It is an unarguable fact that Jesus was the bearer of the Gospel or Good News about the Kingdom of God/Heaven (the two phrases are identical in meaning). "Kingdom of God" is the master-term in Jesus’ presentation of the Christian faith. It is his constant slogan, the concept around which all of his discourse revolves. "Kingdom of God" is the phrase in which the genius of the faith is concentrated. Jesus bared his mind and the fundamental intention of his whole career as prophet, rabbi and Son of God with these precious words, which should be indelibly written on the hearts of his followers:
"I am bound to preach the Gospel about the Kingdom of God to the other cities also: That is the reason why God sent me" (Luke 4:43). Logically, then, the same driving purpose should animate all Christian evangelism.
Yet, strangely, the phrase "Gospel of the Kingdom of God" is absent from the lips of nearly all contemporary attempts to "preach salvation." Something is seriously amiss. This discrepancy was noted also by a leading church planter: "I cannot help wondering why I have not heard more about the Kingdom of God in the thirty years I have been a Christian. I certainly have read about it enough in the Bible…. But I honestly cannot remember any pastor whose ministry I have been under actually preaching a sermon on the Kingdom of God. As I rummage through my own sermon barrel, I now realize that I myself have never preached a sermon on it. Where has the Kingdom been?"
No one, therefore, should be faulted for calling attention to this amazing phenomenon: Jesus’ central concern in evangelism is blatantly absent from the vocabulary of those whose job it is to represent him.
Our language as exponents and teachers of the Christian faith had better be the language of Jesus. Language reflects mind. And Christians claim to have, by virtue of the holy spirit, "the mind of Christ" (I Cor. 2:16).
If we grant then that the Kingdom of God is the heart of the saving Message (Mark 1:14, 15; cp. Matt. 13:19; Luke 8:12), the reasonable and necessary question is: "What is the Kingdom?"
A good place to examine the question is at the beginning of the New Testament, though an approach from the Old Testament would be equally valid and valuable. For the moment, let us start with Matthew. When, what and where is the Kingdom? A cloud of fog and confusion has settled over many Bible students in regard to defining the Kingdom. But this need not be: In the Lord’s prayer, we are invited to approach God with the words "May Your Kingdom come." This point of reference is familiar to the least instructed, and its force should not be missed. You do not pray for something to come, if it has already come! The petition is positively not, "May Your Kingdom grow," nor "May Your Kingdom spread." The request is for the future arrival of the Kingdom, meaning of course, that in the sense indicated by Jesus in the "Lord’s prayer," the Kingdom had not yet come.
An excellent Old Testament base for just such a future coming of the Kingdom is found in Micah 4:7, 8. In that passage the prophet announces that the Kingdom will yet come to Mount Zion, and it will be a return to a former, lost condition, a restoration of dominion which has been taken away from Jerusalem: "The Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion and henceforth forever. And you, tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, to you it is going to come, namely the former dominion: the KINGDOM will come to the daughter of Jerusalem."
A clear basis indeed for the request: "Thy Kingdom come"! And the Kingdom is a concrete empire based on a geographical location — Jerusalem, which Jesus called "the city of the Great King" (Matt. 5:35).
Again, in Matthew, the Kingdom is the great and decisive event of the future: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘lord, lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven/God; but only he who does my Heavenly Father’s will. Many will say to me in that day…" (Matt. 7:21, 22). The linkage is clear. Jesus’ words rivet together the concept of Kingdom and "in that (future) day." The Kingdom belongs in the mind of Christ to the day of God’s future intervention and judgment on the world. The Kingdom is the magnificent, decisive and (for the wicked) catastrophic interposition of divine authority to right the wrongs of our present rebel world. The Kingdom comes (in this passage) with the future coming of Jesus and not before.
Now for a third testimony: Matthew 8:11, 12: "Many will come [note the verb in the future tense] from the East and West and will sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven/God, but the children of the Kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness: there will be weeping and grinding of teeth."
