October 25, 2026 | Citizens Together
Citizens Together | Philippians 1:27–30
Philippians 1:27–30
Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. (ESV)
In Philippians 1:27–30, Paul calls believers to live as citizens of heaven, with their allegiance to Jesus shaping every part of life. In "Citizens Together," Jed Gillis explains that living worthy of the gospel doesn't mean earning God's favor. It means displaying the worth of Christ through the way we live. As a community of heavenly citizens, the church is called to reflect its King through sacrificial love, grace, and unity. This means standing firm together in the face of opposition, actively helping one another through life's struggles, and resting without fear in the gospel. Even in suffering, we can live with confidence because God is faithful to finish the work he has begun.
Transcript of Citizens Together | Philippians 1:27–30
What It Means to Be a Citizen
Jed Gillis: In just a minute, we'll begin in verse 27, but before we do that, I want you to think about what it means to be a citizen. Not at the moment a citizen of heaven, although we'll get to that. Just think what that word even means. What does it mean to be a citizen? And you could, we could talk for hours and hours and hours and have civics lessons, but at least it means five things.
Being a citizen means you have some kind of identity and belonging. As a citizen of the United States, you say, "Well, there's a belonging there." You're identified in a certain way.
It means you have some kinds of rights or protection. We know this. We see this in the news plenty of times. You see someone who's attacked, who's an American citizen somewhere else. That's a different story than many other attacks that go on around the world.
We know we have elections coming up. We have opportunity to, to vote. We have a right, a privilege, a responsibility as citizens.
It means we have an allegiance to a country. We do things like pledge allegiance. That's related to being a citizen.
It also means you have representation, in our context, and an ability to participate in, in governmental affairs. That's what it means to be a citizen.
Scripture Reading
Jed Gillis: Now, if you, if you have in your mind, and you can fill out that picture a lot more, or maybe depending on your background and how much you thought about it, maybe, maybe you can't. That's okay. But with whatever picture you have of citizenship, I want you to think about this. Actually, before we read in chapter one, look over in chapter three and verse 20.
Paul says this, "Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." Our citizenship. And back in chapter 1, although it's not translated this way here, the same exact word that's translated as citizenship in 3:20 is used in 1 and verse 27 when Paul says, "Only let your manner of life," let your citizenship. That's literally the word that's there. So I wanna read what he says from there. I'll use citizenship.
"Only let your citizenship be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have."
Paul's Charge to the Philippians
Jed Gillis: Having updated the Philippians on his life and said, "I'm in jail. I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know if I'm going to get released. I don't know if I'm gonna be executed." And then he, he goes on this talk—we talked last week about this—where he says, "I'm not even sure which one I prefer. Because if I'm released, I have fruitful labor, but that's work, and if I'm executed, that means I go to be with Christ, and that's even better."
We get famous phrases like, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." Having told the Philippians that, and they might say, "Okay, Paul, I get it. It's not our responsibility to worry about what happens to you. Whatever happens to you, Paul, whether you're released or whether you're executed." And we see that language in, in verse 27, "Whether I come and see you," so I'm released, "or am absent," I'm either still imprisoned or I'm killed for my faith.
Whatever happens, Paul says, "I'm gonna glorify Christ in my body. So Philippians, you don't need to worry about that." And you could imagine if they had a conversation back and forth, the Philippians might say, "Well, Paul, what i- what are we supposed to be concerned with? If we're not supposed to be over here wringing our hands that you get free, if we're not supposed to be worried about whether or not Jesus is king if you're in jail, what are we supposed to do?"
So he says, "Only..." Here's the thing. The one thing. You don't have to worry about all the rest of that stuff. The one thing, your responsibility: live out your citizenship, or let your manner of life, right? Live out your citizenship in a way that's worthy of the gospel of Christ.
Jesus Is King in Every Part of Life
Jed Gillis: It, this word citizenship is also the same word... This gives us a little color of why we translate it this way. In Acts 21, there are Jews from Asia who are stirring up trouble from Paul. This happened everywhere Paul went, if you haven't figured that out in the New Testament yet. People stirred up trouble for him because he was going saying, "Jesus is King, and that matters for your life and your country and your city and your religious practice," and all of these things.
