NO ONE TOLD ME much about the kingdom of God when I (Greg) was growing up. The Sunday school classes and the youth group’s Wednesday night “Power Hour” at the church were faithful in teaching the gospel and in encouraging Christian discipleship. But the main categories of thought were sin, grace, holiness, ethics, and obedience (all good, of course!). There was nothing much at all about “the kingdom,” and when it was mentioned, it was almost always in reference to heaven.
When I went off to college and began studying Christian history, the kingdom became more of a conscious category to me. But even then it was almost exclusively the province and language of theological liberals—both past and present—and therefore it was also almost always accompanied by a certain political agenda having to do with broadened social services or a more robust welfare state.
I remember, though, the first time I realized the New Testament talks a lot about the kingdom of God. It’s the first thing Jesus preaches (Matt. 4:17), it’s a major theme of his preaching throughout his ministry (see, e.g., Matthew 13), and it’s also an essential element of the apostles’ preaching after Jesus’s ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:3; 8:12; 19:8; 28:23, 31). That realization threw me for a bit of a loop, because I began to wonder how, in all my years of growing up and being taught in the church, I had missed this apparently enormous theme in the story of the New Testament. So I started to read. And what I read, I started to believe. After all, I didn’t have much of anything to use as a foil, so when I saw someone talking about “the kingdom,” I just largely swallowed what they had to say about it. The trouble, though, was that much of what I was reading and accepting as true about the kingdom simply wasn’t so. In fact, it was shot through with biblical inaccuracies, bad interpretations, overgeneralizations, and overreaching implications. But never having been taught about the kingdom, I had nothing to test those errors against, and so I wound up flirting for a time with a “kingdom theology” that would have been very much at home among late nineteenth-century theological liberals.
I tell that story because more than a few other people, perhaps some reading this book, would tell the same story—an upbringing in which the kingdom of God was seldom mentioned, and only then as a synonym for heaven; a resulting “Aha!” moment when they realized that the Bible actually has a lot to say about this thing; a lingering question as to why they were never taught about it; and a resulting desire to learn more about it. That’s a good desire! Over the past decades, there’s been something of a renaissance in evangelical thinking about the kingdom. More scholars are turning their attention to it, and more books are being published that take the kingdom of God as their main theme. Some of those books are good resources that look carefully at the Bible’s teaching about the kingdom and draw solid conclusions about what the kingdom means for us, today, as Christians.1 But there are many other books out there about the kingdom that are not so helpful, and they’re the ones that most often seem to be hitting the best-seller lists and therefore doing most of the “teaching” about the kingdom of God. Sadly, that means that the kingdom-shaped hole that exists in many people’s theological understanding is being filled with some really misleading material. In this chapter, we want to fill in those holes with positive, and hopefully biblical, teaching about the kingdom.
We should acknowledge from the start that both of us are convinced that the best way to understand the Bible’s teaching about the kingdom of God is in terms of an “inaugurated eschatology,” a position popularized several decades ago by George Eldon Ladd and others. This position holds that God’s kingdom has already broken into this world but has not yet been fully realized.
Though there is much to discuss within the framework of inaugurated eschatology, evangelicals seem to have come at least to a broad consensus regarding its basic structure and outline.2 Of course we realize that broad consensus does not mean total consensus, and there are many evangelicals who will disagree with us entirely on this understanding of the kingdom, perhaps most notably some dispensationalists. Though we ultimately disagree with our brothers and sisters on this, we nevertheless recognize the force of many of their arguments, and we hope they will still be able to agree with and resonate with many of the finer points we make here.
Neither “kingdom of God” nor “kingdom of heaven” is a phrase used in the Old Testament. It is a term unique to the New Testament. The uniqueness of the term to the New Testament, though, does not mean that the kingdom of God is a foreign concept to the Old Testament. On the contrary, God’s kingdom pervades the entire story line of the Old Testament,3 from God’s creation of mankind to rule under him, to his giving of the Law to the nation of Israel, to his charge that Israel had “rejected [the LORD] from being king over them” by requesting a king “like all the nations” (1 Sam. 8:5, 7), to his repeated promises that the kingdom would finally belong to him alone (Obad. 1:21).
