Week 30 Sunday
Week 30 Sunday
The Kingdom Is at Your Doors!
Matthew 6:10; 12:28; Mark 1:14-15
The kingdom of God is at your doors! We have seen that the kingdom of God is within you, also that the kingdom of God is among you; we now pass on to the further step: the kingdom of God is at your doors. The kingdom is within us, among us; but it is also above us, beyond us, and is prepared to invade us from without.
This kingdom is within history and beyond history; it is within time; it is beyond time—eternal; it is within us and yet stands at our doors awaiting our consent for an invasion in fullness from without. The school of thought that insists that the kingdom is within you and emphasizes that conception exclusively is based on a half-truth. However, the school of thought that insists that the kingdom is to be found only by a divine invasion from without is also based on a half-truth. The kingdom is both. If you insist on the-kingdom-within emphasis only, you end in a vague mysticism that often flattens out into humanistic techniques for awakening your latent powers. But if you insist on the from-without kingdom only, then you end in making sin natural, in rendering humanity helpless, in becoming pessimistic about human nature, and in accepting a transcendental God, more or less absent, and wholly Other. This latter emphasis wipes out the fact that we are made in the image of God, that we have God’s laws stamped into our very constitution, that we are family with God, and that religion is therefore not unnatural but our very native air.
Nevertheless, we must emphasize the kingdom-from-without lest we run into vague, subjective theosophy, which has no anchorage in history. How do we see the nature of this kingdom: by looking within ourselves, by looking at the kingdom within us? Yes, but not supremely. Only as we look at the historical Christ do we really see the full meaning of the kingdom.
“You are the new order,” was said to a certain Christian. But only in Christ do we really see the new order.
O Christ, we now turn to you to see the meaning of the kingdom, for we must not get this wrong—if we do, all life goes wrong with it. In our search for meaning, help us to look steadily at you—with our gaze on you we can never go astray. We thank you. Amen.
Week 30 Monday
God Rules in Terms of Christ
John 1:1-5; 10:38; 14:7-11
The kingdom of God is at your doors! The Divine Invasion is near! The nature of that Divine Invasion is seen in Christ. He is the Personal Approach from the unseen. In him, the nature of reality is uncovered. In him, we see into the nature of God and also into the nature of God’s reign. God redeems in terms of Christ. God also rules in terms of Christ. Christ is the revelation of God and also the revelation of the kingdom of God. He identifies with God and also with the kingdom of God.
In Christ, the kingdom is given content and character. If the kingdom were only in us and only among us, then we couldn’t be sure of its character, for our characters would blur its character. But in Christ, the character of the kingdom is determined. If God is Christ universalized, so the kingdom is the Spirit of Christ reigning. This is important, for it means that we cannot bring in the kingdom by any method other than Christlike methods. When we thought we had brought it in, it wouldn’t be the kingdom; it would be something else. The ways we had used in our attempt to bring in the kingdom would enter into and spoil the very goal toward which we had striven. In other words, the means would enter into and spoil the ends. For the means preexist in and determine the ends.
In Christ, the kingdom is given not only a character content but also a personal content. In him, the kingdom is no longer merely an impersonal order. When I give myself to the kingdom, I give myself to the Person who embodies that kingdom. That makes my relationships with the kingdom warm and tender and personal. I can be loyal to an order, but I cannot love it. But in Christ, it is possible both to be loyal to and to love the kingdom. For in him, the kingdom looks out at me with tender eyes, loves me with warm love, and touches me with strong, redemptive hands—it is personal.
Christ is the kingdom personalized.
Christ, in you I see into the heart and meaning of God’s kingdom. You have fixed the character of that reign. What can I ask more? How can I be satisfied with anything less? To such a kingdom I can surrender with complete abandon. I do. In your name. Amen.
Week 30 Tuesday
The Kingdom and Repentance
Luke 18:17; John 3:1-5; Romans 5:1; 8:6
The kingdom of God is at your doors! That kingdom stands at our doors in the person of Christ.
There are two awakenings necessary. (1) We are to be awakened to the kingdom within us—to discover the latent powers hidden away in the recesses of our beings, to become alive to our possibilities, to become aware of our divine origin and our divine destiny. (2) We are to be awakened to the kingdom without us—the invading kingdom. The presence of this invading kingdom precipitates crisis. We sense tension between this kingdom and what we are. If it is true that the kingdom is written into the constitution of our beings, it is also true that we have tried to write something else there—incompatible ways, ways of sin. These incompatible ways of sin set up a conflict between themselves and the kingdom within and the kingdom without. Inner conflict ensues. The kingdom within us heightens that tension and brings it to crisis.