So he's going, and he's stirring up these things. Their accusation toward him, literally this is the way they say it in Acts 21, "This man teaches everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. He has also brought Greeks into the temple." Everyone everywhere. I mean, that's pretty strong, right?
Like, look, this guy Paul, he just doesn't stop. He's telling everybody, every place, every city, every region, everywhere he can get to, he's saying, "Okay, here's the people of Rome. Here's why that's not the most important people. Here's the religious Jews. Here's why Jesus is better." Over and over, against the people, the place, the law, all these things.
They're like, "Paul is counter-cultural everywhere he goes, talking to everyone," because Paul is saying, "Jesus is King, and that matters for every part of your life."
And when Paul gets to his real defense, so that's Acts 21, there's a whole section in between there, but in Acts 23, Paul starts to give his, like, legal defense. Here's the way he starts. Paul says, "I have lived my life before God in all these things." Literally, that word for "lived my life" is "I have lived out my citizenship." It's the same word. I have lived my citizenship out before God. Paul says, "I'm not here to fit into your secular culture. I'm not here to fit into your religious culture outside of Jesus."
Paul says, "I am here to live a different kind of citizenship where Jesus is king, to proclaim that. That's what I have done." The same word: "live out your citizenship."
In other words, this word is—has political undertones. That's how the word's used all the time. In our modern context, we can debate the value of various positions and various political ideas from a Christian perspective, and I know in this room we have disagreements about that.
Here's what we can't do. We can't buy the modern lie that treats "Jesus is King" as merely a private statement. Our modern world likes to tell you that that's the case. You can believe Jesus is king in your house, somewhere else; it has nothing to do with the public sphere. That's not true.
When Paul says, "Live out your citizenship," he's saying, "You are a citizen of heaven. Jesus is your king. That means everything about your life relates to him." There's not a private sphere and then a public life. There's a citizen of heaven.
Like I said, good Christians can disagree about politics. That happens all the time. But these disagreements should be about how do we live out the idea that Jesus is king, not whether or not his kingship matters for our lives, or for our country, or our city, or any other group you wanna talk about. Paul says, "Live out your citizenship."
Philippi and Our Heavenly Citizenship
Jed Gillis: And citizenship was especially important in Philippi. You may know this already; you may not. Philippi was a—what's called a Roman colony. So not every city in the Roman Empire was on equal footing, if you will, or equal social standing. There, there were differences, and Rome would take especially important places. This happened all throughout world history, where you take, uh, like a, a major trade route, and where there's an intersection, the empire says, "Oh, we're gonna make sure we keep control of that intersection. There may be this other backwoods place where stuff happens, and that's okay, but we need to make sure we control this spot."
You could talk about the Strait of Hormuz—that'd be a modern example. Where there's a really important place that needs to be guarded for whatever group, and Rome would do this. They would go develop colonies. They weren't in Rome, but they would structure everything about this colony so that it was like a little bit of Rome, but not in Rome.
And in these contexts, not everyone in Philippi was a Roman citizen, but there were more people who were officially Roman citizens in colonies generally. So when Paul says, "Live out your citizenship," he's talking about something that people in Philippi would have known way more than people in some other cities within the Roman Empire.
Roman colonies were intentionally organized to reflect the Roman identity, the Roman law, the Roman culture, Roman customs. We'll get here in a minute, but every time I say Roman, think about what that means if we're organized around heavenly laws and customs and culture, 'cause our citizenship isn't in Rome.
Citizenship reminded people of a higher allegiance. For people in Philippi who were Roman citizens, they weren't supposed to just think, "We're part of Philippi." They thought, "Yeah, we're part of Philippi, but we're part of Rome." And they had social standing, and privileges, and all these things that, that other cities didn't have, because it was a Roman colony. Citizenship reminded them of another home.
