The Kingdom of God
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
The Central Emphasis in the Definition
Matthew 4:23; Luke 17:20-21; 21:27-28
In another book I said the kingdom of God is a new order founded on the Fatherly love of God—redemption, justice, and brotherhood, standing at the door of the lower order founded on greed, selfishness, exploitation, unbrotherliness. This higher order breaks into, cleanses, renews, and redeems the lower order, within both the individual will and the collective will.
This is true, but not the full truth. It is an offer from without. It is “at our door.” And yet it is within us—“The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21 Weymouth). This kingdom has been “prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt 25:34). Did Jesus mean that this kingdom has been built within the very foundations of the world and within the very structure of our own mental and moral makeup? Yes, I believe he meant just that. . . . But it does mean that the kingdom is written, not merely in sacred books, but in the very structure and make-up of the universe and of ourselves and of society. When we study the laws deeply embedded in the universe, in our own mental and moral and physical being, the laws that constitute true sociological living, we discover the laws of the kingdom.
Victorious Living
(Week 2, Wedneday)
The Kingdom Written Within
Jeremiah 31:33; Romans 2:14-16; 2 Corinthians 3:1-8
What does the psychologist mean by saying, “To be frank and honest in all relations, but especially in relations with oneself, is the first law of mental hygiene”? Doesn’t that mean that the universe and you and I are built for truth, that the universe won’t back a lie, that all lies sooner or later break themselves upon the facts of things? Since the kingdom stands for absolute truth, and our own mental makeup demands the same thing, then are not the laws of the kingdom written within us?
Victorious Living
(Week 2, Thursday)
The Kingdom and Life
John 11:25, 14:6, 1:4, 17:8, 20:31
Life will not work in any way except God’s way. When we find the kingdom, we find ourselves. . . .
The kingdom is “within us,” but it is also “at our doors.” Something from without is prepared to invade us, to change us, to complete us. When that happens, we too shall have to spell life with a capital “L.” For every fiber of our being will know that this is Life. . . .
The kingdom, then, is life-plus. . . . The kingdom is the Ought-to-be standing over against the Is—challenging it, judging it, changing it, and offering it Life itself.
Victorious Living
(Week 2, Friday)
The Half-Truth of the Coming of the Kingdom as Only Sudden
Matthew 11:23, 24:42-51, 25:1, 13
Modern liberalism has insisted that the coming of the kingdom will be by gradual changes. It has drawn its inspiration from two sources: modern democracy and certain teachings in the New Testament that teach gradualism. Modern democracy has committed itself to a faith in democratic process of change according to constitutions. This means by vote instead of by sudden, catastrophic revolution. Liberalism has felt that the processes of the kingdom would be the same.
In this they have been supported by passages in the New Testament: the leaven that leavens the whole lump, the kingdom like the growth of the corn—first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. These passages seemed to fit in with the spirit of democratic, evolutionary change.
But with the recent decay of faith in democratic government, much of this faith of liberalism in gradualism has decayed with it. . . .
[Democracy] should hold to its principle of gradualism. For that lets the responsibility rest where it should rest, namely, on us, to bring in the kingdom by individual and collective endeavors cooperating with the redemptive God. . . . For gradualism is in the New Testament as a living part of the outlook of the Gospel. It is ineradicable.
But it is only a half-truth. We should remember that. There is another side.
Victorious Living
(Week 25, Thursday)
The Half-Truth of the Coming of the Kingdom as Only Sudden
Matthew 13:31, 33; Mark 4:26-28; Luke 17: 20-21
Modern fundamentalism in many cases has rejected the principle of gradualism and has said that in the Second Coming of Christ the kingdom will in fact be set up. This coming will be sudden and catastrophic.
In this, they have been supported by passages in the New Testament that teach his coming as a thief in the night, by the nobleman who went into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return to set it up, and so on. That the New Testament does teach this sudden and catastrophic phase of the coming of the kingdom there is no doubt whatever.