The theme of God’s kingdom comes to fulfillment in the New Testament, and in a powerful way. Undoubtedly because of its prominence in Jesus’s own teaching, kingdom language appears frequently in the New Testament (the word basileia occurs over 160 times), and often at very important points of the unfolding story. We’ve already seen, for example, how “kingdom” forms the major theme of Jesus’s early preaching, and we should also note that it is the driving theme of Matthew’s opening chapters, as well as Luke’s summary of the apostles’ preaching. The final verse of the book of Acts, in fact, tells us that Paul was in Rome, “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31).
From all this biblical material, there are several things we can say about the nature of the kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God Is the Redemptive Reign of God over His People
The word kingdom in English typically conjures images in our minds of kings and castles and knights and lands with borders that can be expanded and must be defended. Biblically, though, kingdom doesn’t refer essentially to a piece of land, but rather to “rule” or “reign.” Perhaps it’s best, in fact, to think of it not in terms of kingdom at all, given that word’s connotations, but rather as “kingship.” In other words, kingdom is a dynamic or relational concept, not a geographical one.
Take a look, for example, at Psalm 145, one of the clearest declarations of God’s kingdom, or kingship, in the Old Testament. Verse 11 is important in helping us to understand what David means when he talks about God’s “kingdom.” “All your holy ones shall bless you,” David declares.
They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
and tell of your power.
This line is a very good example of a common feature of Hebrew poetry—parallelism. Hebrew poets would often state a thought two or more times but in different words, looking at the same concept from several different angles, like turning a diamond so that the light refracts through it in multiple ways. The benefit of that for us, beyond its wonderful devotional promise, is that it can help us see what the poets meant when they used difficult or obscure terms. Here, the holy ones are said to both “speak of the glory of your kingdom” and “tell of your power.” But actually, those two actions are the same thing. “Kingdom” is parallel to “power.”
The same thing is true in verse 13:
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and your dominion endures throughout all generations.
Here again, “kingdom” is parallel to “dominion.” When David talks about the kingdom of God, therefore, he is not referring to a land or realm with definable borders. He’s not talking finally about geography. Rather, he’s talking about the “power” or “dominion” of God. It’s a dynamic word (about power) and a relational word (about human beings’ relationship to God their King).
That doesn’t mean, of course, that geography is irrelevant to kingdom. On the contrary, God’s kingship over his people throughout most of the Bible is exercised in a certain geographical locale. Before the fall, that locale was the garden of Eden. For the nation of Israel, it was Canaan, and for us in eternity it will be the new heavens and new earth. But geography isn’t essential to kingdom. In fact, one of the most salient points about our lives as Christians in this age is that we are “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb. 11:13), “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11). We are, at least for now, a nation without a land and a kingdom without a locale.
Another important point is that the New Testament uses the term “kingdom of God” to refer to God’s reign specifically over his redeemed people. It’s true, of course, that God’s rule extends over the entire universe. Nothing and no one is outside or independent from his sovereignty. And yet when Jesus and the apostles talk about the kingdom of God, they are speaking specifically of God’s benevolent, redemptive reign over those he has saved. Thus Jesus can talk about those who will and will not enter the kingdom (Mark 10:14, 23–25; Luke 18:17), and even those who will be cast out of the kingdom (Matt. 8:12; Luke 13:28). Paul, too, is quite clear that there are some people who are in the kingdom, and others who are out of it: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” (1 Cor. 6:9; see also Gal. 5:21). Paul even teaches that those who trust in Christ are transferred from one kingdom to another—from the “domain of darkness” into the “kingdom of [God’s] beloved son” (Col. 1:13). Biblically speaking, therefore, not everyone is a citizen of the kingdom of God.
