GodReflection: Power Words

Jesus tells the story of a son who talked his dad into cashing out his share of the inheritance prior to his father’s death. With his pockets full, the boy blew through his windfall at a record pace. He woke up flat broke. As a non-citizen the best he could do was feed pigs and remain hungry.

The punch line of the story is when father God restores the repentant big spender to full family citizenship.

The sinful lad is no longer a foreign hog feeder. He now has fine clothes, a ring, a feast, and citizenship extended by his father.

The contrast to citizen is foreigner.

I think of the way foreigners lack acceptance in every country of the world. Some nations shun the outsider. Non-citizens may find harm in hostile nations. Some nations are glad to have non-citizens for menial jobs.

Still other countries welcome the foreigner but everyone knows they aren’t a “true citizen.”

While living in Brazil I always felt more than welcome even though I was a foreigner. Even with documents to grant resident status, I remained a foreigner.

I was a foreigner because I missed the first 20 years that forms speech and makes one a product of the culture. I wasn’t born a citizen. I acquired citizenship through the legal system. I lived as a legal citizen with the full knowledge I would forever be an outsider.

Even as I write, I am thinking of the nation  where everyone receives full citizenship. It is a nation without second-class citizens.  The nation has a king. Each citizen speaks the king’s language. Every member of the nation receives prestige. Each is of such importance the king paid an exorbitant price to make citizenship available.

To the recipient there isn’t a need for an exam. The king freely gives the title of citizen to all immigrants. Each enters daily into the palace to dine with the king.

Allow me once again to run together some of the Apostle Paul’s lines of encouragement:

Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, [where] our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is a powerful concept to understand my status as a fellow citizen with all of God’s people from all of God’s time. Like the sinful big spender living as a foreigner I too received the Father’s grace to become a member of God’s household.

However, it gets better. If I will be patient, my Savior the Lord Jesus Christ will take me to the new heaven where all power of Satan over suffering and death will end. I will enjoy eternal citizenship in the presence of good alone.

I love the way Paul describes the wait. I used the phrase “if I will be patient.”  Paul sees the wait as more aggressive. He wants me to “eagerly await” the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I know I am a citizen of the King. However, that fact will hit me as a reality beyond my greatest imagination when the Lord escorts me to my eternal dwelling.

Since I am a citizen, the very word citizen provides power as I eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

It would encourage me to hear your expression of your own possession of citizenship.

If you are not a citizen, I know a Father who will do the paperwork free of charge.

Stay tuned.

Dr. Gary J. Sorrells – A GodReflection on the Power Word Citizen.

Gary@Godreflection.org