We are presenting some sermons by the late Ps Staffan Bergman, recently translated by our Pastor. This one is from 1997, and is from the reading according to the traditional One Year Calendar.
Sermon from St Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Stockholm
The 23rd Sunday After Trinity
Text: Matt. 22:15-22
A CHRISTIAN’S DUAL CITIZENSHIP
On All Saints’ Day, we turned our eyes and thoughts to heaven and the saints. We have a heavenly citizenship and a heavenly home that we are on our way to. Through faith in Jesus Christ, we are heirs to the glory of eternal life.
Today we are going to say something about the earthly citizenship that we have. We are all citizens of a country, in our case in Sweden. As Christians, we have a dual citizenship: a heavenly and an earthly one. We shall not despise any of them. For behind both stands one and the same God.
The Pharisees tried to entangle Jesus with the question of whether or not to pay taxes to the emperor. They thought they had trapped him. Whatever way he answered, they could accuse him. If he answered no, they could say that he was a rebel, who opposed the emperor. If Jesus answered yes, he could be accused of being on the side of the Roman occupying power. They waited intensely to see how he would answer.
But Jesus did not fall into the trap. His answer was not either/or, but both/and. We must obey both the emperor and God: “Give then to the emperor what belongs to the emperor, and God what belongs to God.” A masterful answer. These words give us today the subject of our sermon: The dual citizenship of a Christian.
1. A Christian is a citizen of the Kingdom of God and serves God there
“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said when he was later bound before Pilate (John 18:36). The kingdom of God is a spiritual and invisible kingdom in the sense that only God, who looks into the hearts of men, knows who are true citizens. We become members of the kingdom through baptism and faith. We can observe baptism, but not faith, neither in the little newly baptised children nor in adults. Only God sees it. “The Lord knows his people” (2 Tim. 2:19).
Many have wanted and still want to make the Church a visible earthly kingdom with peace and justice on earth as its main goal. The Pharisees were obsessed with the idea of a visible earthly Jewish welfare state. But the kingdom of God is no such kingdom. It is not a state built on political power and strength. The Church is a people on a journey to God. She will one day be taken up to him, and then her glory, which has been hidden here under crosses and sufferings, will be revealed. “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43), Jesus says.
Baptism is the passport of Christians that shows that they were once accepted by God themselves as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Many people do not care about their passport. They do not believe what it stands for. It is deeply tragic. Jesus says, “He that believes and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believes not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16).
In your baptismal passport there is a picture of you and under it it states: Christian. We are called Christians after Christ, from whom we have obtained our heavenly citizenship. We have not earned this citizenship, but Christ has won it for us. He has bought us with His holy and precious blood and clothed us in His righteousness. Through baptism, we have become “coins” with his image imprinted in our lives. In him we are redeemed children of God. We belong to God. The one who is baptised is always called to “give God what God belongs to”, ie. to live for God, “live under him and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness” as Luther says in the catechism. We are baptised into life in the kingdom of God.
God does not rule and uphold this kingdom by force and coercion. He rules with a gentle and merciful hand, through the gospel and the Holy Spirit. The kingdom is a kingdom of grace, full of comfort and forgiveness for sinners. Those who live there live in a constant reception of God’s grace and love in Christ. We stumble and fall, but he raises us up. We are sinners, but have the power of the Spirit to kill sin and live according to God’s commandments. Day by day we are preserved in the faith of Jesus and are brought closer to the heavenly goal, our true homeland.
In the Church, as Luther used to say, God exercises “his spiritual regiment.” The goal is not worldly: “We have our citizenship in heaven, and from there we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior” (Phil. 3:20). The goal is perfection, eternal life, where there is no more sin and sorrow.
2. A Christian is also a citizen of an earthly kingdom and also serves God there
Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” In the current situation, it was the Roman emperor who occupied Israel. His image on the coin reminded the Jews of who they were under. They did not like it, but had to bow to the pagan emperor.
Pious Christians have sometimes found it difficult to see that secular kingdoms and rulers have anything to do with God. But they have.