There are a few important ramifications that flow from understanding the kingdom of God as his redemptive rule. For one thing, understanding that kingdom is a dynamic, relational word rather than a geographic one keeps us from thinking that “extending the kingdom of God” is the right way to describe planting trees or delivering hot meals to the homeless. Sometimes people talk as if by renovating a city park or turning a housing slum into affordable, livable apartments, we are extending God’s reign over that park or that neighborhood. We’re “bringing order from chaos,” someone might say, and therefore expanding the kingdom. But as we’ve seen, the kingdom isn’t geographical. Rather, it is defined relationally and dynamically; it exists where knees and hearts bow to the King and submit to him. And therefore you cannot “expand the kingdom” by bringing peace and order and justice to a certain area of the world. Good deeds are good, but they don’t broaden the borders of the kingdom. The only way the kingdom of God—the redemptive rule of God—is extended is when he brings another sinner to renounce sin and self-righteousness and bow his knee to King Jesus.
Likewise, it’s important to affirm that we cannot extend the redemptive rule of God over non-Christians. Of course we can show the unbelieving world something of what the kingdom is and will be; we can testify and witness to its existence and its character. But because the kingdom is a matter of relationship between the King and his subjects, we cannot extend the kingdom of God over people who will not submit to the King’s rule. It is through faith in the King that someone is transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son (Col. 1:13). Practically speaking, therefore, we should not talk about our efforts to change social structures as “extending the kingdom,” even if they are successful. A non-Christian person may be living in as just and good a society as is realistically imaginable, but the Bible says that until he comes to Christ, he has no part of the kingdom of the Son. He is still captive under the kingdom of darkness—even if relatively comfortably for a while.
The Kingdom of God Is the Reign of the Messiah, Jesus
The kingdom belongs to and is ruled by King Jesus. It is “the kingdom of [God’s] beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). Jesus refers to it as “my kingdom” (Luke 22:30; John 18:36; cf. Matt. 20:21; Luke 23:42). The kingdom of God is a mediated kingdom, ruled by the “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ [Messiah!] Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).
All this makes perfect sense when we remember the story of the Old Testament. In 2 Samuel 7, God promised the great King David that his throne would be established forever. Over time, as Israel’s kings failed again and again, the Lord revealed through the prophets that there would one day come a King who would fulfill all God’s promises to his people and establish an eternal kingdom where justice and righteousness would be upheld perfectly forever (Isaiah 9, 11). In Daniel 7:13–14, it even becomes clear that this Messiah would be divine. The phrase “son of man” from that passage is the one that Jesus repeatedly applied to himself, signifying that this vision of kingship being handed to “one like a Son of Man” was fulfilled in him. He is the Son of Man; he is the promised Messiah; all the authority of the kingdom of God—“all authority in heaven and on earth,” in fact—has been given to him.
Of course this simple idea that Jesus alone is the promised King keeps us from a host of errors. For one thing, it keeps us from thinking that there are multiple pathways into the kingdom of God. The reality is that there is no end run around Jesus. The redemptive reign of God is exercised solely and completely by Jesus; no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). That means, of course, that no one comes to the Father directly, either. A person cannot simply say that he is a “God-believer” or a “God-lover” and think that he is under the kingdom of God. Peter is as clear as he could be: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). And for that reason, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The kingdom of God is the kingdom of Jesus, and the way into the kingdom is through submission to the King.
The Kingdom of God Involves the Age to Come Breaking into the Present Age
The Bible gives us a snapshot of what awaits us at the end. It’s not a very detailed picture, but it is a glorious one. Isaiah tells us that God’s full and consummated reign will be one under which joy and happiness are never broken, tears are never shed, death and sickness and sin are no more, and there is perfect peace and security, God is all and all, and evil is banished forever (Isa. 65:17–25). Revelation similarly tells us of the New Jerusalem, where God and his people will dwell with one another in harmony, and where “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Not only so, but the gates of that city will always stand open because there are no more enemies, the tree of life will once again be available for the healing of the nations, and God’s servants will worship him righteously forever (Rev. 21:1–4, 9–27; 22:1–5). All this, of course, is a picture of a reconstituted Eden. Everything is once again as it was before the fall—and even better!—for there will no longer be even the possibility of sin in the redeemed, glorified people of God.
But that, of course, is the end. We are not there yet.
