The Kingdom of God Is at Hand
The Kingdom of God Is at Hand
This part of Jesus’ announcement is the one that tends to create the most difficulty for moderns. How can the kingdom of God have become present with Jesus, given that everything is still topsy-turvy, that evil still abounds and injustice continues apace? How can the great climactic rule of God have come with him, since there has been such a long continuation of things, including human fallenness, since that coming?
The answer to these questions lies with the radical new thing Jesus himself did to the concept of God’s rule: what he called “the mystery of the kingdom,” he unfolded to his closest followers, but it was merely “parable” to those on the outside.153
The mystery had two parts to it, both of which had to do with the presentness of the kingdom in his own person and ministry: (1) that the great kingdom of the future had already begun with him; (2) that its coming was not “with great signs to be observed,” but was present in weakness, in the humiliation of his incarnation.
1. As to the first matter, it is clear from the materials preserved in our Gospels that Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as both a future event and a present reality. On one hand, there was still a future to the kingdom, which would come with power (Mark 9:1) when the Son of Man would come with the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62). At that time the “great reversal” would take place. “The first will be last and the last first,” said Jesus (Mark 10:31); the poor, the hungry, and the weeping will trade places with the rich, well fed, and the laughing (Luke 6:20-25), and the outcasts will take their places at the great messianic banquet while the ”children of the kingdom” will be thrown out (Matt 8:11-12 par.). There are scores of such texts in our gospels; indeed, were they the only texts, Jesus is at this point quite in keeping with the whole prophetic-apocalyptic tradition. There is a great coming day - the kingdom of God, he called it - when God will right the wrongs and settle the injustices.
But, of course, these are not the only texts, and with the others lay the uniqueness of Jesus’ message and mission. “The kingdom is already at hand,” he proclaimed, meaning not “near at hand” or simply “at the door,” but actually in process of realization in his coming — and Jesus’ own emphasis lay here. Thus he told the Pharisees that the kingdom was not coming (in the future is implied) “with great signs to be observed”; rather, the kingdom of God was already in their midst (Luke 17:20-21).154 People were already “forcing their way” into it (Luke 16:16). In his eating at table with the outcasts, the great banquet of the future had already begun (Mark 2:19); and especially with Jesus’ casting out demons and healing the sick, God’s overthrow of Satan and his dominion was already taking place (Luke 11:20-21). God’s stronger man had come, had bound the strong man, and was in process of spoiling his house (Mark 3:27). Already the great messianic prophecy of Isaiah 61 was being fulfilled, with its good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and release of the oppressed (Luke 4:18- 20). As we shall note in the next section, it is the presentness of the kingdom in Jesus that ultimately serves as the basis for the ongoing global mission of the church.
2. The presence of the kingdom in Jesus meant that the kingdom of God was of a radically different order from people’s expectations. Rather than representing the overthrow of the hated Roman Empire, it was present in weakness and suffering, where even the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head (Luke 9:58), and where he came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for the many (Mark 10:45). Thus the kingdom was like a seed growing quietly (Mark 4:26-29), like a minuscule mustard seed, whose beginnings were so small and insignificant that nothing could be expected of it, but whose final end — inherent in the seed itself and therefore inevitable — would be an herb of such dimensions that birds could rest in its branches (Matt 13:31-32).
What becomes clear from all this, therefore, is that for Jesus himself the kingdom of God was both “already” and “not yet”; it was both “now” and “yet to come.” It was “now” with his own invasion of Satan’s turf and the spoiling of his house. With the coming of Jesus the kingdom of God has already been inaugurated; it has already penetrated the present. But inherent in its presence with Jesus was likewise its final and full consummation with the future coming of the Son of Man. The future is not something new, it is merely the consummation of what Jesus already began through his ministry, and finally and especially through his death, resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit. Thus, the kingdom, though still future, is already “at hand.”