Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The Kingdom of God: Primarily a New Society Coming on Earth at the Parousia of Jesus

The teaching of Jesus begins with a command to us all to “repent and believe the Gospel of the Kingdom of God” (see Mark 1:14, 15; Mark 4:11, 12). Jesus makes repentance a matter of believing the word of the Kingdom (Matt. 13:19; Mark 4:11, 12). He makes forgiveness conditional on our acceptance of his Kingdom Gospel preaching. The heart of biblical faith is laid out by these immortal words of the Savior:

“To you the secret of the Kingdom of God has been given, but to those who are not my followers everything comes in parables, in order that ‘they may see indeed without perceiving, and hear indeed without understanding; for if they were to perceive and understand they might repent and be forgiven.’ He said to them, ‘Do you understand this parable [of the sower]? How then will you understand any parables? The sower sows the message [of the Kingdom, see parallel in Matt. 13:19].’”

Salvation, according to the theology of Jesus, is based on an intelligent reception of his seed Message of the Kingdom. (Note: not a seed faith donation of finances to the preacher!) The whole New Testament is really an expansion of the summary statement of the Christian faith provided by Jesus in Mark 1:14, 15. But what is the Kingdom of God?

The objective analysis of the Kingdom of God in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ teaching, provided by the Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, ought to serve as a much-needed guide to all our thinking about the Kingdom, and thus about the gospel:

“The Kingdom — the central subject of Christ’s doctrine. With this He began His ministry (4:17) and wherever He went He taught it as Good News [Gospel] (4:23). The Kingdom He taught was coming, but not in His lifetime. After His ascension He would come as Son of Man on the clouds of heaven (16:17, 19:28, 24:30) and would sit on the throne of His glory (25:31)…Then the twelve Apostles should sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (19:28). In the meantime He Himself must suffer and die and be raised from the dead. How else could He come on the clouds of heaven? And the disciples were to preach the Good News [Gospel] of the coming Kingdom (10:7, 24:14) among all nations, making disciples by baptism (28:18). The body of disciples thus gained would naturally form a society bound by common aims. Hence the disciples of the Kingdom would form a new spiritual Israel (21:43)” (W.C. Allen, MA, Christ Church, Oxford, Vol. II, p. 145).

The same authority goes on to say: “In view of the needs of this new Israel of Christ’s disciples, who were to await His coming on the clouds of heaven, it is natural that a large part of the teaching recorded in the Gospel should concern the qualifications required in those who hoped to enter the Kingdom when it came…Thus the parables convey some lesson about the nature of the Kingdom and the period of preparation for it. It should be sufficiently obvious that if we ask what meaning the parables had for the editor of the first Gospel, the answer must be that he chose them because…they taught lessons about the Kingdom of God in the sense in which that phrase is used everywhere in the Gospel of the Kingdom which was to come, when the Son of Man came upon the clouds of heaven.

“Thus the Parable of the Sower illustrates the varying reception met with by the Good News [Gospel] of the Kingdom as it is preached amongst men. That of the tares also deals not with the Kingdom itself, but with the period of preparation for it. At the end of the age, the Son of Man will come to inaugurate His Kingdom…There is nothing here nor elsewhere in this Gospel to suggest that the scene of the Kingdom is other than the present world renewed, restored and purified.”[2]

The last sentence of our quotation makes the excellent point that Matthew does not expect believers to “go to heaven” but that Jesus will come back to rule with them in a renewed earth. The perceptive reader of the New Testament will note the striking difference between the biblical view of the Kingdom and what in post-biblical times was substituted for it: a departure of the faithful at death to a realm removed from the earth.

“The Kingdom He taught was coming, but not in His lifetime.” “In the New Testament the Kingdom of God is conceived, first of all, as something in the future” (cited above). So say leading analysts of the Gospel records. We add a further statement from a recognized authority on Luke:

“It cannot really be disputed that Luke means by the Kingdom a future entity…It is the message of the Kingdom that is present, which in Luke is distinguished from the Kingdom itself. He knows nothing of an immanent [i.e., already present] development on the basis of the preaching of the Kingdom” (Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, p. 122).²

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