And yet! And yet the New Testament’s declaration about the kingdom of God is that in the person of Jesus the King, the glory of that age to come has broken into and invaded the present age. This is what we mean, in fact, by the term “inaugurated eschatology.” It is the understanding that the eschaton—“the end”—has been inaugurated, or begun. We can see this truth dramatically displayed in the life and ministry of Jesus. When he heals sickness and drives out demons, those are—to be sure—signs that verify his claims to be the Son of God, but they are also the King’s counteroffensive against the dominion of darkness and the effects of the fall. Even death begins to fail in its iron-fisted dominion over humanity when King Jesus speaks: “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43). And the dead man rises.
We see this truth also in the fact that many of the blessings that the Bible ascribes to the age to come are ours, now, in the present age. Joel 2:28–29, for example, prophesies:
And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit.
In Joel’s prophecy, that is clearly a vision of the age to come. The entire prophecy of which those verses are a part begins with the declaration that “The day of the LORD is coming; it is near.” And 2:30–31 contain a common description of the day of judgment as well. When Joel says the Spirit will be poured out, he is talking about the age to come. And yet Jesus tells his followers that this blessing of the age to come is theirs now. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,” he says in Acts 1:8, and Peter says that the events of Pentecost are explicitly the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. The Holy Spirit dwelling in us is a blessing of the age to come, and yet we have that blessing now.
We live in the “overlap of the ages.” The present age is not yet over—“I am with you always,” Jesus said, “to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20)—and yet the age to come has begun. We are, in Christ, “new creation”! “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17)! As a result, we live with the tension of being in two “ages” at once, a tension that no Jew ever thought would exist. When the Jews read the prophecies of Isaiah and Joel and Daniel, they expected that there would be a hard break between the present age and the age to come. The one would end, and the other would begin. But in God’s wisdom, the coming of the Messiah turned out to be not just one event, but two—his first coming to inaugurate the age to come in the midst of the present age, and his second coming to end, finally, the present age and consummate the age to come. Thus we enjoy the forgiveness of sin even as we struggle with it; thus we enjoy the presence of the Spirit even as we may still grieve him; thus we have been raised with Christ, seated at his right hand in the heavenly places, even as we know we will, for a time, return to dust. And thus we live in a world that is shot through with injustice and sin and oppression and evil and tears and sadness, even a world that we know will be shot through with such things until Jesus comes back, even as we strive to “walk as children of light” and to “shine as lights” in a “crooked and twisted generation” (Eph. 5:8; Phil. 2:15).
The Kingdom of God Is Manifested in This Present Age in the Church
There is an old hymn that begins,
I love thy kingdom Lord,
the house of thine abode,
the church our blessed Redeemer saved
with his own precious blood!
It’s pretty common seminary humor to make fun of that hymn, chuckling at the naïveté of the author to equate the kingdom of God and the church like that. And of course there’s some truth in that thought. Without getting into whether Timothy Dwight really did equate the church and the kingdom, it’s important to note that biblically speaking you can’t do that. The kingdom of God is indeed much more than—and different from—the church. Just try replacing “kingdom” in the New Testament with “church,” or “church” with “kingdom,” and you quickly realize that synonyms they are not.
However, it’s also true that like your rearview mirror says, these two things—the church and the kingdom—are actually “closer than they appear,” and closer than we often give them credit for.
Jesus’s words in Matthew 16 are hugely important here, for it is in that chapter that he institutes his church “upon this rock” of Peter’s confession of faith and then immediately says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (v. 19). “You” refers not to Peter but to the church, as becomes clear in Matthew 18. But still it’s an astounding statement. The keys of the kingdom of God—the authority of that kingdom, the right to act in its name—are given in this age, by the King, to the church! It’s not to the government, nor to any king or pope or any other ruler, but rather to the church—to this ragtag bunch of argumentative, self-centered, struggling-for-holiness but gloriously forgiven sinners—that the keys of the kingdom of God are given. To put it another way, the church acts as a sort of embassy for the government of the King. It is an outpost of the kingdom of God surrounded by the kingdom of darkness. And just as the embassy of a nation is meant, at least in part, to showcase the life of that nation to the surrounding people, so the church is meant to manifest the life of the kingdom of God to the world around it.4
Paul writes about this in Ephesians. After saying that in the gospel of Jesus the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles is torn down (Eph. 2:14), he makes this extraordinary statement: God intends that “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (3:10). In other words, the life of reconciliation and love that exists in the church will be a manifestation of God’s wisdom to the world. The life of the kingdom of God—a life of poverty of spirit, meekness, mercy, purity, and peace—will be manifested to the world in the church. It’s not that the church is perfect, or that it showcases the life of the kingdom without flaw. But believe it or not, the church is the primary arena God has chosen to make his redemptive reign over his people visible. It is, as some have said, the initial manifestation of the kingdom of God in this age. And as the world sees and responds to that kingdom life, the church will not only manifest the kingdom, but also bear witness to it.
