Additional Notes §24
§24 Heavenly Citizenship and Hope (Phil. 3:20–21)
True believers are citizens of heaven, where their Lord now is, and when he comes from there he will equip his people with bodies like his own, fitted for full entry upon their heavenly heritage.
3:20 / In saying that our citizenship is in heaven, Paul uses the noun politeuma, not found elsewhere in the NT, but related to the verb politeuesthai, which he has used in 1:27 to denote the Philippian Christians’ “conduct,” with special reference to their responsibility as members of a community. So here, if their citizenship is in heaven, their way of life should be in keeping with that citizenship.
There may be an allusion here to the constitution of Philippi. Since Philippi was a colony of Rome, its politeuma, the register of its citizens, was kept in Rome, its mother city (Gk. mētropolis). No doubt only a minority of the church membership possessed this citizen status, but the constitution of the city would be well enough known to them all. Moffatt’s translation, “But we are a colony of heaven,” could express the general sense quite well. As citizens of a Roman colony were expected to promote the interests of their mother city and maintain its dignity, so citizens of heaven in an earthly environment should represent the interests of their true homeland and lead lives worthy of their citizenship. This citizenship was theirs already; they did not have to wait for it. But they did eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. This expectation was a constant element in the primitive apostolic preaching: the Thessalonian converts, for example, were taught “to wait for his [God’s] Son from heaven …—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath” (1 Thess. 1:10).
It would be pressing Paul’s language here too far to infer that he himself expected to be still alive to greet the appearing Savior. In 1:20–24 he expects rather to die before the advent of Christ, and in verse 11 above he hopes to “attain to the resurrection from the dead.” So, in saying now that we eagerly await a Savior, he expresses the attitude of Christians in general, without special reference to his personal prospects.
3:21 / When the Savior comes, he will transform our lowly bodies. A fuller statement is given in 1 Corinthians 15:42–53. Whether believers have died or are still alive at the time of the advent, they will have to undergo a change in order to inherit God’s eternal kingdom. Those who have died will receive a “spiritual body” to replace the “natural body” that has disintegrated; the mortality of those who are still alive will “clothe itself … with immortality.” Both the dead who are raised and the living who are changed, having hitherto “borne the likeness of the earthly man” (the first Adam, according to the narrative of Gen. 2:7), will henceforth “bear the likeness of the man from heaven.”
This last statement is expressed here in slightly different wording when Paul says that Christ will transform our lowly bodies (lit., “our body of humiliation”) to be like his glorious body (lit., “his body of glory”)—that is, his glorified body. The bodies that the people of Christ will wear in the age to come will belong to the same heavenly order as his own resurrection body. “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed” (Rom. 8:19) because their revelation as the sons and daughters of God will be their participation in the glory in which he who is the Son of God par excellence will then be revealed. “When Christ, who is your life, appears,” says Paul to the Colossian Christians, “then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4).
The power that enables him to bring everything under his control is the power he shares with the Father. The almighty power of the Father, demonstrated in his raising his Son from death (see comment on v. 10 above, “the power of his resurrection”) is exercised by the Son in virtue of the authority he has received to give life to whom he chooses (cf. John 5:21, 25–29). The raising of his people to resurrection life is one phase of the Son’s exercise of this God-given authority: “For he must reign,” says Paul to the Corinthians, “until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:25, echoing Pss. 8:6; 110:1).
Paul did not know, nor did he pretend to know, when the advent would take place. Something has been said about his own changing perspective in the comment on 1:23. The so-called delay of the parousia involved no such agonizing reappraisal for him and his theology as has often been supposed. The certainty of the advent is accepted by faith; its timing is inaccessible to curious calculation. Each successive generation of the church has the privilege of living as though it were the generation that will greet the returning Christ.
3:20 / On Roman citizenship see A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, pp. 78–80 and The Roman Citizenship; on its relevance to Phil. 3:20 see E. Stauffer, New Testament Theology, pp. 296, 297. For the heavenly metropolis cf. Gal. 4:25 (“the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother”). For Gentile analogues see Plato, Republic 9.592B (on the pattern of the ideal city laid up in heaven); and Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.11 (“dear city of God”).
E. Lohmeyer (ad loc.) draws attention to the rhythmic structure of the words beginning we eagerly await a Savior, as though Paul were quoting a Christian hymn or confession without necessarily committing himself to every one of its details (so also E. Güttgemanns, Der leidende Apostel und sein Herr, pp. 246, 247; J. Becker, “Erwägungen zu Phil 3, 20–21,” TZ 27 [1971], pp. 16–29). Moreover, the word Savior (Gk. sōtēr) does not appear elsewhere in the Pauline corpus apart from Eph. 5:23 and the Pastoral Letters. But the wording of Phil. 3:20, 21 (especially as regards the body in v. 21) is completely consistent with Paul’s general teaching; see R. H. Gundry, “Sōma” in Biblical Theology, pp. 177–83.
J.-F. Collange (ad loc.), R. P. Martin (ad loc.), and others point to a striking series of parallels between this passage and 2:6–11. Among those others M. D. Hooker sees 3:20, 21 as carrying on the line of thought in 2:6–11: in 2:6–8 we have a description of Christ’s becoming like us, in 2:9–11 we have an account of what he now is, in 3:20, 21 we are told how, by the power bestowed on him, he will make us like himself (“Interchange in Christ,” JTS n.s. 22 [1971], pp. 356, 357; and in Jesus und Paulus, ed. E. E. Ellis and E. Grässer, p. 155).
When Paul says that “our citizenship is already (Gk. hyparchei) in heaven” and yet points forward to its consummation at the advent of Christ, he illustrates the interplay of realized and future eschatology in the NT; on this and other features of the present passage see A. T. Lincoln, Paradise Now and Not Yet, pp. 87–109.
3:21 / The “body of our humiliation” (sōma tēs tapeinōseōs hēmōn) is identical with the “natural (lit., ‘soulish’) body” (sōma psychikon) of 1 Cor. 15:44, so called because it is inherited from the first Adam, who became a “living soul” psychē zōsa, Gen. 2:7, LXX). The “spiritual body” (sōma pneumatikon) of 1 Cor. 15:44 is so called because Christ, the “last Adam,” became in resurrection a “life-giving spirit” (pneuma zōopoioun, 1 Cor. 15:45). In 1 Cor. 15:42–50, as in the present passage, it is to Christ’s resurrection body that the believer’s body is to be conformed.
With so that they will be like (Gk. symmorphon, “conformable”) may be compared “being conformed [symmorphizomenos] to his death” in v. 10 above. “If we have been united with him in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection” (Rom. 6:5).
Through the power (Gk. energeia) that enables him to bring everything under his control he fulfills what is said of man in Ps. 8:6 (“You [God] made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet”) and to the Davidic king in Ps. 110:1 (“Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”). See 1 Cor. 15:24–28; Heb. 2:5–9.
On the imminence and “delay” of the advent see A. L. Moore, The Parousia in the New Testament, pp. 108–74; also S. S. Smalley, “The Delay of the Parousia,” JBL 83 (1964), pp. 41–54.