When I was a freshman in high school, our civics class did a month-long unit on the American democratic process by staging a presidential election among our entire ninth-grade population. We had political parties, a nominating convention, delegations, a weeks-long campaign that included a live debate, and finally the election itself. As a joke, my friends and I invented a brand-new political party on a whim and nominated one of our hapless but lovable buddies to run against the clear favorite for the office of president. I guess we thought this would be a less boring way to survive yet another academic unit we wanted nothing to do with, but we wound up getting pretty invested. Eventually, we took that reluctant candidate and crafted a platform and a campaign that swept the hearts and minds of every fifteen- and sixteen-year-old in that town on our way to a landslide victory.
The really weird thing was that my friends and I wound up becoming extremely loyal to this fake political party we invented. The more we poured our time and energy into spreading the message of this campaign that we made up in gym class, the more we cared about what we were saying and how we wanted to change our school. Without meaning to, we became totally devoted to an idea that started out as just a bit of fun. It turns out that the human heart is extremely pliable and persuadable. If handled correctly, it’s not all that hard to get a group of us to care passionately about a person or a cause, and when enough of us are invested, it’s very hard to get us to see the world any differently.
In Acts 23, Paul found himself face to face with the Jewish ruling council in the city of Jerusalem. They had been hastily convened by the local Roman officials because of a dramatic day of accusations, misunderstandings, and violence involving the Apostle Paul’s testimony about Jesus.
The rumor was that this man was traveling all over the world telling otherwise faithful Jewish people to disregard the Law of Moses. For these folks, this Law was more than just a code of rules. It went beyond even a definition of their culture. It was deeper than just the religious stories and rituals they were taught as children. Their sacred Scriptures were a gift of Almighty God. The Law of Moses was the very fabric of their identity and the emblem of their belonging to something larger than themselves.
The problem was that the rumor wasn’t true. Paul wasn’t trying to subvert anyone’s loyalty to the Scriptures, but the tidal wave of mob mentality had swept him up into the middle of a riot where he barely escaped with his life. After even more drama, Paul found himself in front of the Jewish ruling council, where he said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.”
We have been talking about what it means to be a citizen of the Heavenly Jerusalem. When Paul talks about our citizenship in that Heavenly city, he does a really cool bit of wordplay. In Philippians 1:27, he is encouraging his readers to live in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ, and instead of using the verb “live,” he actually uses a verb built from the noun “city” (πόλις): πολιτεύομαι. It’s a cool trick. It’s like a clean and abbreviated way to say, “Conduct yourself like a citizen” of that city. Or, to make it sound a little more modern, “Act like you came from where you came from.”
The only other time Paul uses this verb is in Acts 23:1. It’s this scene after the huge riot, in front of the city’s leadership, where Paul is making his defense. Our translation tells us that he said, “I have fulfilled my duty to God.” But actually, the word he used wasn’t “fulfilled” at all. It was the ‘city’ verb again. He told them, “I have acted like a citizen before God.” In this case, Paul was telling them that his citizenship as a person who belonged to God was his deepest identity and loyalty. He understood allegiance and devotion, and he also knew how simple it was to sidetrack those sentiments and aim them in the wrong direction. For believers in Jesus today, it is so easy to become distracted and give our hearts to temporary things that actually have very little to do with God’s will for our lives. We have a deeper citizenship whose claims upon us are much older and whose bonds are stronger. To be a citizen of the Heavenly Jerusalem, the city whose architect and builder is God, means more than merely claiming to know the Lord. According to Paul, it’s about the heart of our loyalty and even our very identity.