Once again the setting and the timing of the Kingdom are unmistakable. The Kingdom belongs to the future as an event which will divide the good from the bad, and their destinies will be fixed. "The children of the Kingdom" are here those who by virtue of their privileged position as members of the Israelite race should have been candidates for successful entry into the Kingdom when it comes. But tragically, they will not have accepted the Messiah and his Gospel-of-the-Kingdom Message. They will not have believed the Gospel of the Kingdom from the lips of the Messiah, nor spread the fire of its saving message to others. And they will be barred entrance into the Kingdom "in that day."
These three passages found early in the Gospel of Matthew are sufficient to set the pattern of Kingdom teaching which pervades Jesus’ preaching career. The Kingdom is yet to come. It will be the momentous event of the future for which all are invited to prepare now with utmost urgency — in terms equally of proper, Bible-informed, belief system and proper conduct.
The Gospel of salvation, as it fell from the lips of Jesus, is to the Kingdom as an invitation is to a banquet. The Gospel is to the Kingdom as the sowing of seed is to the harvest. And it leads only to confusion, if we muddle these simple facts. An invitation is not the banquet itself, and the sowing of seed is not the harvest. The primary and dominant meaning of the Kingdom in the Gospel teaching of Jesus is the Kingdom of God to be manifested in the future when Jesus returns to administer it on earth in company with the saints of all the ages. These will function with him as under-sovereigns in a world reborn, restored and reconstituted. Present conditions tell of our world plight and the desperate need for a better human society. This will eventually materialize as the Kingdom of God to be inaugurated on earth as all the prophets foresaw. The Gospel of the Kingdom invites all to become caught up in this thrilling, divine scheme, to share the passion of God Himself and His unique agent the Lord Jesus Messiah (Luke 4:43; cp. 2:49, "God’s agenda").
The Bible from cover to cover looks forward to the time when God’s people will be in God’s place, with God’s Prince established in the Kingdom which is his by divine Promise. Blessed indeed are the meek, because they will inherit the earth/the Kingdom/the Life of the Age to come (immortality gained in the resurrection) (see Matt. 5:5; 25:34; 19:29; I Cor 15:23).
In our last issue we suggested that an intelligent response to the Gospel as Jesus preached it — the Gospel of the Kingdom — requires a grasp of Jesus’ famous phrase "Kingdom of God." The Messiah opened his public ministry with a dual command:
"Repent [undergo a complete reorientation in thinking and in conduct] and believe in the Gospel about the Kingdom of God" (Mark 1:14, 15). The Greek may also be rendered "Believe the Gospel [about the Kingdom]". This is where the Christian faith, according to its pioneer exponent, Jesus, begins. Mark gives us, as do the other gospel writers, a summary, programmatic statement of the essence of what Jesus was about. His entire career was devoted to the propagation of the Gospel Message about the Kingdom. The Gospel of Kingdom of God is the quintessential saving Message, authored by the Savior himself.
It would be reasonable to expect Christian ministries today to give clear evidence of their genuineness. A certain proof that they are following in the footsteps of Jesus would be their clarion call for "repentance and belief in the Gospel of the Kingdom."
The facts, however are alarmingly different. The phrase "Gospel of the Kingdom" has been almost entirely removed from circulation. Listen carefully to gospel preaching as it bombards the American public. Jesus’ famous phrase "Gospel about the Kingdom of God" is strangely absent. This fact calls for an urgent investigation among those who are keen to have the Savior’s words both in the public forum and as the driving force of their lives (I Thess. 2:13).
Matthew wrote his Gospel to document the work of the historical Jesus and thus to set the standard of Christian preaching. He presents these fundamental facts: John the Baptist came announcing the Kingdom of Heaven (=Kingdom of God) (Matt. 3:2). What did John mean by the Kingdom? The answer is given in Matthew 3:7-10. Repentance, John said, is in view of the coming Kingdom. The Kingdom is both threat and promise. It brings the threat of the "wrath to come" (v. 7), of being "cast into the fire," "burned up life chaff in unquenchable fire" (vv. 10, 12), or the promise of being gathered like "wheat into the barn" (v. 12). The coming of the Kingdom, which is near, not yet here, means the coming of judgment and reward.
