Reflection on the Kingdom of God

For the Kingdom of God as Gospel

a class taught by Sir Anthony Buzzard

Jesus said in Luke 11:28, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” But what is this word of God that Jesus speaks of? Ac-cording to the Parable of the Sower, the word of God is the gospel of the kingdom. Our very salvation is dependent on our response to this gospel of the kingdom, which is made clear in Luke’s rendition of the parable of the sower where he says in chapter 8, verse 12: “Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.” You must believe the word about the kingdom and obey it in order to be saved.

So clearly, this is a message that we must fully understand, so that we can respond to it intelligently. What is the gospel of the kingdom that Jesus preached about? Is it the same gospel that is being preached in today’s Christian churches?

Tragically, it is not. Most churches today will focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus – but this is only part of the story! The message that Jesus preached was a message about the kingdom of God, a concept firmly rooted in the Old Testament scriptures. He taught about the Messianic king-dom that God would establish on the renewed earth at his second coming. This kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom where Jesus will reign as King, establishing world peace and ruling with justice and righteousness.

Rarely will you ever hear of the kingdom of God in church and even rarer still will you ever hear it preached as Jesus preached it. The church is peddling watered-down gospel, if we can truly call it that, because it is lack-ing the main ingredient of Jesus’ teaching. This is dangerous, because Jesus said we are to obey his word of the kingdom. How are we to obey, if we havn’t heard the gospel of the kingdom? It is impossible.

To make up for the loss of the gospel of the future kingdom of God, the church has adopted a view known as “realized eschatology,” which is the be-lief that the kingdom of God only refers to the present, where Christ reigns in the hearts of believers. They have lost their hope – their hope is no longer in the literal kingdom to be established on the renewed earth at the second coming of Christ. With no future kingdom to look forward to, their hope is heaven – a false hope. Thus it is essential to return to the teachings of the Messiah, our King, and understand them as he understood them – in light of the Old Testament. Only when we do this, will we understand the true gospel and have the opportunity to respond and obey the words of our King.