Kevin Williamson considers the difference between a “citizen” and a “subject.” In this context I’d prefer being a “citizen.” Do you have a preference?

A citizen has many different loyalties and obligations, sometimes complementary and sometimes rivalrous: to the state, to duties voluntarily entered into, to a particular people and way of life, to an ethos, and, in the case of the U.S. citizen, to the Constitution, which binds all of those others together in different ways. A subject’s loyalty is simpler in that it binds him only to a man—a king, traditionally.

As a Christian I give my allegiance to – put my “faith” in, to use more traditional language – a king, that king being Jesus. I trust the character of Jesus’s kingship more than I trust the character of the wanna be kings on offer in our culture today. I am willing to submit to his authority as I am not to today’s kings, presidents, and governors. Even so, I see language in the New Testament that includes language of citizenship in this kingdom of God. There is a dignity in being subject to King Jesus and a citizen of his kingdom that I do not see in current realms.