What is the Kingdom of God?

The Kingdom of God is the central theme in Jesus’ preaching. It is like a fishing net, a mustard seed, a ball of yeast, a treasure buried in a field, a master forgiving debts. You must forget your family to find it; you must leave your riches to squeeze into it; you must be born from above to see it. Perhaps the best definition is seen in Jesus’ prayer for it:

“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10)

The Kingdom of God is where God’s will is done: Where sin has no hold, where death has no sting, where the accuser is thrown down, where swords are beat into ploughshares, where the lion lays down with the lamb, where widows and orphans are loved, where cooking pots are holy like vessels in the Temple, where there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.

With the way the world is today, the pain and suffering, the malicious treatment of one person to another, this Kingdom seems pretty far off. Yet Jesus also says:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15)

There has been a definitive and irreversible victory over sin, death, and the powers of rebellion in Christ. The sick are healed, the lame walk, the dead are raised, the captives are set free, the veil has been torn, and the spirit is poured out on all flesh. The war is won. He is on the throne.

How do we know? The Church is our proof. The Church is a sign. It is a sign that makes real that which it signifies. It is an outward sign of a spiritual reality. It is a sacrament of the Kingdom. Although we don’t always look it quite as well as we should, the Church persists in history as an assurance that what Jesus has accomplished has taken hold and will take hold in the fullness of time.

What is the Gospel?

I once received the ‘gospel’ photocopied on canary yellow, stuck under my windshield. There was a three bullet outline about how to “go to heaven”, along with a bold, italicized headline encouraging readers to “Get a better life using God.”

Three point outline -– Should it really be that simple?

“go to heaven” –- Is that all there is to it?

“using God” –- Do you take God in liquid or pill form?

Of course I criticize because I love. I passionately believe in the revolutionary liberating power of the Gospel of Christ. But there must be something more to it than what it sometimes becomes. These days of ours, in which there is a crying need for a robust Christianity to feed the needs of a spiritually starving people, demand a Gospel that will satisfy, not just another appetizer from Oprah and Dr. Phil.

So what does this meaty Gospel look like?

“and the Word became flesh and lived among us”

The Gospel, signified most fully in Christ, is that God desires to communicate his very self to all humanity. The offer has “divinizing” effects on human nature, as God graciously makes himself a constitutive part of human nature. This process deepens over time through sanctification, at last realized in beatific vision.

In the reverse, with the Incarnation, human nature is taken up for all time into the reality of God. God has made the human to participate in the divine.

“By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

We have been given an invitation to cut in on the ecstatic Triune dance of dynamic interrelated love for all eternity.

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’”

Good News.

What are human beings for?

In the reality of the Triune life we learn that God is inherently disposed towards giving himself to another: ‘Father’ expresses himself in the whole through the eternally generated ‘Son’, at once creating a space in God which is held open by ‘Spirit’, and an utterly profound union that is bound together by ‘Spirit.’ The Trinity is God giving himself so completely to the other that the otherness is fully himself.

This mystery teaches us something profound about human life. While the divine processions of ‘Son’ and ‘Spirit’ must be radically differentiated from the creation of ‘Adam’, there is a sense in which they are not totally distinct. God is in his very self prone to create, to give and share life with others. The welcome to others that is rooted in the triune life spills over, freely, in the act of creation, and does so most fully in the creation of human beings. God was not forced to create in order to be fully himself, but it is precisely because he is fully himself – his triune self – that humans come to be.

What does this tell us about what we are for?

God made us to give himself to us. We exist because he wants to share. We are because God loves to love.

We are rain barrels to catch the flood; empty vases needing flowers; hungry stomachs craving bread of heaven; ears to hear the still small voice; incomplete puzzles awaiting a divine piece.

“Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

Open up!