But it is a fact that the holding of this phase alone has produced a mentality that has withdrawn interest from social change by gradual processes, has made those who hold it discount those changes and has made them look for a worsening of things in order to reach a final, sudden triumph at the coming of Christ. This has been a moral and social drain.
Christian thought has moved from the catastrophic to the gradual and back again: thesis producing antithesis. It is now time for us to come to the synthesis. And the synthesis is this: there is in the pages of the New Testament both the teaching of gradualism and the teaching of the apocalyptic. Both are there and are integral to the account. They cannot be explained away. And in the interest of the kingdom, they must not be explained away, for we need both phases of the kingdom. Each is a half-truth that needs the other to complete it. We need to understand that the task is ours and must be assumed as such, and we must also see that it is God’s and that God will complete it, perhaps even when we least expect it.
Victorious Living
(Week 25, Friday)
The Synthesis
Matthew 25:14-30
To accept this synthesis of gradualism and apocalyptic [regarding the coming of the kingdom of God] would leave us just were we should be as Christians: within the stream of human history and yet above it, within the world process to suffer and bleed and thus remake it and yet above the process as its judges through Christ who is to be its final Judge.
Victorious Living
(Week 25, Saturday)
The Kingdom of God—Another Rejected Stone
Matthew 6:33, 21, 43, 44; Luke 4:43; Acts 1:3
When we study the records, we find that the message of Jesus was the kingdom of God. When we study “church history” (significant phrase, for the history of the Christian centuries is “church history” rather than “kingdom history”), we find that the message was the church. Why this supplanting of the kingdom of God by the church? Jesus intended that the church should be subordinated to and a servant of the kingdom. But we have reversed that. . . .
The kingdom is more Christian in its conception than the church, for it obeys the fundamental Christian law of losing oneself and finding it again. Hence the kingdom has gone further than the church.
If you doubt this, ask yourself: Is the church a sufficient founding upon which to build a new world society? To ask it is to answer it. It was tried during the Middle Ages and failed. But ask: Is the kingdom of God a sufficient basis for a new society? The answer is, that it is the only foundation.
This stone that the builders, both secular and sacred, rejected, has now become the head of the corner. [The kingdom of God] is emerging as the only solid foundation for human society. . . . We have hid this kingdom light under the bushel of ecclesiasticism. We must now put it on top of the bushel as a candlestick. If we do, we save both. The church can be revived only as it becomes, no longer an end in itself, but the servant of the kingdom, which is far larger than the church. For the world’s need cries out for the kingdom.
Victorious Living
(Week 50, Wednesday)
The Laws of the Kingdom Are Self-Acting
Proverbs 28:16; 29:6; Hebrews 1:9, 11, 13
This fact of the kingdom of God within us is so important that it must be pursued. These laws, which are written in us, are self-acting. The action and the result are one. The result is not something imposed by God from without. It is something inherent. Sin and its punishment are one and the same thing. Sin literally is “missing the mark,” the thing for which we are inwardly made; and to miss the mark is, by that very act, to sin against oneself.
Abundant Living
(Week 2, Friday)
The Kingdom Belongs to You!
Matthew 5:1-10; Luke 18:16-17
Remember that you do not merely belong to the kingdom of God; the kingdom of God belongs to you. Here is a fact that you must lay hold of, for in grasping it you turn the whole tide from defeat to victory. Possess this, and it will possess you.
Abundant Living
(Week 16, Friday)
The Homeland of the Soul—the Kingdom of God
Micah 6:8; Luke 17:20-21; Romans 8:9-11
When Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21 KJV), he voiced one of the most important things ever uttered. The seeds of a new humanity are in that statement. It has seldom been taken seriously by orthodox Christianity; only the cults have taken it up and have used it. It must now be reclaimed and used. It must be put back into the stream of orthodox Christianity and become potent there. For this great truth is potent. I know the fear that has kept that verse from becoming current coin. If the kingdom of God is within us, in everybody, even the unchanged (for this verse was spoken to Pharisees who were unconverted), then the necessity of a new birth is gone. A merely optimistic view of human nature takes the place of the tragic view of human nature as sinful and in need of redemption; therefore salvation comes by insight, instead of by repentance and surrender and faith. I appreciate that fear, but do not share it.
