BLOG 817/15. A SUBJECT OF HUGE CONFUSION WITHIN THE CHURCH: THE KINGDOM OF GOD

As much as the concept of the Kingdom of God gets tossed around in the church, … as often as church folk pray: “Thy kingdom come,” as often as they read in the New Testament gospels about Jesus preaching the gospel of the kingdom, or the loaded prediction that “when this gospel of the kingdom shall have been preached in all the earth,” … it is a verifiable fact that most church folk have a very fuzzy, if not totally inadequate, concept of what the kingdom of God is all about. It, more often than not, has to do with some future state of things when there is some kind of harmony, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Meanwhile, in the realities of daily life, and ordinary ‘church life,’ folk go merrily along and do not realize that, if they have taken their baptismal vows seriously, then they are to be the present dynamic agents of that kingdom right in the midst of life’s daily realities, whether those realities are pleasant and filled with beauty, … or whether they are hopeless, tragic, or frustrating, or filled with injustice, greed, and human brokenness.

So, just to get the conversation going, let me see if I can begin to get some focus here. In the Old Testament there were all of those hints of the day when God would inaugurate a whole new creation. There are the prophecies about God’s anointed servant who would come and establish a dominion which would reconcile the rebellious human community to God, and where God’s design would be motivated by his law being written in human hearts. A new creation.

And then comes Jesus onto the scene. The angel told Mary that her son would sit on the throne of his father David, and of his kingdom there would be no end. That same Jesus several decades later came onto the scene proclaiming the thrilling news of the kingdom of God, and making the outrageous (?) statement that if he by the finger of God could cast out demons, then the kingdom of God was among them. He explained to his twelve disciples that upon the reality that he was God’s anointed he would call out a people who would then live out the divine nature in their daily lives, be God’s new creation people. He gave them a prayer that they should pray that God’s kingdom would be coming, and his will be being done … not in some future bye and bye, but here and now. He gave them guidelines for that life. He told them that those who had teachings and did/obeyed them were those who were his true disciples, his new creation people.

I could go on and on, … but just to prime the conversation, let me state for your investigation that: the kingdom of God is a designation that is near synonymous with eternal life, with new creation, with salvation, sometimes with righteousness, … but all speak of God’s great eschatological design to make all things new, and that reality was inaugurated in Jesus Christ, and is to be dynamically incarnated here and now by his church, and will ultimately be consummated when Jesus comes again. The calling to be Christ’s disciples is not to be taken lightly. Because of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, they are called to be the dwelling place of God by the Spirit, and to be the incarnation of the divine nature right in the midst of the here and now. They are called out of a dominion of darkness, and into the dominion of God’s dear Son.

This makes our calling to Christ thrilling, filled with challenges, subversive to the present darkness, but so very purposeful and filled with hope. So if you have a fuzzy spiritual image of the kingdom of God, then you have missed the point. Get over it. Check out your New Testament and see how this central theme is the church’s mission until it is heralded into every tribe and nation. It will tax you to the limit, but it is never dull. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done …” Fasten your seat belts.