Most of the confusion and/or apathy existing in churches today is traceable to one cause. The voice of Jesus and his teaching has been muzzled. People have been invited to “get saved” (what that is exactly is often left vague) by “accepting Jesus in your heart.” What has not been made clear is that Jesus must be defined, and secondly that accepting Jesus is impossible unless one is told what his Gospel message is. It is by the words of Jesus that his spirit and mind are conveyed to us. Hence the emphatic warnings in Paul (I Tim. 6:3) that any preacher who does not hold forth the “health-giving words, namely those of the Lord Jesus Christ” is worse than useless. Indeed he is a positive menace (see again I Tim. 6:3). John repeats that same message with equal clarity in II John 7-9 where a Jesus divorced from his teachings is not the real Jesus at all. He is an imagined Jesus, reinvented by our very creative but wicked human hearts. One might say this: The Devil has one major trick: To separate Jesus from his Gospel teachings. See the marvelously insightful warning in Luke 8:12!
A large measure of the present chaos in churches and denominational divisions is a failure to define the building-block concepts of the Bible. We need first to define God correctly as Jesus did. Jesus agreed with the unitarian creed of Israel (Mark 12:28ff with Deut. 6:4). In conversation with an inquiring professional theologian, a scribe, Jesus affirmed that God is one Lord, and that this cardinal tenet of biblical faith is the most important of all truths. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One Lord.”
We should add that God is positively not three Lords! At present churchgoers have generally given this issue very little thought. They have merely parroted various popular utterances that “Jesus is God,” with almost no investigation how that amazing proposition could possibly be true — especially since Jesus never said anything like that and insisted that his Father was “the only one who is truly God” (John 17:3).
The next major step towards Christian unity will be taken when we all sit down and decide what the saving Gospel is. It really should not be hard to agree that the Gospel is about the Kingdom of God. Jesus spoke daily of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God as did Paul (Acts 19:8; 20:24, 25; 28:23, 31; II Tim. 4:1, etc.). A valuable step towards clearing up confusion over the Kingdom of God would be taken if Christians adopted the Bible’s primary Gospel language. In Acts 8 Luke uses several parallel phrases to describe the evangelistic activity of the Church. They were “preaching the Message as Good News” (literally, “evangelizing the Word,” Acts 8:4). Philip “proclaimed the Christ to them” (Acts 8:5). Samaria thus “received the Message of God” (Acts 8:14). After “they had testified and spoken the Message of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the Gospel to many villages of the Samaritans” (Acts 8:25). At the center of this account, however, Luke provides the most comprehensive description of the content of the saving Message. With a carefully worded formula, he lets us know exactly what “proclaiming the Christ” or “proclaiming the Message” or “preaching the Gospel” mean. It is “preaching the Gospel of [i.e., about — Gr. peri] the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12). This is Luke’s fullest summary of the Gospel. He repeats it at two other critically important points in his narrative.[1] It defines his other “shorthand” statements, appearing in his Gospel as well as in Acts, and ought to serve as a rallying point for all proclamations of the Gospel. Quite extraordinarily, these texts receive almost no mention in literature defining the Gospel. If they were taken seriously, current “gospels” would be exposed as lacking a primary biblical element. The all-important fact would emerge that the Apostles were no less insistent upon the Kingdom of God as the center of their Message than Jesus had been. They were following their Master faithfully. But can the same be said of evangelism in the twentieth century? “The Gospel of Christ” is an ambiguous phrase in the 20th century, though not in its New Testament context where it is assumed to be a synonym for the Gospel of the Kingdom. Contemporary evangelism chooses the ambiguous label for the Gospel and dispenses with its clear title as the Message about the Kingdom.