Abundant Living
(Week 28, Monday)
The Kingdom of God and Business
Matthew 22:36-40; 25:34
The kingdom of God is within you! Psychology, education, and even business are stumbling upon the laws of the kingdom in their search for a workable way to live. I say “stumbling upon,” for that expresses the chance discoveries that are being made. Someday our prejudices will drop away, as all other ways become manifestly unworkable, and we shall methodically and with abandon give ourselves to the discovery of the laws of the kingdom. Then in a decade, humanity will leap further forward in progressive abundant living than it is now doing in a century.
Abundant Living
(Week 29, 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.
Abundant Living
(Week 30, Monday)
Get the Spiritual Straight and the Material Will Be Guaranteed
2 Corinthians 8:14-15; Philippians 4:5-6, 11-13, 19
In seeking first the kingdom of God, Jesus says, the material basis of human life will be guaranteed to you. You will get what you need. “Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all [these things]” (Matt 6:32 KJV). Note that you will get according to your need, not according to your greed. You have a right to as much of the material as will make you mentally, spiritually, and physically fit for the purposes of the kingdom of God. You and I are constitutionally made in such a way that if we get less than we need or more than we need, we harm ourselves. Therefore, those who strive to get more than they need are working for their own harm.
Abundant Living
(Week 31, Thursday)
Is the Kingdom Our Good?
Acts 19:8-9; Colossians 1:13
That cosmic Home is the kingdom of God. Jesus said, “Seek God’s Realm [kingdom] and his goodness, and all that will be yours over and above” (Matt 6:33 Moffatt). He makes the kingdom and goodness synonymous. His rule is our good—our physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, economic, social, political; and international good. God’s rule is good for us, is our highest interest. Any other rule is bad for us. Self-rule equals self-ruin. God-rule equals good rule. The kingdom is our cosmic Homeland—our total Security.
The Way
(Week 9, Monday)
1 Timothy 6:13-16; 1 Peter 5:10-11
No wonder the writer of Hebrews says, “Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb 12:28). I am grateful with every fiber of my being that we have an unshakable kingdom. For the kingdoms of this world and the rotten civilizations they have built up are going down in blood and ruin. They are shakable. Paul speaks of “the dethroned Powers who rule this world” (1 Cor 2:6 Moffatt). These Powers still rule, though they are dethroned. Life has passed judgment on them, but they still rule on under the law of decay.
The Way
(Week 9, Wednesday)
The Kingdom of God Is Totalitarian
1 Corinthians 15:24-28
We have seen that the kingdom is the worldview of the Christian. It can be summed up in these words: “May your kingdom come and may your will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” There are three things here: (1) The kingdom is. It is a kingdom that is in operation, and its operation produces heaven. Where it is not in operation, that is hell.
(2) The kingdom that is, nevertheless, comes on earth as earth is willing to accept it and submit to it.
(3) The kingdom comes in a total way. The coming of the kingdom means the doing of the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven. How is the will of God done in heaven? In the individual will? Yes. In the collective will? Yes. In the total social arrangements in heaven? Yes. Then may the kingdom come in this total way on earth as it is in a total way in heaven.
The kingdom of God is a completely totalitarian order demanding a total obedience in the total life. It was presented to the individual will; it was presented to the collective will: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it” (Matt 21:43 RSV). “But,” cries my reader, “we are getting rid of one totalitarianism, and you are introducing us to another, even more thoroughgoing and absolute.” True. But there is this profound difference: When you obey the kingdom of God, you find perfect freedom. When you obey other totalitarianisms, you find perfect bondage, for they are not the way you are made to live. When you obey the kingdom of God, you find perfect self-fulfillment.
The Way
(Week 9, Thursday)
The Kingdom Invades and Pervades
Romans 11:36; Colossians 1:26-29
I find ten laws written into our beings, and as we study them, they turn out to be the very laws of the kingdom of God.
