The Kingdom of God
On the other hand, the kingdom of God (kingdom of ‘heaven’ in Matthew) is a different matter altogether from 'heaven' and 'the heavens', but there is a connection between them. Those who are “in Christ” as apostle Paul describes it are those who are “born again” as Jesus describes it. As such, they are no longer simply members of the kingdoms of this world, but members of the kingdom of God and “joint heirs with Christ” and “heirs of God”. [See Romans 8:17; Galatians 3:29 & 4:7]
Now
let’s transfer this illustration to our discussion here. A is our world – what I call the kingdom of
man; B is ‘eternity’, God’s zone – the kingdom of God; C is an exclave of
eternity (God’s zone), planted and growing as an enclave in our world; in the
kingdom of man; in amongst the human race.
Consider
the parable Jesus told as recorded by Luke (13:18-19): “So He was
saying, ‘What is the kingdom of God like,
and to what shall I compare it? “It is like a mustard seed, which a man took
and threw into his own garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the
birds of the air nested in its branches’.” Jesus came to our world, as
that mustard seed, to establish and grow the kingdom of God for the ultimate
good of our world, the human race and the eternal kingdom of God itself.
Consider Jesus’ own
words as recorded by John (12:24): “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a
grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies,
it bears much fruit.” Like a grain of
wheat or corn or a seed, Jesus ‘fell into the earth’ and died – and from that
lone seed sprang up a new tree, the kingdom of God on earth, to nourish and
shelter any of us whose desire and passion is towards the God who inhabits
eternity; Jesus’ Father and now ours.
As I said, God “inhabits
eternity” (Isaiah 57:15) – eternity is His zone. 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”.
So consider Matthew
18:20: “For where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am
there in their midst.” 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 here on earth and we can
personally experience it.
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 future 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.
Paul gives one of the purposes
of this temporal or ‘exclave’ phase of the kingdom of God on earth in his first
letter to the Corinthians: “For we who live are constantly being
delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be
manifested in our mortal flesh.” (4:11)
Paul could say, “I die daily” (see 1 Corinthians 15:31). That’s the disciple life for us humans; for
as we die, the life of Jesus is manifest in us.
The boundaries of the kingdom of God on earth (the exclave) are extended;
the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not understand what is
going on. And the kingdom of God grows
and provides shelter and food for those who seek God and put their faith in His
righteousness.
All of us who are fully trusting
in Jesus for our right standing before God are joined to Christ in an organic
union; we are part of the kingdom of God, though we still have roots in the
earth (“in the world but not of it”).
Like all the saints before us (see Hebrews 11:13) we are, in this world, an enclave of “strangers and
foreigners” because we are now part of the exclave of eternity (the kingdom of
God) on earth. But, consistent with
apostle Paul, as far as God our Father is concerned, “You are no longer
strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are
of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is
growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built
together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” (Ephesians
2:19-22)
The second stream of thought concerns “citizenship”. I am not a Jew; I am not writing from a
Jewish perspective; and I am not writing with a Jewish audience in mind. I mention this because the two passages from
apostle Paul on the subject of citizenship are likewise focused on non-Jews –
Gentiles. The Ephesians 2 verses above
come at the end of the section I want to now focus on:
Therefore
remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision”
by the so-called “Circumcision,” which
is performed in the flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel [citizenship], and strangers to the
covenants of promise, having no hope and
without God in the world. But now in
Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood
of Christ. For He Himself is our peace,
who made both groups into one
and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the
enmity, which is the Law of
commandments contained in
ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might
reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to
death the enmity.
And he
came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were
near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and
aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself
being the cornerstone, in whom
the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the
Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the
Spirit.
The “Commonwealth of Israel” Paul speaks of is
not the same thing as the “kingdom of God”.
In God’s heart, intention and plan, His kingdom knows no racial
boundaries or lineages; it is equally open to Jew and non-Jew, male and female,
slave or free-man, circumcised or uncircumcised. But the crucial question is: wherein is your
righteousness? Expressed another way,
what is your claim to right standing before God based on: yourself; a parent; a
‘priest’; the law; or Jesus?
Christ-righteousness is available equally to
everyone – and it is the only righteousness that has the imprimatur of God; the
Divine stamp of approval.
Self-righteousness, priest-righteousness and law-righteousness all fall
short and disappoint God and man alike.
