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THE KING AND HIS KINGDOM

JESUS’S VIOLENT WORLD

The Prince of Peace was born into a world drowning in violence. The years between the Old and New Testaments were anything but silent, as kingdom rose up against kingdom, nation warred against nation, and the Jewish people hacked their way to freedom with swords baptized in blood.

About two hundred years before Christ, the Greeks who ruled over Israel banned the practice of Judaism and slaughtered those who resisted. But the Jews wouldn’t give in so easily. Led by Judas “the Maccabee” (literally, “the hammer”), zealous Jews took up the sword and threw off the yoke of their Gentile overlords, massacring thousands in their wake. A few decades later, the Maccabees reclaimed their religious and political freedom and set up a quasi-messianic kingdom through violent force. The success of Maccabean swords would shape the way Jewish people in Jesus’s day would understand—and anticipate—the kingdom of God.1

Over time, the Maccabean heroes turned their swords on their own people. Aristobulus (Judas’s grandnephew) killed his brother and starved his mother to death, all the while claiming to be king of Israel.2 The next Jewish king, Alexander Jannaeus, formed an impressive military to defend the nation and expand its territory: one thousand cavalry, ten thousand infantry, and eight thousand mercenaries. Jannaeus fought off Greek invaders and secured Israel’s freedom. But soon power led to madness as Jannaeus terrorized his own citizens. On one occasion, he crucified eight hundred Pharisees and, according to Josephus, “butchered their wives and children before their eyes” while he “reclined amidst his concubines” and “enjoyed the spectacle.” On another occasion, Jannaeus executed six thousand Jews for throwing fruit at him during a festival.3

Jesus’s world was submerged in violence.

After eighty years of Maccabean rule, Israel’s kingdom crashed to an end when the Roman general Pompey killed twelve thousand Jews while taking control of the land. Israel again was under Gentile rule, this time by the Romans. But seething unrest for freedom, fueled by Maccabean memories, fostered a violent spirit among the Jewish people. Years later, Herod the Great picked up where Jannaeus left off, killing his own mother-in-law, his favorite wife (he had many), and several of his sons, along with anyone who was even suspected of threatening his rule, including a number of babies in Bethlehem.4 Herod’s sons—the ones who weren’t killed—also wielded the sword. Herod’s son Archelaus slaughtered many thousands of Jews and on one occasion stuffed three thousand murdered bodies into the temple as an “offering to God.”5

MESSIANIC FREEDOM?

This was the world Jesus entered, a world ruled by violence. Many Jews sought freedom through bloodshed. Others kept their swords close at hand, ready for a signal to rise up and conquer.

During Jesus’s lifetime on earth, several messianic figures rose up to establish God’s kingdom through violent revolution. Immediately after Herod the Great died, two messiah-like figures named Simon and Anthronges led independent revolts. Their “principle purpose,” according to Josephus, was “to kill Romans” and claim the Jewish throne. Both movements were crushed, and Simon and Anthronges were executed. A few years later, when Jesus was about twelve years old, a warrior named Judas (not Iscariot) tried to overthrow Rome and set up God’s kingdom. The insurrection—which happened a few miles away from Nazareth—gained some traction but was halted by Rome.6 Judas’s two sons, Jacob and Simon, also led violent revolts that failed, and both men were caught and crucified. Around the same time, a certain Tholomaus worked up an unsuccessful revolt, as did Theudas, who claimed to be a prophet and mustered up a sizable force. Both were executed.7 Three decades after Jesus’s death, two other messianic figures, Menahem and Simon ben Giora, led a massive revolt against Rome that also ended in failure. Menahem was caught, dragged through the streets, and “put to death by prolonged torture.”8 Simon was taken back to Rome, paraded as a trophy, and then pulled with a rope around his neck to the Forum, where he was executed.9

Welcome to Jesus’s world.

Despite the failure of these many revolts, the earlier success of the Maccabees ensured that messianic zeal was not easily snuffed out. Hope still burned for the establishment of God’s kingdom through force. Struck down but not defeated, the Jews cooked up yet another revolt a hundred years after Jesus’s death. They hailed as Messiah a certain Simon bar Kochba, who led an impressive force against Rome. But the uprising was put down. Bar Kochba was killed, Jerusalem was razed to the ground, and the land of Israel was once again muddied with the blood of Jewish insurrectionists—messiahs, who sought to usher in God’s kingdom by hammering their plowshares into swords.

