Philippians 3:20-21

Philippians 3:20

The Reunion of the Saints.

I. "The body of our humiliation." What a word is that! It was not always thus. When God, in the solemn conclave of the Eternal Trinity, said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," He could not have been speaking only of man's soul. The record of the Creation which follows is almost entirely corporeal. He must have been speaking of the entire man. In the likeness of Christ's body, God formed the body of Adam, not in the likeness of Christ's body as He wore it down upon this earth, but the likeness of that body as it is now, as He ascended into the heavens, the body glorified, so that in all probability the body of our first parents in paradise was the very same body as we shall receive after the resurrection, both being in the likeness of Christ and both glorious. And this is, therefore, one of the points in the fulness of the restitution of all things, and shows how we regain in Christ all, even to the exact bodily form all that we lost in the Fall.

II. The resurrection body will be a body which we shall glory in, just as in this body we now are humiliated. So the one becomes in some sense a measure of the other; and such as is the degradation of the body now, so will be the exaltation of the body then. For it will be the memorial through all eternity, not of a fall, but of the grace which has raised us to an elevation higher than that from which we fell. Christ will be both admired and reflected in it before the universe. Continually, without cessation, it will be capable of worship and service; and, like Him it mirrors, it will express transparently the whole of the intellect and the love breathed in it, and, like Him, it will never change. A beauty which we see each in the other will never fade away from before our eyes; the satisfaction which we never found in a creature we shall find absolutely and for ever in that new creation: and from the moment of our waking up in that blessed morning, on and on, for ever and ever, the gushing sense of light, and life, and power, and service, and purity, and humility, and love will flow, ever full and ever fresh, out of the freeness of the fountain of the indwelling of God.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 225.

The Heavenly Citizenship.

St. Paul had just been speaking of some members of the Church whose god was their belly, who minded earthly things. It is a plausible opinion that in the text he intended to contrast with their state of mind his own and that of the persons who strove to imitate him as he imitated Christ. Our translators probably adopted that notion, or they would scarcely have rendered πολ ίτευμα by conversation. That word had undoubtedly a more extensive signification in the seventeenth century than it has in ours: it included the whole course and habit of life, and had no special reference to intercourse through the tongue. But it can never have denoted what a word derived from "city" and "citizen" does most naturally denote: a condition and privilege which belonged to certain men, whether they made use of it or forgot it.

I. That natural sense, I apprehend, St. Paul gives to the expression here. He does not contrast hisheavenly temper with the earthly temper of those concerning whom he speaks with so much sorrow; but he blames them for that temper because he and they had both alike a Divine πολ ίτευμα, because a state had been claimed for them and was implied in their acts with which such a temper was wholly at variance. The opposition is not between them and him; it is between them and themselves. It is not, again (as we sometimes state it), between them and their professions, as if they boasted of a high citizenship when, in fact, they were only aliens. They had too low, not too high, an appreciation of their status and of their rights; they would be raised above their grovelling tendencies, yea and above the conceit which no doubt accompanied these tendencies, if they could once really understand what they were: what honours and estates were legally theirs, only waiting to be claimed; under what title these honours and estates were to be held.

II. To say, "Our conversationis in the heavens," would be a bold thing for most of us; but when we say, "Our citizenshipis in the heavens," then need we no faltering of the tongue, no timidity in the spirit within. That is declaring God to be true, and us to be liars; that is affirming He has not made our lives to be insincere in solitude or in society, our friendships to be poor in quality and to be shorter than the existence which they glorify. All that is fragile and transitory belongs to us; we have failed to recognise the stamp of His eternity which He has assuredly put upon us and upon all our human attachments. We sever by our sin and unbelief links which He has fastened; our noise has disturbed the great deep of memory which His Spirit broods over; but His blessed order stands firm, however little we abide in it. The affinities in the world of human beings, like the affinities in the natural world, have all been constituted by Him, are all maintained by Him. The unity between the different parts of the frame of man is not so mysterious as the unity between the different members of the body politic. The latter is certainly indestructible, whatever may happen to the former, and this because our polity is in the heavens. We are made one in Christ.

F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. i., p. 235.

There are here two practical motives by which the Apostle urges the Philippians to walk so as they have true Christian teachers for an ensample: the energy and loyalty and the inspiration of hope.

