The Kingdom of God (4)

Exclave

At this point, I want to introduce a rare word. This word is so rare that few would know its meaning and that makes it particularly useful for us here because few people will come to it with a pre-conceived idea of what it means. But before I introduce the word, I want to make some small comment on the use of Paul's idea of our being ‘ambassadors for Christ’. Ambassador and Embassy are linked words since an Ambassador is an agent of and for a foreign country, situated in a small territory of the host country. We call that territory an Embassy.  While in Uganda, I regularly passed by the United States Embassy, located on a piece of land on Gaba Road in Nsambya in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.  Located in Uganda, the Embassy is a little part of the United States of America and within it, the US Ambassador to Uganda carries out his duties and his mission.

Another way of seeing an Embassy – such as the US Embassy in Kampala – is as an exclave (as distinct from an enclave). Let me quote Wikipedia:

In political geography, an enclave is a territory whose geographical boundaries lie entirely within the boundaries of another territory. An exclave, on the other hand, is a territory legally or politically attached to another territory with which it is not physically contiguous.

[Wikipedia: Enclave and Exclave, March 2012]

To a considerable extent, it is a matter of perspective - as can be seen in the following diagram.

As Wikipedia points out, C is an enclave to A, but an Exclave to B.

The US Embassy in Kampala (C) is an enclave in Uganda (A) and an exclave of the United States of America (B).

In a similar way, Paul's understanding of the place and the role of the New Covenant People of God in Christ (C) is that they are an enclave in the world – the kingdom of man (A) and an exclave of the Kingdom of God (B).

And there is an important extra dimension to this illustration: The Kingdom of God – the place God inhabits – is eternity, a ‘place’ not constrained by time, space and matter.  The kingdom of man is the place of time, space and matter.  The new covenant people of God – what Paul calls the ecclesia – is a volatile state of transition between the two.  The people of God have ‘eternity in their hearts’ (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and are undergoing a permanent transformation into the likeness of Christ (Romans 12:2 and 1 Corinthians 3:18) while still being largely constrained within the time, space, matter continuum.

We are an outpost of Eternity (the eternal Kingdom of God – the realm of God and His Son) placed within the world (the temporal kingdom of man – the realm of Satan and his entourage) for the purpose of representing the interests of the Kingdom of God and His Son and of providing the ‘bridge’ or way of passage from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His beloved son as Paul described in Colossians 1:13.

This is the place and the role of the exclave of the people of God.  That is on the macro level – the universal plane of the whole of the new covenant people of God in all of history.  It is also the place and the role of local groups of disciples of Jesus in their localities, towns, cities, suburbs, etc.  And both, in the language of scripture, are the ecclesia – God’s called-out company of disciples who are in transition.  As Paul says, “For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).  But we are still constrained by earth’s time, space, matter continuum.

Apostle Paul had an interesting take on this matter: he told the Philippians, “But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better, yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake” (1:23).  I echo his sentiments: to make the move from exclave to homeland is ‘very much better’; yet to remain in exclave as ecclesia is necessary for a variety of reasons and purposes.

At this point, I want to draw into this meditation a critically important trinity of ideas that I came across as I plied God with questions and delved into the scriptures.  I got just so far down this study track when I discovered that other people in other parts of the world were doing the same thing.  So much so that I stopped writing on the subject: because one such fellow-traveller is Frank Viola.  Mid-study, I found his wonderful book From Eternity to Here (David C Cook, 2009).  The rear cover of the book says this:

Deep within God's Word lies a wondrous story like no other. A drama that originated before time began. An epic saga that resonates with the heartbeat of Go. As story that reveals nothing less than the meaning of life and God's great mission in the earth. (Italics added)

[I added the italics here because when I began my study in 2008, I was looking to find the missio Dei (God’s mission in the earth) and I called my study – and this document – The Meaning of Life.]

What is so important about this book?  The back cover continues:

From Eternity to Here presents three remarkable stories spanning Genesis to Revelation. Each story traces a divine theme that is woven throughout scripture. Seen together, they offer an extraordinary glimpse into God's highest passion and grand mission. What we discover will forever change your view of life, the church and our magnificent God.

