The Kingdom of God is At Hand
Writing in 1963, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great reformed preacher, makes this concise statement about the present churches approach to the faith in his book The Kingdom of God:
“How does it come to pass that, with open Bibles before them, men and women should be wrong not so much about certain details with respect to the gospel, but about the whole thing? …wrong about its foundation, wrong about its central message, wrong about its objective, and wrong about how one comes into relationship with it.”
Lloyd Jones is commenting on Jesus’ announcement of the Kingdom of God which Lloyd-Jones understands to be the essence of the Christian message, “The Kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe!!!” Lloyd-Jones is exactly correct in his articulation that the most foundational problem with the present church is that the church has gotten the gospel wrong and an understanding of the Kingdom of God is the most effective path to clarity as to the question of what is the message, the promises and the objective of the Gospel.
The Hebrew Mind
We know that in Jesus’ time the Jewish expectation of the messianic kingdom was primarily political and economic liberation. The Messiah, the greater David, would bless all mankind with wisdom and righteousness by placing the Jewish nation above all nations. The Spirit of God would rest on the Messiah, the anointed one, and He would rule, through the state, in righteousness. Abraham’s vision of a city in whose architect and builder was God was seen as one in which the law was fully instituted and established through the might of the Messiah reign.
The promise of the Kingdom is the establishment of God’s rule on earth as it is in heaven. The Jewish people and leadership of Jesus’ day saw the path to this blessed quality of life as requiring primarily or at least fundamentally a political and legalistic solution. The Messiah must take over political and military power and establish the Law, the Torah.
The Jewish mind understandably given its status at the time saw their problem as political and therefore its solution as political. But Jesus, the true Christ, came to the Jewish people and revealed an entirely different problem and therefore and entirely different solution. Nonetheless, Jesus did announce the immediacy of the Kingdom!!! It is the path into the kingdom quality of life that set Jesus Christ and the First Century Jewish people apart.
Jesus’ proclamation was and still is that the Kingdom of God or heaven is at hand through His Lordship and our response is to be repentance and faith in Him.
At hand
The meaning of this proclamation is that a truly heavenly quality of life is at hand, or within reach. Something is ‘at hand” when it is within arms length. The kingdom is at hand. The kingdom of God is within our immediate reach.
This at handedness of the kingdom is the exact problem of the modern approach to the faith. The kingdom so often is seen as something we enter after we die. We come to saving faith, in this common evangelical paradigm, so that when we die we go to heaven. The kingdom of heaven is this place called eternity which is present later. The kingdom is seen falsely as actually not at hand at all.
Another view says that the kingdom is at hand, we immediately enter the kingdom upon faith but this entering is positional only. This new status is in the heavens, but the heavens are not on earth. The great problem with this view is that then our realm problems, our marital happiness, how to maintain relationships, practical problems of well-being are answered outside the gospel. This false view of the kingdom as purely heavenly, out there, supports a low view of the practical power of the Gospel to provide blessedness on earth.
The reality is that the kingdom of God is a truly happy and heavenly quality of life that is delivered to the believer in Jesus as the Christ from the inside out and is the exact answer to the practical problems of human kind. A truly happy and heavenly quality of life is available immediately to the believer and this quality of life is not a new social or economic status and is not something that is so heavenly that it does not invade the conscious experience of the believer. Instead, the kingdom of God is to experience heaven on earth through a Spirit to spirit walk with God in the will of God. The kingdom of God is “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” The true gospel, the gospel of the kingdom, delivers a practical righteousness, a practical peace and a practical joy to the follower of Jesus Christ.
The gospel brings to the believer the one thing needful to experience this life. The one key characteristic of heaven is here NOW!!!! This key characteristic of heaven is not first and foremost that there is no political oppression. Jesus, the Christ, did not deliver His people from political oppression. The key characteristic of heaven is not that there is no poverty and no suffering. Jesus, the Messiah, did not deliver His people from poverty and suffering. NO, the key characteristic of heaven is that God is present in heaven. Jesus brought this one aspect of life to His followers at His coming. While He was here, He was the presence of God, but in fact it was better that He left. For now we can all experience a life in the presence of God that drives out all that is at the root of our human dilemma.