That crisis demands that we repent, that we submit, that we be changed, that we be converted, that we let this kingdom without invade us with its healing, its reconciliation, its Life. When we fling open the doors of our being and let this kingdom invasion possess us, we are not letting in something strange, something alien. We are letting in the very fact for which we are made. The kingdom within us rises up to meet the kingdom without us, and together they cast out the unnatural kingdom of sin and evil.
The coming of this invading kingdom has the feel of a homecoming about it. There is a sense that estrangement is over, that reconciliation has taken place, that the homeland of the soul has been found. Why? Well, when we welcome the kingdom, we welcome that for which we are made. The kingdom within and the kingdom without are counterparts, are one. So we feel a deep sense of unity and universal being.
O Christ-kingdom, you are the Love of my love, the Joy of my joy, the Peace of my peace, the Being of my being. When I welcome you, I welcome my long-estranged self—the prodigal come home. And now I am at rest, at peace, at adjustment, at home. I thank you. Amen.
Week 30 Wednesday
The Kingdom as Pervasion and Invasion
Matthew 13:37-43; John 3:16; 15:1-6
The kingdom of God is at your doors! We saw yesterday that when we welcome this invading kingdom, we welcome the heavenly natural, the homeland of our soul. Jesus said, “The earth produces of itself” (Mark 4:28)—the soil and the seed are made for each other. The soil of your being and the seed of the kingdom are affinities, family. You have tried to grow the poisonous weeds of sin in the soil of your being, but the whole process brought, not comfort, but conflict; not rest, but rebellion.
When the child passes from the womb to the outer world, it finds a world for which it is made: air for its lungs, light for its eyes, food for its stomach, love for its affectional nature, and a world of growth for its latent possibilities. The child and the world are made for each other. So you and I are made for the kingdom.
But Christianity is not merely the awakening of the kingdom within; it is an invasion of the kingdom from without. If it were only the first, we should get the interpretation of the nature of the kingdom by looking within. But the nature of the kingdom cannot be truly seen by looking within, for we have so overlaid that kingdom by unnatural ways of life that the interpretation is blurred. Only in the face of Christ do we see the nature of the kingdom. But we see more than the nature of the kingdom in Christ; we see in him what it costs God to get to us in spite of our sin. The kingdom at our doors is there only because in Christ that kingdom came down to us through an Incarnation, down to us through a Cross, down to us through a Resurrection, down to the very threshold of our being, there to await our consent for entrance.
Something crucial, something decisive had to happen in history before the kingdom could stand at our doors. The barriers have been broken down from God’s side by the offensive of Christ’s suffering, redemptive love. The cross is therefore the pivot upon which history turns.
Gracious Christ, you have come to me at supreme cost. Help me respond to you with all the cost I can pay. For your kingdom knocks with nail-pierced hands at my doors. Help me open with hands that are willing to be pierced. Amen.
Week 30 Thursday
The Kingdom Means Choice, Crisis, Conversion
Luke 11:23; 18:18-27; Romans 6:23
The kingdom of God is at your doors! Yesterday we saw that the coming of the kingdom to our doors was costly. The realization of this kingdom is no child’s tea party. It cost God, and it will cost us. It cost God.
Arnold Lunn satirizes current surface views of the gospel in these words: “God so loved the world that he inspired a certain Jew that there was a great deal to be said for loving your neighbor.”* No. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Those who do not receive this kingdom do “perish” literally, for their life forces break down through contradiction and strife. When you let in this kingdom, you have eternal life; you align yourself with the eternal realities of being; hence you live, now and forever.
The coming in of that kingdom means crisis, choice, conversion. The schools of thought that tell you that you have only to evolve yourself are missing the deep tragic note of religion. Paul did not say, “Progressive creature that I am! Who shall help me evolve myself?” He said, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” or, literally, “this dead body” (Rom. 7:24). The figure is that of a live man with a dead body chained to him, carrying around a decaying corpse as punishment. That figure is accurate: a sinner is a person with the kingdom of God written within, carrying around a decaying corpse of sin, decaying through its own intrinsic anti-life ways and attitudes. Sin is anti-kingdom, therefore anti-life; therefore it is doomed to decay. The one who harbors it “perishes.” But that dead body of sin is not the real person; it is a false importation into life, a useless, infecting encumbrance. The real person is the one with the kingdom of God written within.