(1) The universe is a universe of moral consequence. (2) The morally and spiritually fit survive. (3) The Christian way is written in the structure of the universe. (4) Humility and obedience are the secret of knowledge and power. (5) An organism expends as much as it receives and no more; therefore receptivity is the first law of life. (6) The second law of life is that you must lose your life to find it again.
(7) Greatness comes through service. (8) Love is the fundamental law of human relationships. (9) Life is an eternal growth. (10) All life is lifted by self-sacrifice, by a cross. Wipe, then, the gospel of Jesus from the pages of the New Testament and you will find intimations of it in yourself. . . .
The kingdom of God both invades you and pervades you. It invades you from without and pervades you from within. It descends and it ascends. We are made for it; therefore its coming is like a home-coming, a naturalizing, a finding of one’s self.
The Way
(Week 9, Saturday)
The Open Secret
Luke 8:9-10 (Moffatt); Ephesians 3:2-6
Jesus is the key to the meaning of the universe. Follow the clues he gives and you get the answers every time. But the answers are hidden answers; they are an “open secret.” The secret is a spirit, the spirit of self-surrendered humility. Everything in the kingdom is open to those who surrender to and obey the kingdom. We are in the process of discovering that kingdom hidden in the nature of reality. The kingdom is there, the ground plan of our being.
The Way
(Week 26, Friday)
The Holy Spirit Brings Unity
John 16:7-15
The Way is the way of the Indwelling. God’s laws are written within us, “‘The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21 KJV). This is without our consent. But the Indwelling is with our consent. In the Indwelling our personality is preserved, purified, permeated, and perfected.
The Way
(Week 39, Tuesday)
The Kingdom Has the Final Word
Matthew 15:13; 1 Corinthians 15:24-25; Revelation 1:17-18
The starting point for the Christian is the kingdom of God. From this, we work down to all life. But this has to be clarified. The starting point is the kingdom of God embodied in Christ—the Order embodied in a Person. Christ + the kingdom = the Way. Everything not conforming to the kingdom is destined to perish. . . .
O God, my Lord, I see that your kingdom is my good, and my kingdom is my bad. Help me, then, to give myself to your kingdom with all my heart and with all my influence. For if this is true, then nothing else matters. But it is true. I know it. Amen.
The Way
(Week 49, Monday)
Matthew 13:31-33; Luke 17:20-21; 1 Thessalonians 1:5, 8
A good many earnest and sincere Christians feel that the kingdom of God cannot be an issue now, since it will not come till Jesus comes. “No kingdom without the King,” is the slogan. “He will come to set up his kingdom on earth, but until then we can do little or nothing to bring in a better order on earth. The best we can do is to rescue individuals, for the earth is going to smash, getting worse until he comes.”
But as we look closely at the teaching of Jesus, we find the kingdom comes in three ways. First, by gradualism. “First the stalk, then the head, then the full head of grain” (Mark 4:28 CEB). The kingdom of God “is like a grain of mustard seed . . . ; it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shurbs” (vv. 31-32). The kingdom of God “is like leaven . . . till it was all leavened” (Luke 13:21). These and other passages teach that the kingdom will come by permeation, by gradualism.
Other passages teach that the kingdom of God will come suddenly, by apocalypticism, with the return of Christ. Some people extract the gradualistic passages, others the apocalyptic. That disrupts the account, for both are there, and we need both. The gradualistic gives me my task, and the apocalyptic gives me my hope. So I shall trust as if the whole thing depends on God and work as if the whole thing depends on me. As this passage puts it, “The hidden issues of the future are with the Eternal our God, but the unfolded issues of the day are with us” (Deut 29:29 Moffatt). I shall therefore deal with the unfolded issues and leave the hidden issues to God. “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons” (Acts 1:7). Our task is clear: We can be the agents of the coming of that kingdom now.