We could go on and on about the so-called dagger men (sicarii) who wandered the streets of Jerusalem in stealth, thrusting blades into the ribs of their enemies. Or the Zealots, whose very identity was shaped by violently resisting evil. Suffice it to say that Jesus’s world was a tinderbox ready to explode into flames, and messianic figures kept dousing it with gasoline. The reign of God became synonymous with the sword of man. A would-be Messiah who turned the other cheek and loved his enemies would not be taken seriously. Or he would be killed.10

It’s in this context that we must understand the strange words and deeds of the peasant son of a Jewish carpenter—a rather unmessianic messianic figure.

Despite the widespread expectation of peace envisioned by the Hebrew prophets, history had gone a different direction. The Maccabean kingdom cultivated a thirst for political independence through the sword. Yet from birth to death, Jesus preached a non-Maccabean kingdom. He would bear a plowshare, not a sword, and set up God’s kingdom without using violence. And He would tell His followers to do the same.

A KINGDOM HERE AND NOW

Jesus’s central message was not primarily about how to get to heaven when you die, or about becoming a better person. The central message of Jesus was about the coming of God’s kingdom.

This kingdom language is everywhere in the four gospels. When the gospel writers sum up Jesus’s message, they say things like the following: Jesus “went throughout all Galilee … proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom” (Matt. 4:23), or Jesus proclaims “the gospel of God, and say[s], ‘… the kingdom of God is at hand’” (Mark 1:14–15). Everything He says and does is in some way related to the kingdom.

Jesus’s kingdom-message is rooted in the Old Testament. Simply put, “the kingdom” means God’s reign over Israel through its Messiah. We’ve seen glimpses of the kingdom during the time of David, Solomon, and other kings. And we’ve looked at how the prophets longed for God to restore His kingdom to Israel, where the Messiah’s rule would extend to the ends of the earth. This is the same kingdom that Jesus is talking about. Jesus announces that this long-anticipated reign of God over the earth is breaking into history through Him.

The kingdom is what the prophets looked forward to and what the Maccabeans and their heirs tried to establish through violence.

But Jesus’s kingdom talk gets Him into hot water. The term kingdom isn’t invented by Jesus or the New Testament writers. Most people in Jesus’s day understand kingdom to mean the empire (kingdom) of Rome. Jewish people, as we have seen, tried to set up their own kingdom. So when Jesus talks about the kingdom, everyone already has a category to understand what He is saying. Jesus isn’t inventing a term or concept unknown to people. Rather, He takes a well-known concept, guts it, and stuffs it with new meaning. What God does with the concept of kingship in the Old Testament (for example in Deut.17), Jesus does with kingdom throughout the Gospels. And one central feature of Jesus’s unkingdom-like kingdom is the issue of power and violence. Whereas all other kingdoms (Roman, Jewish, or whatever) are breaking in with force and violence, Jesus will erect the kingdom of peace without using violence. Put simply: Jesus preaches a demilitarized Deuteronomy 17-like kingdom.

NOT OF THIS WORLD

Perhaps the best place to see this is in John 18:33–38, where Jesus is on trial and describes His kingdom to Pontius Pilate. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Pilate asks. But Jesus doesn’t give him a straight answer, and we can imagine why. Pilate understands the concept of king to be a powerful, coercive, violent earthly ruler. Since Rome already has one of these—Caesar Tiberius—all other self-proclaimed kings are impostors or revolutionaries trying to overthrow Rome. Jesus will affirm that He is indeed a king (v. 37), but first He must redefine kingship:

My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world. (v. 36)

Jesus’s statement has been subject to its own slew of interpretive violence. Some people think that the kingdom is wholly spiritual, or completely otherworldly.11 While early Gnostics held this view,12 few (if any) biblical scholars believe that this is what Jesus means. Others think that “not of this world” means that the kingdom is a present spiritual reality, but in the future it will be a physical reality.13 “Christ’s kingdom is spiritually active in the world today,” says one writer, “and one day He will return to physically reign on the earth in millennial glory (Rev. 11:15; 20:6).” During the church age, Jesus’s “Kingdom exists in the hearts of believers” and is irrelevant to the “political and military identity of Rome.”14 This view is correct in that Jesus wasn’t seeking to overthrow Rome, and there is definitely some sort of “already/not yet” dimension of Jesus’s kingdom. The kingdom is only partially here (“already”), and certainly there’s more to come (“not yet”). However, this view still falls into the trap of taking “not of this world” to refer to some spiritual, immaterial realm. Also, as we will see, Jesus’s kingdom was viewed as a challenge to the political and military identity of Rome. That’s why He was crucified.