A very misleading idea has become ingrained in much contemporary evangelism. The idea has been widely accepted that the Kingdom of God was not the main emphasis of Paul’s preaching, though it was the leading topic in Jesus’ evangelism. One has only to read Acts 20:25 to learn what Luke constantly tells us about Paul’s Gospel: that it was a “proclamation of the Kingdom of God.” It is puzzling that such an obvious clue to the mind of Paul should have been so neglected. Not only does the centrality of the Kingdom in Paul’s Message appear frequently in Luke’s accounts of Paul’s evangelism, it is found indirectly throughout his own writings. He reminded the Thessalonians that they had received “the Word” (Luke’s synonym for the Gospel of the Kingdom, Luke 4:43; 5:1) and in so doing were expressing their faith in God as they “waited for His Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (I Thess. 1:10). (The theme of the return of Christ and the wrath associated with the coming of the future Kingdom are exactly John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ Gospel themes.) Paul then refers to his proclamation as the Gospel of God (I Thess. 2:2, 8, 9), which is precisely the phrase used by Mark to denote Jesus’ preaching of the Gospel about the Kingdom (Mark 1:14, 15). Almost in the same breath Paul exhorts his converts to “walk worthy of the God who is inviting you into His own Kingdom and glory” (1 Thess. 2:12). It is clear that the Gospel of the Kingdom is at the center of Paul’s thought, exactly as Luke reports that the Kingdom was always the heart of Paul’s Gospel (Acts 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31). Moreover he goes on to tell the Thessalonians that this “Word,” or “Word of God,” both synonyms for the Gospel of the Kingdom, was “performing its work” in the believers. The concept is exactly that of Jesus who spoke of the essential saving “Message of the Kingdom” taking root in the heart of the believer as the life-giving seed able to produce fruit (Matt. 13:19, 23).
Another evidence of the Gospel of the Kingdom throughout the New Testament is provided by the term “glory” which is closely related to Kingdom. Matthew recalls that the mother of James and John requested for her sons close association with the Messiah in the administration of the coming Kingdom (Matt. 20:20, 21). Mark reports the same event but substitutes the word glory for Kingdom: “Grant that we may sit in your glory, one on the right and the other on the left” (Mark 10:37). Thus when Mark speaks of the Son of Man coming in the glory of his Father (Mark 8:38) there is an immediate reference to the Kingdom of God (Mark 9:1). The whole discussion is closely related to Jesus’ words about losing one’s life for the sake of Jesus and the Gospel (Mark 8:35). When Paul speaks of future glory he always has the Kingdom in mind. In Romans 8 he recognizes that Christians are “heirs with Christ” and goes on to say that “the sufferings of this present time are not to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed for us” (Rom. 8:17, 18).[2] Just as Joseph of Arimathea, a Christian disciple, was waiting for the Kingdom of God, so Paul sees the creation as “waiting for the revealing of the Sons of God,” a Messianic title (Rom. 8:19). He takes up exactly the same theme when he summarizes the faith: “If we suffer with him we shall also be kings [i.e., in the Kingdom] with him” (II Tim. 2:12). “Salvation,” “inheritance of the Kingdom of God,” inheritance of “life” or “life in the coming age,” “ruling with the Messiah as kings” and “glory” are all interchangeable ways of describing the same goal of the Kingdom. Paul may sometimes have chosen politically less explosive words like “glory” and “salvation,” rather than Kingdom. Such “code words” were clear to his readers. Provided Paul’s synonyms for Kingdom are detected, there is every reason to find in his epistles complete confirmation of his claim to have been a preacher of the Kingdom of God, faithfully speaking for the risen Christ whose Message of the Kingdom was continued in the Apostles’ ministries.
Without an understanding of the phrase “Gospel of the Kingdom,” it is hard to see how there can be intelligent response to Jesus’ first command. We are asked to “repent and believe the Good News about the Kingdom of God” (Mark 1:14, 15). That is the essence of faith. All subsequent preaching in the New Testament should be referred to this basic thesis statement about the Gospel of salvation. Cut loose from Jesus’ appeal for belief in the Gospel of the Kingdom, preaching exposes itself to the menace of a distorted and thus “another gospel.” That such a distortion has occurred will not be hard to see. One has only to listen to preachers of “the Gospel” to recognize that whatever else they may preach, there is precious little mention of the Kingdom of God. This can only mean that the principal element of Jesus’ proclamation has been silenced. Such a “muzzling” of the Savior, in the name of the Savior, remains the baffling and disturbing feature of contemporary preaching and of the history of the Church from the earliest centuries.