Citizenship also reminded them of a corporate reality. It doesn't mean much if you're a citizen and you're the only citizen of whatever it is, right? That wouldn't be that meaningful. The point is we're citizens together. When you live out your heavenly citizenship, the point isn't just that you are part of a heavenly kingdom, it's that we are. There's a corporate reality to it.
Citizenship means legal protection. We know that in our court system, and we could debate whether it always works the way it should. Of course, it doesn't. It's fallible. But we do have certain protection because of citizenship. We have standing, we have rights, we have responsibilities.
All these things were tied to citizenship. The people in Philippi knew what it was like to live in one place and have a citizenship from somewhere else that was even more meaningful to their lives. They knew what that was like. And that's God's intent for us. Because we are part of his church. We have a citizenship, like chapter three says, from heaven.
I know we all have earthly citizenship, and we have heavenly citizenship if you're a believer. Those two things are not of equal importance. They're not of equal importance. Paul's not saying you have two equal citizenships: "Remember your second one." Paul's saying, "Remember your real one." And while you're a citizen of heaven, you also live in a geographical location. So we do what God's people have done all throughout scripture and throughout time. You live for the good of wherever you are in light of your real citizenship in heaven. That citizenship is what really matters.
Now, I'm very grateful to be an American citizen. I'm very grateful we have privileges and responsibilities like elections coming up, and the opportunity to vote in those. I'm glad that we have that, and we should.
But I wanna encourage you, when you vote, you're not voting primarily as an American citizen. You're voting as a Christian. That's the most fundamental reality. If you're a believer in Jesus, if He's king, that's the most fundamental thing about you and why you vote the way you do, or it should be. As I said, we can wrestle with what exactly that looks like.
We can talk about policies. We can talk about all of those things. Don't ignore the good you can do for your earthly country because you're a heavenly citizen and don't in- ignore your heavenly citizenship when you go to the polls.
The Church as a Colony of Heaven
Jed Gillis: God made us to live out our foreign citizenship—the one in heaven. That means heaven's customs and institutions—I used that phrase a minute ago—heaven's customs and institutions are supposed to shape our lives. We just did one just a minute ago. That's what this was. It was a pattern, a physical pattern instituted by our king to say, "This is the new covenant in my blood," so that you would take a custom, if you will, a practice of heaven, of the Kingdom of God, and do it here together.
When we have baptisms, that's a kingdom of God thing. We're announcing, you say, "I'm publicly declaring Jesus is my king and my trust is completely in him." That's heaven's customs and institutions shaping our lives. That's why we do church leadership the way we do, and we try to reflect: "How did God say his people were supposed to be organized?"
But we can think of things that aren't customs and institutions like that. Heaven's also shaped by sacrificial service, because our king put on a towel and washed feet. Because our King said, "You're to love one another just as I have loved you." So we as a body of believers, as citizens of heaven, we're supposed to be shaped by heaven's customs and institutions, which include we act like our King in serving one another even when it's sacrificial.
We're supposed to be shaped by the fact that as citizens of heavens, we're all brothers and sisters, so we love one another. That's not primarily an earthly value. That's a heavenly one.
We as the church are supposed to do that in a different way because we're citizens of heaven. So that if somebody comes in and sees, Jesus said, uh, "People will know you're my disciples if you have," what for one another? Love. Why? Because that kind of love, that kind of family, sacrificial, initiative-taking love, that kind of serving is a custom or an institution, if you will, we don't use those words very often, but it's, it's reflects our King. It's part of heaven. They're supposed to be able to come in and go, "You are citizens of somewhere else 'cause you're not like all these other things." We have love for one another.
We recognize that there's grace. That's one of the customs of heaven, if you think of it that way. Because God has shown, poured out this great grace towards us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Because God has done that, then part of what should fill a colony of heaven, the church, is the same kind of grace. All we're doing is saying that's what the kingdom of God is like, and as a colony full of heavenly citizens, we wanna act like that.
Earlier I said citizenship means you have privileges and responsibilities and knowledge, by the way. Some of you know, if you weren't a citizen, if you weren't born as a citizen of America, and then you become a citizen, you have to go, like, take tests and things like that, which some of us probably couldn't pass. You have to go take tests and learn about, well, what is this civic organization? What is America like?