I couldn’t agree more – but it’s not the book that will do that, but the truth that the book unveils.  I struggled for some time with the very thing that Viola addresses at several points throughout his book: the vast bulk of theological, ecclesiastical and missional understanding that underpins “church life” as we know it starts at Genesis 3 and ends at somewhere around Revelation 20.

But, whether we like it or not, things did not begin with the fall – they didn’t even begin with creation.  And they don’t end with judgment; they end with what is often called ‘the marriage supper of the Lamb’ and the beginning of the new order with the Father, the Son and the Bride.  They began with a passion in the heart of God for three things.  They end with that same passion now a living reality on the new earth.  These are the ‘three remarkable stories’ referred to in the quote above.  In my estimation, they are best seen and summarized in Viola's Introduction – Disclosing the Divine Story.

What I will share in the pages that follow are three narratives, which woven together, tell the epic story of God's ageless purpose. All three narratives are solidly grounded in scripture. In fact, they embody the whole story of scripture, streaming through it like a constant current.

The first is the story of a God who is an ageless romantic, driven by one consuming pursuit. The second is about a God who has sought since eternity to have a resting place, a habitation, a home. And the third reveals a God from another realm ['B' in my earlier illustration] who visits planet earth '['A' in that illustration] to establish a heavenly colony that will give Him visible expression ['C' in that illustration].

In the economy of scripture, 1+1+1 does not equal 3, but 1. The story of God's ageless purpose is one grand drama...

Part 1 of this book is dedicated to presenting the Bride. Part 2 is dedicated to presenting the house. Part 3 is dedicated to presenting the body and the family. Interestingly, all of these images are different aspects of one reality. Taken together, they embody God's grand mission in the earth, [the Missio Dei]

This progression is also rooted in scripture. And it is the heart of the biblical story, the metanarrative (overarching story) of holy writ. The Father obtains a bride for His Son by the Spirit.  He then builds a house in which he, the Son, and the bride dwell together in the Spirit. The Father, the Son and the bride live in that house as an extended household and they have offspring by the Spirit. The offspring constitutes the family, a new humanity called "the body of Christ", [the ecclesia]

Most of us will be familiar with these terms, but, as Viola astutely points out, “Christians have been given a steady diet of biblical terminology.  We speak it fluently because it’s the tribal language.  But the reality and the power behind our terminology has largely been lost.”

I join my hope with his: “... that as you read this book, new life will be breathed into these familiar terms.  I pray that the Holy Spirit would fill them with their original beauty and awe to this end: that you would be given a dramatically new, if not a staggering, look at the ageless purpose that drives your God. For that purpose is the very reason you exist.”

And that purpose is central to the life and mission of the ecclesia today.

 

End of series

The Kingdom of God (3)

Kingdom Reigning

Apostle Paul seems to agree with his fellow-apostle John, since in 2 Timothy 2:11-12, he writes: “For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him; If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.”  Paul does seem to have this as a bit of a theme.  In Romans 8:17 for instance, he says, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.  Whatever else we say, “co-heir” is quite specific.  We are not the heir’s lackey, but co-heir or ‘joint heir’ – confirming that we will actually be reigning.  Through Christ, we are children of the Eternal Royal Family and will co-reign with Jesus.

This gives me considerable encouragement.  I know I am not the King of Kings, but, in Jesus, I am a king.  According to Hebrews 11:6, God rewards those who diligently seek Him.  If I take the Old Testament seriously, then I can be encouraged by Proverbs 25:2 – “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”  As a ‘king in waiting’, I am determined to search out the matter of what my reigning will involve.

However, as good as Paul’s writing to Timothy is, it tells us only a little more than does John in his Revelation.

But he does give us a bit more to go on.  Mind you, they are only hints.  If I may use an analogy, it’s like Paul has these ‘windows’ in his place – windows on a subject that he might very well have known much more about than he reveals to us in what we have of his writings.  But the windows are very tiny.

In a kind of passing comment, he says to the Corinthians, “Don’t you know that we will judge the world; don’t you know that we will judge angels?”  1 Corinthians 6:2&3.

