Monday: God aHalf-God Ruling over aHalf-Realm
WEEK 29
MONDAY
GOD A HALF-GOD RULING OVER A HALF-REALM
Matthew 13:37-41
We have seen that the message of the Acts was the Person, Jesus, and the Order, the kingdom. But they were not two messages; they were one.
Jesus started out “preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God” (Mark 1:14 KJV), the only thing he ever called his gospel. And he sent out his disciples to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. Then he seemed to change his emphasis and began to preach himself. “I am the way. . . . No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Which was his message—the Order or the Person? Or did they coalesce and become one? They became one; he used interchangeably “for my sake” and “for the kingdom’s sake.” He was the kingdom personalized; the Order came to embodiment in him. The Absolute Order and the Absolute Person came together and were one. That meant religion was personal in that it had personal relations with a Person; it was also social in that it had relations with an Order embodied in that Person. It was not now personal and now social; it was both by its very nature. So I do not want a personal gospel or a social gospel; I want one gospel that redeems the total life, individual and social. That is as it should be, for God is not a half-god ruling over a half-realm. God is the God of all life. God’s kingdom is a total kingdom.
It also meant that the material and the spiritual were being redeemed. A Chinese leader put it this way, “Where the material and the spiritual are integrated, there is the kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God is where the will of God is done on earth in all relationships as it is done in heaven.
When the disciples said, “Jesus is Lord,” they knew that the kingdom had come in Jesus. God was not only redeeming by Jesus, God was ruling by Jesus. That made the nature of the kingdom plain; it was love ruling in human affairs, the Christ-like spirit universalized. Some would make out God as redeeming by Christ but as ruling by other methods of a different spirit—force and compulsion. But his redeeming and his ruling are one. For both express his nature as love. The kingdom is love in total operation.
O Lord, we thank you that Jesus reveals you as redeeming through love and as ruling through love. Help me to make love the all-embracing method and atmosphere of my life. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall live today as love realized in every thought, attitude, and act.