There's knowledge. You know, that's, that's one reason we read this book. That's one reason we ask questions about what does this mean, and God, how do these pieces fit together? Because we're citizens of heaven, and we need to grow in knowledge of his kingdom. That's one reason we do that.
I've already talked about some privileges and responsibilities throughout this series. Think about one we've already exercised repeatedly this morning. You have the privilege to come before the throne of the God of the universe in prayer, and to say whatever you want. And you can be the youngest person in this room and pray, "Thanks for food and help me to not die tomorrow." And you can come and say, "God, help my friend to still like me tomorrow." Or you can have a whole big, like, detailed prayer, and it doesn't matter. You have the privilege to come before that throne because you're a citizen of heaven.
That's a privilege, but it's also a responsibility. Because Paul talked about, "I will be sustained through your prayers." It's a responsibility to pray for one another.
You have the privilege to love and be loved like a family, but you have the responsibility to love and be loved like a family because you're citizens of heaven.
One of my favorite pictures of the church, of any church gathering, is that the church is like an embassy of heaven. If you were to go to, say, Kenya and walk into the American Embassy, for all purposes, you are on American soil. When you're in the embassy, the flag that flies is the American flag. You are on American soil. If someone attacks the embassy, it's just like they attacked America. That's how embassies work.
You might not have thought about it this way, but right now, not because of the building, but because of the people gathered, you're in a heavenly embassy. It's heavenly soil. That's the point. The, the, the church, any gathered church, it's not primarily, it's not even really at all, an American civic organization. It's a heavenly one. It's a heavenly assembly. We are a bunch of, in, in, in one sense, we are a bunch of foreigners to America gathering to celebrate our kingdom in heaven. Now, we're not really foreigners in one sense, but we are. We're strangers and pilgrims on this world. Scripture refers to us that way.
Living Worthy of the Gospel
Jed Gillis: So Paul says, "Live out your citizenship worthy of the gospel." And let's, let's pause there for just a second 'cause that word worthy throws us all off. We're like, "Oh no, I don't feel worthy. I just was convicted of sin getting ready for communion." I was today, had a specific thing come to mind. "God, I need your forgiveness before I can take this with a clear heart."
Say, "I don't feel worthy." Yeah, he doesn't mean you need to be good enough that you are worthy of grace. That doesn't make any sense, 'cause grace is undeserved favor anyway. You can't be good enough to deserve something that's undeserved. That doesn't make any sense, right?
But when he says to live out your citizenship worthy of the Gospel of Christ, that means that you are displaying, your, your life displays the worth of that thing. Not that you earned it, but that the way you live out your citizenship demonstrates the value of having Jesus as your king.
If somebody can come alongside your life and hear you talk and hear the way you live, and they come away going, "I don't know if Jesus is valuable for them at all," there's a problem. If you say, "Oh, I'm a citizen of heaven," but nobody knows that that's of any benefit to me or any value to me, there's a problem.
We need to live out our citizenship in a way that the people who see the way you live, they say, "Man, it must be pretty awesome to have a king like that. It must be pretty fantastic to have grace like that."
We're supposed to live out our citizenship or to have, as he's, as it's translated in ESV, our manner of life be something that displays the worth of the Gospel of Jesus in everything that we do. So what's that look like, Paul? I mean, that's great, but it sounds kinda pie in the sky. What, like, on the street, what does it look like?
Confident Unity Despite Opposition
Jed Gillis: He gives us those things, too. He's gonna give us three descriptions of what it means to live worthy of our citizenship. First, to have confident unity despite opponents. He says, "That I may hear of you so that you are standing firm in one spirit." Standing firm, that's confidence. That's something that's unshakable, something that's strong, and it's in one spirit.