The Kingdom of God in Relation to the Death and Resurrection of Jesus
The urgent demand by Jesus to “repent and believe the Good News of the Kingdom” (surely an excellent place for Gospel preaching to begin) implies an understanding of the term “Kingdom of God.” While Jesus’ leading phrase remains unclear, the Gospel itself is obscured. Perhaps it is this uncertainty over the meaning of Jesus’ proclamation about the Kingdom that has caused evangelicals to drop all reference to the Kingdom of God in their definition of the Gospel, and to rely on what they think is a full account of the saving Message: the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. It is customary to appeal to Paul’s words in I Corinthians 15:1-11:
“Now I make known to you, brethren, the Gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are being saved, if you hold fast the message which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance [literally “among the first,” NASV margin] what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve…Whether then it was I or they, so we preached and so you believed.”
An important key to understanding Paul’s fine statement about his own Gospel Message is found in the little phrase “en protois,” “amongst things of primary importance” (verse 3). The point at issue in the Corinthian letter was the resurrection of Jesus which some of the Corinthians were beginning to doubt — “How do some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” (verse 12). In response to this particular crisis of belief, Paul reminds his audience that the death and resurrection of Jesus are of absolutely fundamental significance in the Christian Gospel. Without the death of Jesus to gain forgiveness for all of us, and without his return from death to life through resurrection, there can be no hope of salvation in the coming Kingdom. The Gospel of the Kingdom is nullified if in fact Jesus has not been raised from the dead.
It is a mistake, however, to argue from this text that the facts about Jesus’ death and resurrection formed the whole Message of the Gospel. Paul is careful to say that these central facts were preached “amongst things of primary importance.” This, however, was not his entire Gospel. There were other things also, of equal importance in the Gospel, namely the announcement about the Kingdom of God.[3] We recall that Jesus had proclaimed the Kingdom of God as the Gospel long before he spoke of his death and resurrection, a fact which proves that the Kingdom of God is not a synonym for the death and resurrection of Christ (Luke 4:43; cp. Luke 18:31-34). As a leading authority notes:
“Neither Romans 1:1-3 nor I Corinthians 15:1-4 is meant to be a full statement of what Paul understood by the Gospel. We can see this from the fact that the death of Jesus is not mentioned in Romans 1:1ff…The Gospel of Paul is identical with that which Jesus himself preached during his earthly life. Christ himself speaks in the Gospel of Paul. Paul is not referring [in Rom. 16:25] to his Gospel added to the preaching of the risen Lord. He is emphasizing the agreement of his preaching with that of the earthly Jesus. Hence the ‘proclamation of Jesus Christ’ can only mean the message which Jesus Christ proclaimed.”[4]
It is evident that Paul was not in I Corinthians 15 directly addressing the subject of the Kingdom of God as a future event coinciding with the return of Jesus. The Corinthians had already accepted that belief as part of the Gospel of salvation. Thus Paul is able to elaborate on the already understood doctrine of the Kingdom only a few verses later. Having just mentioned the future coming of Jesus (I Cor. 15:23), he speaks of the Kingdom over which Jesus will preside at his coming (I Cor. 15:25-27). That Kingdom, it should be carefully noted, is the Kingdom which “flesh and blood” cannot inherit, for “the perishable cannot inherit the imperishable” (I Cor. 15:50). In order to enter the Kingdom of God, Christians must be summoned from death at the last trumpet and be changed, in the twinkling of an eye, into immortal persons (I Cor. 15:51, 52). These verses confirm, once again, the fact that the Kingdom of God comes into power at the Second Coming. Following Jesus, Paul speaks of entering or inheriting the Kingdom in the future.
The Kingdom has a principal place in the New Testament Gospel Message in addition, of course, to the equally essential preaching of the death and resurrection of the Savior. It is a serious mishandling of the Bible to place I Corinthians 15:1-4 in conflict with the massive evidence for the central importance of the Kingdom of God in the pre- and post- resurrection proclamation.[5] Once again we must emphasize the importance of Acts 8:12 (echoed in Acts 19:8; 28:23, 31) as Luke’s comprehensive summary statement about the Gospel Message: “When they believed Philip as he preached the Good News about the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were being baptized, both men and women” (see also Matt. 13:19; Luke 8:12). “Kingdom of God” “frames” the entire writing of Luke. For him and for the New Testament church it was the term par excellence to denote the restoration of the land under the reign of the Messiah, as well as the urgent present necessity for converts to prepare for the high honor of ruling with the Messiah.