The first little bit extra we can see is that those who died with Him and shared the wedding breakfast with Him will be involved in judging the world.  What world?

If Revelation 21 is to be believed, John’s vision also included “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea.”  This has promise – there is a new heaven and a new earth.  To make things even more interesting and promising, there is also a “new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven.”

John’s revelation goes on to reveal that God’s age-old promise is now coming true – “... a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men and He will live with them.  They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.’”

And then the crowning glory: “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘See – I am making everything new.’”

Think about it!  Everything new.  New heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem, no more death, no more tears, no more pain.  And God now living with men as He originally intended when He created man so long ago!  This is bigger, better and infinitely longer lasting than the life of man as we have known it for thousands of years.  And if it takes kings and their retinues to ‘administer the realm’ on this earth, I suggest it will likewise take ‘administrators of the realm’ following this awesome, unimaginable new order of King Jesus.

Paul’s second window is perhaps even more enlightening.  “We will judge angels.”  To open this up a bit, I would like to create a bit of a montage of Prince Charles and the British royal family (below).  Study it and see if you can make sense of it by yourself first.

This second little window of Paul’s relates to the yellow dotted line.  Throughout Charles’ life – indeed, even before he was born – the royal family had household servants.  These servants, in the early years, had a role in the early development of the future king, even to the extent that sometimes he has things done to him and for him by the servants.  From time to time the servants would have told the young prince what to do.  Now that is not the future state of Charles as king, is it?  As king, he will tell the servants what to do.  So, somewhere in the passing years, while the servants remain servants, Charles goes from a child under tutelage to a ruler in his own right.  The former state and the latter state are two entirely different things, but it is the same person.

For one thing, I suggest this is how it was for Jesus.  Just like Charles, Jesus ‘learned obedience by what he suffered’ as part of his journey from babe in Bethlehem, through confounding the priests, to reigning on His throne.

So it is also for us relative to our birth and life in the eternal royal family of God.  If the scriptures are to be believed, we were – as every human is – “born in sin”.  As Paul says, before our new birth we were slaves to sin, death, fear and the elemental spirits of the world.

In the analogy I am using, ‘household servants’ equals angels.  When we are just born into God’s family, I believe that our Father sees to it that there are angels all about, ministering to us and protecting us for our role as future joint-heir with Jesus.  However, in the eternal kingdom, we will rule over the angels.  Somewhere along the journey, as we are transformed by the Spirit more and more, from ‘one degree of glory to another’, into the full likeness of Jesus, we find the angels less directly involved and increasingly ‘observers’ or ‘overseers’ of our life.

In my frame of reference, I think the fallen angel – our arch enemy – knew this is what happens and despised the idea of these puny, dirty little humans ultimately judging him, so he rebelled and took a third of the household servants with him.  This matter is for another time.  For now, think about an eternal state “in which dwells righteousness”, with Jesus and His Bride on the throne, administering a new heaven, a new earth, a new Jerusalem and a period of unmitigated and untold sowing and reaping of the glory of God.  And added to this mix is “the lake of fire” – whatever that is – into which the fallen angels and those who choose to side with them are sent.

We don’t know much about this period (if one can call it that) but we do know, if we ‘diligently seek’ and ‘search out’ this matter, that, compared to it, our time on earth is like a mist and a blink.  And the reason for our trials, our training, our testing, our gifts and callings and the over-arching blessing of the wisdom and power of the Spirit is so that we can prove faithful in the little things here and so be trusted with great things in the administration of the eternal kingly household of God, savouring the glorious company of our Groom, adoring our Father for His infinite wisdom, love, power and holiness, judging men and judging angels – without end.

I am convinced that the type and style of work in eternity, and the untold vast expansiveness of that new universe is such that all our life and the best of our faithful ministry within the Body of Christ on earth will be seen as little more than our apprenticeship for eternity.  After all, isn’t that the root idea of discipleship as practiced by Jesus?

