The Kingdom & Paul’s Gospel — Marlin Sommers

Because that's how we think of it now. Somebody says Jesus Christ, we just think of it as a phrase like, you know, somebody might rattle off Alexander the Great. Well, if you talk to me about Alexander the Great, you might or might not mean that he was actually great, right? You just refer to him that way because everybody else does. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, there's other scholars—think of N.T. Wright and, more recently, you know, Matthew Bates—really pushing us on that and saying, "Hey, wait a minute.

You know, it's not like Jesus was the first name and Christ was his last name. Like, you know, Jesus is the Messiah." Which I even saw it put really memorably. Somebody said, "Jesus Christ is a claim, not a name."

All right, Marlon, welcome back to the podcast. It's, I think, been a minute. I'm not sure even the last time I interviewed you, but you're the executive director here at Anabab's Perspectives. And it's not too often that both of us get to be on camera at the same time. So this is fun.

Why don't you spend just a brief minute introducing the topic today, and then I'm going to respond with a quote from one of our listeners. Yeah, so thinking about it as the kingdom and Paul's gospel, and thinking about that because people sometimes say, and we'll read some quotes here that say, "Well, Paul doesn't talk about the kingdom. Why is that?" Or, "Paul doesn't talk much about the kingdom."

And we'll respond to some of those quotes, but I also keenly remember that as something, you know, in my own thinking journey over the last 20 years or so. So a lot of this is going to be kind of autobiography in the very narrow sense of how I thought about the kingdom and influences over the years.

Yeah, so let's hop right into it. So if people have been listening to this podcast for a while, they'll know we do talk a fair bit about the kingdom of God. We've interviewed different people on that. We'll put links in the description to some of those episodes. But yeah, today, a bit of a different angle. And I'm going to start with a quote from someone named Benjamin. He left this quote on one of our YouTube videos.

He says this: "The Ebionites and the original James-led group who rejected Paul and read the original Hebrew Matthew made its way eastward away from the Greco-Roman pagan influence and persecution of the West. The West preferred the teachings of Paul over Jesus and still do today. Meanwhile, Jesus' own brother and the actual 12 disciples followed Jesus' teaching.

Eusebius, Irenaeus, and Jerome wrote about them. Ask yourself, why did everyone in Asia abandon Paul? All the churches mentioned in Revelation were in Asia. Why did Justin never mention Paul? Why did the original heretics like Marcion love Paul? Why do most churches today reject Jesus' commandments and preach mostly just about Paul's teaching? Why did Calvin and Luther prefer Paul over Jesus?" So it's a bit of a mouthful. Like, it's a big chunk he's got here, and he's kind of free-ranging across church history and different sectors of the church and things. So yeah, maybe we want to start by unpacking a bit of this and tell us what is this concern that he's addressing? Try to boil it down for us.

Yeah, and when I saw that comment on YouTube, you know, this represents this kind of Paul-Jesus contrast. He puts it in a very extreme form. But the reason I want to address it here is there are a lot of people and a lot of tendencies to think that way, even if most people who talk about Paul and Jesus wouldn't go as far as Benjamin does. They're not going to accuse Paul of essentially being a heretic, which is what this comment feels like.

But, you know, I remember a number of years ago, you know, having a conversation with a brother who was also a relative. And, you know, he had recently discovered and gotten really enthused about thinking seriously about the kingdom of God, especially as presented in the Gospels, Matthew and so on. And he makes the comment, you know, "We need to put Jesus first and Paul second."

So, okay, in one sense, that's obvious, right? Paul was a disciple of Jesus. Jesus wasn't the disciple of Paul. But why did he feel that tension? And why have other people felt that tension, you know, in so many different ways?

You know, even thinking from more of a, you know, liberal scholarship or liberal theology, there you might hear people talking about how, you know, Jesus was the radical revolutionary, and then Paul came along and tamed it down and made this, you know, suitable for civilization or whatever. I've definitely heard that before. Right. So either way, it's the same sense of it. And often it is related to ideas of the kingdom. Like, you know, Jesus came promoting a kingdom, came as Messiah.