The Way
(Week 49, Tuesday)
A Measureless Coming
John 3:31-36
Just as you have to have brains to enter the kingdom of knowledge, an aesthetic nature to enter the kingdom of beauty, an emotional nature to enter the kingdom of love, so you have to have a spiritual birth to enter into a spiritual world—the kingdom of God.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 6, Tuesday)
I’m In
Acts 15:8-11
Nobody is ever farther than three steps from the kingdom of God: (a) self-surrender, which includes sin-surrender; (b) acceptance of the gift of God, the gift of salvation; (c) obedience, obedience to the unfolding will of God. Anybody, anywhere, any time, can take these three steps and be “in.” It works with an almost mathematical precision.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 7, Saturday)
Matthew 4:23; Mark 1:1
We are studying Philip as the type of the humble, surrendered people through whom the Spirit of God breaks old molds and begins creative movements.
Philip was the first of the early disciples to put together the two things Jesus indissolubly put together: Jesus and the kingdom of God. “But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12). None of the apostolic hierarchy seems to have grasped this, but Paul did (see Acts 28:23, 31). And this was vastly important. In Jesus, two important things came together: the Order—the kingdom of God; and the Person—Jesus Christ. The absolute Person and the absolute Order coincided, making our relationships with him both personal and social. The whole of life, individual and social, was to come under a single sway, the will of God. This was a completely totalitarian order, demanding a total obedience in the total life. But when it is totally obeyed, it brings total freedom.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 42, Thursday)
That Imponderable Something
Luke 13:18-21; 19:12
The kingdom of God is God’s total answer to humanity’s total need. The totalitarianisms took over where we abdicated, saying to us, “We will leave you the inner mystical personal experience of the kingdom of God now, and the collective experience hereafter in heaven; we will take over the rest and control it.” And yet they can’t, simply can’t. They are always running up against something imponderable, something that always breaks them. What is it?
It is nothing less than the kingdom of God that is written into the nature of things. . . .
That kingdom has been “prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt 25:34); it is built into the structure of the world as the laws of its being. If we live according to the kingdom, we live (“the Kingdom of God” and “Life” are used synonymously in Mark 9:45, 47 Moffatt). If we live against it, we perish. . . .
The kingdom of God is not something imposed on humanity; its laws are not imposed, but exposed from the nature of things. Here is a kingdom whose decrees are the very decrees of our necessities, the complement of us. When we find them, we find ourselves; when we break them, we break ourselves. What an advantage that is! A kingdom that has its seat in our nerves, our blood, our tissues, our organs, our relationships—how ultimate and inescapable it is!
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 49, Monday)
The Kingdom Written into Us
Acts 9:2, 19:23, 22:22
The kingdom of God is written not only into the Bible, but into the nature of reality and into us. The kingdom is the revelation of what heaven’s order is and what earth’s order ought to be. It is the way we are to live individually and collectively and is therefore the Way. . . .
The “kingdom of God” and “life” and the “way” are the same [see Acts 19:8-9; Mark 9:43, 47, Moffatt]. But these terms are also used of Jesus: “I am the way . . . the life” (John 14:6). Then Jesus and the kingdom are one. The absolute Order—the kingdom, and the absolute Person—Jesus Christ, are the same. God redeems through Christ, and God reigns through Christ.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 51, Wednesday)
The Kingdom of God Is God’s Total Answer
Matthew 6:33; Acts 16:25-34
The kingdom of God is God’s total answer to humanity’s total need.
The rise of modern totalitarianisms is a symptom of humanity’s felt need for something to totally command us, to bring life into integration under a single control and direct it toward a single end. Without this, life is at loose ends. Hence in religion, the [totalitarian church]; in political life, the totalitarian state. . . . These are symptoms of an inner disease, the lack of total meaning felt by modern humanity. These half answers let people down. When you totally obey them, you find total bondage.
But has God no total answer to humanity’s total need? God, who put order in the lowest cell, has God left unplanned the most important portion of life on our planet: the total life of humanity? No! The total answer to humanity’s total need is the kingdom of God. When you totally obey it, you find total freedom.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 51, Thursday)
The Gospel Is God’s Search for Man
John 1:9-13
You cannot say the kingdom of God until you have first said Jesus, for Jesus puts content into the kingdom of God.