So what does Jesus mean by “my kingdom is not of this world”? The answer comes in Jesus’s very next words: “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting.” Nonviolence is at the heart of Jesus’s definition of kingdom. More broadly, Jesus means that His kingdom will not follow the script of all the other nation-like worldly kingdoms of history. Jesus’s kingdom will enact God’s reign on earth, which according to the prophets will speak peace to the nations, offer forgiveness to the undeserving, and extend love to neighbor and enemy alike. So the contrast between “of this world” and “not of this world” isn’t between a material versus spiritual reign, but between a worldly way and a godly way of reigning.15 Jesus’s statement, in other words, reflects the counter-cultural spirit of Deuteronomy 17.

When Jesus uses the term world (as in “not of this world”), therefore, He does not mean physical creation, as if Jesus was opposed to trees, rocks, and mountains. John uses the term world (kosmos) throughout his gospel and his letters to refer to “the systems of the world” or “social construction of reality.”16 Put simply, world often means the way unbelievers do things. For instance, Jesus says that He has come to testify against the world that its deeds are evil (John 7:7). Or as John will say elsewhere, “Do not love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:15). This does not refer to the material stuff on earth, nor does it refer to people, whom Jesus and John say we are to love. The “world” refers to the worldly systems that run against God’s way of doing things. Unjust economic systems, dehumanizing social classification, and advancing one’s kingdom through violence. These are all “of the world.”

GOD’S EMPIRE

The most daring word that Jesus throws at Pilate is the term kingdom. As I said, this was the typical Greek term used for the Roman Empire. And it’s the same word that Jewish freedom fighters would use when they tried to oust Rome and set up their own empire (as the Maccabees did). Kingdom, therefore, cannot be reduced to individual salvation, or some immaterial religious experience. If Jesus’s kingdom was restricted to individuals or the spiritual realm, He would use a different word. But He doesn’t. He uses the word kingdom. He uses the word empire.17

Jesus seeks to set up God’s empire on earth, and it will look different from Rome and the Maccabees in one crucial aspect: Jesus’s empire will not come about through physical fighting. It will be a demilitarized empire where enemies are loved and offenders are forgiven.

We see that those in the crowd recognize the subversive nature of Jesus’s claims when they cry out: “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar” (John 19:12). And again the people affirm, “We have no king but Caesar” (v. 15). The crowd plays up the political nature of Jesus’s claims, which is necessary to get Him crucified—capital punishment for insurrectionists.

Now, the crowd is wrong on one level. Jesus isn’t a physical threat, nor is He trying to overthrow Rome. But His kingdom will challenge Rome’s ideology: its economics, social classification, treatment of the outcast, and its use of power and violence.18 Nonviolence takes center stage as Jesus singles out physical fighting as the key difference between His empire and Caesar’s.19

WE WANT A KING LIKE THE NATIONS—AGAIN

Jesus’s words are rooted in the rich soil of the Old Testament. As we have seen, God intended Israel to be a kingdom quite unlike the other nations, which was why God prohibited Israel from having a king like the nations. But Saul, Ahaz, and even David fell into nation-like kingship. The failure of Israel’s kings cultivated hope for a new Son of David, a Prince of Peace who would match the Deuteronomy 17 ideal, who would not trust in military might or accumulate wealth, but who would love the Lord and serve God’s people. According to the prophets, this new King would “speak peace to the nations” and set up a kingdom that would reach the ends of the earth (Zech. 9:10). Jesus’s “kingdom not of this world” is directly connected to God’s original intention with Israel in the Old Testament. God wants to set up an alternative kingdom, one that will have a different type of king and a distinct way of living.

Jesus’s nonviolent kingdom doesn’t make immediate sense to His followers, however. We see this confusion in Matthew 11 when John the Baptist is thrown into prison and wonders if Jesus really is the Messiah. “Are you the one who is to come?” John asks. “Or shall we look for another?” (v. 3). John was on board for a while, but after Jesus has talked about turning your cheek, loving your enemy, and forgiving people like a Roman centurion, John starts to have his doubts. He then finds himself in prison with all the other unsuccessful revolutionaries, ready to be executed. So you can imagine John’s confusion about whether Jesus’s kingdom is truly drawing near. From behind bars, it looks like it’s fading away.