And there's obviously different people see very different emphases in the kingdom of God, but then tend to see Paul's theology as something else. And I'll say right up front, I think that's just plain wrong. That's a large part of the thesis of this episode, that, you know, Paul's gospel is thoroughly kingdom-centered.

But yeah, I want to do that by kind of exploring some of my own journey, people I've learned from, things I've learned thinking about the kingdom of God.

So that, yeah, that does lead us to the first question. And you've already kind of tapped to this a bit. But isn't Paul's gospel—and it's kind of funny to use those terms, but let's go with it—Paul's gospel actually kingdom-centered?

And doesn't Paul talk about the kingdom of God? But again, it does feel—you referred to a personal conversation you had where it seemed like they were almost a bit in contrast or in tension. And I've definitely noticed that too when people talk about it. It's like, well, Jesus talks all about the kingdom and all this stuff, and then Paul doesn't really.

Push back on that because you're saying that that's not the case. Walk us through it. Well, maybe from a little bit of a sideways angle, a little bit.

You know, in the last few years, I'm not sure how far back this was, but the idea of red-letter Christianity, in other words, taking the words of Jesus seriously. And then you get pushback from that and say, you know, people say, well, all-letter Christianity, which obviously we should be all-letter Christianity, right? Red and black. But again, why is there this sense that red-letter Christianity is going to get you something different than, you know, the whole New Testament Christianity?

Now, obviously, Jesus was talking before his death and resurrection in the red letters, and so the apostles have to make sense of it after Jesus is ascended and so on. But why is there the sense of it getting a different lifestyle? And sometimes it's like, you know, Jesus taught non-resistance on the Sermon on the Mount.

Paul taught, you know, Romans 13 and justified the state and violence and slavery and everything else. And so with the red-letter Christianity, sometimes there's the idea that, you know, Jesus taught something different, taught a different ethic than what Paul did.

But I think as a lot of people have pointed out, well, actually go read Romans 12 and 13, read the whole thing. Like, the Sermon on the Mount is still there. The ethical content of the Sermon on the Mount shows up in Paul and the other epistles and so on. So there's not this big change. You know, some of these other pieces we'll talk about in more detail later, but Paul often doesn't use the word kingdom as much, but he uses other things that have become obscured.

What does Christ mean? Well, it means Messiah. What does that mean? Anointed. Well, who was anointed? The king.

So that would be one very quick, quick rejoinder. So as we look at this, let's pivot it a bit to more your personal story. So what were some of the key influences for you on this journey of unpacking what is this kingdom of God? How does this work? How does this even resolving that bit of tension that some of us have sensed between Jesus and Paul and, oh, you know, different emphases and all that stuff? Yeah, walk us through what were these influences across your life? Yeah, so let me start earlier with, you know, teenage years and really thinking about kingdom and gospel of the kingdom.

So one of those thinkers who we had on the podcast, John D. Martin, who, you know, would speak about the kingdom of God over and over again with various emphases, but especially, you know, the kingdom of God is the Sermon on the Mount, the kingdom of God as, look, what happens when you get enough people together that actually are willing to obey? You get a different kind of community when they're obeying the king.

That was a huge influence early on. And he would contrast it with what he called the save-me gospel. You know, so gospel of the kingdom, God is establishing a kingdom which entails a group of people, a group of subjects who live together versus a save-me gospel that says, well, actually the good news is that I personally can be forgiven and, you know, the rest is, it's still important, but it's downstream from there. It's not central. And so he kept calling back that gospel of the kingdom. And of course, I really latched on to that because that's what Jesus talked about in terms of the gospel of the kingdom.

But I've had to wrestle, you know, since with, okay, how do all these different pieces fit together in a kingdom framework? Because at that point, I didn't have the tools for, I didn't have the tools for myself for thinking through, you know, Paul's gospel and kingship and so on in quite the same way.

