom. So that’s the core of what we’re talking about.

[05:06] Stephanie: And before we get into the spiritual stuff, I want to make sure we have a good, concrete idea for what it looks like normally. What citizenship means normally. Because I think it also helps inform how we’re wrapping our brains around things. So do you want to maybe talk in the present and then we can move to some more Roman history?

[05:27] Marcus: But I love Roman history.

[05:28] Stephanie: Oh, we all love Roman history.

[05:30] Marcus: All right. Most of us I’m guessing know people who have had to go to court and go through a process to become a U.S. citizen. We’ve worked with refugees who became immigrants who went through the whole process of becoming citizens. And when that happens there are legal changes to your identity that take place because of that. My wife, your mother, I tell her I married a Brazilian beauty. She’s not technically Brazilian, but she has Brazilian citizenship. Her heritage is more German, but she was born in Brazil so she has dual citizenship. So that’s a legal thing. What it does is it affects your rights. What are your rights and your privileges and also your responsibilities? So if you become a citizen of a different entity than you were a citizen of before, it comes with both rights and responsibilities. It’s the same with our citizenship in heaven.

[06:37] Stephanie: All right. Now I will unleash you into Rome.

[06:39] Marcus: Into Rome.

[06:41] Stephanie: That could be scary.

[06:42] Marcus: So Paul says in Philippians 3:20, your citizenship is in heaven.  One of the reasons that’s significant is the city of Philippi to whom he’s writing, was a Roman colony that was originally colonized and given to Roman veterans. So if you were a veteran of the Roman legions, part of your pay as a Roman legionnaire was that when you retired you were given land ,and you were basically taken care of for the rest of your life. So it was like a pension. Well, Philippi was one of those places where it was populated with Roman soldiers who were veterans of the Roman army.

And so the idea of citizenship was really keen there. So everybody who was born in Philippi even though it was north of Greece in Macedon, everybody there was born a Roman citizen. And that meant they had special rights that came with being citizens. So in general, this idea of citizenship was used by the Roman Empire to threaten, like, do you really want to stand up to us because we can beat you up. They had a lot of threats. They were the most dominant military the world had seen up to that point.

[08:00] Stephanie: It was a carrot and stick.

[08:02] Marcus: It was a carrot and a stick. So they had the threat and they had the promise of something good. Well, the good thing that they routinely promised was citizenship as well as trade. But citizenship was the main one. And so there were people everywhere who wanted to become Roman citizens because of some of the rights that came with that. One, there were people you could marry as a Roman citizen that you couldn’t marry if you weren’t. It also affected your taxation. Roman citizens by and large, didn’t pay taxes. Everybody else paid the taxes to support them. Once that became impossible, there was still a different tax rate for citizens and non-citizens. It was an empire.

So most of that revenue was coming from people who’d been conquered. They were there to support the Roman citizens and their way of thinking. And then there was also perhaps most importantly this aspect of trial, and what happened with the legal system. You had more rights before the legal system as a Roman citizen. So we’re probably the most familiar with that because of the Apostle Paul who often invoked his citizenship.

It was interesting as he was in Philippi, which we’ve already mentioned. He was arrested and beaten, and then they found out he was a Roman citizen, and they were like, oh. They were very scared because Paul as a Roman citizen had the right to appeal to a higher court and they would have been the ones in trouble. They could have easily lost their positions. They could have been sent to prison themselves. They could have literally lost everything, it was a serious offense.

And so when they said, please just get out of town, Paul’s like, are you kidding me? You did all this to me and I’m a Roman citizen. You escort me out of town. And they did it because they knew he had every right to get them in a heap of trouble. So there are legal rights that come with citizenship that would have been really important back in those days. So when Paul’s talking about citizenship, he lived during the Roman Empire and this would have been the background. This is what would have come to everybody’s mind is the rights related to taxation, related to trials, and also just the relational rights. Who you would associate with and even to the point of who you could marry.

[10:30] Stephanie: Yeah. All right, now I’ll unleash you into the spiritual realities. So what are the practical but spiritual realities of being a citizen of heaven?

[10:38] Marcus:  I often think of Jesus standing before Pilate. He’s on trial and Pilate says, So are you a king? And he gives a real simple answer, hey, yeah, but my kingdom is not of this world. If it was, my followers would rise up and fight for me. But now my kingdom is from another place. And Jesus frequently said, I’m from above. Especially the Gospel of John, it really hammers home on this that Jesus is portrayed as the one who is from above. From a different place, from a different world, who has come into this world and he has come to bring it light, and he’s come to bring it life. And he’s now brought in his first disciples and he has given them the same citizenship.