The substitution of the word “heaven” for Kingdom of God is a major contributing factor in a loss of clarity about the Gospel of Jesus. When the language of Jesus is abandoned the damage in terms of the loss of the mind of Jesus is untold. Such a loss, tragically, has been characteristic of the history of the development of the central Christian idea — “the Gospel of the Kingdom and the things concerning Jesus.” Out of deference for Jesus, as God’s Messiah, and in obedience to his original challenge to belief in the Good News of the Kingdom, we must insist on defining the Kingdom according to its biblical setting and restoring it to a central position in all exposition of the Gospel. Can intelligent response to the Gospel mean anything less?
Kingship as the Christian Goal
The nation of Israel had long been convinced of its high destiny in the purposes of God. As part of the covenant between the nation and its God, Israel was to enjoy a position of special privilege: “If you obey My voice and hold fast to My covenant, you of all the nations shall be My very own, for all the earth is Mine. I will count you a kingdom of priests, a consecrated nation. These are the words you are to speak to the sons of Israel” (Exod. 19:5, 6).
Israel as a whole had repeatedly failed to live up to her high calling. Nevertheless, the promise of world supremacy was reserved for a faithful remnant destined to inherit the future Kingdom of God. The invitation to kingship was repeated through the prophet Isaiah:
“Pay attention, come to Me; listen and your soul will live. With you I will make an everlasting covenant out of the favors promised to David. See, I have made of you a witness to the peoples, a leader and a master of the nations. See, you will summon a nation you never knew, those unknown will come hurrying to you, for the sake of Yahweh, your God, of the Holy One of Israel who will glorify you” (Isa. 55:3-5, Jerusalem Bible).
In the New Testament the prospect of royal position in the Kingdom is offered to the New Israel of the Church (Gal. 6:16) gathered from both Jews and Gentiles. Jesus assured the faithful Church: “Those who prove victorious, I will allow to share my throne, just as I was victorious myself and took my place with my Father on His throne…To those who prove victorious, and keep working for me until the end, I will give the authority over the pagans which I myself have been given by my Father, to rule them with an iron scepter and shatter them like earthenware” (Rev. 2:26, 27). This prospect gave rise to the Christian “slogan” found in II Timothy 2:12: “If we suffer with him, we shall also reign as kings with him.”
In Revelation 2:26 Jesus quotes the celebrated Messianic Psalm 2, one of many which describe the glories of the future Kingdom of God. It will be initiated by a decisive intervention by God, sending His Messiah to crush political rebellion and establish a new government in Jerusalem. The fact that appeal is made to this Psalm in the book of Revelation shows that the traditional Messianic hope was taken over into Christianity, with full approval of Jesus himself:
“Why this uproar among the nations? Why this impotent muttering of pagans — kings on earth rising in revolt, princes plotting against Yahweh and His Anointed [Messiah]. ‘Now let us break their fetters! Now let us throw off their yoke!’ The One whose throne is in heaven sits laughing, Yahweh derides them. Then angrily He addresses them, in a rage He strikes them with panic, ‘This is My King installed by Me on Zion, My holy mountain.’ Let me proclaim Yahweh’s decree; He has told Me, ‘You are My son, today I have become your Father. Ask and I will give the nations for your heritage, the ends of the earth for your domain. With an iron scepter you will break them, shatter them like potter’s ware.’ So, now, you kings, learn wisdom, earthly rulers, be warned: Serve Yahweh, fear Him, tremble and kiss His feet, or He will be angry and you will perish, for His anger is very quick to blaze. Happy are all who take shelter in Him” (Psalm 2, Jerusalem Bible).
The promise of “the ends of the earth for your domain” is reflected in Jesus’ own claim to the “authority which I myself have been given by my Father” (Rev. 2:27). The same theme is taken up by the angelic chorus when they sing of the faithful who “shall rule as kings on the earth” (Rev. 5:10) and in the famous millennial passage which foresees the saints ruling with the Messiah for a thousand years (Rev. 20:4-6).²
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