General Blurring the Kingdom Lines

[benadam1974]

by carlos@thehumanjesus.org

Christians oftentimes confuse “kingdom living” principles with the coming kingdom itself. For example, if you’re a citizen of England living in the USA, it does not mean England has come to the USA.

Similarly, if you’re living like a citizen of the coming Kingdom, it doesn’t mean the Kingdom has come.

So when Jesus says “you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world,” he didn’t mean you’re some kind of an alien. Or that when you die you will leave this world to be with Jesus in heaven!

The point is when Jesus says we don’t “belong to this world” (John 17:16) he meant we are not to believe, sound or behave like this world.

Similarly, when Jesus says to Governor Pilate “my kingdom does not belong to this world” (John 18:36) he means the kingdom will not originate, i.e., look, sound or act like any of the current governments.

Hence, Robert Saucy (Professor of systematic theology at Biola University) was right to say:

“Since Jesus gave no explanation of the meaning of the kingdom in his early proclamation, it seems reasonable to conclude that Jesus assumed that his audience knew the meaning of this term [i.e., kingdom].”
(Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan. Mar. 1988, p 33)

Similarly, the noted German scholar Johannes Weiss:

“What speaks more forcefully than all else against the kind of interpretation to which we have been objecting is the fact that Jesus put in the mouths of his disciples, as the first petition of their prayer, the words ‘May Your kingdom come.’ The meaning is not ‘may thy Kingdom grow,’ ‘may thy Kingdom be perfected," but rather, ‘may thy Kingdom come.’
For the disciples, the kingdom is not yet here, not even in its beginnings; therefore Jesus bids them to ‘seek His Kingdom’ (Luke 12:31). This yearning and longing for its coming, this ardent prayer for it, and the constant hope that it will come— that it will come soon—this is their religion.
We would import an opaque and confusing element into this unified and clearly unambiguous religious frame of mind were we to think somehow of a ‘coming in an ever higher degree’ or of a growth or increase of the Kingdom.

Either the kingdom is here, or it is not yet here. For the disciples and for the early church it is not yet here.

Therefore, if Jesus already speaks of a Kingdom of God which is present, it is not because there is present a community of disciples among whom God's will is done, as if God's rule were realized from the side of men.
Rather, Jesus does so because by his own activity the power of Satan, who above all others is the source of evil, is being broken.” (Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God)

 

[LeeB]

Revelation 11:15 which is in the future agrees with you benadam. The saints are like a spiritual embryo developing in the womb of the bride, the church, we grow in grace and knowledge, overcome sin and are always looking forward to the new birth into the kingdom of God.