The Kingdom of God is thus established in our thinking as the objective of Christian faith. It is positively not, in these passages, a "rule in human hearts." Nor is it a synonym for the church. It is the great cataclysmic event of the future: The Kingdom is parallel to the wrath to come (v. 7). None of this, of course, was in any way unclear to a first-century student of the Scriptures, since the Kingdom was the hoped-for liberation of Israel from foreign domination as well as the hope of peace for all nations under Messiah’s worldwide empire (the Kingdom of God). The Kingdom of God was already known as the empire of Israel. Solomon had indeed sat on the throne of the Kingdom of God over Israel (I Chron. 28:5). The faithful in Israel, following the teaching of their prophets, were unitedly looking forward to that restored throne in Israel (cp. Luke 24:21; Acts 1:6) and the presence there of the Messiah as the legitimate royal ruler for God on earth. It is repentance and commitment to that great fact of the divine Plan which John urged in the Gospel of the Kingdom.
Matthew gives Jesus’ message an identical label. Nothing could be clearer than the fundamental thrust of Jesus’ Gospel described by Matthew 4:17, 23: "From that time Jesus began to proclaim his Message and say: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven [equivalent to the Kingdom of God] is at hand.’… And Jesus went all over Galilee proclaiming as a herald the Gospel about the Kingdom and healing all kinds of sickness."
With the Kingdom defined as the future intervention of God to establish peace on earth and punish the wicked, the heart of the Gospel is clear. Jesus offers the promise of reward and life in the Kingdom, and threatens extinction, like chaff in the fire, to those who fail to pay attention to his Gospel.
The entire New Testament provides a commentary on this basic, simple thesis. As we saw in our last issue the Kingdom is a main priority in prayer. We are to pray "May your [God’s] Kingdom come!" (echoed exactly in "May our Lord come" and "Lord Jesus, come! — I Cor 16:22, Rev. 22:20. Note that the last text makes the coming Kingdom the subject of the final biblical request). The well-known petition of the Lord’s prayer marks the Kingdom as the desired event of the future. One does not pray for the Kingdom to come, if it has already come. The Kingdom is therefore the object of Christian hope. This fact is demonstrably true of other famous sayings of Jesus: "Enter by the narrow gate…Few find the way to life…Beware of false religious teachers…It is not everyone who says ‘lord, lord’ to me, who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the one who carries out the will of my Father…Many will say to me in that day…" (Matt. 7:13-15, 21, 22). "That day" will be the great occasion for rejection from or acceptance into the Kingdom of God. Once again the Kingdom is the event of the future for which we should prepare with urgency. It will be at that future time that "many will come from the East and the West and will recline with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 8:11). At the same time the "children of the Kingdom" (those who by being privileged Israelites ought to have qualified for entry into the Kingdom, yet they tragically refused their own Messiah) will be rejected from the bright lights of the banquet hall and hurled into outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth — a picture of awful remorse and despair.
The career of Jesus was wholly devoted to the proclamation of the Father’s Gospel of the Kingdom. Matthew 9:35 repeats 4:23: "Jesus went to all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and heralding (preaching, KJV) the Gospel of the Kingdom." All biblical "preaching" refers to preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.
Christian discipleship means learning the Gospel as Jesus preached it and taking it to the public: "As you go, preach [herald], saying, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’" (Matt. 10:7). We have here the obvious fact that Christianity entails following Jesus by preaching his Gospel, the germ of what was later given by the risen Jesus as the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19, 20). The proclamation of the Kingdom will continue right up until the day of the arrival of Jesus in his Kingdom, as Jesus made clear in a fascinating observation in Matthew 10:23: "You will not have gone over the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes." The Messiah here foresees an end-time ministry on behalf of the Gospel of the Kingdom in the land of Israel. But the Great Commission mandates the preaching of the same Christian Gospel of the Kingdom to all the nations of the world (Matt. 24:14; 28:19, 20). Those who receive such proponents of the Kingdom Gospel receive Jesus himself (Matt. 10:40) who commissions them. "Accepting Jesus," then, must be rooted in its biblical context. It means accepting Jesus’ proclamation about the Kingdom of God. The Gospel, therefore, is an eschatological matter. This is to say that it puts before us the great fact of the future and demands that we believe it. God speaks to the present from the future, laying before us His ultimate Plan and inviting us for our own good and our psychological and spiritual well-being to attune ourselves to God’s world-scheme being worked out through Jesus.