However, please don’t let me divert you from the need for a full and serious participation of all the saints in the Missio Dei.  “Now all these things are from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.  It is as though God were entreating through us, ‘we beg you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.’”   2 Corinthians 5:19-20

As ‘kings in waiting’, we are ambassadors of the eternal royal family of God.  What we do and how we live is to display the nature, the mission and the goal of the King, of the family and of the kingdom.

The Kingdom of God (2)

What is heaven?

Now what about this notion of ‘heaven’?  Ouranos is the Greek word for heaven, most commonly used in the plural form ‘heavens’.  The heavens (plural) are said to have been created by God in Genesis 1:1.  In Jewish thought throughout ancient times as well as the time of Jesus, the heavens (according to Dr Edward Robinson in 1837) are believed to be “the expanse of the sky, the apparent concave hemisphere above us, which was regarded by the Hebrews as solid.” (Robinson’s 1837 Lexicon, p. 599)

Robinson goes on to say, “In common usage, it included the regions above the sky, where God is said to dwell (Psalm 2:4) and likewise the region underneath and next to the firmament, where the clouds are gathered and birds fly (Genesis 1:20, 26).”

Consistent with the belief that Matthew’s gospel was written within and into a Jewish context, Matthew uses this plural term often, Mark less often, Luke hardly at all and John not at all.  It also occurs a few times in the apostles’ letters.

On the website www.crivoice.org (as at September 07, 2012), Douglas Ward writes well on the subject.  He says this:

Jews of that time did not have the scientific knowledge that we take for granted, so they did not think of the world in scientific terms or descriptions. Instead they attempted to conceptualize the world in terms of what they knew, and usually described it visually. So, when they conceived of the universe, they constructed a multi-layered world, sort of like a large onion composed of various layers with the physical world in which human beings lived at the center. These layers were called "firmament" or shamayim (heavens or sky) in the Old Testament or "heavens" in the New Testament era. There are many other non-Biblical books and writings that also describe these layers. This model was still in use in the Middle Ages (1400s AD) when Dante wrote of the various levels of heaven...

Most often this model contained seven heavens but in a few writings there were only three layers. Even though the number of layers was different these models of the universe shared some common traits. The lowest heaven, the core of the "onion," is the visible physical world that all people can see. In most of these models the second heaven is composed of water, a great sea, a firmament dividing the earth from the heavenly beings. This water that surrounded the earth became a common symbol for chaos and disorder that threatened to engulf the world (cf. Gen 6; see Speaking the Language of Canaan for a discussion of the symbolism of the cosmic waters). So often, these waters were understood to be gathered to await the coming day of judgment when they would once again be loosed to destroy the unrighteous. However, the third heaven was beyond the sight of human beings. It was the dwelling place of God and his attendant heavenly beings whom he would send to protect Israel and the righteous. So when Paul claims to have seen the risen Christ [see 2 Corinthians 12:2] he is describing his experience in terms that he, and others, would readily understand. In that cultural context, he would have assumed that God had taken him to the region where it was possible to see spiritual beings, and the risen Christ.

Given that explanation, God’s dwelling place is up through the heavens and out beyond the capacity of our sight and our thought.  If God comes to earth, it was understood that He would have to come ‘through the heavens’.  When Jesus ascended to the Father, it was said that he ‘passed through the heavens’.  The New Jerusalem spoken of in John’s Revelation is said to come “down out of heaven from God.”  All of these only make sense if one understands that the language used is not meant to reflect scientific discovery but to communicate to and within the culture and philosophy of the Jews of the day.

Historically, the Greeks had a view of these matters quite distinctly different from that of the Jews.  Modern Western thinking, culture and philosophy drinks in large measure from a Greek spring and little if at all from a Hebrew one.  So using language and thoughts that come from a Hebrew milieu in our communication in the otherwise very Greek West of today only serves to create impossible fantasies and to open believers to ridicule and confusion.  That’s a fairly accurate description of the stasis of what we call the church today: fantasy, ridicule, confusion.

To me, it makes most sense to use the word heaven and heavens to describe the world as we know it and the yet-uncharted realms radiating out and away from the earth’s surface.  Generally, we do not refer to the realm of inner earth, beneath the earth’s surface, as heaven or heavens!

