Chapter 3: A Different Kind of Kingdom. The year AD 30 began like any other year. Jewish priests still offered daily sacrifices in the temple, farmers worked in their fields, and women washed their clothes in the streams. Fishermen hung up their nets to dry on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. But suddenly, a prophet named John burst upon the scene. Clothed in camel's hair and a leather belt, John made a striking figure, and he brought with him a startling message: the Kingdom of God was at hand.
The Kingdom of God was at hand. To the Jews, this meant that the Messiah was about to come. It meant the overthrow of Rome. It meant they would soon have back their independence as a nation. No wonder that John's message caught everyone's attention. People began flocking to him to find out what they needed to do to prepare for this kingdom. However, when John identified Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah, most Jews were not excited. Jesus of Nazareth? He didn't seem at all like the Messiah they were expecting.
He was obviously no warrior, and he didn't even attempt to organize an army to liberate the Jews from Rome. In fact, he didn't even preach against the Romans. What did he preach about? I would like to ask you, the reader, that question: What was the theme of Jesus' preaching? Man's need for salvation? God's love for mankind? The necessity to be born again? The fact that Jesus would die as a ransom for us?
Jesus certainly spoke about all of these things, and they are all essential truths, but none of them was the theme of his message. The scriptures record only one occasion on which Jesus spoke about the new birth: his private talk with Nicodemus. He mentioned his dying as a ransom for us only one time. There are only five or six passages in which he even used the word salvation. No, the theme of Jesus' message was the Kingdom of God. There are nearly 100 references to the Kingdom throughout the Gospels.
Furthermore, most of Jesus' parables were about the Kingdom. In fact, Jesus said that the reason he was sent to earth was to preach about the Kingdom. "I must preach the Kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent." That's not what we're used to hearing, is it? We've all been given the impression that the primary purpose of Jesus coming to earth was to save us from our sins, and that definitely was one of the purposes of his coming here. But it was not the only purpose.
Wherever he went, Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God. From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. But when the multitudes knew it, they followed him, and he received them and spoke to them about the Kingdom of God and healed those who had need of healing.
Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. The irony is that although the Kingdom of God was the theme of Jesus' preaching, the message of the Kingdom is almost totally missing from the Gospel that's preached today. What's the theme of most preaching today? It's man's personal salvation, isn't it? It's not the Kingdom of God.
You may be thinking to yourself, "Okay, maybe Jesus preached about the Kingdom, but it was different with his disciples. He told them to preach about the new birth and salvation, not about the Kingdom, right?" Wrong. When Jesus commissioned his disciples, he specifically told them to preach about the Kingdom. Notice his preaching instructions: "As you go, preach, saying, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'" He sent them to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick.
Heal the sick there and say to them, "The Kingdom of God has come near to you." Please understand that these are not a few isolated proof texts. In nearly every passage where Jesus gave preaching instructions to his disciples, he told them to preach about the Kingdom. You no doubt remember the disciple who said he would follow Jesus, but that he first had to bury his father. What did Jesus tell him? "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the Kingdom of God." But please, don't misunderstand me.
I am in no way minimizing our need to be born again and to be saved. These are crucial aspects of the Gospel. However, they are a means to an end: entering the Kingdom of God. Jesus never intended that his followers would preach about salvation and the new birth apart from the Kingdom. The Kingdom is an absolutely crucial aspect of the Gospel. When we tell people about salvation but say nothing about the Kingdom, we are not preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And what Gospel was it that Jesus said would be preached in all the world before the end? He said, "And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come." A Gospel is being preached throughout the world today, but is it the Gospel of the Kingdom? Every kingdom has four basic components: 1) a ruler or rulers, 2) subjects, 3) a domain or area of rulership, and 4) laws. God's kingdom is no different. It has a ruler, subjects, domain, and laws.
However, because God's kingdom is a revolutionary kind of kingdom, these four basic components take on unique aspects. To begin with, God's kingdom has no earthly ruler. Its ruler is Jesus Christ, who reigns from heaven. Earthly kingdoms periodically change rulers and policies. In contrast, Jesus is eternal, and his policies don't change. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Who are the subjects of the Kingdom of God? The Jews? No.