Summary
So the kingdom of God then, we may say, is God’s redemptive reign, in the person of his Son, Jesus Messiah, which has broken into the present evil age and is now visible in the church. With that understanding, there are a few other questions we should consider about the New Testament’s teaching on the kingdom of God.
Just before the apostles watched the risen Messiah ascend into heaven, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). In other words, is now the time when you establish and consummate the kingdom, bringing it to completion? The answer they received from Jesus must have been most unsatisfying: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (v. 7). But of course they did know something about how and when the kingdom would be established. The Lord had taught them those things himself.
When Will the Kingdom Be Finally and Fully Established?
We’ve already seen that with the first coming of Jesus, the kingdom of God was inaugurated. As he preached, “The kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). But it is also true that the kingdom Jesus inaugurated is not yet consummated; it has not been established in its fullness. That much is clear enough simply by comparing the Bible’s snapshots of the consummation with the world around us. This is not a world of perfect justice and righteousness; far from it, in fact. Moreover, the apostles themselves knew that there was more to the kingdom than they had yet received. That was the realization behind their question in Acts 1:6. It was the realization behind the request of James and John’s mother to let her boys sit at Jesus’s right hand (Matt. 10:21). It was also the realization behind Paul’s longing for the resurrection from the dead (1 Corinthians 15) and his declaration that the Holy Spirit is “the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it” (Eph. 1:14). And it was the hope of that future that lay behind Jesus’s teaching that his apostles should ask God to make his kingdom come, to make it so that his will is done as perfectly here on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10). Clearly there was something the apostles were looking forward to, even as they enjoyed the blessings of the kingdom as it had broken into the present age.
What they looked forward to was the full and final establishment of Jesus’s kingdom, and that will happen only when King Jesus returns to do it. He told them to expect this.
Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matt. 24:30–31)
Revelation 19–20 make the same point. The final events—the defeat of the nations arrayed against the Lord and his anointed, the defeat of Satan, the creation of the new heavens and the new earth—it all happens when and only when King Jesus returns in glory, and not before.
That’s important to remember for at least a couple of reasons. For one thing, it protects us from a wrong and ultimately discouraging optimism about just how good we should expect to be able to make this world. Paul tells us in Romans 8 that creation will one day be “set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (v. 21). But he is equally clear that until that day, the creation remains “subjected to futility” and under its bondage to decay (vv. 20–21). We are afraid that many church leaders are doing their people a disservice by leading them to hope too much for the betterment of society in “this present evil age,” which still languishes in bondage and futility. Mission statements like “Transform the City and the World” and “Change the City, Change the World” express a commendable desire, but simply go too far beyond what the Bible tells us we should expect to see in the world during this age, before Jesus returns. And the result, we fear, is that over the years, as cities don’t become havens of virtue and justice, as poverty persists, as inadequate housing remains, as governments remain susceptible to corruption, Christians will find themselves discouraged and possibly even questioning the goodness or power of God—all because they have their hopes set too high and on the wrong things.
It seems to us that a better, more biblically realistic way to think about the world in this present age is to realize that until Jesus comes back, we will (as he told us, in fact) “always have the poor” with us (Matt. 26:11), and that our societies and civilizations will always be marked by corruption, injustice, and even oppression. Should this make us complacent? By no means! Should we strive and work against those evils? Absolutely! Is all this a reason simply to sit back, throw up our hands, and resolve not to resist evil? Absolutely not! Generosity and social concern, especially toward the poor and vulnerable, as Tim Keller reminds us, “reflects the character of God.” Godly living in our world consists “of a broad range of activities, from simple fair and honest dealings with people in daily life, to regular, radically generous giving of your time and resources, to activism that seeks to end particular forms of injustice, violence, and oppression.”5 We should fight against and resist evil in the world with a square-shouldered realization that God does not expect us to be able to make the world perfect, and that those evils will persist until our King comes back to end them.