Jesus, however, reassures John that He is indeed the One. Though He hasn’t overthrown Rome, nor has He acted violently, “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matt. 11:4–5). These are the types of things the Messiah will do, according to the prophet Isaiah.20 And Jesus has been doing them (Matt. 8–9). He is the true King of Israel. But “from the days of John the Baptist until now,” Jesus says, “the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (11:12). Jesus here refers to the persecution that will accompany His kingdom (“suffered violence”) and to the response others have taken toward this violence. “The violent” (the Maccabees and the Zealots) have tried to set up God’s kingdom by overpowering their oppressor.21 But not Jesus. His kingdom is not of this world. A divine kingdom doesn’t need to be propped up by human swords.

The expectation of a warrior-like Messiah, stirred up by Maccabean zeal, has all but snuffed out the prophetic hope for a Prince of Peace, but Jesus is rekindling that hope. His unworldly kingdom befits the unworldly king extolled in Deuteronomy 17—a King and kingdom that are not militarized like the nations.

ARE YOU THE MESSIAH?

Have you ever noticed that Jesus frequently tells His disciples not to tell others about His identity as the Messiah? On several occasions, Jesus sternly warns His disciples not to tell people that He is the Messiah. This is because by the first century, the titles messiah and king were fraught with images of warfare and violence, as we have seen. Jesus, therefore, has to redefine what messiah and king mean to the ears of His Jewish followers, who are steeped in the ideology of the Maccabees. This is probably why Jesus is reluctant to call Himself the Messiah. The title is loaded with violent images fostered by the frequent messianic revolutions sought by the Jewish people.

Consider Mark 8:27–38. This a turning point in Jesus’s life, when He asks Peter point blank, “Who do you say that I am?” (v. 29). And Peter answers correctly, “You are the Messiah” (usually translated “Christ,” which is the Greek word for the Hebrew “Messiah”). This is the first time that the disciples rightly identify Jesus as the Messiah. But rather than celebrating, Jesus “strictly charged them to tell no one about him” (v. 30). Sounds like Jesus is stifling their evangelistic zeal. But this isn’t the point. Jesus tells them not to go around heralding Him as the Messiah since people would immediately think of Jesus as a violent revolutionary when they heard this term. This is why Jesus immediately redefines the meaning of Messiah. Instead of a coercive, violent, power-hungry king, Jesus will be a suffering Servant:

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. (8:31)

The disciples still don’t get it. Peter turns and rebukes Jesus for speaking such nonsense. Messiahs don’t suffer, and they certainly aren’t killed prematurely—unless they are imposters. If they are legitimate, they conquer. They fight. They do kingly things like getting rid of their Gentile oppressors and cleansing the land of sin through violent insurrection.22 “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus responds. “For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Mark 8:33). In other words, Peter is still trapped in a “kingdom of this world” way of thinking. For Peter, messiahs wield power; they don’t submit. That’s what messiah means according to Peter’s worldview. Jesus goes further and says that He’s not the only one who will suffer. All of His would-be followers must deny themselves, pick up their crosses, and suffer—if they want to follow the Messiah. The cross and resurrection are what constitute the power of the kingdom.

The disciples are still confused, so Jesus takes three of them up to a mountain to show them “the kingdom of God after it has come with power” (Mark 9:1). The kingdom that they see is the transfigured Messiah appearing in His resurrected glory. God’s kingdom will come, and it will come in power. Not human power—coercive violence, military might, or legions of fighting servants—but divine power. The kingdom will come, in other words, through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Welcome to Jesus’s upside-down kingdom, where weakness is power, power is weakness, and suffering leads to glory.