And so in his high priestly prayer, John 17, he prays and he says of his followers, they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. And so that is a citizenship statement. He said, I am not of the world, and you are not of the world. Which means if I’m not, then my identity has changed. When it comes to this world I am a stranger, I’m an alien, and I’m an outsider. And that’s the perspective like the Apostle Peter really brings home in his epistles.

And then on the positive side, I am a citizen, which means I have rights and I have responsibilities. Now, some of those rights bleed over into the adoption thing we just talked about where I have rights to inheritance. But Jesus even said to his disciples one time, who pays taxes? Is it the sons or is it the other people? Well, sons don’t pay taxes. Same thing, that kind of overlaps with the citizenship that God is not expecting us to pay our own way for this. He’s taking care of all of these things. So when we talk about citizenship it comes down to this fundamental identity of, am I of the world or am I not of the world? Am I of the kingdom? So part of this really starts with again, the Apostle John in 1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world nor anything of the world”.

This is getting at the same idea that as a citizen I want to make sure that I keep my first love Christ and his kingdom. When I think of that, “do not love the world”, I think of the world as the devil’s mistress. And she’s sexy and flirty, and hey, spend time with me, and I’ve got the good thing. And John is saying, don’t fall for that. Don’t fall for that nonsense of living for the pleasures of now, of living for what you can get now. Jesus says the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, let’s have that eternal perspective. And so living as a kingdom citizen will immediately mean living with an eternal perspective on life.

[13:48] Stephanie: Well, you can build more off of that. I want to bring up just two concrete things that are responsibilities that we have as citizens and facets of our identity, which are the ambassador and the steward. And you’re kind of on a steward train right there, so you can keep chugging along.

[14:07] Marcus: Yeah. So the idea of stewardship is that you were given a trust, you were given assets and you have been entrusted with those assets. And  we should be using the assets that we’ve been given for the sake of the kingdom. Now, we do this for two reasons. One, because that’s where our loyalty lies. But two, it’s also because that’s where our treasure lies. Like the Roman soldier who’s going to retire someday and that’s going to be my future. Jesus is saying the same thing. He’s like, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. So that’s what stewardship is all about. Stewardship is: I’m giving you these assets now, invest them for the kingdom, and use them for the benefit of the kingdom. Don’t just use them for the world and for your own selfish good.

And so the more that we do that it says not only are you helping the kingdom, but the king is saying, I’m going to remember what you’ve done. It will go into the treasure that you’re storing up for yourself. One of my favorite stories explaining this is Randy Alcorn who runs a ministry called Eternal Perspective Ministries, which makes sense because if you’re a kingdom citizen you’re living with an eternal perspective.

He talks about living overseas and some of his friends were also living overseas at the time and working there, they were just living lavishly, enjoying all the things that living overseas had to offer. Meanwhile, he had some nice things, he wasn’t living like a pauper, but he was sending the majority of it ahead to the U.S., to where he knew he was going to spend most of his life. He knew he was only there for a couple of years so he was always remembering, this is not my home. That’s the main thing, this is not my home.

I’ve got to remember where my home is and make sure that my priorities stay accordingly. So that’s the idea of a steward. A steward is making sure that their priorities are kingdom first. And this is embodied in that statement from the Sermon on the Mount. Seek first God’s kingdom, his righteousness, everything else will be taken care of. That’s the ultimate stewardship statement in the Bible.

[16:18] Stephanie:  I want to get to ambassadorship, but maybe linger more on, what is the kingdom? Is the kingdom physically somewhere else? Like, what does it mean? What is the kingdom in terms of where you’re storing that treasure or with the perspective you’re thinking through?

[16:36] Marcus: I think it’s on Venus. It sometimes helps me to think of the kingdom of God as almost like being on another planet. But I use that just to make it a little more concrete for myself, not that I think it is. The idea here though, is that someday the kingdom of God is going to come to Earth.

[17:01] Stephanie: Because there’s a lot of “already”, not yet stuff with the kingdom.