I. The energy and loyalty. Loyalty is reverence for law, not mere submission to it, but the glad, free submission which comes from respect for the law and homage for the authority on which it rests. A man may be obedient to his country's laws from fear of punishment. Not out of any regard for right, but because of the constable and the gaol, he may keep within the bounds of law. The loyal man will not think much of a penalty to be escaped; he honours the principle of law; because it is just and good, he will submit himself to it. You see how loyalty to heaven affected Paul. It was pain to him that there were Christians who were unmindful of their heavenly character. To him the Christian name was something to be regarded with reverence and preserved spotless. The honour of the heavenly citizen is the strong motive by which he appeals to his loved disciples at Philippi. Loyalty to a higher order is an energy to resist degrading circumstances or strong temptation. It is so when the influence is historic only or ideal. St. Paul is putting the Christians on their honour. You are citizens of heaven, and your citizenship abides there. It is a real thing, this heavenly law. You are called by the Christian name; you have felt the Christian consolation; you claim the Christian privilege; you are also under Christian allegiance; the Christian life is the life to which you are bidden, which you are trusted to live.

II. The inspiration and hope. Our body is indeed a body of humiliation; we must have it changed before we can be set free: but we shall be free. He who can subdue all things to Him has energy for our deliverance, and we await His delivering advent; we struggle on, faithful, loyal to Him; and He by the energy with which He is able even to subdue all things unto Him will change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto the body of His glory.

A. Mackennal, Christ's Healing Touch,p. 250.

The Redemption of the Body.

I. St. Paul valued his privilege of being a citizen of the greatest city upon earth. The Philippians had reason to know that he valued it. He had made them understand by his conduct that citizenship is a great and honourable thing. Men are bound together as citizens of a city, as members of a nation, by God Himself. But St. Paul tells the Philippians that he was the citizen of another country too: "Our citizenship is in heaven." We have friends and fellow-sufferers upon earth; our work is upon earth; we live to do good to the earth; but our home is with God. He has bought us at a great price that we might be freemen of His kingdom, and might always fly to Him and plead our cause before Him; He has made for us a new and living way into His presence through the flesh and blood of His Son; and we have a right to walk in that way, and not to be taking the downward way, the way of death.

II. St. Paul had the greatest reverence for his own body and for the bodies of his fellow-creatures that any man could have. For he believed that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour, had taken a body such as ours, and had eaten earthly food, and had drunk of earthly water and wine, and had given that body to die upon the cross, and had raised it out of the grave, and had ascended with it to the right hand of His Father. Therefore when St. Paul recollected his citizenship in heaven, when he claimed to be a member of Christ's body and prayed in His name to His Father and our Father, he could not but think how this body, which is so curiously and wonderfully made, has a hidden glory in it, which, when Christ appears in His glory, shall be fully made manifest. Everything seems to be threatening it with death, but Christ, in whom is the fulness of life, has overcome death and is stronger than death. He has raised up my spirit, that was sinking lower and lower, to trust in Him and hope in Him; He will raise up this body too. Nothing shall be lost of all that God has given us, for Christ has redeemed it. Only death and corruption shall perish, for they have assaulted God's glorious handiwork. What God has created God will preserve.

F. D. Maurice, Sermons in Country Churches,p. 72.

Christian Citizenship.

I. Consider, first, the source of Christian citizenship. At the time these words were written, the Roman empire had attained the culmination of its power. The long clamour of battle was hushed in the reign of Augustus. The Emperor seemed to reign over a consolidated and prosperous empire; and through each subject province or far-off archipelago of isles the man who could say, "I am a Roman citizen," found in the words the surest talisman of safety or the speediest redress for wrong. The source of our heavenly citizenship is not, as in the Roman, by birth or by servitude; it can only be by redemption, purchased for us by One who loves us, who can pay the satisfying price, and can exert the needed power; and this is the marvel of love which has really been wrought on our behalf.

II. That the citizenship thus conferred upon us by the free love of Jesus entails duties upon all its possessors is a consequence which each Christian heart will be prepared very cheerfully to recognise, as indeed it follows from every principle of right. Those whom a state protects and advances owe to it loyalty and patriotism, and if they fail in the discharge of duty, they forfeit all claim upon privilege; those who have received the heavenly citizenship and carefully obey the laws and steadily watch over the interests of the kingdom to which they belong theirs will be neither stinted obedience nor intermittent devotion.

III. For true-hearted citizens there is abundant consolation in the immunities to which their citizenship entitles them. (1) They have a claim to the protection of the state in all circumstances of difficulty or need; (2) they have a claim also upon the privileges of the city to which they belong: theirs are its security and its freedom, its wealth, its treasure, and its renown. All the treasures of heaven are yours, "for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

W. M. Punshon, Sermons,2nd series, p. 333.

References: Philippians 3:20; Philippians 3:21. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 973; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,p. 105; Church of England Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 293; Homilist,vol. vi., p. 59; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 228. Philippians 3:21. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 213; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 289.