Jesus told the Jews quite pointedly, "I say to you, the Kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it." Who was this nation to whom Jesus said he would give the Kingdom? The Romans? The British? The Americans? No. It was none of these, for the scriptures tell us, "There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise." So all of us who belong to Christ, all of us who are genuinely born again, we are the subjects of this kingdom.
We have become the heirs of God's promise, the citizens of his new nation, and writing to Gentile Christians of his day, Peter addressed them with the following words, "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy." So the subjects of God's kingdom are called to be
a holy nation, a kingdom of priests, just as the Israelites had been called.
However, the kingdom was taken from the Israelites and given to a nation that would produce the fruits of righteousness, the nation of born-again believers. One unique aspect of the Kingdom of God is that its subjects don't occupy a certain portion of the earth, like the subjects of other kingdoms. The citizens of God's kingdom are interspersed among all nations of the world. This feature has caused continual conflict for the Kingdom of God.
That's because its citizens always live under two different kingdoms: a kingdom of the world and the kingdom of God. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, "The hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father." God's kingdom would have no earthly capital or holy shrine. All of this was something beyond the experience of both the Jews and the Gentiles of Jesus' day. The kingdom of the Israelites had encompassed a specific geographic area, so had all of the kingdoms of man.
The Israelites had always had a physical location where their tabernacle or temple was placed. For a thousand years, that place had been Jerusalem. Every human kingdom has an earthly capital, but God's kingdom does not. If all of this was not astonishing enough, Jesus told the Pharisees something even more startling.
Now, when he was asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, he answered them and said, "The Kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will they say, 'See here' or 'See there,' for indeed the Kingdom of God is within you." What kind of kingdom is this? A kingdom that's within you? Jesus was truly introducing something marvelously new, something revolutionary. This was not just a new kingdom. It was a new type of kingdom.
It was a type of kingdom that was totally different from what anyone, Jew or Gentile, had ever heard of before. A kingdom that is within you. "Oh, I see." You may be thinking, "Jesus was talking about a spiritual kingdom, not a real one." No. Jesus was talking about a real kingdom. The ancient kingdom of the Israelites was definitely a real kingdom, wasn't it? It had real kings, real subjects, and real laws. The Kingdom of God is just as real as the ancient Israelite kingdom.
It, too, has a real king, real subjects, and real laws. Its domain encompasses the entire earth, even though most of the earth's population are not citizens of this kingdom. What did Jesus mean when he said that the Kingdom of God is within you? Tertullian, an early Christian writer, commented on this phrase. "Now, who is there who does not understand the phrase 'within you' to mean in your hand or within your power?
That is, if you hear and do the commandments of God?" Anybody can choose to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God if he is willing to make the needed commitment. A person doesn't have to travel anywhere or pay any sum of money to become a citizen.
Now, many Greek scholars today feel that Luke 17:21 should be translated, "The Kingdom of God is in your midst rather than within you." In other words, the king and some of his subjects were already standing there in the midst of those religious leaders who asked Jesus when the kingdom was coming. The kingdom was in their midst, but they didn't realize it. Whichever significance Jesus intended by the phrase "within you" or "in your midst," the principle is still the same.
His kingdom has no national boundaries, no earthly king, and no military forces. His subjects live within the midst of the peoples of this world, yet the world cannot see this kingdom. Becoming a citizen of God's kingdom is within reach of everyone. In fact, what makes God's people the subjects of this kingdom is something within them: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. A lot of Christians have the idea that the Kingdom of God is something only in the future.
But no, the Kingdom of God is something that is here right now. Paul wrote to the Colossians, "He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of his love." Paul speaks in the past tense. God has already conveyed us into his kingdom. He doesn't bring us into his kingdom after we die. He brings us into his kingdom as soon as we are born again. Strangely, many Christians don't realize that the Kingdom of God is a present reality on earth.
In fact, many Christians don't even know what the Kingdom of God is. Like the Pharisees, they don't see the Kingdom of God, and so they never make the kingdom commitments.