[17:02] Marcus: There’s a lot of “already”, not yet stuff. And so there’s this unseen realm that we only get glimpses into in the Bible. But the promise is that in the same way that Jesus left, he’s coming back. And when he comes back he’s going to sit on David’s throne. He’s going to reign over the nations with a rod of iron. There’s going to be a literal kingdom here on Earth and we will reign with Him, it says. Well, technically, it’s those who are martyred for Christ in the Tribulation which gets us into a whole other set of weeds. It’s still this idea that the kingdom is a tangible future thing as well as a tangible present reality. It’s just that we don’t have as much access to the present reality because it’s spiritual. And there’s real spiritual power. There’s a real spiritual stuff going on, but we access it differently and we experience it differently.

[18:04] Stephanie: Thank you. That’s what I was going for. So, ambassadors, how are we ambassadors as citizens?

[18:12] Marcus: Well, if this world is not my home, then my home is heaven. That means that I am a heavenly person walking around in this world. Which means whether I want to be or not my very identity is ambassador. Because if that’s who I am, a citizen of the kingdom walking around wherever I go, then I represent heaven everywhere I go. I represent the kingdom of God everywhere I go, not just Sunday mornings. It’s like my ambassadorship is not just, oh, I should witness to this person, I should share the gospel with this person. I should do some kind of ministry. My identity is a kingdom person. Just like if I’m an American overseas somewhere, I don’t turn that on and off. The very fact that I am in America means I am a representative.

So Paul talks about this in 2nd Corinthians. He says, we’re all ambassadors of the kingdom of God and as ambassadors our mission is reconciliation. Which takes us right back to the reason for the covenant, the reason for identity and everything else. He said he’s given us a ministry of reconciliation. And as ambassadors of the kingdom we are crying out, “Please be reconciled to God.” So this is kind of what’s going on here. Paul was very acutely aware that there’s this official element to our identity that leads directly into mission. And so I don’t choose to go into mission, I am on mission, because that’s simply a part of who I am as a citizen of the kingdom in a foreign place. So all that ties together. Citizenship reminds us of stewardship. It also reminds us that I am an ambassador in everything that I do.

[20:00] Stephanie: Anything more about citizenship you want to cover specifically?

[20:04] Marcus: Well, those are the main things, to not love the world. To me that’s one of the more helpful identity things. I think it was C. S. Lewis who said, “Everybody you meet is either becoming a creature so despicable you’d recoil in horror, or something so glorious you’d be tempted to worship.” And was it Jim Elliott who said, “Whatever is not eternally useful is eternally useless?” And I think Lewis had another quote about eternity like that, but it’s the same idea. I think it’s helpful for us periodically just to step back and think about the eternal perspective that comes from being a citizen of the kingdom.

And to me that’s really the key thing here that I need to be looking at this world not just in terms of how am I going to survive this place? How am I going to thrive in this place? But how do I look at everything that I’m going through from the perspective of through the eyes of eternity, what’s really important here? And that’s a helpful way to kind of cut through some of the clutter in life.

[21:12] Stephanie: That’s a good anchor. So you’ve already kind of been doing this naturally, but can you tie citizenship with pardon and adoption now, and how those work together with our identity?

[21:24] Marcus: Yeah. So if you go back to the Roman system where most of them were slaves, if the anchor thing  is I’m in slavery like the Israelites under Pharaoh. Or I am a slave who’s been conquered by the Roman machine and now I’m working for this aristocratic Italian. It’s like, here I am. I’ve got this dual identity already. So I’m set free and that’s what the pardon is all about, is being set free. And then I’m given everything that I need for life and then I am adopted into the family. But with the adoption would also come citizenship. As a prisoner of war who’s become a slave I’m probably not a Roman. Roman citizens didn’t become slaves, it was prisoners of war who became slaves. It was people who went into significant debt who became slaves.

So I would lose the rights of citizenship as a slave. Being set free and being adopted by a family that is a Roman citizen then I also become a Roman citizen. Along with all of the rights and responsibilities that brings. And so all of these things do tie together. The pardon, the adoption, the citizenship. They’re all connected as the foundations of who we are and what this new identity is that God has so graciously given us.

[22:56] Stephanie: Maybe it’s because you teach such a legal approach to spiritual warfare, but I just keep thinking about spiritual warfare principles. We’re talking about our rights and we’re talking about our authority. And those are very spiritual warfare things. So how does citizenship identity tie into spiritual warfare?

[23:16] Marcus: First of all, it determines which side of the war I’m on which is fundamental. I am not on your side, I am on Jesus’s side. That’s an important thing to get clear. In terms of the authority that I have as a child of God as somebody adopted is far greater than the authority I have as a citizen, but they are connected. And so I do think legally about this very much. And it helps me to understand that first of all, demons have rights and that I have rights. And so because demons have rights, it’s like if someone has given them permission to be someplace then legally they have a right to be there.

