Kingdom Principles: Part 1 – Prologue
The Kingdom, the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension are interrelated pieces of God’s Grand Plan for creation. I am on this amazing journey to know Jesus more intimately, to see this Plan more fully. As I travel my ideas will evolve. God will show me more. Where to start? At the beginning. The Kingdom.
I have written six posts over the last three weeks about the Kingdom of God. The first was about the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The next four examined and compared the Rich Young Ruler with the blind beggar Bartimaeus in Mark 10 as Jesus’ final teachings on the Kingdom of God. The sixth post summarized Jesus’ teaching on these two men.
Over the years, I have come to believe that the Kingdom of God is the heart of Jesus’ teaching and ministry. He came to earth to bring the Kingdom of God, and what He taught us can be understood within this context. In the New Testament, the Kingdom of God (or the Kingdom of Heaven) is the reality within which we find salvation, healing, righteousness, eternal life, freedom, power and authority, and the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Kingdom life is the New Creation, the abundant life that Jesus came to release into the world. Apart from life in the Kingdom of God, this Jesus-life does not exist. The Kingdom of God is the ‘vehicle of restoration’ that Jesus is using to accomplish His ultimate purpose – total defeat of evil and the glorious culmination of God’s restorative work in the future New Heaven and New Earth. The Kingdom of God is the sine qua non (Latin for ‘without which there is none’) of our walk with Christ. We enter the Kingdom through the power of the cross, the Holy Spirit, and our decision. The resurrection is the proof that the Kingdom of God has defeated the kingdom of the world, which is the kingdom of Satan, and that there is eternal, resurrection life in that not-yet Kingdom for us who accept Kingdom life now. The Ascension released the Holy Spirit to enter into the hearts of men.
Because the Kingdom of God is so radical, so strange, and so disturbing to contemporary Western culture (and some in Western Christianity) I decided to write another post I call ‘Kingdom Principles’. Actually, it is too long to be a single post (surprise) so I broke it into five parts: Part 1: Prologue; Part 2: What Is the Kingdom of God?; Part 3: A Well-Watered Garden; Part 4: Kingdom Decisions; and Part 5: The Upside-down World.
Here is Part 1: Kingdom Prologue
Mankind thirsts for life, for acceptance, freedom, and a deeper connection to the Divine; It knows there is more but has been searching for this ‘more’ down pathways that inevitably lead to spiritual, emotional, and physical death. A.W. Tozer described the thirst this way:
“In this hour of all-but-universal darkness one cheering gleam appears: within the fold of conservative Christianity there are to be found increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities and will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with correct ‘interpretations’ of truth. They are athirst for God, and they will not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the fountain of Living Water” (The Pursuit of God, pg. 8).
Tozer is identifying the hunger that human beings have, although they may not use these words, for life in the Kingdom of God.
He explains how important sound Bible exposition is to spiritual growth. But then he writes:
“But exposition may be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their lives” (The Pursuit of God, pg. 9).
This is a description of life in the Kingdom of God – where we enter “into Him” and live in His Presence. Men and women can never have an “intimate and satisfying knowledge of God” as long as they dwell in the kingdom of self, which is their personal subset of the kingdom of the world. We can live in this kingdom and know the Bible inside out. But does that give us life? Even the demons know the Bible. As long as we continue to make anything other than Jesus our ultimate source of life we will not know the intimacy, the Power, and the Presence of God in a real and tangible way, no matter how much knowledge we have.
The Kingdom of God has come into the world without power and fanfare. It has come quietly, under the radar, so to speak. It is easy to miss. Like the yeast in a bowl of dough, you hardly notice it. But it is radically changing the world. And it requires a choice. Will you receive the Kingdom of God, living as Kingdom men and women? Or will you reject the Kingdom and forgo the life of freedom and power that Christ died on the cross to give us and continue to live in the kingdom of self, the kingdom of the world?
Put that way, it is a stupid question, right? Well, maybe not so stupid.
The next post will address the question “What is the Kingdom of God?” Is it a physical territory or realm, like a country? Is it a group of people? Is the Church the Kingdom of God?
Grace and peace