We shall return to this matter of righteousness shortly.
And Paul wrote this to the Philippians, a largely
Gentile congregation in modern-day Europe:
For
many walk (of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping) as enemies of the cross of Christ,
whose end is destruction, whose god is their
appetite, and whose glory is in
their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. For our
citizenship is in the heavens, from which also we
eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body
of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion
of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
Just as the first disciples had seen Jesus
disappear from among them into “the heavens”, they describe their anticipation
of his return from out of “the heavens”.
The consummation of the kingdom of God on earth, rolled into the eternal
kingdom, begins with the appearing of Jesus in “the heavens” and runs into the
transformation of our humble, earth-bound bodies into bodies that conform with
his body, which in turn conforms with eternity, the dwelling-place of God. He is the glorious King who has the power to
subject all things to himself; that same power will transform our mortal bodies
(dead or alive) to conform with their new ecology: eternity.
For
this perishable must put on the imperishable; and this mortal must put on
immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and
this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that
is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’.” (1 Corinthians
15:53-54)
From there it rolls into the new heaven, the
new earth, the new Jerusalem and the wedding-breakfast for Jesus and his Bride,
the ekklesia, the Christ-righteous ones.
And so begins the eternal reigning of Christ and his Bride, judging the
world, judging angels, administering the realm, reigning with Christ.
But note this: a) nothing in New Testament
scripture indicates that this transformation happens immediately upon death; b)
the New Testament record strongly suggests that this transformation happens
coincidentally with our resurrection, when our spirits are reunited with our
new ‘transformed’ bodies. Note the
apostle “whom Jesus loved” (John) wrote of the return of Jesus this way: “Beloved,
now we are children of God, and it has not appeared [been revealed] as yet what
we will be. We know that when He
appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone
who has this hope fixed on Him
purifies himself, just as He is pure.” (1 John 3:2-3)
Now either we accept the apostolic understanding of how
things work out or we don’t. And I’m the
first to admit I don’t know or understand it all; even the apostles themselves
were not clear; they simply trusted themselves to the keeping of God and of His
Christ. And, as their scriptures
reminded them, in the words of Abraham: “Far be it from You to do such a thing,
to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are
alike. Far be it from You! Shall
not the Judge of all the earth deal justly [do right]?” (Genesis 18:25)
One thing we cannot do is decide it’s stupid or
discriminatory or fanciful or whatever and make up our own version. Such an action is guaranteed disastrous
(Revelation 22:18). I’m with Paul who
said to the Galatians, “we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the
hope of righteousness.” (5:5)
Eternity is the kingdom of righteousness and the home of
righteousness; the triune God is the personification of righteousness; God is
the righteous father and judge; and righteousness is both the character of
Christ and the family name and heritage.
It would be so good if we all had the same understanding of
‘righteousness’ and ‘righteous’; it would be even better if the understanding
we all shared was an understanding that was grounded in the scriptures and
routed back to the teaching of Jesus and the apostle Paul. Sadly, most often it is neither. But it is not alone in this: choose just
about any subject you like within the gamut of what we call christian theology
and you will most likely find that the common understanding of it falls
woefully short of what the bible actually says and what Jesus and the first
apostles actually understood and taught.
Sometimes, if we would simply read the bible under the
direction of the Holy Spirit and without the spectacles we have become so used
to wearing, we would see for ourselves amazing truths that we have not come
into contact with before. As we’ve seen
in the paragraphs above, the common understanding of the kingdom of God is
woefully truncated and inadequate and simply does not fit whole tracts of the
New Testament.
In my experience, most ‘christian’ people don’t understand the concept
of the new covenant, yet that is the
covenant with God that allows and enables us to be genuinely a Christian – a
full member of the household of God and of His Christ. Similarly, many of the key terms we readily
use and which fall so easily off our lips are so truncated and inadequate in
our own experience and understanding that our use of them sounds like
gobbledygook to outsiders. Terms like
salvation, redemption, justification, sin, sanctification and so on; all too
often, the one who faithfully teaches about such terms will be maligned and accused of
being overly intellectual. At the same
time, what congregations generally hear about these terms is, as I said,
woefully truncated and inadequate. Sadly, that's how many Pastors have it and intend to keep it.Consistent with my earlier post "Fetish for Control", I agree with a quote attributed to Maximilien Robespierre: "The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."
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