NOTES for Heb 13:14
What can indeed mean the sentence of the author of the epistle "here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come."? In the immediate context, in which this sentence was said, we can understand it, as a reminder that the Kingdom, which the Savior brought into the world, by His own words, "is not of this world".
Such a reminder after the disaster of ‘70, when was destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, was very actual: because it then began to seem that the destruction of the city and the Temple meant the failure of the hopes of the triumph in the world of the Kingdom, and this even to many Christians. We can also perceive it as a warning against the militant messianism, which after the year 70 didn’t extinct at all (the last major ancient messianic revolt took place approximately half a century after the destruction of Jerusalem). But this expression has another context, wider, more particularly actual nowadays, when the history called Christianity, goes back two millenniums already.
In fact: can we in such a case in a general way speak about the Christian culture, about the Christian civilization, about Christian government? And yes, and no. Certainly, there has never been in the world, and there will be no governmental, no public, no religious institution, which would have been able to solve the task that faces the Church: to witness the Kingdom that "is not of this world ", and to bring this Kingdom into the world.
The history of the Kingdom in our world is the history of Christian righteousness, history of holiness, giving to us an idea of what is Christianity, that is life in this Kingdom, which the savior brought into the world, and how it used to be in various historic periods.
But, since we can speak of Christianity and, more widely, of the biblical values, since we can speak of the Torah, as of a law given by God, so we can speak about societies and about governments that follow these laws or don’t, so we can speak of cultures and civilizations that are guided by these values or neglect them.
And also of which measure these governments, societies, cultures and civilizations are acceptable or unacceptable for the Kingdom. Of what can enter the Kingdom, having been transformed and become its part, and what will never enter because of its total incompatibility with it.