1 Peter 2:9-10 - “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

“In us and in our communities the Spirit is at work and reproducing the very life of God, so that in our present between-the-times existence, we might live the life of the future, toward which we are walking. This is what lies behind Paul’s command in Philippians 1:27, wherein a wordplay of the fact that Philippi was a Roman colony, whose free people were therefore citizens of Rome, Paul urges them to live out their heavenly citizenship in Philippi in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.  Picking up this same imagery again in 3:20 he says that “our citizenship is in heaven.” God’s people in Philippi were in effect a “colony of heaven” in this colony of Rome. Paul’s point is that if people are to see what heaven is to be like, they should see it now in the way the heavenly citizens live their life together. Obviously, only the Spirit of the living God can pull that off! But that is what it is all about.” (G. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God.  Kindle Locations 2105-2106)

Today pray for your church and ministry group, asking that we will become the heavenly colony in this world.

- GK