This truly happy and heavenly quality of life is indeed immediately present through the Lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives. Repent and believe the great news.
“How does it come to pass that, with open Bibles before them, men and women should be wrong not so much about certain details with respect to the gospel, but about the whole thing? …wrong about its foundation, wrong about its central message, wrong about its objective, and wrong about how one comes into relationship with it.”
Lloyd Jones is commenting on Jesus’ announcement of the Kingdom of God which Lloyd-Jones understands to be the essence of the Christian message, “The Kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe!!!” Lloyd-Jones is exactly correct in his articulation that the most foundational problem with the present church is that the church has gotten the gospel wrong and an understanding of the Kingdom of God is the most effective path to clarity as to the question of what is the message, the promises and the objective of the Gospel.
The Hebrew Mind
We know that in Jesus’ time the Jewish expectation of the messianic kingdom was primarily political and economic liberation. The Messiah, the greater David, would bless all mankind with wisdom and righteousness by placing the Jewish nation above all nations. The Spirit of God would rest on the Messiah, the anointed one, and He would rule, through the state, in righteousness. Abraham’s vision of a city in whose architect and builder was God was seen as one in which the law was fully instituted and established through the might of the Messiah reign.
The promise of the Kingdom is the establishment of God’s rule on earth as it is in heaven. The Jewish people and leadership of Jesus’ day saw the path to this blessed quality of life as requiring primarily or at least fundamentally a political and legalistic solution. The Messiah must take over political and military power and establish the Law, the Torah.
The Jewish mind understandably given its status at the time saw their problem as political and therefore its solution as political. But Jesus, the true Christ, came to the Jewish people and revealed an entirely different problem and therefore and entirely different solution. Nonetheless, Jesus did announce the immediacy of the Kingdom!!! It is the path into the kingdom quality of life that set Jesus Christ and the First Century Jewish people apart.
Jesus’ proclamation was and still is that the Kingdom of God or heaven is at hand through His Lordship and our response is to be repentance and faith in Him.
At hand
The meaning of this proclamation is that a truly heavenly quality of life is at hand, or within reach. Something is ‘at hand” when it is within arms length. The kingdom is at hand. The kingdom of God is within our immediate reach.
This at handedness of the kingdom is the exact problem of the modern approach to the faith. The kingdom so often is seen as something we enter after we die. We come to saving faith, in this common evangelical paradigm, so that when we die we go to heaven. The kingdom of heaven is this place called eternity which is present later. The kingdom is seen falsely as actually not at hand at all.
Another view says that the kingdom is at hand, we immediately enter the kingdom upon faith but this entering is positional only. This new status is in the heavens, but the heavens are not on earth. The great problem with this view is that then our realm problems, our marital happiness, how to maintain relationships, practical problems of well-being are answered outside the gospel. This false view of the kingdom as purely heavenly, out there, supports a low view of the practical power of the Gospel to provide blessedness on earth.
The reality is that the kingdom of God is a truly happy and heavenly quality of life that is delivered to the believer in Jesus as the Christ from the inside out and is the exact answer to the practical problems of human kind. A truly happy and heavenly quality of life is available immediately to the believer and this quality of life is not a new social or economic status and is not something that is so heavenly that it does not invade the conscious experience of the believer. Instead, the kingdom of God is to experience heaven on earth through a Spirit to spirit walk with God in the will of God. The kingdom of God is “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” The true gospel, the gospel of the kingdom, delivers a practical righteousness, a practical peace and a practical joy to the follower of Jesus Christ.
The gospel brings to the believer the one thing needful to experience this life. The one key characteristic of heaven is here NOW!!!! This key characteristic of heaven is not first and foremost that there is no political oppression. Jesus, the Christ, did not deliver His people from political oppression. The key characteristic of heaven is not that there is no poverty and no suffering. Jesus, the Messiah, did not deliver His people from poverty and suffering. NO, the key characteristic of heaven is that God is present in heaven. Jesus brought this one aspect of life to His followers at His coming. While He was here, He was the presence of God, but in fact it was better that He left. For now we can all experience a life in the presence of God that drives out all that is at the root of our human dilemma.
This truly happy and heavenly quality of life is indeed immediately present through the Lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives. Repent and believe the great news.
posted by passthebread at 3:03 PM
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