One of the central concepts to the Emerging Church (EC) movement (alright, let’s get real and call it what it is!) and my alternative vision for Capitol Hill is a recapturing of Jesus’ teachings on the Kingdom of God. For someone who was raised as a fundemental evangelical, this is uncharted territory so my thoughts are not exaustive nor terribly profound, but I want to put in digital ink several thoughts on Jesus’ Kingdom vision that were articulated by Scot McKnight in a series of seven posts. Scot is a new-found Christian thinker who has reinvigorated my love for Jesus and his teachings, not to mention given much intellectual and academic support for our groanings within the EC movement.
(I would encourage you to check out and read the seven posts. Because I think they are worthy of your time, I have included links to each of them. You can find them here: Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, Post 4, Post 5, Post 6, Post 7.)
Until I applied myself to studying this idea of the Kingdom of God, I did not realize how much of a focus it was in the ministry and teachings of Jesus. A quick search reveals Jesus used this term nearly 100 times throughout the recorded Gospels. In fact, when He sends out the disciples on their first “assignment” He tells them to “preach this message: the Kingdom of Heaven is near (at hand, available).”I find it extremly interesting that Jesus does not tell them to say: “repent of your sins” or “believe on Jesus Christ and you will be saved” or “confess your sins and you will be saved” or “repeat this prayer and you will go to heaven when you die.” No, the message Jesus wanted His followers to communicate was the openness and availability of God’s Kingdom-reality to each person and society. Here are my initial thoughts on the Kingdom of God:
This reality, the Kingdom of God, is centered around Jesus Christ, the Son of God. His announcement in Mark 1:15 that, “the Kingdom of God is near” is an announcement that the gates into God’s reality are flung wide open, because He had now arrived.
The Kingdom of God is the society that embodies God’s will as found in the Jesus Creed, “love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind, and with all of your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.” This God-created society is the result of His promise to His people, and is marked by release, healing, freedom, favor, justice, mercy, peace, and love.
The Kingdom of God embodies the purpose for which Jesus was on earth, as outlined in His words in Luke 4:16-19. If we think back to Genesis 3 and the promise of the Seed that would crush the head of the Enemy, Christians almost always think about SALVATION. And while true, to a degree, it is more than that: the promised Seed was about RESTORATION, of the God-man relationship and creation-society. Jesus came to restore.
The Kingdom of God is the central vision of Jesus, and the cross was the culmination of and catalyst for accomplishing His vision. What brought about a need for restoration in the first place? Why does the God-man relationship and creation-society need restoring? Sin. Sin destroyed both the God-man relationship and creation-society, and it was the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross, in addition to the bodily resurrection of Jesus, that made this restoration possible.
The Kingdom of God was still the focus of the early church, though the language representing this vision of God’s reality was largely dropped, for various reasons. This Christ-community was a socio-economic, power-denying, fellowship with a mission to spread the Spirit-empowered gospel about Jesus Christ and his community for the good of others and the world.
The Kingdom of God is still the central purpose and vision of the Ecclesia (the Church), and any vision that does not begin with Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom is a denial of Jesus’ Lordship and a misunderstanding of the New Testament. The way in which God executes Jesus’ vision and accomplishes the restoration of the God-man relationship and creation-society is through the Church.
The Ecclesia is the community of Jesusly restored individuals and is formed through justification, atonement, and salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This Kingdom community of Jesusly restored individuals is what “produces”: release, healing, freedom, peace, justice, mercy, and love.
Ultimately, the Kingdom of God comes about through the gospel and the gospel alone. The God-man relationship is restored to the way in which they was originally intended to be, an eternal relationship defined by love, through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Creation and Society is restored to the way it was originally intended to be through the restoration of individuals and the adoption of the Way of Jesus.
Some initial thoughts on the Kingdom of God. I hope to write a series of posts applying Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God to the Capitol Hill community, but until then consider on your own the significance of this vision for the Hill and how the Church should approach it.
be His,