Now, I know depending on your translation, the word spirit may be capitalized, it may not be capitalized. There's a fairly complicated debate as to whether that's like we're all like-minded of one spirit, or whether that's the Holy Spirit. I think because of the way Paul uses it in other places, I think he's referring to the Spirit of God. Whether or not he was here, he certainly says we are to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. He uses that phrase of, of the Spirit of God as the unity given to us. So I think he's referring to having the Spirit of God within you: you stand firm together. Because having the Spirit of God is the mark of heavenly citizenship.
There are no citizens of heaven who do not have the Spirit of God. Romans 10 says, "If you don't have the Spirit of Christ, you're none of His." There's no citizen of heaven who does not have the Spirit of God. It's kind of like your passport, sort of. Say this is the mark of what it is to be a heavenly citizen.
So he says, "I want you to live out your citizenship so that when opponents come at you..." We don't have to look far to find opponents of Christianity, do we? The internet makes it really easy to find them. And in plenty of cases, you don't have to look to the internet, you can just find them in your relationships. There is opposition to the truth of the gospel. Paul says, "I don't wanna hear that you guys are all concerned. 'Oh, I don't know if I really believe it. I don't know if it's really worth being a citizen. I don't know.' I don't wanna hear that. I wanna hear you standing firm. And not just standing firm by yourself, but standing firm together in the Spirit of God against opponents of Christianity." He wants them to have that kind of unity and that kind of confidence.
I wanna say real quickly, one of the trends in our modern world, depending on where you are, is to emphasize the universal Church and our unity with the universal Church, and sometimes downplay our unity within the local church. And I know why people have done that. It's reactionary because there are some churches that make a big deal of standing against other churches that are good, solid, gospel-preaching churches. There are some churches that make such a habit of standing against them. "We're better than these people. Are they believers? Yes, but we're better and our church is better." And because that's been emphasized, m- maybe especially in the Southeast US, it's been emphasized so much that we've reacted against it and said, "Oh, yes, I'm united with God's people."
And sometimes I wanna ask, what about the person who sits next to you in church? Or excuse me, they don't sit next to you, they sit across the room from you, right? And you never actually see them. That happens. Paul's saying, "I don't want you to stand firm against other believers. That's not the point. I want you to stand firm in unity against the opponents who are out there."
It's good for us to say, we, as a body of believers, really do belong together. It's good to have unity to your brothers and sisters that you sit inside the same room, not just to believers in general.
Paul says he wants them to stand strong. And this, the term for stand firm is, it's a unit. I'm trying to figure out a good way to say this. I can't figure out a good one, so I'm just gonna explain it. It's a unit term. It doesn't mean, he's not telling you individually, "You make sure you stand strong, and if you feel weak today, you're failing." That's, that's not the point. The point is for you all, plural, to stand firm in unity in the Spirit even when you individually may feel weak at times.
If you were to look at, maybe yesterday some of you watched some college football games. I know, disappointing if you're a Volunteer fan. The offensive line is a unit. Do they always, all five, work perfectly well? No. Does sometimes one guy get beat and somebody else picks him up? Yes. If that happens, did they stand firm? Sh- yeah, sure. It's a unit.
The point is: does this church, do believers stand firm together even if you individually may feel weak from time to time? The way you live out your heavenly citizenship isn't to be Superman and say, "I never have any problems. Nothing ever harms me." The point is for you to live out your citizenship together by standing firm in unity.
Striving Together Through Difficulties
Jed Gillis: So confident unity despite opponents is one way. Second thing: Active unity in difficulties. This really comes from the phrase when he says, "With one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel." The words "striving side by side," we could translate it "striving together." It has the idea of entering into a struggle with others for a goal. Say here's something we both think should happen, and it's hard, and I'm gonna come alongside and help you.
We're striving together. We're not fighting against each other. We're not striving against one another. We're striving together in a struggle towards a goal.
And he uses this phrase, "With one mind." Literally, that says, "With one soul"—as, or you could, you could translate it, "As one person," which Paul says things like that other places too.
He says things like, "Weep with those who weep. Rejoice with those who rejoice." Come alongside them like one person. If they're weeping because something's difficult, you say, "I'm sorry for that too. How can I help? Can I walk with you?" Striving together in unity for the sake of a goal.