Mastery
(Week 1, Thursday)
The Kingdom Primarily a Youth Movement
Luke 9:59-62
The kingdom is the most radical conception ever presented to the mind of humanity and the greatest challenger ever confronting our creative longings. When given to that, both youth and old age cannot help coming together in a common endeavor for change.
Mastery
(Week 9, Friday)
Revelation 14:6, 22:2
The kingdom of God is a classless society; there is only one class, the class of the children of God. That simple fact dooms all distinctions set up to segregate person from person.
Mastery
(Week 10, Wednesday)
Everything Anchored to Jesus
Hebrews 2:7-9
The kingdom of God is anchored to Jesus. He fixes in his own person the character of the kingdom. The kingdom is the spirit of Jesus universalized.
Mastery
(Week 25, Wednesday)
The Two Emphases: The Person and the Order
John 1:14-19
The kingdom of God is the all-embracing conception that gives cosmic and total meaning to life and redemption. In the Acts the kingdom and Jesus are the two emphases: one the Order and the other the Person. Note: “After they came to believe Philip, who preached good news about the God’s kingdom and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized” (Acts 8:12 CEB). Note the good news was not just Jesus, the Person, nor the kingdom, the Order—it was both. Paul had these two emphases also, “From morning until evening, he explained and testified concerning God’s kingdom and tried to convince them about Jesus” (28:23 CEB). And again: “Paul lived in his own rented quarters for two full years and welcomed everyone who came to see him. Unhindered and with complete confidence, he continued to preach God’s kingdom and to teach about the Lord Jesus Christ” (28:30-31 CEB).
Mastery
(Week 29, Sunday)
A Kingdom That Cannot Be Shaken
Matthew 7:24-29
The kingdom of God gathers up all the loose ends of life and weaves them into total meaning. It is the Cosmic Loom upon which all the little things and big are woven into fabric, into meaning. . . .
“A kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb 12:28). . . . I’ve seen people building up kingdoms that I knew were shakable: the kingdom of money, the kingdom of position and pride, the kingdom of honor and glory, the kingdom of pleasure, the kingdom of learning, the kingdom of physical love. I knew in my heart of hearts they were shakable, for I’d seen them shake and fall before my very eyes.
Mastery
(Week 52, Friday)
John 10:9-10
This earth of ours is to be the scene of the coming of the kingdom of God: “Thy kingdom come on earth” (Matt 6:10). Events are not moving with goalless feet. They are moving toward God’s kingdom, or they destroy themselves.
Christian Maturity
(Week 8, Saturday)
The Center Is Self, the Margin Is Disorder
Everything that is transferred from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God has life in it—eternal life. It has security in it—eternal security. Everything transferred from the kingdom of God to the kingdom of self has death in it—eternal death.
In Christ
(Week 2, Wednesday)
The Material World Has a Meaning and Destiny
Romans 8:19-21
When Jesus announced the new order, the kingdom of God, he said that we were to pray that the kingdom may come on earth, and come on earth as it is in heaven. The earth was not be deserted and destroyed, but to be delivered and dedicated, the scene of the kingdom of God. The earth, therefore, has a goal and a destiny, and its goal is to added back to heaven from which it fell. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1); heaven and earth were to be wedded and both were to be new. That puts faith and hope and optimism at the heart of our dealing with this material world. It has a future.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 6, Sunday)
Science Teaches Surrender to the Will of God
Matthew 6:22-23
The kingdom of God is the ultimate order, the ultimate authority, the ultimate good. All this is open to those humble enough, surrendered enough, to receive it. That leaves you centered on another, on Jesus, on the kingdom of God; and when you seek first the kingdom, all these things, including yourself, are added to you.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 21, Wednesday)
The Kindom: Not Talk but Power
2 Corinthians 13:3-4
Nothing could be more to the point than this verse: “For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (1 Cor 4:20). This plants the Christian gospel in the Word become flesh and not in the Word become word.
