Where Is Your Citizenship?

June 30

“Now, you who are not Jewish are no longer foreigners and strangers but are citizens together with God’s holy people,” Ephesians 2:19.

There is much controversy in the U.S. regarding illegal aliens; a controversial bill has just been passed regarding them. These are people who have slipped over our borders (primarily our border with Mexico) or who have overstayed the time legally allotted to them when they came to this country as students or on other business.

There are two prevailing schools of thought as to how this problem should be dealt with. One is that they should all be given legal status. Our venerable Supreme Court has even ruled that citizenship need not be proven in order for an individual to vote. In some nations even citizens do not have this privilege/right.

The other, less popular idea, is that they all be deported to their country of origin and be required to get in line behind those who have applied to come here legally. These people support their position by saying we should not welcome into our national family a group of people whose first act in arriving here was theft—the theft of a country.

But God has no quibbling about citizenship status in His Heavenly Kingdom. His policy is firm. An individual is either a citizen of His Kingdom or he is not and each person’s status is determined by one single factor—what he has done with Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31).

If he has refused Christ's claim of being God in the flesh (John 8:58), crucified for man's sins, he shall be relegated to a hell apart from the Holy One eternally. If, however, he has accepted JESUS as Savior and Lord, he shall be forever embraced into the nation, the family, of God.