We know in Philippi, 'cause he says it later, there were at least some people were fighting against each other. You can look at chapter four, the beginning of chapter four. Some people were fighting against one another rather than fighting for something else. And many of us can fill in the blank with modern church stories where things like that happens, right?
Some of them are ridiculous. Just for fun, I Googled a few of these things. A church that fought over the length of the worship pastor's beard. A deacon who falsely accused another deacon, and it ended literally with them settling it in the parking lot in a fistfight after the service. Uh, the, there was one church that had a church argument and a vote over whether or not they should remove a clock from the back of the auditorium. Some of you might think you need a bigger one so I can see it, right?
There was an argument, a church split over whether you could have deviled eggs in a church function. I didn't make it up, or an argument about whether you could call it a potluck because luck doesn't exist anyway.
Sometimes it's ridiculous things, right? And I think we could all say, look, if you're fighting over deviled eggs, the problem's a lot deeper than deviled eggs. But sometimes we have churches in our modern world, we know this, where there's fighting over just unimportant things.
But sometimes it's not unimportant. Sometimes there's real sin and real doctrinal faithfulness. Say, "Well, how do we handle that?" What doesn't become, "How do we fight against other believers?" even in that case. It's about, "How do we fight for them?" When someone's really sinned within the body of Christ, it's not about, "How can we attack them? How can we shame them? How can we beat them up with their failures?"
It's about, "How do we come alongside them?" We need to call sin sin. There needs to be repentance. There needs to be change. But how do we strive together? How do we enter into the struggle for the gospel and for faithfulness to Christ? How do we enter into that struggle with this person to help them?
Strive together. Not just 'cause you said, "Oh, that's a good idea. I'm gonna try to strive together harder," but because it's living out your citizenship, because that's what the kingdom of heaven is like.
Your brothers and sisters face temptations and challenges every single day, just like you do. And you, if you have the Spirit of God in you, you want them to honor Christ. You want them to be victorious in their challenges. Do you, because you're a citizen of heaven, enter into that struggle with them? It's easy to just go about thinking about my life, and I know there's this difficulty. Uh, do I pray for them? Do I talk to them? Do I do any- it's hard to say. How do I enter into that struggle?
Some of my younger people in here, like my front row and my back row back there, you guys have some really awesome friendships. And some things that those friendships could last. Think about this: their friendships could last for 75 years. Most of yours can't. I neither. You guys could have 75 years of entering into the struggle together. To have so many years of helping one another grow. That's a gift. Practice now.
Striving side by side with one soul for the faith of the gospel. That's what heavenly citizens do. We strive together to help one another to know the undeserved favor of God in Jesus Christ and for our souls to rest in that. You need people to help you do that, and so do I.
This week I could name people in this room who've done that for me. I won't 'cause they'll be embarrassed. But I could name people who have entered into a struggle, maybe a little one, maybe a big one. They've entered into a struggle with me and said, "Hey, here's what the gospel is, and you can rest in that."
The brother in the church who texts me—every once in a while we're texting—he'll say, "Rest easy in Jesus." It's a simple thing, and I need that. And you need others to do the same.
What's that citizenship look like? Confident uni- unity despite your opponents. It looks like active initiative-taking love in difficulties.
Fearless Rest in the Gospel
Jed Gillis: And then it looks like fearless rest in the gospel. Paul says, "Not frightened in anything by your opponents."
This word fearlessness, it- it's interesting. It's used in a lot of different ways, and it just means fearless. But one of the ways it's used is to refer to horses in battle. So if you imagine a, a, a ancient battle, and there's cavalry coming, if the horses get afraid and they're out of control, that's not gonna work well. If those horses get spooked, they're much more likely to hurt people on their side than to hurt the enemies. Same thing's true for us.
If we live lives characterized and governed by fear, we're a lot more likely to hurt each other than we are to actually attack opponents or to strive together effectively.