You know, another thinker that I read early on that really influenced my view of the kingdom, and this is outside of our Anabaptist circles, but was Dallas Willard and particularly the book The Divine Conspiracy. It felt like I was reading that at a young time, and it's like all of a sudden Christianity for me switched from a black and white picture to a full-color picture. So it was, yeah, hugely important in getting me excited about that. But the biggest, you know, takeaway for me there related to the kingdom and my thinking was just him stressing, look, God is present. God's power is available. Because God is in control, you can actually now in your life, you know, I can rely on that.

We can learn to be like Jesus. We can trust that God's going to take care of us in the middle of whatever's going on. And of course, yeah, Willard is a very rich thinker, but that was the part that resonated the most for me in terms of kingship.

And that added another level because Willard wasn't just talking about he's a king, so we obey him, although he strongly emphasized that, but like the king is here and is capable of taking care of us and we can become like him.

So in that process, so those are some of the early influences. So John D. Martin and Dallas Willard, which yes, that is quite the read. The Divine Conspiracy as a good read. And we'll put links to all these things that you're referencing in the description. What were some others as you're progressing along this journey? Some other influences? Yeah. Well, so two more men that we've interviewed on Anabaptist perspectives.

So David Berceau has been a frequent guest. So he had the book, The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down, which is, you know, a short book that goes through, takes a quick look at what kind of kingdom did Jesus teach? And especially the emphasis there that stuck with me, I think, is, you know, Jesus is a king. There are certain what he would call laws of the kingdom, and they are to be obeyed. And so this is how we live.

A theme that resonates very well with Anabaptist sensibilities and so on. And then Dean Taylor, again, a frequent guest. I remember him talking about the kingdom. And the one phrase I remember from there, that really builds on some of the stuff that John D. Martin talked about, was this phrase that Dean would use, "God's people are supposed to show the world what things would be like if only we would obey the king."

And so there's a powerful thing there, right? Like, okay, if you actually had not just one or two people, but together and with those around us, we're obeying Jesus, it's going to result in a different kind of interaction.

And if enough people do that, you're going to get a kind of different model or portrayal of what things could look like. So yeah, all four of those were hugely helpful for me. But I don't know if those, the things that I took from there, I'm not saying these people didn't have answers for that. But the things that I personally took from those emphases didn't really address that question, you know, well, how does this fit with all of Paul's writings and these larger themes, integration and so on.

So yeah, you've mentioned, okay, so Berceau, Dean Taylor, again, we've talked to them both actually on this podcast about some of these themes. So people can dive into those in more detail if they want.

This is quite the package. Are there other pieces that were influenced as well in this time in your life that you'd like to mention? Well, I think the idea, you know, through all of those and through what I was thinking about, the very biblical idea that kind of sums up what I took from there, you know, actually comes from the Lord's Prayer, from Jesus, where we're taught to pray, pray to our Father in heaven and to ask for his kingdom to come, his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So that's a very important part of the idea of the kingdom of God, right? Well, if God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven, and that's what we're praying for when we ask for God's kingdom to come.

So that's extremely important. And so when I say I didn't have all the pieces at that point in life, well, I had that very important piece. And I think, you know, all those thinkers I mentioned helped to really flesh out that idea of the kingdom as God's will being done on earth, which is tremendously important.

So we're going to pivot a little bit here and ask you this. So how does the kingdom of God or God the Father relate to Jesus as king, specifically as we think of him in the line of David as the Messiah and so forth? How do these pieces come together?

Yeah, I think that was a key for me that took a little bit to think about. So of course, when Jesus is on earth, he's saying the kingdom of God and his identity as Messiah is getting revealed. We see it getting revealed slowly over the course of the gospels, right? Early on, he says people, you know, hey, don't tell, don't tell people. And then eventually he has people can, you know, you confess, I am the Christ. I am the Messiah. And so we do see, we do see in the gospels this thing emerging that it's not just the kingdom of the Father, but this is Jesus' kingdom too.

And I think that's an important piece that I've had to keep, had to keep wrestling with. And I think can explain more like, okay, so of course, once we get to Paul, well, he's on the other side of the resurrection. He's on the other side of the ascension.

He's very, very tuned into Jesus as the king. Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. And so once you are actually able to start tracing that thread, you know, through the gospels and through Paul, once I'm able to start tracing that, then it's like all kinds of things start coming together.