The eternal realm – the place scripture says God inhabits – is best referred to as either eternity or the kingdom of God.  But always bear in mind that it is not a time-based thing and it is not something that begins when time as we know it ends.  The time-space-matter continuum is the temporary state; eternity, by definition, has no beginning and no end – hence the two infinity symbols at the ends of the centre line in the diagram above.  Eternity has always existed and will always exist.  The heavens are a creation of God for a time and a purpose that has a beginning and an end.

Perhaps you can see now what I mean if I ask the question, what kind of a blessing and future is heaven when it is understood as typically preached by church?  It’s hardly a blessing and it doesn’t represent any significant future because it ceases to exist when earth ceases to exist.

What continues without end – consistent with the God who invented it who has no beginning and no end – is God’s dwelling place.  And it is this place – His home, His household, His dominion, His kingdom – that Jesus introduced in touchable attainable form; and it is this kingdom that is the inheritance of the family and household of God.  And it is entered only by a second birth.

Those who know me well have heard me say repeatedly that the good news of the kingdom of God – indeed the New Testament itself – nowhere offers humans the promise of heaven-when-you-die.  The whole idea is a pathetic excuse for the reality of inheriting the kingdom of God.  And that is a significant part of the good news that Jesus came to bring and that the first apostles were at pains to proclaim.  Most died serving it with their whole lives.  God’s offer is not heaven-when-you-die but inheriting the kingdom of God – both its ‘assets’ and its DNA.

The world of man most often thinks in terms of reward and punishment for doing good or doing bad in the course of one’s life on earth – or several lives if you believe in reincarnation.  The ‘judgement’ is understood as putting all our life on some celestial weighing machine and seeing which outweighs which.  Is it any wonder intelligent people scoff at such simplistic nonsense and fantastic myth.  That is nothing like what Jesus said and it is nothing like what his apostles heralded as the good news of the kingdom of God.  It is the stuff of religion – that which “binds up again” otherwise free people.

Unfortunately, however, it has become a central plank of the church’s gospel.  Remember, ‘church’ is a creation of man and ‘gospel’ is church’s story of God, neither of which has anything to do with ecclesia or the good news of Jesus.  And church has travelled (and will continue to travel) to the farthest ends of the earth to make a handful of disciples to this pretender.  Rather reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew 23:15 - "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”

Let me make one thing very clear.  The popular idea that “the kingdom of God” is the same thing as the church’s “heaven” is patent nonsense.  It is so wrong on so many levels it defies imagination.  “Heaven” is a popular religious concept constructed by humans; it varies from person to person and from church to church; it is a childish over-simplification of what God is about and what Jesus achieved while here on earth; it inoculates its believers to the real truth of the kingdom of God; and (if only we understood this bit) both heaven and earth are destroyed as part of the final judgement – hardly a good thing to look forward to.

And like a pièce de résistance of stupidity, we mistakenly assume and teach that God’s ‘future’ only begins when either Jesus returns for final judgement or we die.  The kingdom of God arrived on earth in Jesus and has been taking root and growing ever since.  It is a spiritual kingdom and we enter it by a spiritual (second) birth as Jesus taught.  The return of Jesus ushers in the consummation of the kingdom, but in the meantime, we live and move and have our being in a zone of mixture where the old is passing away and the new is taking root and expanding.

And corresponding to that, the books of the bible roughly fit that model.  The documents of the old are Genesis to Malachi; the documents of the new are Acts to Revelation; the four gospels are the documents of the zone of mixture where elements of old and new are present, clearly visible and experienced by the people who lived in that (roughly) thirty year period.

 

Next post: Kingdom Reigning

The Kingdom of God (1)

 

What is the kingdom of God?

The Greek word used in the New Testament is basileus (king) and basileia (kingdom).  Basileus is a broader term than the literal English ‘king’ in that it is used to speak of Emperor (e.g. the Roman Emperor) and of Jesus the Messiah, King of the Jews.

