We have been looking at what constitutes the "City of Man", and how God tells us to keep the correct balance of living in the world, but not being of it. How we must seek God's glory, and not our own.

In the City of Man, we want to exalt ourselves, rising above others around us and pushing all aside in our mad dash to get to the top. As Charles and Janet Morris say: "Being above it all is the best place to be according to the City of Man—beyond striving, not answering to anyone, and disdaining the opinions of others. Humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow said that "striving upward" (to what he calls "self-actualization") is a widespread and perhaps universal tendency ... as a humanist, he considered man to be the measure of all things. Therefore, what man seeks to be, man has a legitimate right to be—a law unto himself, answering to no one but himself."

And how do we measure our growth towards "self-actualization" and autonomy? It is simple: by how much money we accumulate! Money is, and always has been, the main criterion on which people in the world (in the City of Man) are judged. Rich people are accorded great honor and privilege, no matter what their character or behavior. If you are rich enough, you can get away with almost anything in our materialistic and secular society.

Without God, there are no absolutes of right and wrong; therefore whatever is best for the individual and whatever works is acceptable. Out of that mindset comes the 46,000,000 babies butchered each year throughout the world in abortion mills and the widespread acceptance and approval of deviant sexual practices. In this mindset, we can kill human babies, and even contemplate infanticide and "involuntary" euthanasia, while at the same time revering and raising huge amounts of money to save the whales and the trees.

Shaming The 'Wise'

God looks at things a different way in His City: "God deliberately chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And He chose those who are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important, so that no one can ever boast in the presence of God" (1 Cor. 1:27-29).

As we saw earlier, the key sin in the City of Man is pride—pride that leads to boasting and putting others down. In the City of God, boasting is ousted, because the mighty are pulled down, and the lowly are raised up.

Charles and Janet Morris put it this way: "His presence in the City of Man has a leveling effect. The valleys are lifted up and the mountains are brought down, as Isaiah puts it. Everybody is at sea level with Jesus. He simply ignores all the things of value in the City of Man as if they were of no significance at all ... It takes a lot of patient teaching on Jesus' part to get across to His disciples that 'a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions' (Luke 12:15)."

The apostle James teaches powerfully on this principle. Although a half-brother of Jesus, he describes himself in the introduction to his letter as "a slave of God and of the lord Jesus Christ." To call himself a slave of his brother, after growing up together in the rough and tumble of a normal family, says a lot about this godly "leveling effect."

In his letter, he says: "Christians who are poor should be glad, for God has honored them. And those who are rich should be glad, for God has humbled them" (James 1:9-10). God is no respecter of persons. Jesus Himself teaches that the first will be last, and the last first. James continues: "You insult the poor man! If you pay special attention to the rich, you are committing a sin ..." (James 2:6, 9).

Blaise Pascal in "The Mind on Fire" writes: "The more promotion we seek to have on fortune's ladder takes us further from the truth, because people become increasingly more wary of offending those whose friendship is deemed most useful." Jesus told His disciples they had to become like little children if they wanted to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus was just as happy talking to a prostitute as to a wealthy businessman. He prayed for lepers and He prayed for priests. He modeled in His own life His admonition to love others as much as we love ourselves.

The City of God inhabited by the Lord Jesus Christ is no kind of city for the proud and self-seeking. The cross itself makes total sense in the City of God, where a man will give up his life for his friends, but makes no sense at all in the City of Man.

In the City of Man, it is "look out for No. 1." In the City of God, it is to serve others. In the City of God, leaders lead by serving their followers. People put the needs of others before their own needs.

The Significance Of The Cross

The apostle Paul said: "As for me, God forbid that I should boast about anything, except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world died long ago, and the world's interest in me is also long dead" (Gal. 6:14). Paul, a once-proud, highly educated Pharisee, learned well the lessons of humility and servanthood.

"The cross renders the glory/shame struggle of the City of Man obsolete by showing us the repugnance of our boasting. It levels us with an unequivocal revelation of the 'lowness' of the place we deserve and makes us despise the things that led us to boast.

"Yet at the same time, it breaks our hearts by revealing the depths to which the Son of Man was willing to descend in order to rescue us from the City of Man and make us His own.

"It's in the cross that we understand the dynamics of the City of God. Boasting is excluded for everyone except Christ Jesus. He alone is exalted. But we are exalted in Him. 'God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in heavenly realms' (Eph. 2:6).

"Everything that is His—righteousness, life, wisdom, the glory of the sons and daughters of God—are given to us in Him. All the distinctions have been eliminated because 'Christ is all and is in all' (Col. 3:11)," Charles and Janet Morris say.

As dual citizens—citizens of the City of Man and of the City of God—we need to live in such a way that everyone who comes into contact with us is left in no doubt as to where our allegiance lies. We have Christ in us, and we should live and talk and do business like we believe it.

As kingdom business professionals, we have our higher call in heaven while still called on this earth to "do business till I come" (Luke 19:13). But as we do our business, we do it unto Christ, and as Christ Himself would do it—with true integrity and humility. We serve others first, putting others' needs before our own, and in the midst of it all, letting the Holy Spirit fill and control us every moment, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making music to the Lord in our hearts, giving thanks for everything to God the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 5:18-20).