“Our citizenship is in heaven”
But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, (Philippians 3:20 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A pious way of saying 'heaven is home.'
The cultural key
Written to Philippi, the Roman colony (see the Acts 16:37 entry): a transplanted Italy of veterans holding Roman citizenship on Greek soil, governed by Roman law, proud of it to the point of comedy. Politeuma names exactly that arrangement: a citizen-body living abroad under its capital's law. And the sentence keeps borrowing the empire's vocabulary: 'Savior' (soter) and 'Lord' were Caesar's own titles, and a colony's great day was the arrival of the emperor in person.
Recovered meaning
'You know precisely what it means to live as citizens of a capital you have never seen: do that.' Not escape ('we await a Savior from it,' arriving here), but colonial loyalty inverted: Philippi's church as heaven's colony, awaiting a greater Lord's state visit.