O Christ, you have come to loose the chains of this dead body and to free me from decaying death. I gladly consent to let go this sin whose embrace is death. Forgive me if I hesitate, but I have lived with death so long that I think it is life. But I do consent, for I see, I see. Amen.
* Published source unknown. But see Arnold Lunn, Now I See (London: Sheed & Ward, 1934).
Week 30 Friday
The Crisis of Conversion and of Cleansing
Luke 9:23-26; 24:49; Acts 1:8
The kingdom of God is at your doors. The Divine Invasion precipitates crisis within and makes us either resist or surrender to this redemptive invasion. Sometimes we resist. A brilliant doctor, whose inner life was a mass of conflicts, returned to me an inscribed New Testament with this written on the wrapper: “I hate him, and I hate you.” I had scarcely received this outburst when another letter came, saying: “Where is God, and where are you?” Here is the stark, first stage of kingdom invasion: a soul resisting God and yet reaching out for God; telling God to go, and yet entreating God to stay! Rebelling, repelling—relenting, repenting: these are the alternate heartbeats of the heart that feels the pressure of the Divine Invasion. Consent—conversion are the alternate beats in the first stage of acceptance.
When the consent is given, the Divine Invasion usually takes place in two great crises: the crisis of conversion; the crisis of deeper cleansing. The soul gets on by a series of crises, and usually by these two great crises.
The crisis of conversion brings release from festering sins, and marks the introduction of a new life. Conversion is a glorious release but not a full release. Festering sins are gone, but the roots of the disease are still there. The new life is introduced but not fully regnant. The old life is subdued but not surrendered.
While I was in an acute stage of appendicitis, I was operated on. When I came to consciousness, the doctor was by my bed. He said, “I have drained the inflamed appendix, but I couldn’t take it out, for there were too many adhesions. This will relieve you, but you’ll have to have the appendix and the adhesions taken out later.” After that I was better, but I wasn’t well. Six months later, I had the appendix and the adhesions taken out. Then I was not only better; I was well. Sin throws its adhesions around the organs of life, but neither the sin nor the adhesions are natural. Salvation, in these two great crises, drains the poison, unlooses the adhesions, and restores to the truly natural—gives health!
Tender and skillful Invader of my soul, I yield my stricken life to your healing. Drain every drop of poison from my being, and then root out the adhering results of that poison. “Be of sin the double cure.”* For I want not only to be better; I want also to be well. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* Augustus Montague Toplady, “Rock of Ages.”
Week 30 Saturday
The Kingdom of God Is Our Own
John 8:31-32; Romans 6:16-23; Galatians 5:1
The kingdom of God is at your doors! If anyone harbors sin within, that person is caught between two fires: the kingdom of God within and the kingdom of God at the door. That person lives out life under a double protest: the protest of what he or she really is—in contrast to the false world that has built up—and the protest of what she or he might be. One protest is from the kingdom within, and the other from the kingdom without. Sin is therefore caught within a pincer movement. This intrusion, called evil, must surrender and succumb if the person is to live. When it truly surrenders, then the kingdom within and the kingdom without coalesce, and the person is possessed by an inner unity, possessed by Life! He or she is now truly natural, hence rhythmical and harmonious and adequate.
Jesus sums this up when he says, “If you are not faithful with what belongs to another, how can you ever be given what is your own?” (Luke 16:12 Moffatt). What can it be that is “given” to us, and yet is our “own”? What but the kingdom! The kingdom is our “own”; it is written into the constitution of our very being; it is our real nature. But the kingdom is also “given” to us; it is “given” when we submit to it and let it possess us. The paradox is this: When we find this invading kingdom, we find ourselves. I do not argue; I only testify that when I belong most to the kingdom, I belong most to myself. When I try to live in non-kingdom ways, I lose both the kingdom and myself.
Here, then, in the kingdom I find my perfect freedom. Think of the paradox of that statement: a kingdom where you are ruled is a place where you are perfectly free! The freedom of the engine is the confining rails; the freedom of electricity is the confining wires—for engine and rails are made for each other; electricity and wire are made for each other. So it is with the kingdom and me—when I am given it, I am “given that which is my own.”
My God, I have arrived! I see everything clearly, and I see it whole. I take the yoke of the kingdom, and I find it easy, for your yoke is my yearning. I take your burden, and I find it light, for your burden is my bounty; so, of course, your burden is light. I take you and find myself. I thank you. Amen.