I mean, so even an example there of, I guess, just the process of time that it took me to think through some of these. So I remember, you know, at our church a number of years ago, we sang one of these grand songs about God's kingship. I think it was something like, you know, the Lord is king, coming out of the Psalms, talking about God's rule over all of creation and nature and everything.

And I remember one point, you know, we had a sharing time or something, and I just, I just mentioned something there in church. I said, okay, this grand, grand old hymn, the Lord is king, like, okay, well, this has to connect to what we talk about when we talk about the gospel of the kingdom.

But I'm like, I don't, I don't quite have all the, all the pieces to feel like it connects. It feels like we're talking about two very different things. Like I hear the gospel of the kingdom and I think, well, live according to the Sermon on the Mount.

And then I hear this song and I think, yeah, God created everything.

Yeah. And it just, it felt disconnected to me. That's a really good point though, because when we, you know, again, we've done episodes on this and you talk about this in the, you know, in our sector of the Anabaptist world, we're talking about kingdom of God, all this stuff. Very rarely, if ever, have I heard it tied back to the Psalms like you're doing, which is really neat. Actually, that's a neat angle that maybe we should hear about more often. I don't, yeah, this is kind of a new thought for me. But it's also, it's coming back to the original question where you're tying that in with the divinic line of the Messiah.

Yeah, that's, anyway, this isn't even a question. This is just kind of a response of like, hmm, that's an interesting thought that I have not really heard expressed very often. Yeah. And I mean, the New Testament uses that all the time, uses these pieces from the Psalms to describe the Messiah or these pictures, describe Jesus.

Things that are talking about God the Father in some cases, as you know, talk about Yahweh in the Old Testament, or things that are talking about David or a Davidic king in the Old Testament, brings us right together and says, actually, you know, this is talking about Jesus, the divine son.

Yeah. So, okay, so we just use the Psalms and the Messiah, this kingdom of God, God the Father. Bring that into the New Testament then. How do we transition from some of the things Jesus is saying in his teachings and then you go through the death and resurrection? We've already talked a little bit about the angle with Paul. What are some other elements, other pieces to this picture that you would like to add? This whole thing of, you know, the Davidic king and Jesus being the king and so on, I can describe, you know, a particular point in time where I saw something in two scriptural passages that tied that together, tied together Jesus' ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

Now, I've seen lots of people reference that since.

But where it first really clicked with me was reading these two passages. The first one was in Acts 2. This is Peter's sermon. There on the day of Pentecost, he's quoting Psalms, quoting things that David wrote, applying them to Jesus.

And then about verse 32, you get this. He says, "This Jesus, God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing." And what he's talking about there is, this is Pentecost, you know, the dramatic giving of the Holy Spirit there. And he says, well, this is because Jesus was exalted to the right hand of the Father, right? That's kingship language. He's at the throne beside the Father, ruling. This is because he's ruling.

And then keep going, ties that right to David. He says, "For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'" So that quote from Psalm 110.

And Peter continues, "Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified."

And so it ties it to, it treats the ascension as ascending to the throne and saying, that's actually why the Holy Spirit can be poured out, because Jesus is there. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that, again, that's another angle that I don't know if I've heard very much. So the Psalms is one and tying it into the line of David, but also you're tying in the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, and so forth as part of this kingdom of God package. Right. Package, I guess that's the right word. I mean, it kind of comes with the territory, so to speak, is a way of saying it, I guess you could say. Yeah, so I was, you know, looking at that.

I latched onto that in Acts. And then Ephesians 4 takes that same theme, verse 7, that grace or a gift was given to each one of us according to the measure of Messiah's gift. Therefore it says, jumps back to quoting the Old Testament again, "When he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men."

In saying he ascended, what does that mean? But that he also descended into the lower regions, the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. So, you know, Paul there is talking about Jesus saying, yes, there's this ascension.