POWERFUL WEAKNESS

Nonviolence becomes a hallmark of Jesus’s kingdom. Such understanding of the kingdom, though not far from Isaiah and the prophets, is foreign to the violent first-century world of Jesus. This is why Jesus often corrects His disciples’ misperception. On one occasion, Jesus and His disciples are rejected from a Samaritan village. James and John react by wanting to call down fire and nuke the entire town. Such vengeance may have fit the Maccabees or Zealots, but it has no place in Jesus’s kingdom of peace. On another occasion, Jesus reminds His disciples that the Son of Man is going to be condemned, killed, mocked, flogged, spit upon, and then “after three days he will rise” (Mark 10:32–34). But James and John don’t get it. So they ask Jesus if they can surround His throne in the kingdom. Jesus rebukes them like He did Peter and tells them again that the pathway to glory is suffering:

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” (Mark 10:42–43)

Like Israel in the days of Saul, the sons of Zebedee want a kingdom like the other nations. But Jesus flips the logic of kingdom and kingship. Unlike the Babylonian, Canaanite, Egyptian, and—nearer at hand—Roman kingdoms, the kingdom of God will be shaped by servitude and suffering, not human power and violence. Jesus came to serve, not be served; to suffer on behalf of many. Following Jesus in His kingdom means we do the same.

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND

Jesus’s not-of-this-world kingdom is shaped by nonviolence. This doesn’t always stand out to us, but no Jew in the first century would have missed the radical nature of Jesus’s claim. In a world where king and kingdom were synonymous with coercion, power, and violence, Jesus’s upside-down kingdom stuck out like a baseball team with no bats, or a megachurch with no sound system or comfy chairs. But that’s precisely the point. As God’s reign on earth is enacted through nonviolence, the power of God rather than the power of humans is showcased for all to see.

The apostles frequently speak of the kingdom of God in ways similar to Jesus, as we’ll see in chapter 8. Peter says that Christians are sojourners and exiles scattered throughout the world.23 John commands Christians to live in the world but not like the world. And Paul says that our citizenship is in heaven, not on earth.24 This means that instead of being colonies of earthly governments, we are colonies of heaven on earth. God’s kingdom continues to spread across creation through local bodies of believers called the church.

We are called to be different, to give our allegiance to Jesus’s not-of-this-world kingdom. Worldly kingdoms flex their muscles to rule the earth; Jesus kneels to wash feet. Gentiles lord it over other people; Christians become servants to everyone. Rome crucifies those who threaten its power; Jesus endures crucifixion as a pathway to resurrection glory. And He calls His disciples to bear their cross and follow Him down the bloodstained road to Calvary.

Something is wrong when the kingdom of God is indistinguishable from that of the world. Christians should contribute to the good of the nation in which they live (Jer. 29:7). But we are first and foremost citizens of Jesus’s kingdom spread throughout the world. We have more in common with Christians in other nations—nations our country may war against—than we do with neighbors who share the same passport. When nations war against other nations, this critical point gets snuffed out. Take the Iraq war, for instance. Regardless of America’s cause for invasion—to secure oil reserves, disarm weapons of mass destruction, get rid of a dictator—the kingdom of God has suffered horrific effects from the war. And this should cause citizens of God’s kingdom to mourn. For instance, prior to 2003, there was relative freedom for the 1.5 million Iraqi Christians. But since 2003, more than half of these Christians have been tortured, killed, or exiled to other countries.25

It’s sad when American Christians talk about “us” and “them” and use these identity markers solely in terms of different national identities. But “we”—the kingdom of God in America and Iraq—have suffered greatly. Citizens of God’s kingdom did not win the war. We lost.

Citizens of God’s kingdom, wherever we live, should pray for our leaders and submit to our governing authorities insofar as such submission doesn’t conflict with the law of Christ. But through Jesus’s blood, we have more in common with our fellow kingdom-citizens in Iraq, who have suffered from America’s invasion, than we do with most of our nation’s military, which caused the suffering. We should never let our national citizenship take priority over our heavenly citizenship.

A TENSION OVER CITIZENSHIP

Such a tension over citizenship was felt by a man named Martin on the eve of World War II. Martin was the son of a Lutheran pastor and a heroic submarine commander in World War I. After his service in the armed forces, Martin became a pastor like his father. By the time World War II was on the horizon, Martin spoke positively of his government and the need to fight the war. “When this great nation was formed,” proclaimed Martin, “God gave it Christianity as its soul, and it is from these Christian roots that it has grown and developed.” The Christian church, however, was divided on whether the war was just. Some said that going to war would violate Jesus’s teaching. Others, including Martin, appealed to Romans 13 for biblical proof that their government had the divine mandate to punish evildoers. When the war finally broke out, Martin joined the army along with his two sons.