As citizens, if you know you're a citizen of heaven, that should lessen your fear. Just like if you're an American citizen and you're traveling abroad, one of the things... Now, you might say there's, there's a target on you sometimes, sure. But there's also story after story of the American military recovering citizens. There's a fear to say, "I don't wanna attack an American citizen," because I know what happens when you do that.
Citizenship and your allegiance can lessen your fear. As a soldier, knowing the army behind you can increase your commitment and lessen your fear of the battle. Think about Elijah in the Old Testament. When he's standing there with his servant and the whole army's out there and his servant's freaking out like all of us would be, it's like, "Open his eyes." "Greater is he that's with us than that army."
See, knowing your citizenship and knowing your God, your King, that lessens your fear as a soldier. He says, "You should be fearless. Not just fearless, but not frightened in anything by your opponent. Fearless in everything. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God."
This is a really hard text to, to translate 'cause there's some words here that could tr- be translated two different ways. You could take this to mean when unbelievers see Christian unity and Christian fearlessness, that it is a clear sign to them that you have something that's more powerful than what they have, and so it shows their destruction. And then they would, the Philippians would see that same unity and they'd say, "But we are gonna be delivered. We have unity in the Gospel of Christ." You could take it that way, and that's really the way it's translated here in, in the ESV. That's one way to do it.
The other way would be to say this: that when opponents see you standing in unity, they think you're headed for destruction. In other words, here when it says, "their destruction," that's a little unclear in the Greek. So it could be that your opponents instead they're looking at Christians and saying, "What a bunch of crazy lunatics. Why would they stake their hope on a heavenly kingdom? They're gonna miss out on every opportunity here in this life because they're talking about King Jesus, and they're serving him, and instead of standing up for themselves and getting whatever they can get, they're saying, 'I wanna serve, and I wanna sacrifice.' They're headed for d- destruction." That's what the opponents see.
But the Philippians, and us as believers, we see that unity and say, "God has started a work in us." And what did Paul say in Philippians 1:6? "He'll finish." We see it and say, "God started this work in this body of believers, and he's gonna finish it so we'll be delivered."
I think that makes more sense of Paul's context, but really either one can work. One of the questions here is that clear sign. See, I don't think opponents of Christianity look at us and say, "Oh, that's a clear sign that we're gonna be destroyed." They look at us and they say, "You guys are crazy." So I think the, the fact that he says clarity, that's why I lean that way.
We can talk more about details of that if you want to sometime. But Paul says their fearless unity of the Gospel, because they believe in Jesus, because they suffer for Him, reminds them that—says, "God has started this work"—so they're confident of deliverance because God finishes what He starts.
Living Out Our Citizenship
Jed Gillis: So Paul's command to you, live out your citizenship in a way that shows the value of the Gospel of Christ. That's what you're called to do. That's what you should do this week and every week if you're a believer in Jesus.
If you're not a believer in Jesus, here's the awesome news. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to say, "I gotta stop doing all these bad things and do all these good things, and then maybe I can have that kind of joy, and unity, and love, and feel..." You don't have to do that. You take the announcement of God's grace for you that Jesus came and lived a perfect life for you, and he died in your place, and he did so so that all who would trust in him could be citizens of heaven. And that's available by God's favor towards you.
If you're a believer in Jesus, you're called to live that out in a way that shows how great the Gospel is, in confident unity even though there's a world full of opponents. That's pretty hard. And that stands out in our world because there's not a whole lot of unity that goes on. In initiative taking love to one another, even though everybody's got baggage and everybody's got difficult- You're called to live out that citizenship and in fearless rest in your soul because Jesus is king.
Reflection and Prayer
Jed Gillis: I wanna invite you to take a moment—I say this from time to time—take a moment and think about what God has done, what he's told you in this section of his word. And you probably don't have enough time to really do business with all of those things right now. But so that it doesn't get forgotten, if God's brought a question, a conviction, a thought to your mind, jot it down. Write it down to come back to it so that this can be not just something that happens on Sunday and gets forgotten, but something that continues to shape you throughout this week.
I want to invite you to take a moment and respond to God in prayer and then we'll sing together.