Immigration is one of the most hotly debated issues of our times. However, this article is not necessarily about immigration but there is something of the immigration debate that relates to the Christian’s relationship to God.
A naturalized citizen is someone who has emigrated from another country to, let’s say America. But there is more to it than just a change of one’s geography. One who is naturalized is someone who has sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, learns and speaks the nation’s official language, embraces its values and lives up to the responsibilities of a citizen. Another name for this is assimilation.
What does it mean to be a naturalized Christian? To be honest, I have never heard of the term but I am certain that the Bible calls us to be naturalized. We have been called to be naturalized to the Kingdom of God. Paul says; Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philippians 3:20).
The Word of God boldly announces things about our salvation and our new identity in Christ that totally reset our position in this world and the cosmos. Many have the idea that we are slowly inching our way to the pearly gates. But the Bible says we are already citizens of Heaven. The New Jerusalem is the mother of us all. We are born from above, born of the Spirit, born of God. The adoption papers have been drawn up and signed. Everything that needs to happen so that we might have full rights as sons has been accomplished through the finished work of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
But there is another step in the process that I am afraid is sorely lacking in our generation; naturalization to our new homeland. Some might say; how can we be naturalized to a country we have never been to?
From L.E. Maxwell’s classic Born Crucified, Dr. A. J. Gordon said;
The men who conquered the Roman Empire for Christ bore the aspect of invaders from another world, who absolutely refused to be naturalized to this world. Their conduct filled their heathen neighbors with the strangest perplexity; they were so careless of life, so careful of conscience, so prodigal of their own blood, so confident of the overcoming power of the blood of the Lamb, so unsubdued to the custom of the country in which they sojourned, so mindful of the manners of that country from whence they came not. (their heavenly country). The help of the world, the patronage of its rulers, the loan of its resources, the use of its methods they utterly refused, lest by employing these they might compromise their King. An invading army maintained from an invisible base and placing more confidence in the leadership of an unseen Commander than all the imperial help that might be proffered- that was what so bewildered and angered the heathen, who often desire to make friends with the Christians without abandoning their own gods. But there can be no reasonable doubt that that age in which the church was so completely separated from the world was the age in which Christianity was most victorious in the world.
Dr. Gordon’s assessment paints a picture of a totally different kind of church, a church naturalized to the world to come. As Paul said; We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are temporal but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18).
Does this not take us to the root of the problem? Are we so much like the world that the people of this generation see no discernible difference in our lives? And if we were so caught up and obsessed with that Kingdom above us, naturalized if you will, would we not burn with a message that seeks to wrestle men and women out of the grip of a sin sick world that is coming to nothing? But I am afraid we are far too at home in the world that is under the command of God’s sworn enemy.
The writer of Hebrews said of the people of God; 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. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country-a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:12-16).
Does your Christian experience so expose you to the glory of God and His Kingdom and thus create within you a longing for the world to come and at the same time cause the bloom to fall off the rose of this proud world in your eyes? Has your exposure to the Kingdom of God caused a certain “naturalization process” to take place within you, one that has awakened your heart to Eternity, and therefore leads you to disinvest from this fallen world and seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? Are you a heavenly minded, naturalized Christian like the Christians of the Roman era mentioned before?
I am afraid that our modern religious culture basically promotes itself, not the interests of God. It has lowered the high standards of God and now offers a self-centered spirituality that embraces and enjoys the comforts and luxuries of this world and Heaven when we die. (See Matthew 16:24-25 from the Amplified Bible).
Paul told the Corinthians; If someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:4, 13).
I am quite sure that in large part, the Jesus, the Gospel, and the Spirit, that is being disseminated throughout the nation today, falls short of the Jesus and the Gospel delivered by Paul and the Apostles. I am sure of this because the lamentable fruit we are producing does not lie. It is what it is. I am not saying that we aren’t nice, well intentioned people. All I am saying is that we desperately need men who are so naturalized to Heaven’s manners and Spirit, who will bring forth the Word of God that will cause the church to repudiate the world’s claims upon them and embrace Heaven’s claims.
May God raise up a new generation of men and women who will once again be fully naturalized Christians!
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