And yet the whole of the Christian setup is around the kingdom of God consisting in talk. Our “services” are sermons, with a padding of hymns and prayers; they are “talk,” lip services instead of life services. We don’t go out of these “services” asking, “What do I do next?” but commenting, “It was a good sermon. I enjoyed it.” You are supposed to react in comment and not in commitment.
But the kingdom of God is “in power”: power to change lives, power to remake character, power to start movements, power to lift horizons and nerve people to live, power to turn inner and outer defeat into victory, power to break chains and make people free, power to enable people to do what they cannot do—power!
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 31, Friday)
The Incarnation and the Kingdom
Matthew 4:17, 23
We come now to one of the most important aspects of the application of the Word become flesh, its application to the kingdom of God. For if this incarnation is God’s incarnation then it must have total meaning for the total life. The Christian conception of the Incarnation is unique in that the Incarnation is not only to be in a person, but in an order, the kingdom of God. Jesus made himself and the kingdom of God synonymous. He used interchangeably “for my sake” and “the kingdom’s sake.” He was the kingdom. One’s relationship to Jesus determines one’s relationship to the kingdom. Not only was absolute love embodied in Jesus, but absolute authority. God was not only redeeming in Jesus, God was ruling in Jesus. The Incarnation is redemptive rule. The kingdom came with Jesus. The kingdom is Jesus, and Jesus is the kingdom. The kingdom is the Christlike spirit universalized. So the Incarnation is not only in a personal body, but also in a cosmic body. To have relations with Jesus is to have relationship with an Order. Religion is at once individual and social.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 45, Sunday)
We Wanted Something That Would Bring Life into Total Meaning
Luke 9:1-2
An English bishop said, “Stanley Jones seems to be obsessed with the kingdom of God.” My reply was, “Would God that I were. It would be a magnificent obsession.” For Jesus was obsessed with it. He used the phrase or its equivalent one hundred times. And, depend upon it, anything he used that often is important, the ages being witness, for he was never misled by a subordinate issue, never got on the marginal, the unworthwhile. And Jesus made the kingdom central.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 45, Monday)
The Kingdom of Heaven Has Been Forcing Its Way Forward
Revelation 11:15-17
This passage is luminous: “Ever since the coming of John the Baptist the kingdom of Heaven has been subjected to violence and violent men are seizing it” (Matt 11:12 NEB). A footnote gives an alternate translation: “The kingdom of Heaven has been forcing its way forward” by its own inherent truth and reality. But people of force try to use force to further it and to violate the inner nature of the kingdom ends.
When in Russia in 1934, I was shaken to see them building up a civilization without God. I needed reassurance. This verse spoke to my condition during my Quiet Time in Moscow: “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb 12:28). Was the kingdom of God the one unshakable kingdom? Everything within me answered yes, and continues to answer yes, with increasing emphasis. I went to my Bible the next morning, and this verse arose authoritative: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8). Is Jesus Christ the unchanging person, the same yesterday, today, and forever? Everything within me answered yes, and does so increasingly. I came out of Russia with an unshakable kingdom and an unchanging person, the Absolute Order and the Absolute Person. They were two then. Now they have become one; I see that the Absolute Order—the kingdom of God—is embodied in the Absolute Person—the Son of God. They are one. The Word of final authority has become flesh in Jesus Christ. In him is not only Absolute Goodness, but Absolute Authority. God not only redeems in Jesus; God rules in Jesus. Jesus is Lord!
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 45, Saturday)
The Divine Illustration
Mark 1:16-20
[Jesus] did not point to a utopia, far off and unrealizable; he announced that the kingdom of heaven is within us and is “at hand” and can be realized here and now.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 51, Tuesday)
In Jesus I Have Everything
John 1:29-34
[Another] thing Jesus Christ means to me is the kingdom of God, God’s total answer to our total need. Without this fact of the kingdom, our faith would be a personal allegiance to a Person; it would lack total meaning, individual and corporate. But with Jesus and the kingdom one—he is the kingdom—then “all authority” is in him both “in heaven and on earth.” I belong to the sum total of reality, and the sum total of reality belongs to me.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 52, Saturday)