Ephesians 2:19 “Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people…”

You have been asked to introduce yourself to a group. You tell them your name. Then your next sentence begins, “I am a…” How does the sentence end? Do you tell them what you do for a living? “I am a computer programmer.” Do you lead with your family relationships? “I am the mother of three children.” “I am Allyson’s husband.” Do you go to some lifelong allegiance to team or state? “I am a life-long Sooner fan. I am a native Oklahoman.” All of these, of course, are expressions of your identity.

Paul gives us another identity, one far greater than any other: “fellow citizens with God’s people.” If citizens, then we are “no longer foreigners and aliens.” Whatever your politics might be about immigration in our country, you have to admit that citizenship in the United States of America is a privilege highly prized by people all around the world. Most of our own ancestors risked a very dangerous voyage across an ocean to come here and get it.

Like those who come to our country with the dream of becoming citizens, we didn’t begin life as “fellow citizens with God’s people.” For those born outside the United States, it is an accident of where they were born. For citizens of God’s Kingdom, it was a matter of how they were born. We are infected with sin we inherited from our parents. We are disqualified by behavior that is inappropriate and shameful for people of God. We are more or less content with our original citizenship under whatever false gods we find to serve. We don’t know any better and we don’t want any better, so long as we are more or less left alone to do what we want for ourselves.

Then something extraordinary happened. In the case of our human ancestors, they made a dangerous journey to come and become American citizens. But for “fellow citizens with God’s people,” it is our Ruler, our King, who made the dangerous journey from heaven to earth. He came in search of people who didn’t want to be his citizens at all. The journey cost him his life, but his death on a cross removed all the disqualifications that stood in the way of our citizenship. More than that, it unleashed a power, the power of grace and love, that changes the people who hear it. It draws them, woos them, wins them, until they renounce their old allegiances to sin, self, and Satan.

This love of God that came, and died, and searched and claimed me for his own makes me a loyal citizen of God’s kingdom, and a fellow citizen with God’s people. It’s my new identity. It’s who I am.