The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.
—Niels Bohr
Like many, I grew up in a church culture that paid little attention to the kingdom of God. Eventually I came to realize that it is everywhere in the four gospels, mentioned 122 times, including 99 times from Jesus’ own lips. Here in the earliest gospel, Mark, is our first glimpse of Jesus: “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’ ” (Mark 1:14–15, emphasis added). The phrase “good news” brackets what Jesus announces as the good news, or the gospel. What he announces is not gaining forgiveness, eternal life, salvation, or heaven. The good news Jesus is bringing to the world is the kingdom of God.
Jesus says, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near.” The Jewish people had been expecting the kingdom of God for a very long time, just as the Old Testament prophets predicted. One famous prophecy was Isaiah 61:1–2, which are the words Jesus chooses as the text for his sermon to the hometown crowd in Nazareth (Luke 4:16–30). His conclusion: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (v. 21). In other words, “Don’t you see all of Isaiah’s signs of the coming kingdom of God in my work?”
All creation started out very good (Gen. 1:31). But God’s good creation came under the brutal tyranny of Satan. Now Jesus is leading a counterattack, recapturing the territory Satan has held. Whenever Jesus heals someone, the kingdom of God has come. Whenever he casts out a demon, the kingdom of God has come. Whenever Jesus reaches out to love people no one else loves—like lepers or tax collectors or prostitutes or sinners—the kingdom of God has come. Whenever truth and justice defeat injustice, the kingdom of God has come. Person by person, piece by piece, Jesus is reclaiming the territory that has been under the dominion of Satan. This is exactly what Revelation 11:15 looks forward to at the end of history: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.”
The Mystery of the Kingdom
The reframing nature of Jesus’ parables, which we noted earlier, presses home the paradoxical, unexpected nature of the kingdom of God. The kingdom will not arrive in overpowering might, as the Jews expected, but is already at work quietly, as insignificant to human eyes as a mustard seed or a bit of leaven (Matt. 13:31–35). A tiny seed (750 mustard seeds to the gram), a tiny pinch of yeast. Jesus’ kingdom looks embarrassingly small and weak against powerful world systems that seem to have the upper hand in every quarter. Yet he tells us it will expand to penetrate every corner of God’s creation. As nineteenth-century Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper famously maintained, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”1 Jesus is sovereign over all by right and is reclaiming human existence one square inch at a time, until the day when he will return and cry, “Mine!” in fact.
Other parables continue the beat of the kingdom’s mystery. God’s kingdom will not be joyously received everywhere, as the Jews expected; as we learn in the parable of the sower, it will never take root in some lives, it will be superficially received in others, and it will be choked out in still others (Matt. 13:1–9). One of the hardest truths for Jesus’ audience, and many of us today, to swallow is how many people ultimately reject the kingdom (Matt. 7:13–14). Also contrary to Jewish expectation, the kingdom will not vanquish evil all at once but comingles with an evil world, like wheat and weeds growing together until the final judgment (Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43).
All these revealing yet hidden aspects of Jesus’ parables of the kingdom have been well documented by New Testament scholars, premier among them George Ladd: “The new truth, now given to men by revelation in the person and mission of Jesus, is that the kingdom that is to come finally in apocalyptic power, as foreseen in Daniel, has in fact entered into the world in advance in a hidden form to work secretly within and among men.”2 Hence the classic phrase describing the kingdom of God: “already/not yet.” Already here, but not yet reaching its fullness until Jesus returns. Pauline commentator Gordon Fee confirms that this “already/not yet” mystery of the kingdom is a controlling theme in Paul’s letters as well. The future has already invaded the present, but not yet completely: “Death is ours (1 Cor. 3:22), but some still die (1 Cor. 11:30); the present and future are ours (1 Cor. 3:22), but the paradigm of present ethical life is our crucified Messiah (1 Cor. 4:10–13). Thus, Christian life is paradox, apparent contradictions held together in tension.”3
Overcoming Dualism
As we explore the tension in the “already/not yet” kingdom of God, we observe that this particular paradox has been especially susceptible to dualities—to split apart what God wants to hold together. Jesus claims every square inch of creation for his kingdom, yet we often assign only certain compartments of life to the kingdom and label the rest of life “worldly” and outside the kingdom.
One such dualism is the kingdom of God encompassing a limited, sacred sphere of life; everything else is secular. Sacred music, art, and literature honor God; everything else does not. Sacred work (pastoring, evangelism, and so on) is valuable to God; secular work is not. In a colorful expression I never heard before living in Ethiopia, work in any profession or career except full-time ministry is “making bricks for Pharaoh”; a person works (makes bricks) in order to live, but only serving in church ministries counts as working for God (and only if the person serves full-time).