The word “authority” is usually used to describe the governing and controlling power in a country. We read about the government and our relationship to it in Rom. 13: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. … For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” (Rom. 13: 1, 4).
God himself is thus behind the authority, and to obey it is to obey God. This applies no matter how it is organised, and no matter how it has come about. The government is a servant of God for the earthly good of men, set to limit external evil, maintain law and order and protect the citizens.
This is the “worldly regiment of God.” The goal of it is external justice and decency. It is not about faith and salvation, but a good earthly life for the people. The state is not a church governed by biblical words, but by laws enacted by men and based on reason and common sense (the natural law which is inscribed in the hearts of men, Rom. 2:15).
We Christians should not despise the government and the laws of the land, but obey. We must obey the ordinances as they stand, declare and pay taxes, not smuggle and lie at customs checks, not cheat or drive through a red light. We may find that a number of regulations, rules and laws are not very good. It does not give us the right to break them. But we can criticise them, and we can legally lobby for them to be changed, improved or abolished. We can bring forth opinion, exercise our voting right, etc. In the earthly realm we must work for the good of society and cooperate, regardless of faith and religion, with all sensible and good powers.
Obedience to the authorities, however, has its limits. Christians are not ones who constantly bow down to and obey those in power no matter what they say. When the authorities or its magistrates go beyond their powers and want to force us into things that are clearly contrary to the Word of God, then we should not obey. “One must obey God rather than men” the apostles told the Sanhedrin, who wanted to forbid them from testifying and teaching about Jesus (Acts 5:29). When the emperor in Rome later wanted to make himself God and force the Christians to sacrifice to him, many of them refused to do so. Not even a symbolic grain of wheat did they want to sacrifice on the emperor’s altar. For that, they had to pay with their life. They became Christian martyrs.
Good authority is important to the Church. Therefore, in the NT, we are called to pray for those who govern, “for kings and all who rule, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life” (1 Tim. 2: 2).
3. A Christian does not confuse the two kingdoms
Although both citizenships are of God, they must not be confused. They have different purposes and tasks. The Augsburg Confession states: “the civil rulers defend not souls, but bodies…against manifest harm,… the Gospel protects souls against heresies, the devil and eternal death” (Art. XXVIII, Latin text)
The Church should not engage in politics and exercise worldly power. She will keep to her task and do what the Lord has commanded, namely, proclaim the gospel for repentance, for salvation and eternal life for all who want to listen to the Word of God, freely and without compulsion.
In the earthly realm, we live among many people who do not believe at all in Jesus Christ and the gospel. These are people whom the Bible calls “the world.” The Christian’s values and way of life differ in several respects from the common man. Christians live in the world, but not of the world (John 17:16).
As Christians, we live in an earthly kingdom, the best of which we seek through community involvement of various kinds. At the same time, we know that this kingdom is not our ultimate goal. We have that goal in heaven. This means that we will never really be at home here. We are “guests and strangers on earth” (Hebrews 11:13). A letter written in the 200s to a certain Diognetus, who wanted to know more about Christianity, describes how Christians live in the two kingdoms. It says:
“…they inhabit both Greek and barbarian cities, however things have fallen to each of them. And it is while following the customs of the natives in clothing, food, and the rest of ordinary life that they display to us their wonderful and admittedly striking way of life. They live in their own countries, but they do so as those who are just passing through. As citizens they participate in everything with others, yet they endure everything as if they were foreigners… They marry, like everyone else, and they have children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They share a common table, but not a common bed. They exist in the flesh, but they do not live by the flesh.”
This is a fine and biblical description of a Christian’s life in the two kingdoms.
Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). “Everything else” is the earthly kingdom and our life there. It is important, but not eternal. It has an ending- but the kingdom of God will endure when all earthly kingdoms fall. That is why it is so important to be first and foremost in the kingdom of God, in the kingdom of salvation and grace, in which we were received through baptism and remain in through faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
Let us thank God for both our earthly and heavenly citizenship and ask for grace to properly serve Him in both.
Oh lead me with simple and safe words
Every day into your kingdom
And teach me to remember, that this earth, is yours
And not only heaven.
Amen.
S. Bergman (1997)