Basileia is primarily an abstract noun speaking of dominion; regal power; sovereignty.  Secondarily, it is used as a concrete noun speaking of the territory or the people over whom the king has dominion and authority.  This is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “all dominion, rule and power has been given unto me” in his commissioning of the first apostles.  A person’s kingdom is that which the person has dominion, power and authority over.

By definition, God’s kingdom is that which God has dominion, power and authority over.  But don’t blindly jump in and conclude that, by that definition, everything then is God’s kingdom.  Note what Jesus said: ‘my kingdom is not of this world’.  The kingdom of God is an eternal kingdom, not a temporal kingdom.  So it is important at this point to realise an important fact about eternity: eternity is not unending time – time that goes on and on without end.  There is no such thing as unending time.  Whether we like it or not, time ends – that’s why it’s time.  It is a measurement that we use to speak of the progression of life as we know it, past, present and future.

For a moment, think back to the story of the temptation of Jesus as recorded in Luke 4:5-8:

And he [Satan] led Him [Jesus] up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.  And the devil said to Him, “I will give you all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if you worship before me, it shall all be Yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY.’

The whole point of Jesus’ coming; the whole point of the proclamation of the good news of the kingdom of God; the whole point of the existence of ecclesia; is for Jesus’ victory over death and the power of the devil to be realised and then enforced.  Jesus won the victory and set that process in motion; his body on earth now (ecclesia) continues and completes it under the dominion (the kingdom) of God the Father, the headship of Jesus the first-born Son, and the power and encouragement of the Holy Spirit.

Satan thought that in the death of Jesus, he had won, but the opposite was true.  Satan thought he had untouchable control over the kingdoms of the world, but Jesus stole them from him.  Until the resurrection, Jesus couldn’t say “all dominion, power and authority has been given to me”, but the victory of the resurrection is that the kingdoms of the world are now ripe for a transfer of allegiance from Satan to Jesus, and thereby to the Father and His family and household.  Hence he declared at the commissioning of the twelve and at Pentecost some days later that ‘all authority in heaven and on earth has been give to me; so, as you go through life now, herald and proclaim the good news of my Father’s kingdom.  And remember – I will be with you at all times, right up to the very end.’

Life as we know it tends to be limited by time, space and matter and the natural laws of the created universe.  Eternity, on the other hand, has no beginning nor end and is not restricted by these limitations.  It is another dimension altogether.  You can see glimpses of it all through the New Testament record.  I believe that, post Pentecost, the expression “in the Spirit” attributed to Paul by Luke for instance is a metaphor – perhaps even a synonym – for eternity.  Consequently, I also believe that the comparison between “in the Spirit” and “in the flesh” is a comparison between eternity and time; eternal and temporal.

Below is a simple illustration of what I am saying.

One of the things we know about God is that he “inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:15).  So, for me, the kingdom of God is eternity plus the spaces or environments in all of creation where his dominion, power and authority are welcomed and embraced.  And, for me, that comes down to the individuals who yield their lives to his dominion, power and authority and the corporate spaces where those people gather together in twos and threes and in larger numbers – God’s ecclesia – but not the buildings, because “God does not dwell in buildings made with hands”.

Where two or three are gathered together under His dominion, power and authority, that is a gathering “in my name” as Jesus said, and He is present.  As such, it is an outpost of the kingdom of God on earth – an exclave of eternity, existing in the human time-space-matter continuum.  I have elsewhere spoken of this matter of exclave in more detail and you can find it in the Household of God and This Good News series in this blog.

In essence, the kingdom of God is the dominion of God and the space or environment where His dominion is welcomed, embraced and submitted to; every place where that happens becomes a place of His authority and power – His kingdom is near, present, around and about.  Now read some of the accounts in the gospels where Jesus said that the kingdom is near or present.  His birth, life and ministry were all spaces or environments where the dominion of God was welcomed, embraced and submitted to – by Jesus himself in the first instance, and secondly by the people Jesus was sharing his life with.