Another dualism is the well-known dichotomy between evangelism and social ministries, with churches commonly emphasizing one side while neglecting the other. As many of us who have been around churches awhile know, it is not uncommon for people who prioritize evangelism to accuse people interested in social action of “not doing kingdom work,” and (of course) vice versa.
A similar dualism separates the present from the future. Some envision the kingdom of God being established only in the future (think of many African American spirituals); others insist that the kingdom can be experienced in its fullness here and now. (This optimistic view receded after the horrors of two world wars and lost further momentum as the twentieth century continued.) Closely akin to this “future/present” dualism is a “human/divine” dualism. Some assume the kingdom of God can be implemented if we humans just work hard enough; others assume the kingdom of God is solely God’s work, with no human partnership allowed or needed. Such dualistic views of hope usually lead to either an unfaithful activism (we trust our own efforts far too much) or an equally unfaithful quietism (we disengage and wait for heaven).
Yet another prominent dualism throughout church history has been the dualism of law and grace. Some Christian communities focus on law, which can result in viral forms of judgmental legalism with little grace or forgiveness. Others proclaim themselves people of grace, which can lead to fluid ethical and moral values and minimal expectations. Theologians find law and grace constantly interpenetrating and correcting one another throughout the Bible. Certainly this tension of law and grace is present in Jesus’ vision for his kingdom.
Echoing Abraham Kuyper, Eugene Peterson challenges all of these dualisms: “The Kingdom of God that Jesus announces as present here and now is not a religious piece of the world pie that God takes a special interest in and enlists us, his followers, to partake of and be filled with, a world that specializes in prayer and worship, giving witness and doing good deeds. No, it comprises Everything and Everyone.”4 When the two sides of the kingdom of God are not held together, it loses its power to impact the world as God intends.
A Supercollider
The dualisms we’ve surveyed are familiar points of debate in coffee shops or church board meetings. In The Promise of Paradox, Parker Palmer believes dualistc thinking is tempting for all of us: “We are not well prepared to understand our lives in terms of paradox. Instead, we have been taught to see and think in dualities. . . . But the deeper truths of our lives seem to need paradox for full expression. There is truth in both [sides of a paradox], and we live most creatively when we live between them in tension.”5
The more we embrace one side of the kingdom of God more than its opposite, the more we exit the zone of their creative tension. I imagine this creative zone as the force field generated by the immensely powerful electromagnets in supercolliders, their magnetic fields propelling atomic particles through a forty- or fifty-mile oval conduit. Repeated revolutions around the racetrack build incredible speed until the particles slam like a cue ball into a tiny fragment of subatomic material. From such collisions, physicists learn clues to the beginning of the universe. Just as the energy of the supercollider comes from opposite magnetic forces in finely tuned tension with one another, so I imagine God’s supernatural kingdom-creating power. Eminent twentieth-century physicist Niels Bohr maintains, “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.”6
I was a guest preacher at a church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, chatting with the pastor before the service. He told how the area of town where he founded his church was once full of prostitutes, but now six years later you never saw any prostitutes around his church. In his worldview, the sacred and holy influence of his congregation had sent the secular and unholy prostitutes packing! Unfortunately, such thinking does not square with Jesus’ own kingdom understanding of what he was all about, especially concerning prostitutes (Matt. 21:31–32).
Another Ethiopian pastor (a student of mine) served a church in the same red-light district. Instead of driving prostitutes away, this pastor developed a ministry to them, meeting basic needs like food, health care, and education but also confronting the human trafficking of young girls from the countryside who were often sold into this life by their families. As might be imagined, many of these girls who were loved so unconditionally became followers of Jesus Christ—a perfect demonstration of how living in the tension between social action and evangelism empowers Jesus’ kingdom.
What might happen if we reject the false dualisms and choose instead to live within the “already/not yet” tensions of the kingdom of God? Indeed, how might our neighborhoods, communities, and world be transformed as energized kingdom of God people are propelled outward, colliding with poverty, despair, and human misery? That would be an experiment worth trying.
Reflection Questions
1. Before reading this chapter, what came to mind when you heard the term “kingdom of God”?
2. Which aspect of Jesus’ teaching on the mystery of the kingdom is most surprising or prominent to you?
3. Of the several dualisms mentioned, which in your observation most inhibits the power of the kingdom of God to change the world?
4. Where have you personally seen the energy of the kingdom of God at work?