Even the well-known petition "Hallowed be Your Name" is a cry for the future revelation of the Kingdom. Ezekiel had written of the time coming when God will be vindicated among the nations worldwide: "I will vindicate the holiness of My great Name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you [Israelites] have profaned among them; and the nations will know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes" (Ezek. 36:23).
Throughout the ministry of Jesus members of the public approached him seeking information about how they could "inherit the Kingdom of God" (no one asked Jesus about how they could "go to heaven when they die"). Common to Jesus and his audience was the notion that the Kingdom of God was the objective of the Christian life. Entry into it or exclusion from it were the two options to be faced by those who heard Jesus preach. The decision to permit or refuse entry would be made at the Second Coming of Jesus (the Parousia). This is the constant scheme underlying the teaching of Jesus. That this is unclear to many churchgoers is due to our persistent use of a contradictory scheme. Our unbiblical tradition interferes with and muddles the teaching of Jesus in two ways. Firstly, it substitutes "Heaven" for "Kingdom of God" as the objective of the faithful. Deeply ingrained in churchgoers language is the conviction that "heaven" is the Christian goal. Jesus said otherwise. He promised "the earth" and the Kingdom of God to his followers (Matt. 5:5; cp. Rev 5:10). Secondly the time at which the promised reward is reached has been altered by popular language. It is ingrained in the minds of churchgoers that immediately upon his or her death the goal of faith will be reached. Such an idea, cherished as it is, produces a very considerable confusion when it is imposed on the Bible. The Bible knows only of the future resurrection at the Coming of Jesus as the "point of arrival" for Christians. According to the testimony of Scripture, there is no way out of death except by resurrection of the whole man, an event which will involve all the faithful of all the ages in one community resurrection destined to occur, not at the individual’s death, but only when Jesus returns visibly to inaugurate his Kingdom on the earth (I Cor 15:23; Rev. 11:15-18; Dan 12:2).
Reception of the Gospel of the Kingdom in the New Testament involves also a joyful response to the function which is offered to believers who will enter the Kingdom when it comes. The function of the believers is nothing less than the ultimate point of God’s covenant with man. Man was instructed from the beginning to take charge of the earth as God’s vice-regent. That purpose, hitherto frustrated by sin and the Devil, will come to fulfillment when the world is under the supervision of Jesus and the saints. The point of the whole Christian struggle for the Kingdom of God is beautifully laid out by Jesus at the last supper. Here, once again, Jesus confirms that the Kingdom will arrive with the future arrival of himself in glory. It will be then that "those who have followed me, will be promoted to take their seats on twelve thrones, to administer the [regathered] twelve tribes of Israel…Just as my Father has covenanted with me to give me the Kingdom, so I now covenant with you to give you the Kingdom."(Luke 22:28-30). "Don’t be timid, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom" (Luke 12:32). This promise of kingship in the Kingdom is an essential part of what it means to receive the Gospel of the Kingdom. Paul treated this information about the future function of Christians as basic information about the faith. He was not a little disturbed that the Corinthians had forgotten the purpose for which God had called them to salvation, which was more than the forgiveness of past sin: "Don’t you know that the saints are going to manage the world? And if the world is to come under your jurisdiction, are you incompetent to settle trifling matters in the church?" (see I Cor 6:2, Moffatt).
Vague promises of a disembodied life (without a brain, or eyes or ears, which are part of the body?) in "heaven" are an exceedingly poor substitute for the hope which beat in the heart of Jesus, and which drove his mission — that of forming around him a team of co-workers and co-rulers for his Father’s coming Kingdom on earth (Rev. 5:10; Matt. 5:5).
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