Citizens of Heaven

What is salvation? Are we simply saved from our sins and then we get to go to heaven and exist in a blissful stress free paradise for all eternity eating whatever we want without the harmful effects? Or is there something more that is going on when we become saved?
Maybe if we started thinking of salvation as a real change in our lives from one thing to another many things in our faith would line up a bit more?
I have read Philippians 3:20 (our citizenship is in heaven) and have heard it from others that this is basically a nice centiment. The thinking is that sure things go badly down here on earth and sometimes bad things happen to good people and maybe we're persecuted for our faith, but we shouldn't be too worried Our citizenship is in heaven." It's something more of a wish or a future hope that comforts us now in our misery, but what if there's more to it than that?
What if we thought of salvation as a transfer of citizenship, something that was real in this world?
I like to think of the movie the Matrix when it comes to salvation. Neo is freed from the mental prison the machines have created to enslave humanity. He has been released from one world only to learn that the world he has been released into is not what he thought. He has been freed from one and transfered to another. In a sense he is no longer a citizen of the matrix and his citizenship is somewhere else. When he reenters the matrix he sees it in a whole new light. More importantly he doesn't exist in the matrix as if he was a citizen of the matrix, rather he lives like someone who has been freed from it, hence he is chased and "persecuted" by the agents of the matrix, the gatekeepers of the prison. What Neo lives for and the way he runs his life in the matrix has been irrevocably altered because of his transfer of freedom into the real world.
This does seem to be the picture that salvation in the christian context is all about. There is an act of release from prison to sin through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But for many people this is where the thinking stops. The christian life, however, is all about living in the reality of the liberating death of Christ. Something real, profound and deeply unsettling has hapened in the life of the neophyte Christian. Her life has changed and she can not live as if she had not become a citizen of heaven. Romans 6:1-10 talks about Jesus giving us a new life, but there is no reference that this is a new life that only lies in wait in heaven. In fact the new life begins now and here on earth. There is a tension that now exists in the life inbetween this present world and the new creation. These are the two realities that now exist for those of us who have been freed from sin. This old self is something that like clothing we must take off (Ephesians 4:22-24) and the new self created by Christ is something we must put on like clothing. So salvation is not something that we arrive at and wait to go to heaven. Rather salvation is a new reality for those who have been freed by the blood of Christ in which we are to live now in this world.
So, maybe when paul says we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13) what he is saying is that we must live our lives striving to live in the way and by the pattern of the new creation and not of this world. Maybe if we can get beyond the quagmire of morality that gums up the issue of salvation (i.e. heaven is for good people, hell is for bad people) we can see that those who have been transfered to the new creation, in its embryonic stage, must, in order to arrive at heaven, live in that pattern and on that path now.
Additionally, there is the eschatological hope of Christians that one day the new heaven and the new earth will be all there is. Paul states that this earth in it's corruption and decay is passing away (1 Cor 7:31). How then can we continue to live our lives according to the pattern of this world expect to walk into the reality of the new heaven and the new creation? Peter states in 2 Peter 3:11-13 that since this present world is going to be destroyed by fire, what type of person should we be now. Salvation then is 99.99% related to the here and now. I think this is what James is getting at when he says in James 2:14-19ff that faith without works is dead. Think about it. If salvation really is about the here and now as we look forward to the new heaven and the new earth can someone who does not demonstrate a changed pattern of life really say that they are saved? Heaven then is not simply the end of this life, but it is the goal of those striving and working out their salvation here in this world, living with their citizenship in heaven and running in a way to finish the race. This life here and now is to be a life changing and altering experience that along the way we put off our old selves and put on our new selves created to be in the new heaven and the new earth so that when we do enter heaven it is because our life has been leading there.
Okay that was rather long