The Exile Theology
A school of thought, associated with thinkers like Van Droonen and others in the amillennial Reformed tradition, teaches that Christians are strangers and exiles on the earth. The argument is not crass otherworldliness — it is dressed in careful exegesis. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were exiles, living in a land they would not possess during their lifetimes. The church, it is claimed, stands in the same position: inheritors of a promise not yet realised, sojourners in territory that is not yet theirs.
It sounds humble. It sounds faithful. And it is wrong — or rather, it is a partial truth elevated into a controlling framework that does violence to the full scope of what Christ has accomplished.
What Abraham’s Exile Actually Meant
The patriarchs were exiles in Canaan. That is true. But it is crucial to understand why. They were waiting for a specific event: the Exodus and the conquest. That event happened. They came into the land. The promise was not permanent exile but temporary sojourn before actual possession.
That root — Abraham’s exile — was definitively ended by the entry into Canaan. And then it was definitively ended again, at a higher level, by the work of Christ. Jesus, the true Israel, the seed of Abraham in whom all the promises are yes and amen, has already asked the Father for the nations as his inheritance. The inheritance has been granted. The decree of Psalm 2 stands: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance.”
Christ has won the earth definitively by his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. He is seated at the right hand of the Father, ruling, waiting until all his enemies are made his footstool. The church is the body of the one who has already won. The church is not waiting to enter into an inheritance still withheld. She is called to take possession of what has already been granted.
To say that Christians are still exiles, in the same sense that Abraham was, is to say that Christ’s work has not yet changed our fundamental status. It is, in effect, to ignore the finished work — to place us perpetually before the cross and resurrection rather than after them.
What Happened in AD 70
There was a dispersion after Christ. There was exile. But whose exile was it?
According to Josephus, not a single Christian perished in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Christ had given his people the signs: when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, flee (Luke 21:20). They obeyed. Many had already liquidated their assets in preparation, as the book of Acts records.
The covenant sanctions of AD 70 fell upon whom? Upon those who rejected the Messiah. Upon those who clung to the temple and the sacrificial system after the true sacrifice had been made. The exile of that period was not an exile of the church; it was the definitive covenant judgment on apostate Israel — on those who were outwardly of Israel but not inwardly.
The people of God did experience dislocation. But they went to other lands the way the pilgrims went to America — not as captives taken in defeat, but as those advancing the dominion mandate under new conditions. The distinction between the pilgrim and the exile is important. The pilgrim leaves voluntarily, under God’s direction, to build something. The exile is taken against his will, in judgment, to captivity. Abraham was a pilgrim. Daniel was an exile. The first-century Christians were, in that moment, pilgrims.
The Holy Land Now
Another aspect of this matters. There is no longer a holy land in the old sense. The distinctiveness of the land of Israel was tied to the presence of God in the temple. With the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and the definitive ending of the sacrificial system, that specific geographical sanctity dissolved. The land is no longer special in the way it was.
What is the holy land now? The whole earth. The dominion mandate — fill the earth and subdue it — was never revoked. The prayer thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven is not a prayer for escape from the earth but for the transformation of it. The inheritance is the nations. The territory is everywhere.
This is why the exile theology, whatever its intentions, tends toward passivity and withdrawal. If this earth is not ours, if we are merely passing through, then the project of transforming culture, law, economics, education, and public life according to God’s word is, at best, a temporary service while we wait for rescue, not a genuine mandate to be prosecuted until the victory is complete.
Covenant Judgments Are Real
Here is where the nuance matters. The wide-angle view is clear: the people of God in Christ are definitively not exiles. That is fixed, settled, guaranteed by the finished work.
But the close-angle view — particular people, particular families, particular churches, particular nations at particular times — is different. We are still subject to the negative covenant sanctions for disobedience. A nation that has abandoned the law of God, that has broken covenant, that is in sustained, unrepentant rejection of his authority — that nation is ripe for judgment. Daniel and his friends were men of integrity. They were still taken into Babylon with the rest.
These two things must both be held. Definitively, as the body of the one who has already won, we are not exiles. Practically, in our specific historical moment, we may be experiencing covenant discipline — and that discipline may intensify before it lifts.
The answer is not to embrace exile as our permanent identity. The answer is to understand why the discipline has come — because we have forgotten the law of God — and to return. The sanctions of Deuteronomy 28 are not punishments from a hostile God. They are the covenant operating as it was designed to operate, calling the people back to their real identity.
Heirs, Not Wanderers
The church is not a band of wanderers hoping for rescue. She is an heir who has received the deed to the estate and is tasked with taking possession.
That is a harder calling than exile. Exile asks you to endure. Inheritance asks you to govern — to extend the dominion of God’s kingdom into every sphere of life, to bring every thought captive to Christ, to make disciples of the nations, to seek the welfare of the city, to pursue the transformation of culture by the word of God.
This is not triumphalism. The cost is real; the opposition is real; the road is long. But the destination is not in question. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. That is not a hope still outstanding. It is the ground on which we stand.