Regardless of whether World War II was considered a “just war,” I don’t think Martin should have gone to fight. His allegiance should have been toward God’s kingdom, not the earthly nation where he lived. Martin should have considered the fact that those he was seeking to kill may actually have been fellow citizens of Christ’s kingdom. And regardless of whether his country won the war, this would not advance God’s kingdom on earth. Jesus sought to advance His kingdom without fighting, and Martin was called to further Jesus’s kingdom not by fighting, but by proclaiming the good news that Jesus, not Franklin D. Roosevelt or Harry Truman or Adolf Hitler, is King.

Martin Niemöller, by the way, was a German citizen. He volunteered to serve in the Nazi army out of allegiance to his earthly nation. It’s a dangerous thing when national ideology dims the lights on that city set on a hill.26

NOTES

1. For more on the Maccabean revolt, see 1 and 2 Maccabees. Political independence was gained under Simon, the older brother of Judas, in 142 BC and lasted until 63 BC. To learn about the importance of the Maccabean revolt in shaping the subsequent Jewish worldview, see N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992), 167–181.

2. Josephus, War 1.1.1–2.

3. On Jannaeus, see Josephus, War 1.4.6.

4. Matt. 2

5. On Herod the Great, see Josephus, War 1.30–33; for Archelaus, see War 2.1–2. Pompey’s invasion is recorded in War 1.7 and reflected upon in Pss. Sol. 2. On Herod the Great, see Josephus, War 1.30–33; for Archelaus, see War 2.1–2. Pompey’s invasion is recorded in War 1.7 and reflected upon in Pss. Sol. 2.

6. Ant. 18.4–10, 23-25; Acts 5:37

7. See Acts 5:36; Ant. 20.5, 97–99.

8. Josephus, War 2.447.

9. Josephus, War 7.5.6.

10. I’m painting a general picture. There were some exceptions to such violence within Judaism—for instance, the Sadducees, the Essenes (for the most part), and the Pharisees of Hillel’s persuasion. Some Jews, in fact, fought against oppression with nonviolent means, and they won (see Josephus, War 2).

11. “In recent exegesis the spiritualistic reading has almost universally been rejected” (Reimund Bieringer, “My Kingship Is Not of This World (John 18, 36): The Kingship of Jesus and Politics,” in The Myriad of Christ, BETL 152, ed. Terrance Merrigan and Jacques Haers [Leuven, Belgium: University Press and Peeters, 2000], 162).

12. See for instance the Gnostic book the Acts of Pilate.

13. For an example, see George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), especially chapter 4.

14. John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: John 12–21 (Chicago: Moody, 2008), 330.

15. See Ben Witherington III, John’s Wisdom (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1995), 291; N. T. Wright, John for Everyone Part 2: Chapters 11–21 (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 2004), 114–115.

16. See John 7:7; 9:39; 12:31, 47–48; 15:18–19; Bieringer, “My Kingship,” 171–170.

17. Peter J. Leithart, Between Babel and Beast (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012), 166 n.4.

18. Bruce Chilton and J. I. H. McDonald rightly saw Jesus’s statement about the kingdom to be “a challenge and rebuke to all worldly power-systems.” They went on to say that “‘my Kingdom is not of this world’ is a political statement, part of the dialogue that relates to a charge of treason brought against Jesus” (Chilton and McDonald, Jesus and the Ethics of the Kingdom [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988], 101).

19. The Greek word translated “fighting” is agonizomai, which in 2 Maccabees 8:16 and 13:14 unmistakably refers to violent fighting (Bieringer, “My Kingship,” 172).

20. Isa. 35

21. This is a notoriously difficult verse to interpret. The first part of the verse (“has suffered violence”) almost certainly refers to the persecution that followers of Jesus, like John the Baptist, will endure, as most commentators recognize (Donald A. Hagner, Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 33a, Matthew 1–13 [Nashville, TN: Nelson, 1993], 306–307). The second part (“the violent take it by force”) is more debated. I have read it to refer to violent Jews trying to set up the kingdom through violence (following W. E. Moore, “Violence to the Kingdom: Josephus and the Syrian Churches,” ExpTim 100 [1989]: 174–77). It could also refer to potential followers of Jesus wanting Him to set up a kingdom of this world their way.

22. See Psalms of Solomon 17:22–25, 30 (although see vv. 33–34).

23. 1 Pet. 1:1; 2:11

24. Phil. 1:27; 3:19–21

25. See Leithart, Between Babel and Beast, 144–146.

26. The story is recounted in Daniel M. Bell, Just War as Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2009), 16–17.