I (Greg) spent a few years ministering in Washington, DC, and one of the things I noticed there—something that surprised me, in fact—is how often college graduates would come to town thinking they were going to change the world, only to spend three or four years banging their heads against the wall of this present evil age, and finally leave town jaded and discouraged and convinced that it was all hopeless. I think a good deal of that discouragement could have been avoided if they had just come into those jobs with a Bible-informed realism about the age we are all living in. Then they could have worked hard to accomplish good in the world, rejoiced when victories were won, and yet not been crushed when it turned out that they could not, in fact, fix the world. That would have given them both the motivation to do good and the flinty determination to work even through the strong and persistent opposition of the powers of this world.
Another reason it is important to remember that the kingdom will be established only when Jesus returns is that it fixes our eyes firmly on the King, rather than on what the King brings—the Giver, not just his gifts. Our great hope as Christians is, as the refrain rings out through the Bible, “We will be his people, and he will be our God.” As John puts it in Revelation 22:4, “[We] will see his face” once again. That’s what we look forward to—not so much the golden streets and pearl gates, or even the world emptied of injustice and oppression. Great and wonderful though these are, ultimately they are not enough. We look forward to seeing our King, face to face. As Christians, we want our eyes to be not so much on the kingdom, as on the kingdom’s King.
How Will the Kingdom Be Finally and Fully Established?
If it is true that the kingdom will be fully established only when Jesus returns, it is equally true that it will be established by his hand alone. Again, the disciples’ question in Acts 1:6 is instructive. They are under no illusion that it is now their task to establish the kingdom of God. It has been inaugurated without their help, and they recognize that it will be consummated without their help, too. “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” they ask. This too they have learned from Jesus himself. Consider the passage from Matthew 24:30–31 again; the Son of Man comes on the clouds of heaven, and it is he who sends his angels to gather the elect. Moreover, Isaiah says that it is God who will “create new heavens and a new earth” (Isa. 65:17), and Revelation tells us that it is God again who “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 21:4). Not only so, but the very next two verses make it clear that it is Jesus and Jesus alone who establishes his kingdom:
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.” (Rev. 21:5–6)
“I am making all things new,” he says. And then there is the declaration of completion: “It is done!” The fact that this work is his alone redounds to his glory, for he declares in the very next sentence, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” Kingdom building is a divine, messianic act, one that is worthy of divine, messianic praise.
When you look at the Gospels and examine the verbs associated with the kingdom, you discover something surprising. Much of our language about the kingdom is a bit off. We often speak of “building the kingdom,” “ushering in the kingdom,” “establishing the kingdom,” or “helping the kingdom grow.” But is this really the way the New Testament talks about the kingdom? George Eldon Ladd, the man who put kingdom back on the map for evangelicals, didn’t think so.
The Kingdom can draw near to men (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15; etc.); it can come (Matt. 6:10; Luke 17:20; etc.), arrive (Matt. 12:28), appear (Luke 19:11), be active (Matt. 11:12). God can give the Kingdom to men (Matt. 21:43; Luke 12:32), but men do not give the Kingdom to one another. Further, God can take the Kingdom away from men (Matt. 21:43), but men do not take it away from one another, although they can prevent others from entering it. Men can enter the Kingdom (Matt. 5:20; 7:21; Mark 9:47; 10:23; etc.), but they are never said to erect it or to build it. Men can receive the Kingdom (Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17), inherit it (Matt. 25:34), and possess it (Matt. 5:4), but they are never said to establish it. Men can reject the Kingdom, i.e., refuse to receive it (Luke 10:11) or enter it (Matt. 23:13), but they cannot destroy it. They can look for it (Luke 23:51), pray for its coming (Matt. 6:10), and seek it (Matt. 6:33; Luke 12:31), but they cannot bring it. Men may be in the Kingdom (Matt. 5:19; 8:11; Luke 13:29; etc.), but we are not told that the Kingdom grows. Men can do things for the sake of the Kingdom (Matt. 19:12; Luke 18:29), but they are not said to act upon the Kingdom itself. Men can preach the Kingdom (Matt. 10:7; Luke 10:9), but only God can give it to men (Luke 12:32).6
We’ve quoted this section in our works. But when we’ve used it in the past, we’ve been uncomfortable with the line “we are not told that the kingdom grows.” It seemed to us that the parable of the sleepy farmer (Mark 4:26–29) and the parable of the mustard seed (4:30–32) clearly teach that the kingdom grows. But as we’ve studied the passages more carefully, we think you can make a good case that Jesus is not teaching about the growth of the kingdom as much as he is demonstrating that the kingdom of small beginnings will, at the close of the age, be the kingdom of cosmic significance. The kingdom may look unimpressive now, with nothing but a twelve-man band of fumbling disciples, but one day all will see its glorious end.