In this paradigm, eternity is what it is all about.  The starting point for an explanation of corporate human life – and our lives as individuals – is the mind and heart of God in eternity.  The starting point for an explanation of the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus is the mind and heart of God in eternity.  Jesus both personifies and bears in his person the DNA of eternity – and in that he is unique, one of a kind; he is also the prototype of many to come after him.  He is the firstborn of a new breed; all who welcome and submit to his DNA join the family whose father is God Himself and whose natural ecosystem is eternity, not time-space-matter earth.  Remember Paul’s insistence that the in-Christ ones – the ecclesia – are ‘strangers’, ‘foreigners’ and ‘aliens’ to this world.

And it all emanates from the mind and heart of God.  He set the whole thing in motion when he planted His DNA – the DNA of eternity – into the womb of Mary the mother of Jesus.  Because of this, a second birth is possible – even necessary.  Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus makes this point well.  Jesus was the first-born of a breed who possess the DNA of eternity in a human body.

Here let me explain a mis-translation in the New Testament.  Older English versions of the bible refer to Jesus as “the only begotten son”.  Given that ‘begotten’ means born, the text is saying that Jesus is the only born son – which is patent nonsense.  In Greek, the word translated only can also be translated first and once.  Why either or both of these options was not chosen by the English bible translators I can only guess, but both these alternatives work.  Jesus is, as I just explained, the first-born son of the new breed.

But Jesus is also – and I stress this is absolutely unique – the once-born son of this breed.  The uniqueness of Jesus is that he only needed to be born once.  But when he is talking to Nicodemus (John 3), it becomes clear that all the sons to follow have to be born twice: a natural birth and a spiritual, ‘second’ birth.  In other words, being born again (the second birth) is necessary.  Nicodemus was like many of us today – he scoffed at the thought, asking ‘how can this be?’  “Can a man enter into his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”  Of course not.  So Jesus told Nicodemus how it happens.  And today, we need to be told how it happens – and that it is necessary!  For without it (note Nicodemus again) one cannot see the kingdom of God.

And what did Jesus tell Nicodemus?  “Except one receive birth from above, he is not able to see and perceive the kingdom of God.” [literal translation]  And the second time he said, “except one receive birth out of water and spirit, he is not able to enter into the kingdom of God.” [literal translation]

Jesus continues, “that which experiences a flesh birth is flesh; that which experiences a spirit birth is spirit; those who receive spirit birth experience the life of eternity (the kingdom of God), the life of God Himself.  Link this back to John 1: “He came to his own and those who were his own did not welcome him.  But as many as welcomed him, to them he gave the right to become children of God – to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”  The second birth is the spiritual birth, the birth from above, the birth from eternity – which secures entry into the family of God, the household of God and the kingdom of God.

The second birth is also referred to as a birth ‘out of water’.  This is likely a reference to the same thing Peter wrote to the Jews about in 1 Peter 1:23, “You have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable – through the logos (word) of God that lives and abides throughout this age.”  This living ‘word’ of God is often characterised as living water.  And Peter could well have been harking back to Luke 16:16 when he speaks of the word that lives and abides throughout this age – it is the good news of the kingdom of God, not the Jewish old testament.

The reference to birth ‘out of water’ to some is a link to water baptism, not as the means of the birth but as the symbol of the believer’s identification with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection.

W.E. Vine in his Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (page 1225) comments: “So the new birth is, in one sense, the setting aside of all that the believer was according to the flesh, for it is evident that there must be an entirely new beginning.”

Most of this story – and much of the stuff Jesus talked about – makes little sense apart from the paradigm I sketched earlier.  Without that paradigm, the explanations we come up with are fanciful and they remain in the realm of metaphor and analogy.  Within that paradigm, the things we are talking about become practical reality.  They are practical reality in my life and in the lives of many others since the time of Jesus, starting with the first disciples/apostles.  Therefore, there is no doubt at all in my mind that when they went out heralding the good news of the kingdom of God, part of the message was, “you must be born again”.

And since the truth remains that, in order to perceive and experience the reality of the kingdom of God now, one must be born a second time – from above; from the spirit; from the living word of the good news of the kingdom of God – that truth and that message must be an integral part of our practice of proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.  We defraud God and we defraud people when we skip that essential part of the message.

 

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