Chapter 15: Has Anyone Done This in Real Life? Jesus didn't merely teach us how a kingdom Christian should live—no, He lived the kingdom life Himself, leaving us a real-life pattern of kingdom living. And God chose the perfect time to send His Son to earth, a time that would precisely illustrate the very things Jesus would be teaching. To appreciate God's timing, we first have to understand some of the historical background leading up to the birth of Jesus.
Most of us remember how the Jews had been taken captive and exiled in Babylon. After the Persians overthrew Babylon, a remnant of Jews returned to Judea and rebuilt the Temple. However, they were not an independent nation; the Persians continued to rule them for more than 200 years. However, in 335 BC, the Greeks defeated the Persians, and they became the new rulers over the Jews. Finally, in 142 BC, under Simon Maccabee, the Jews gained their independence.
For the first time since the Babylonian captivity, the Jews no longer had to submit to any foreign king. What a time of rejoicing that brought! While the Jews were struggling against the Greeks, Rome was slowly rising to become the dominant world power. Since Greece was the mutual enemy of both Rome and Judea, the Jews had signed a treaty of friendship with the Romans. In this treaty, Rome affirmed that Judea was an independent nation, and it warned the Greeks not to try to reconquer Judea.
Despite this treaty, in 66 BC, the Romans took control of Judea themselves, and they soon began taxing the Jews quite heavily. And what were those taxes used for? To benefit the Jews? No, to support the very armies that were keeping the Jews subjugated. The Jews had been a free people for over 75 years, and they weren't about to submit meekly to Rome. So at the time that Jesus was born, Jewish nationalism ran high.
In fact, by the time Jesus reached manhood, there already had been a number of Jewish uprisings against the hated Romans. But Rome had brutally suppressed them all. However, not all Jews hated the Romans. In fact, some Jews profited from Rome. This was because the Romans did not personally collect the taxes they levied against the Jews. Rather, they farmed the job out to other Jews. After all, it was easier for a Jew to collect Jewish taxes than it was for a Roman.
A Jew would be wise to the tricks and schemes his fellow countrymen might use to evade taxes. Furthermore, he lived right in the midst of them. He knew what was going on, who was prospering and who wasn't. Traitors! Turncoats! The Jews detested the men who served as tax collectors for the hated Romans. "Just wait until we get our independence, and we'll hang you from the highest gallows," was surely what most Jews were thinking.
Naturally, most of the Jewish nation yearned eagerly for the coming of the promised Messiah. They firmly believed that surely He would lead the Jews in a victorious war of liberation against Rome. If the Maccabean family had been able to overthrow the Greeks, how much more so would the Messiah overthrow the Romans? But then here comes this carpenter's son named Jesus, and he tells them to love their enemies. Love the Romans? That borders on treason! And what's this?
If a Roman soldier commands you to carry his pack for one mile, carry it two miles instead? That's not only treason; that's insanity. Pay all of the onerous taxes that Caesar demands? Surely this can't be the long-awaited Messiah. And what's worse, this Jesus actually befriends the traitorous tax collectors and eats with them. If there was ever a time and place when a patriot was needed by his country, it was in 1st century Judea.
The Romans had no legal right to be in Judea, and the only way to get them out was going to be with the sword. To his fellow countrymen, Jesus was a coward and a traitor. Not only would he not join their cause, he treated the Romans like friends. Why didn't Jesus help the Jews in their struggle for independence? Because He was simply a sojourner here on earth. He lived in Judea, but his citizenship was in God's kingdom. God's kingdom rendered Jewish national affairs irrelevant.
What difference would it make to the kingdom of God whether the Jews obtained independence from Rome? Struggles for earthly power and earthly independence are meaningless in the realm of eternity. Earthly patriotism has no place in God's kingdom. Some Christians make the claim that Jesus didn't get involved in the Jewish struggle for independence only because He had come to lay down His life as a ransom for mankind.
But if this were the case, then surely His disciples, who were nearly all Jews, would have been closely involved with that struggle. However, Jesus' disciples ignored the Jewish fight for freedom, just as Jesus had. In fact, from reading Acts and the Epistles, a person would never even know that such a struggle was going on. Acts and the Epistles never even mention it, even though most of the New Testament writers were Jews. That's how irrelevant the Jewish struggle for independence was to the kingdom of God.
In fact, history shows that Christian Jews didn't join the fight for Jewish independence. Rather, the Christians abandoned Jerusalem after the Jews had freed it, briefly, from the Romans. Instead of helping their countrymen, they fled to the city of Pella, outside Judea. Like Jesus, the Jewish Christians in Judea weren't Jewish patriots. They didn't care if Judea was ruled by Romans or by Jews, for they had no interest in promoting any earthly kingdom, Jewish or Gentile. Does that sound unpatriotic? Indeed, it was.
The banner of Jesus' disciples wasn't "God and country." It was "God or country." Either a person's heart is entirely devoted to God's kingdom, or it's devoted to the kingdoms of this world. We can't have a divided heart or serve two masters. The love of country that the 1st century Jewish Christians had once had for Judea was now transferred to the kingdom of God. It was the same for Roman Christians. Like their Jewish brethren, they didn't care whether Judea was ruled by Romans or Jews.
They didn't take part in the war against the Jews, and there was no rift between Jewish and Roman Christians over the issue of Judea's independence. As I have said, obtaining citizenship in the kingdom of God is similar to obtaining citizenship in the United States. To become a United States citizen, a person must transfer his allegiance from his former country to America. He can't maintain allegiance to both. It's no different when we seek citizenship in the kingdom of God.