To borrow a tired cliché, the kingdom is what it is. It does not expand. It does not increase. It does not grow. But the kingdom can break in more and more. Think of it like the sun. When the clouds part on a cloudy day we don’t say, “The sun has grown.” We say, “The sun has broken through.” Our view of the sun has changed or obstacles to the sun have been removed, but we have not changed the sun. The sun does not depend on us. We do not bring the sun or act upon it. The sun can appear. Its warmth can be felt or stifled. But the sun does not grow. (Science guys, don’t get all technical, you know what we mean.) This seems a good analogy for the kingdom.
God certainly uses means and employs us in his work. But we are not makers or bringers of the kingdom. The kingdom can be received by more and more people but this does not entail growth of the kingdom. We herald the kingdom and live according to its rules. But we do not build it or cause it to grow because it already is and already has come. As Ladd put it:
The Kingdom is the outworking of the divine will; it is the act of God himself. It is related to human beings and can work in and through them; but it never becomes subject to them. . . . The ground of the demand that they receive the Kingdom rests in the fact that in Jesus the Kingdom has come into history.7
The point is that, biblically speaking, we as human beings may proclaim, enter, reject, inherit, and possess the kingdom, but it is God and God alone who establishes and ushers it in. It is God who will reconcile all things to himself through Christ (Col. 1:19–20). We should not think these verses from Colossians tell us what to do in partnership with God. Rather, they speak of the cosmic scope of what God himself will accomplish through the cross. Through and through, this final consummation is God’s work and for God’s glory.
If the kingdom of God is all it’s cracked up to be in Scripture—God’s benevolent, joy-filled, happy reign over his redeemed people—and if it’s true that you can be either in or out of that kingdom, then it’s hugely important to be clear about how one gets in it. We’ve already seen how the kingdom is specifically the reign of Jesus the Messiah, and that leads us to a simple answer to our question: Inclusion in the kingdom of God is wholly conditioned on one’s response to the King.
It is not based on a life well lived, or a comparatively nonevil life next to the worst person you can think of. If you want to be included in the kingdom of God, you must respond rightly to the King of the kingdom. That is the consistent message of both Jesus and the apostles. Thus in Mark 10, when the rich young ruler asks what he must do to inherit eternal life—which Jesus later equates to “enter[ing] the kingdom of God” (v. 24)—Jesus’s answer to him is, “Follow me” (v. 21). Yes, he tells him first to sell everything he owns and give to the poor, but the point is neither the selling nor the poor. The point is the man’s idolatry, and Jesus calls him to renounce the idol of his possessions and cast his faith and his life on him. The same is true of the story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. The dividing line between those who are welcomed into the kingdom and those who are told to depart is how they respond to Jesus and his message in the person of his “brothers,” those bearing witness to him. The apostles, too, consistently teach that salvation—inclusion in the kingdom of God—is to be had by responding rightly to the King. “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord,” Paul says, “and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). “Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you,” he preaches in Acts 13:38, and Peter proclaims in Acts 2 that “God has made him both Lord and Christ” and that the way to be saved is to “repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (vv. 36, 38). Time and time again, both Jesus and the apostles make clear that forgiveness of sins, redemption, and inclusion in God’s kingdom are predicated on a person coming in repentance and faith to Jesus as the only one who has both right and power to qualify anyone to share in the inheritance of the saints.
