Philippians 3:20

This word is not used in Scripture in the sense of familiar talk. In the Old Testament it refers to the walk... In the New Testament the word anastrophē has a similar sense of "walk, conduct, behaviour," and so it reads in every other passage except Philippians 1:27 and Philippians 3:20. There the word is politeuma, "citizenship," which for the Christian is in heaven, separating him from citizenship on earth and its politics.

It is "citizenship." To our minds that is a cold political thing. To a Greek it was everything. His citizenship came before wife, children or any other interest in life. The Spirit can take up this word to bring out a truth that matters so much to us: everything that shapes the Christian's life morally, in its deepest springs, is in heaven now. What a wonderful contrast for us who once belonged to earth! Our new relationships, interests, objects, joys and hopes are found in heaven!

"For our conversation (citizenship) is in heaven"; our real association is with Him who is there. Whatever we might have been as citizens of the earth, it is at an end now and forever. We belong to Christ on high. It is not merely that we are going there, but we belong to heaven now... We are now heavenly, and then we shall be declared and proved to be so.

Nothing is more important than to heed the moral association of things in the mind of God. For example, in Philippians 3:19, those "who mind earthly things" are in the position of "the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame!" This is God's moral connection of things. The true contrast to it is to have "our conversation in heaven, from where we also look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ."

This is the great safeguard against falling away! "Where the treasure is, there the heart will be also." The servant who says in his heart, "My lord delays his coming," begins to indulge himself and oppress his fellows. It is the same here. When the Church stops realizing that HEAVEN is the place of its inheritance, its privileges and its titles, and that the coming down of the Saviour from heaven is its hope, then its own things — earthly things — become its object.

When we first came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, we knew Him "as Saviour." So what does it mean that now "we eagerly await Him as Saviour"? When we first learned to know Him, we knew Him as Saviour of our souls — the Saviour who bore our sins. Now we eagerly await Him as Saviour of our bodies: "we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). It is the very same word we have in Philippians 3:20: "eagerly await," or "wait for patiently and persistently."

It is true that He is coming as the Judge, but we do not look for Him in that character. For us it is written, "We look for the Saviour… who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body" (Phil. 3:20-21).

If our commonwealth exists in the heavens, then it is "from where we also look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ." People may tell us we ought to spend our time improving things down here. But we are simply waiting for Christ to come and take us away from the things down here.