Ambassador of Heaven.

For a long time, I’ve been more and more perplexed, concerned…vexed by the slow sinking of the Church into the affairs of this world.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe the Church is designed to have influence in the world. Jesus himself took great interest in the lives of the people he encountered in his ministry here. But there’s a problem.

The two natures.

By definition (Romans 7), the Church is made up of people with two natures struggling within us. There’s the Spirit that lives in each true Believer. And then, there’s the flesh…the self-serving, almost animal nature that each human has as a function of Adam’s DNA.

The Spirit drives us to want to be like Jesus. To do and say the things Jesus did and said. To put his objectives over everything else.

But the Adamic piece! It wants to seek comfort. To cultivate and feed appetites. To serve self. To build empires. To subjugate those who are weaker (whoever we can), in order to make ourselves stronger. To exploit those who are vulnerable, in order to use their vulnerability to our advantage. To leverage our assets and wealth to suck the meager security away from those with less…to make ourselves stronger and to make the poor dependent.

Paul laments the “war in his members” between these two natures. And bearing these two beasts about, and knowing that it is tempting (but wrong) to feed the one and necessary (but hard…and sometimes unsatisfying) to feed the other, causes Christians to drift into a tempted state. How close to the line can I get, without actually drifting into sin?

This is the root of the hypocrisy Christians are often accused of (mostly because we’re guilty of it).

But when we stop thinking it’s wrong!

Lately, I’ve been noticing that many Christians (I’m looking at you, American Evangelicals) have stopped thinking those things are wrong. In particular, we’ve jumped into the cultural fray as if we have a dog in the fight.

We seem to be okay with enriching ourselves at the expense of the world around us. It’s almost as if we think we’re entitled, because we’re Christians.

And we seem to be intent on creating a world that is comfortable for us, even if it makes the world untenable for its rightful occupants. We seem to be trying to create a perverse version of Heaven here on Earth. But, there’s a problem.

We’re ambassadors of somewhere else.

When we are born from above (born again), we become something different. We’re not like Adam’s descendants. Nor are we like Adam. We are what Paul calls “new creatures” or “new creations.” We’re not just cleaned up. We’re completely retooled. That comes with certain implications (calls on our lives).

The clear inference is that by becoming joint heirs with Christ, we become citizens of his household…kingdom…country. While we remain here, in this world, in these bodies, we are (as Peter puts it) strangers and pilgrims. We are foreigners, just passing through.

In a more specific sense, we are citizens of Heaven, living on the Earth. We are expats!

And we are ambassadors. We represent our king in the country in which we are residing. This is not something we really have a choice in. We are ambassadors. We may not be good ambassadors. We may not be willing ambassadors. We may not even be aware of our responsibilities as ambassadors. But we are ambassadors.

So, what’s that mean? Well, next time around, let’s take a look at the roles, responsibilities, duties, and prerogatives of an ambassador. And maybe, while we’re at it, we can have a glance at things like duel citizenship.