Foundations for Christian Mission, Mentor's Guide, MG04

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F O U N D A T I O N S F O R C H R I S T I A N M I S S I O N

foreign country is a homeland to them, and every homeland is foreign.… Their existence is on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven” (Epistle to Diognetus 5.1–9). Third, the life of faith is to be a life of confidence in God’s promise to establish his city. Hebrews speaks of the faith by which Abraham “sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents.… For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb 11.9–10 RSV). Heavenly citizenship is to be the ground of confidence in life’s trials, the goal toward which life is directed. But a significant difference distinguishes the NT believers from their OT counterparts. Of the latter we are told, “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance” (Heb. 11.13 NIV). While the Christian is to continue in this alien mode until the consummation (1 Pet. 1.1; 2.11), in a very profound and real sense the pilgrimage has ended because of Christ’s atoning work (Eph. 2.19). Through the persevering, substitutionary faithfulness of Jesus (Heb. 12.2), Christians “have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12.22 RSV). So while the geopolitical manifestation of God’s city is yet future, it has been eternally established in the heavens through Jesus’ work, and believers in Jesus have already taken up residence there (John 14.1–3) through union with him (Eph. 2.6). Therefore the Church of Jesus lives in the world now as God’s holy “city set on a hill” (Matt. 5.14). Augustine described it thus. “The humble City is the society of holy men and good angels; the proud city is the society of wicked men and evil angels. The one City began with the love of God; the other had its beginnings in the love of self” (City of God 14.13).

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~ Leland Ryken. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery . (electronic ed.). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000. p. 153-154.