One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the Kingdom of God come?” Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God can’t be detected by visible signs. You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘It’s over there!’ For the Kingdom of God is already among you.” Luke 17:20-21
Depending on your Bible translation, the Kingdom of God is mentioned at least 68 times in the New Testament. Rather than “Kingdom of God,” Matthew usually used “Kingdom of Heaven.” All four gospels, however, are speaking of the same place. Matthew was a Jew and primarily writing for a Jewish audience. While we tend to interpret the third commandment about not misusing the Lord’s name to mean not using it irreverently, Jews have a much stricter interpretation. Believing God’s name too sacred to say aloud, by the 1st century, His name wasn’t even written or spoken in anything but prayer. Even today, many observant Jews substitute “G-d” rather than write the full name.
Because Jesus continually preached the Kingdom of God (or Heaven), the Pharisees asked Him when it would come. Like the rest of Judah, they were thinking of a materialistic kingdom—one with boundaries and a Jewish ruler—so they missed what was happening in front of them. Looking for a political rather than a spiritual fix, they couldn’t understand that the Kingdom had arrived and God was busy restoring it.
Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees sounds like He’s saying the Kingdom is present and yet He also told His disciples to pray for its coming. Rather than an involved theological explanation to explain a kingdom that was both here and pending, Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed that was planted in a field but hadn’t matured into its future glory. The Kingdom was “already” because believers were taking part in building it but it also was “not yet” because it wouldn’t reach its full expression until the future. To further explain the Kingdom, Jesus used a number of metaphors: a farmer scattering seed, yeast in dough, a fishing net, a merchant in search of fine pearls, treasure in a field, a king settling his accounts, a landowner hiring workers for his vineyard, a king’s wedding feast for his son, ten bridesmaids meeting the bridegroom, and a landowner with tenant farmers. Even then, His own disciples were still thinking of an earthly kingdom when they asked the resurrected Jesus, “has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” [Acts 1:6]
The Kingdom of God is not about going to heaven when we die; it’s about bringing God’s kingdom to earth. We pray, “May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” [Matthew 6:10] God is king of everything and everyone and, when He reigns in our hearts and minds, His Kingdom is already here. At the same time, His Kingdom is not yet here until its full realization when paradise is re-created in the New Jerusalem.
The Messiah has accomplished the work of redemption, the Spirit has been poured out, yet evil has not been eradicated, the general resurrection is still future, and the final state of God’s kingdom has not been established. In other words, the new era has begun–has been inaugurated–but it has not yet replaced the old era. [Dr. Peter Cockrell]
We are people of physical signs and symbols and rituals help us connect with events. As a little girl, I loved Palm Sunday and not just because it meant my Lenten fasting would soon end and jelly beans would be in my Easter basket the following week. I loved the way our liturgical church observed it. The hymns of the day were filled with hosannas (a welcome relief from the more somber hymns of the Lenten season). Typically, the opening hymn was “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” and we children would follow the choir into the church while waving our palm branches. Even as a small child, I knew this day commemorated Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
In writing about Blaise Pascal yesterday, I mentioned that he, along with Pierre de Fermat, laid the groundwork for probability theory back in 1654. I remember a school friend writing her term paper on probabilities who began by testing what’s called the “birthday paradox:” in a room of 23 people, there is a 50% chance that two people will have the same birthday and, out of 75 people, there is a 99.9% chance of two people’s birth dates matching. Imagine her surprise when the first two people she asked had the same birth date! That, of course was sheer coincidence but, if the next 30 people she asked also had the same birth date, another explanation would have been necessary.
Christianity seems to be full of paradoxes. We’re saved by faith and not by works but we can’t have faith without works. As for grace and obedience—it’s God’s grace not our obedience that saves us. But, what initially sounds like a free pass isn’t because the saved are expected to have grace-fueled obedience! It’s easy to get confused when we read only isolated verses in Scripture. Rather than inconsistent or even contradictory concepts, however, faith, works, grace and obedience are complementary and interrelated. Perhaps some of the confusion comes from our language rather than our doctrine.
In ancient times, when an iron tool became dull, another iron implement was used to give it a finer polish and sharper edge. It’s not just tools that can become dulled—so can minds and spirits. Good Christian friends who act as whetstones can make us accountable, keener, stronger, and more enthusiastic and valuable. Rather than allowing us to grow dull and settled in our comfort zones, they sharpen us with challenges that make us better disciples for Christ.
These last few days, I’ve been discussing Paul’s instructions both to carry one another’s burdens and to carry our own loads. In between those two directives, we find a warning about the things that can prevent us from doing that: conceit and comparison.