The whole story of the Bible, in fact, drives toward that conclusion. Israel’s prophets always understood that the Messiah they prophesied would be not only great and powerful and honored; he would also be a representative of God’s people and suffer in their place. Isaiah, for example, has a wonderfully profound play on words in his description of the Servant, whom we know from several parallel passages turns out to be the promised Messiah. At first glance, it looks as if the Servant might be the nation of Israel. So in Isaiah 49:3, the Servant says,
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But then in 49:5, it’s clear that the Messiah-Servant’s mission is to the nation of Israel:
And now the LORD says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him . . .
So what’s going on here? Is the servant Israel, or is the servant doing something for Israel? The answer, it seems, is both. What seems to be happening is that the Servant is at once representing Israel and fulfilling a mission to Israel.
Further, Isaiah goes on in chapter 53 to show how this representation reaches its height when the Servant stands in his people’s place even unto death for their sins:
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (vv. 4–6)
You can see the representative suffering throughout those verses.
He was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities.
Indeed, to suffer and die for the people lay at the very heart of the office of the Messiah.
If that’s true, then it’s no wonder that the passion narratives in the Gospels are so laden with kingly imagery! We normally think of the death of Christ being connected most closely with his office as Priest, and the book of Hebrews tells us that is absolutely correct. But it’s also true that his death is inherently and tightly connected to his kingship. The purple robe, the crown of thorns, the sign above his head—Jesus died as King, not just as Priest. What this means is that any talk about Jesus as King is wholly inadequate if it does not have at its very heart an understanding of his representative, substitutionary death in the place of his people. That, in fact, is what it meant to be the Messiah; it was, according to the prophets, what the Messiah would do. Yes, he would inaugurate a kingdom, and he would rule over it with wisdom and justice. But he would also bear his people’s sins. The Lord would lay on him his people’s iniquities, and he would be wounded for their transgressions and crushed for their rebellion. And in that way precisely, he would win forgiveness for them and make them worthy to be included in his great kingdom! Jesus is not just King; he is suffering King. Not just King Jesus the Great, but King Jesus the Crucified and Resurrected!
Understand that, and it becomes blindingly clear why inclusion in the kingdom is conditioned on one’s response to the King. For it is the King alone who has—by virtue of his substitutionary death and his resurrection—the authority to forgive sins, declare righteous, and make a sinful human being worthy to share in the blessings of his kingdom. The King has come to his subjects who have rebelled against him, he has pronounced the sentence of death against them, and yet—hope of hopes!—he now holds out an offer of forgiveness, having received the sentence of death upon himself. How then could any rebel expect reprieve or acquittal to be granted any other way than through trusting in the King and accepting the offer from his hand? What foolishness for him to say, “Yes, I want your forgiveness, but not on the terms you offer!” If forgiveness and reprieve are to be had, they must be had from the King’s own merciful hand.
It also becomes blindingly clear, once again, why the primary task of Christians in this age, with reference to the kingdom, is not to build it or establish it or even to build for it, but rather to be witnesses to this representing, suffering, forgiving King. You can see this logic in Matthew 28:18–20. If it’s true that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus—the authority to judge, to forgive, to bring into the kingdom, and to exclude from it—then all the nations must be told of that reality and called to come to him as King and Savior. “Tell the nations about me,” Jesus seems to be saying. “All authority is mine; now tell them to follow me!”
You see, the disciples were not simply to sit and enjoy the fact that all authority now belonged to King Jesus; they were to go and proclaim that fact to a dark world that had no idea of that reality. They were to “witness”—not build, not establish, not usher in, not even build for the kingdom—but bear witness to it. They were to be subjects and heralds, not agents, of the kingdom.
1Some classic twentieth-century exegetical studies include G. E. Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959); Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962); G. R. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986).
2See Russell D. Moore, The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004).
3Helpful introductions on this are Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), and Vaughn Roberts, God's Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003).
4See Jonathan Leeman, Surprising Offense of the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010).
5Timothy Keller, Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just (New York: Dutton, 2010), 18.
6George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 193. For an exegetical explanation of this paragraph see George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 89–102.
7Ibid., 102.