And that’s why I take this approach that says we got to get rid of those legal permissions and then we use our authority to evict and to command them to leave. And that’s why permission and authority go together so well in spiritual warfare. And since all of this is legal, the covenant is legal. If you stop and think about it, most of the words about salvation of the Bible have a legal overtone to them. From reconciliation to redemption to forgiveness to justification to adoption, and citizenship. A lot of legal stuff going on here.

[24:36] Stephanie: All right. All very important, thank you. And next week we are going to continue wrapping up PACT. We’re going to be talking about our title, which is Saint. I’m very excited about that. And before you give closing thoughts, do you want to give a pitch for why people should stop procrastinating and join the conference this week?

[24:58] Marcus: I think that anytime you can be a part of something. I know it’s a lot to just sit at your desk and watch something, so I don’t actually expect people to do that, but it’s nice to have it on in the background. It’s nice to be able to focus on the stuff that you want and to feel like you’re a part of it. You have a connection to what’s going on and it also gives you just access to all of the teachings. So everybody who signs up to come in person automatically gets recordings of everything that goes on. By signing up you get access to all the recordings of everything that we do at the conference as well.

[25:30] Stephanie: And to clarify, I think you said it in person, but if you’re coming online you are also going to get those recordings.

[25:35] Marcus: What I meant is people coming in person are going to get all the recordings. But by signing up to attend online, you also not only get to watch it online, you get the recordings to watch whenever you want from that point on.

[25:48] Stephanie: So give us a peek. What are you most excited to be talking about?

[25:52] Marcus: So I have a book coming out March 5 called Breakthrough: Five Essential Strategies for Freedom Healing and Wholeness, which I’m going to be talking about. Three levels of breakthrough and five strategies or five engines that have to be addressed to experience those breakthroughs. So, quick peek. The three levels of breakthrough. And I’m sure we’ll do a podcast on this at some point, but three levels of breakthrough have to do with relief for pain, repair for damage, and then rebuilding our maturity.

So some people are just looking for pain relief. Some people know they have damage that needs repaired. A lot of us don’t think about our maturity that needs to be rebuilt. So the first one has to do with symptoms. I want to feel better. Second one has to do with roots, what are the root issues that need to be resolved. And then the third one has to do with habits that need to be developed. So the opening session is going to be taking a dive into those three things. And then throughout, I’m going to be looking at the five engines and the strategies that grow out of them of how we experience greater breakthroughs in our lives.

[27:00] Stephanie: Huzzah!. And then there will be other lovely people who are going to be speaking too and it’s going to be an edifying party.

[27:08] Marcus: An edifying party, I like that. It should have been our tagline in the marketing. Here we go.

[27:14] Stephanie: 35 years of breakthrough because it’s our anniversary conference. Any closing thoughts?

[27:21] Marcus: Yeah. Once again, we’re talking about foundational stuff. If you go back to the foundations course that we offer at Deeper Walk and use the story of the well. It’s also in the book A Deeper Walk. And the idea of the well, just to remind people if it’s been a while since they’ve heard it. Is this picture of missionaries reclaiming a well that had become the town dump in a village in India. And as they cleaned it out they had to get rid of cobras, they had to get rid of a toilet, they had to get everything out. What they found that was the root cause of the whole thing was that the foundation stones had collapsed and it was keeping this fresh water from filling the well. So once they cleaned it, which is related to freedom, the next thing they had to do was reset that foundation.

And that foundation is like our identity in Christ. So when we come back to these identity teachings what we’re doing is revisiting the foundations of the faith, the foundation on which we’re building our lives. That’s why it’s so good to come back to this on a regular basis. And then what that does between the freedom and the identity it allows for the spirit to fill. He’s like the water that fills up the well and gives life and it bubbles up. And so the spirit is the source of all the life that we live as Christians and we do this in community. The well now becomes the centerpiece around which the community gathers and people are connecting. It took a community to get the well ready and it also then allows the community to benefit. And so the whole FISH model is kind of laid out with that illustration. So that’s my closing thought. It’s one of the reasons why we often come back to these foundational things related to identity again and again.

[29:12] Stephanie: So good. Thank you. I look forward to the conversation next week.  Thank you everyone for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more. And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review and share with your friends. Thanks again.

We’ll see you back next weekend.