Christians don’t have a land
“Stocks may rise and fall. Utilities and transportation systems may collapse. People are no damn good. But they will always need land, and they’ll pay through the nose to get it. Remember, my father said — land.”
~ Lex Luthor, Superman (1978)
That is indeed how the world works. People crave a land, a homeland. As do many Christians, especially in the American church, where they see the United States as the land God has destined for us as a “Christian nation.” Their ambition is to take back America and return it to its civic and cultural religion. Some talk about that so much that you’d think it’s their gospel. Maybe it is.
Related: There’s no such thing as a Christian nation
One of the most-quoted verses in pop evangelicalism is 2 Chronicles 7:14, which promises that the land of God’s people will be healed if they repent and seek His face. Some ethnonationalists who claim the name of Christ use the phrase “blood and soil” (popular in Nazi Germany) as their rallying cry, vowing that they will have a home again.
That verse in 2 Chronicles was part of God’s response to the prayer of Israel’s King Solomon upon the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem. Solomon pleaded for the Lord’s forgiveness should Israel sin and repent:
“Or if Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against You, and return and confess Your name, and pray and make supplication before You in this temple,” Solomon prayed, “then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of Your people Israel, and bring them back to the land which You gave to them and their fathers” (6:24-25).
God’s conditional promise in 7:14 mirrored Solomon’s pleas, which were based on God’s covenant with Israel, which included a particular land. Ironically, that aspect of the promise has never been fulfilled; Israel has never occupied the full territory granted by God, from the Nile to the Euphrates (Genesis 15:18, Joshua 1:4).
Related: ‘Heal our land’ doesn’t mean America — in this life
We’re the aliens
But the Lord did not make that covenant with the church, and so we do not have a land promised to us during the church age. We as Christians have a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6), which includes an eternal, much more glorious destination — the new heavens and new earth described in the last two chapters of the Bible.
However, we do get to share in the land promise in this way: When Christ returns to earth, all His saints will be riding with Him (1 Thessalonians 3:13, Revelation 19:14). We’ll be there when He sets foot on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4) and enters Jerusalem, beginning His millennial reign on earth. That’s presumably when saved Israel, along with believing Gentiles grafted into their tree (Romans 11:17), will finally occupy all of the land promised by God. That’s our soil.
Until then, nothing in the New Testament indicates a certain land designated for the Christian church. Rather, we are sojourners, exiles, and aliens in this world (1 Peter 2:11). In a way, we’re like the Levites, the tribe of Israel who didn’t get their own territory but ministered in whatever tribe they lived in.
No continuing city
A three-chapter section in the book of Hebrews discusses the not-yet nature of Christianity on earth before the second coming of Jesus. Each of those chapters mentions a city that’s not currently on earth but is to come.
The Lord originally made the land promise to Abraham, but the text says of him in Chapter 11:
9 By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; 10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
As I pointed out, neither Abraham nor his descendants ever experienced the fullness of the promised land. The author elaborates on how the fulfillment of God’s promise has become a greater, eternal destiny:
13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 14 For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. 15 And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had the opportunity to return. 16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
There is still a promised land, but it’s a heavenly country. There is still a prepared city, a polis, but it’s not for this life as we know it. In this world, again, God’s people are strangers and pilgrims who have not received the promise, “God having provided something better for us” (verse 40). Better than earthly land in a fallen world.
In Chapter 12, the author tells his Hebrew readers that they have not come to Mount Sinai (representing the old covenant), “but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (verse 22) — referring to the eternal new Jerusalem (Galatians 4:26, Revelation 21:2).
The author urges them in Chapter 13 to go to Christ, whose crucifixion outside the city of Jerusalem symbolized the coming departure of God’s people from that land: “for here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come” (verse 14). Their destiny is not tied to the earthly city God gave them, nor any other city in this world, but the Jerusalem that will come down from the heavens.
Any land we occupy in the meantime is not “continuing” — various translations say lasting or enduring. It’s not permanent. It’s just a rental. It’s not our home.
Related: The hope and point of Christianity is not this life
Citizens of heaven
And yet, so many professing Christians long to make their earthly country their homeland. It’s understandable, because they see comfort, security, and identity in that. It’s a variation of the “prosperity gospel,” in which we seek our best life now. Just like the sinful, unholy world.
But when we fix our eyes on this land, we tend to take them off our eternal home. We distort the gospel. We build a kingdom that Jesus said His is not (John 18:36). We make much of a life that James called a vapor that vanishes away (James 4:14). We fail to heed Scripture’s warnings against storing up our treasure on earth (Matthew 6:19), gaining the world but losing our soul (Mark 8:36), loving our life but losing it in the end (John 12:25), and setting our mind on earthly things (Colossians 3:2, Philippians 3:19).
Does this mean we should not care about our nation at all? No. As the nationalists often quote, Jeremiah 29:7 says, “seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace.” We should love our neighbors; we should be good citizens. But that verse was written to people who would be exiles in a strange country, and that’s what we are. This world is Babylon. That’s where we live.
That passage in Philippians goes on to teach that our citizenship is in heaven (verse 20), and that our job in this life is not to conquer but to wait for our King to bring His kingdom when he returns. Paul wrote that to the colony of Philippi, where all its residents were Roman citizens, an elite status that they cherished. Paul was challenging their pride in their earthly citizenship, exhorting them that they, and we, are citizens of the kingdom of God first and overwhelmingly foremost.
We’re ambassadors of a foreign land — a land not of this earth, a land of all peoples and no divisions, a land that will last forever.
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