He can now fill all things with his gift because he's ascended. And if we look earlier in Ephesians, because he's at the right hand of the Father. And so he gives the Spirit and then he goes right into thing. He gave this. He gave the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers are supposed to do this. It's supposed to result in growth in the body and so on. But it's the same thing. Because he's a king, he can give the gift. The Holy Spirit is the mediator of those gifts and thus of his rule. So right there you have a tie into, you know, kingdom of God and what do we mean by church? Well, if God's rule is coming through gifts and these gifts are different and they're parts of the body, well, God's rule is established when the different parts of the body with their different spiritual gifts are actually working together.

Yeah. So I'm going to pivot slightly here and read another quote or another comment, sorry, that we got on through YouTube on the episode we did with John D. Martin. That's the episode called The Importance of the Kingdom of God.

And this relates to some of the things you've been saying, and I'd like to hear your response to this as well. So this, there wasn't a name attached to it, but this person wrote this comment. It's worth noting that the epistles actually say far less about the kingdom of God than the gospels do. Only eight times does the phrase even appear between Romans and Revelation compared to dozens in the previous books. Does this mean that the church lost the emphasis very, very early? Or might it be that contention about the law, great struggles with establishing churches and keeping them established, and the most central of all disputes over who Jesus was, especially from the Gnostics, became central in the work that the apostles and elders were having to do, as well as in later creeds.

The creeds were often intended to be the divining line between heretical baptisms and those rightfully within the church, not a summary of unquestioned aspects of the Messiah and his work. I suspect that the great interwoven character of their lives from Acts 4 well into the early church writings made the idea of the kingdom much more of a given, much less of a question or even an oddity, as it is for us now with all of the departures from this manner of life in the interim. These changes now seem to us to be what normal Christianity looks like.

So a lot going on there in that comment. But it seems like he's, I'm assuming whoever this person was, is putting some pretty big sweeping statements on the table. And I'd be really curious how you would answer this based on the reflections we've been having as we've been tracing through your own story in this episode. Yeah. Well, first of all, I like where the comment ends that, you know, the kingdom of God was a given and that it's kingship.

And yes, it is a fair point and this, you know, maybe caused me questions, caused other people questions as well. You know, kingdom of God, kingdom of God through the gospels. And then you don't see the language nearly as much in the epistles if you're talking about that specific phrase, the kingdom of God. Okay. But it is used and it's used. Paul doesn't have any problem using the language of the kingdom of God. He just doesn't use it as often.

But there's other words. The concept there is there in other words.

So what does it mean to say Jesus Christ?

Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, different people, I know there's some debates over this. Some people say, well, Christ was just quickly kind of becoming a routine title and, you know, Jesus Christ becomes a set phrase. Because that's how we think of it now. Somebody says Jesus Christ, we just think of it as a phrase like, you know, somebody might rattle off Alexander the Great.

Well, if you talk to me about Alexander the Great, you might or might not mean that he was actually great, right? You just refer to him that way because everybody else does. Yeah. But, you know, there's other scholars think of N.T. Wright and more recently, you know, Matthew Bates, really pushing us on that and saying, hey, wait a minute.

You know, it's not like Jesus was the first name and Christ was his last name. Like, you know, Jesus is the Messiah. Which I think we saw it put really memorably, said somebody said, Jesus Christ is a claim, not a name. Hmm. And just for the clarity for the audience, so Christ would essentially be the Greek form of the word Messiah. Am I getting that right? Or a very similar meaning?

Yes. So Christ is related to the Greek word for anointing.

Just like the Hebrew Messiah is related to the idea of anointing. Like the anointed one. The anointed one, right. So yeah, you had multiple anointings in the Old Testament. But when you say the anointed one, Christ, you know, it's referring specifically to as a king. Yeah. You know, even David, sometimes referencing Saul when Saul was king as the Lord's anointed.

And then, okay. And then of course you get the expectation of the Messiah, the anointed one in the line of David. That's what Jesus is. Even, okay, just refer back to the passage that we both, we just read in Acts.

Peter says, "Let the house of Israel therefore know for certain God has made him, Jesus, both Lord and Messiah and Christ." Hmm. Like he has made him the Christ. He has made him the king, the ruler. Yeah. You know, because of his death and resurrection and really the ascension is showing that as the king. And so then all of a sudden it's totally, you know, the epistles are saturated with kingdom language every time you see the word Christ. That's a really good point of, again, just to hammer that again.

