Allegiance to Christ

Almost in reaction against globalization, many people are responding with increasing nationalism, sometimes with almost frightening ethnocentrism. Christians are not to immune to these sweeping currents of though. They, too, can be caught up in flag – waving nationalism that puts the interests of my nation or my class or my race or my tribe or my heritage above the demands of the kingdom of God. Instead of feeling that their most important citizenship is in heaven, and that they are just passing through down here on their way “home” to the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22-23), they become embroiled with petty priorities that constitute an implicit denial of the lordship of Christ. What we need, then, are world Christians-not simply American Christians or British Christians or Kenyan Christians, but world Christians. By “world Christians,” I am referring to Christians, genuine believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the following things are true: Their allegiance to Jesus Christ and his kingdom is self-consciously set above all national, cultural, linguistic, and racial allegiances. Their commitment to the church, Jesus’ messianic community, is to the church everywhere, wherever the church is truly manifest, and not only to its manifestation on home turf. They see themselves first and foremost as citizens of the heavenly kingdom and therefore consider all other citizenship a secondary matter.

As a result, they are single-minded and sacrificial when it comes to the paramount mandate to evangelize and
make disciples.

- D. A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry, 116-117.