I can't remember who you quoted, but someone saying that Jesus Christ is not just a name, like that's a title attached to who he is. That's a really important piece. That's a really, I guess it's, we're removed enough. I mean, we just hear it so often. We hear it so often. We just kind of like. We just gloss over it. Yeah, exactly. That's a really helpful chunk to pull out. I'm glad you hit that. Is there, yeah, where else would you like to go with that? Or if you want to continue on with other influences as well to kind of help you come through this, wrestle through this. So the one, the one period that really helped me was being assigned to teach a youth Sunday school class.

And I had multiple topics to cover. I decided to use the letter to the Ephesians because I could kind of focus on that one letter and hit most of the topics that I was assigned to. And I just went through a period of just trying to wrap my mind around, obviously Ephesians has lots of long sentences, lots of tremendously grand language and so on. But to wrap my mind around, get my mind around some of the main tracks or threads going through there. And one of those was just how thoroughly, you know, that is about this king and this kind of king. We already referenced Ephesians about, you know, he ascended, gave gifts to men, which were the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Earlier in Ephesians chapter 1, I'm going to read a short section, verses 20 to 23, breaking into a sentence. God raised Messiah from the dead, seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet.

So, okay, a little hard to get more kingdom focused than that. And very clearly putting Jesus as the king, right? Jesus with the Father at his right hand. And then pulling the implications there that determine how he's going to talk in the rest of Ephesians. So God put all things under Jesus' feet, gave Jesus as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

And then you can trace through Ephesians just kind of the outworking of that idea. Like here's the king. Here's something about how this whole church thing works, how it expresses the fullness or expresses God's reign to the powers, to those, you know, authority and power and dominion, you know, how it works out. Paul in Ephesians does talk about inheriting the kingdom of God as well. So he comfortably uses kingdom of God language there.

Some ways I think maybe we could do a whole episode just on that, like the king and his body, take that theme and just, you know, trace it through Ephesians.

But just to hammer that ascension. And then Ephesians chapter 2, you know, you were dead in your trespasses and sins and you were made alive. Okay, so that's a, if there's any passage that is hammering like you personally were messed up and you need to be saved from being very messed up, right? It's Ephesians 2.

Well, okay, right there is kingdom of God language too. So remember Jesus is seated at the right hand. So not only were we buried with Christ in baptism and raised with Christ, it says you are seated with Christ.

So there you have another sense. People who belong to Jesus are actually part of reigning in the kingdom. And of course, the way that can work out is through God giving the Holy Spirit to believers. That's how it can be part of it. But that's kingdom, kingdom saturated right there.

You know, you were under the power of the devil. Now you're seated with Christ in the heavenly places. Work it out. And it seems like the phraseology that's being used is fairly different from what you see in the gospels say. But some of that is also because Paul is writing after the ascension, right? So like there's another piece here that's being emphasized. Am I getting close to some of the differences or maybe that's why we miss it sometimes? Yes.

But you know, that's also in the gospels. And actually, you know, another guest we've had on here, Paul LaMichela. And just some of the ways he's talked about it and other people as well helped me realize like, you know, the gospels have these themes too. Like, you know, we did a little clip from one of Paul's episodes called The Genealogy of Jesus is Not Boring.

Well, what does the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew do? Well, one of the things is it establishes him as the son of David. That's a, yeah, yeah. Kingly. And then you get that king language going the whole way, the whole way through. You know, Jesus as Davidic king, son of David, that's through the gospels as well. That's a really good point. I remember when he shared that on the episode during the interview, I was like, oh wow, I had not thought of it quite like that. But that is an important piece.

Yeah, Jesus's genealogy isn't boring. You know, you start with Matthew chapter 1, it's like, why is it starting with a kind of a dry, boring genealogy? You know, it's like, oh, that's why. And there's a lot more to it that you can find in the episode. But yeah.

Yeah, if that's boring, it's because we don't know our Bibles well enough. If you know your Bible, it's anything but boring. Put it that way. That's really good. So maybe just a couple comments and then I have a couple comments kind of tie in a couple loose ends. And then I have one quote from Romans that I want to end with that really makes the point about the kingdom in Paul's gospel.

And so one of those loose ends, we're talking about Ephesians. I would just flag, I had the privilege of, you know, interviewing John Coblins. We released those recently. And one of those we titled, you know, How God Intends Churches to Exhibit His Glory. And so there we did get into some of those pieces from Ephesians about, you know, what's God, what's the king trying to do with the church. I could recommend that.

The other one I'm going to stick in here, don't have time to develop it in this episode, but can't quite bear not to mention it. And that is, you know, the whole idea of already not yet. It's a phrase used by biblical scholars or inaugurated eschatology, if you like a slightly longer, fancier phrase.

But both of those remind us that, okay, the kingdom is here in the sense that, okay, Jesus has ascended to the throne, we're seated with him. But there's more coming, right? There's still enemies. Not everybody acknowledges his reign. It's not public. It can be hidden.

You know, rebellion still has a place. There's still death. You know, First Corinthians says the last enemy that will be defeated is death. And then the kingdom will be handed over. So just an important frame in all of this. There's the part of the kingdom that is now. And there's more coming.

But the piece I would like to end with here, specifically because, you know, it addresses the kingdom in Romans of all places. And I would thank Matthew Bates, especially a book like Why the Gospel, and he's written other stuff for pointing this out. The opening of Romans. Paul, a servant of Messiah Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his son. Okay, so this is the gospel of God, concerning his son, concerning Jesus.

What does it say about him? Who was descended from David according to the flesh, Davidic connection, and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Messiah, our Lord.

And the part that Bates really highlighted there is that part declared to be the Son of God in power.

And, you know, he argues that that indicates that kind of, you know, installation as king. Through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.

So there you have, right at the beginning of Romans, which we often think of as, you know, locus classicus for Paul's gospel. And he says, it's concerning Jesus, who was descended from David, declared the Son of God in power.

And actually my job as an apostle is to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations to this king. So a little hard to say that Paul's gospel isn't about the kingdom. That's really something I've never thought of the beginning of Romans like that before. That's interesting to, yeah, bringing in those connections in the context of what Paul's trying to communicate. I hadn't thought of it like that. That's really helpful.

Was there anything else you would like to add as we bring this episode to a close? I mean, just to say that this is a rich subject. So I've, you know, shared some of my journey and things I'm learning. And I, you know, I think that may resonate with others because a lot of the questions I've had, I hear other people asking and so on.

But there's a lot more there. So keep learning and studying and, of course, experiencing the kingdom of God through your own walking with Jesus. Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And I appreciate you sharing the journey you've had of learning these things. And also too, for anybody listening or watching this, whatever, we're going to link all the things you mentioned down below so they can continue that journey on their own as well.

Yeah, there's a lot of good resources out there for people to dig into. So hopefully that'll be helpful to some people who want to learn more. I know for myself, many years ago, actually, you recommended the Divine Conspiracy to me from Dallas Willard and I got a copy. And that was a big influence on myself as well as that book by Brissot that you mentioned as well, Kingdom Turned the World Upside Down. Those were very helpful in my own journey. So yeah, I think I would echo what you said there, encouraging people to dig into this more. There's a lot more here. And hopefully this episode is a bit of an inspiration. Wet your appetite.

Yeah, exactly. Yes, there you go. A little bit of inspiration. Yeah, go dig into this more. And hey, maybe go and reread, you know, Ephesians or something and look at it through this lens that you've been giving us. So yeah, well, I appreciate you coming on the podcast today and sharing this. This has been very interesting.

Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode with Marlon Summers on Paul's Gospel and the Kingdom of God. We mentioned a previous episode we did with John D. Martin called The Importance of the Kingdom of God, which you can find linked down below or on the screen here on YouTube. Thanks again for listening. If you enjoy what we're doing here at Anabaptist Perspectives, we have a monthly email newsletter, which you can sign up for at our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. We also have an exclusive partners podcast that's only available to those who donate on a monthly basis. And again, you can join that over on our website. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.