Reclaiming Jesus' Hope, Gospel, and Way
Here’s a documentary Restoration Fellowship put out some years ago about the shocking lack of knowledge about the kingdom of God in mainstream Christian evangelism and teaching. Although some evangelical leaders have made great progress in understanding the kingdom message, the average church-goer remains attached to the old heaven-at-death mythology.
Watch on YouTube
My future determines my present. As I write these words I’m in training; I run almost every day. Each week I log over 50 miles on the road, in the woods, or in the park. October is pulling me forward like a magnet, determining my daily activities in June. This is because on October 13th, I intend to run a marathon. Running 26.2 miles is not something I can just go out and do. It requires months of intense and consistent training. Day after day, I put my shoes on and run countless hours so that on that one day, for about three hours, I will achieve my peak performance. Like someone whose signed up for a marathon, the coming kingdom should affect how we live in the present. This is what Paul is getting at when he writes the following.
1 Corinthians 6.1-11
1 When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! 4 So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, 6 but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?7 To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? 8 But you yourselves wrong and defraud– even your own brothers! 9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Paul was bewildered that Christians were taking each other to court. He could barely believe that something so absurd could even happen. Of course, from an old covenant perspective, there is nothing wrong with taking one’s neighbor to court if there was a just cause. In fact, extensive provision was made for exactly such a scenario under the Mosaic Law. So, what was so shocking here? Why was Paul beside himself? There were two offenses: (1) they were taking their fellow Christians to court and (2) they were going to court before non-Christians. His core driving thought was expressed by the question: “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” Since the Corinthians disciples were destined to rule the world, could they not figure out how to do community without appealing to outsiders to settle matters? Was there not even one wise man among them before whom the two could go? In fact, Paul argues, it would be better to be defrauded than go before unbelievers since that would testify to the opposite of the kingdom message. Besides, the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom. Notice how the people’s future role as kingdom citizens was to affect how they lived. The first question is, “How will it be in the kingdom.” The next is, “How can I embody kingdom living now in this situation?”
Note how many times Paul mentions the future kingdom when he’s reproving the Corinthians. Over and again he brings their focus to their destiny. Look, you are going to rule the world one day, so I’m sure you can figure out this insignificant matter without having to go to unbelievers. The kingdom does not only give us hope for the future. It is not restricted to our gospel message. It also needs to affect what we do now. If we are the kingdom people, then we need to act like it.
God effect[ed] ‘salvation in Christ,’ and thus creat[ed] a people for his name, whose present existence is thoroughly eschatological; predicated on the death and resurrection of Christ and the gift of the eschatological Spirit, God’s people are both ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ as they live the life of the future in the present, awaiting God’s final wrapup, the final consummation of ‘salvation in Christ.’
Gordon D. Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1995), 47.
The fact that the future has already begun…means two crucial things for Paul: that the consummation is absolutely guaranteed, and that present existence is therefore altogether determined by this reality. That is, one’s life in the present is not conditioned or determined by present exigencies, but by the singular reality that God’s people belong to the future that has already come present. Marked by Christ’s death and resurrection and identified as God’s people by the gift of the Spirit, they live the life of the future in the present, determined by its values and perspective, no matter what their present circumstances.
Gordon D. Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1995), 51.
Papias was the overseer of the congregation at Hierapolis, a city through which a major road carried many travelers. As Christians came through, Papias would ask them if they had known the apostles and if they knew any sayings of Christ. Around the year a.d. 130 he composed five volumes called Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord from what he had learned. Sadly his work did not survive until today, though we can get glimpses of it through the quotations of a few later Christians like Irenaeus and Eusebius. Here is an excerpt from that book:
The blessing thus foretold undoubtedly belongs to the times of the kingdom, when the righteous will rise from the dead and reign, when creation, too, renewed and freed from bondage, will produce an abundance of food of all kinds from the dew of heaven and from the fertility of the earth, just as the elders, who saw John the disciple of the Lord, recalled having heard from him how the Lord used to teach about those times and say: ‘The days will come when vines will grow, each having ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand twigs, and on each twig ten thousand clusters, and in each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape when crushed will yield twenty-five measures of wine. And when one of the saints takes hold of a cluster, another cluster will cry out, ‘I am better, take me, bless the Lord through me.’ Similarly a grain of wheat will produce ten thousand heads, and every head will have ten thousand grains, and every grain ten pounds of fine flour, white and clean. And the other fruits, seeds, and grass will produce in similar proportions, and all the animals feeding on these fruits produced by the soil will in turn become peaceful and harmonious toward one another, and fully subject to humankind.
(Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.33.3-4, trans. Michael Holmes)
Although it is impossible to say whether or not Papias’ saying really goes back to the historical Jesus, we should not rule it out completely because of its outlandishness. Consider, for a moment, that when the children of Israel first entered the Promised Land, two men carried a single cluster of grapes along with some figs and pomegranates on a rod between them (Numbers 13.23). In the kingdom age, this idea of incredible abundance gets amplified. Take a look at these prophecies from Amos and Joel:
Amos 9.13 [ESV]
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “When the plowman will overtake the reaper And the treader of grapes him who sows seed; When the mountains will drip sweet wine And all the hills will be dissolved.Joel 3.18 [ESV]
And in that day The mountains will drip with sweet wine, And the hills will flow with milk, And all the brooks of Judah will flow with water; And a spring will go out from the house of the LORD To water the valley of Shittim.
Furthermore, Papias’ statement about the taming of animals comes straight from Isaiah:
Isaiah 11.6-9 [ESV]
6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. 9 They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
Whether or not Papias’ information really went back to Jesus does not affect the fact that Papias himself clearly believed in a kingdom coming to the earth in which the land would produce abundantly and animals would abstain from violence. Considering the fact that he wrote very early (around a.d. 130) and reportedly knew the apostle John, we cannot merely dismiss his testimony as one later Christian did when he wrote:
The same writer [Papias] has recorded other accounts as having come to him from unwritten tradition, certain strange parables of the Lord and teachings of his and some other statements of a more mythical character. Among other things he says that after the resurrection of the dead there will be a period of a thousand years when the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this earth. These ideas, I suppose, he got through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not realizing that the things recorded in figurative language were spoken by them mystically. For he certainly appears to be a man of very little intelligence, as one may say judging from his own words.
(Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.31.3, trans. Michael Holmes)
So Papias is silly to accept scripture at face value instead of interpreting everything allegorically, like later Christians. (To read more about how anti-kingdom Christians used allegorical interpretation to undermine the idea of an earthly kingdom, see this article.) Ironically, I believe Papias intended the quote above to be taken figuratively. Obviously a grape cannot cry out, “I am better” nor can a head of grain contain 10,000 kernels. However, what does the exaggerated language mean? The saying teaches that the produce and grain of the earth in the kingdom will grow prolifically and that everyone will have enough food. Rather than people fighting over who gets the food, the food will fight over who gets the people. It is Eusebius who doesn’t “get it,” not Papias.
In conclusion, Papias stands as a strong witness to an early vibrant faith in the coming kingdom on earth–a time when God heals our world and causes it to flourish abundantly. Like Amos and Joel before him, Papias envisioned the kingdom age in terms of agricultural abundance rather than a disembodied flight to the celestial realm.
Polycarp was a very early Christian author and leader who wrote a letter to the Philippians between the years a.d. 110 and 140. According to Irenaeus who had heard Polycarp speak once in his youth, Polycarp had been a follower of the Apostle John. As an old man, the government arrested and executed Polycarp on the charge of professing Christianity. Here is what Polycarp says about the kingdom. Unsurprisingly, it sounds very similar to what we find in the New Testament:
To the Philippians 5.2-3
2 Similarly, deacons must be blameless in the presence of his righteousness, as servants of God and Christ and not of people. They must not be slanderers, not insincere, not lovers of money, but self-controlled in every respect, compassionate, diligent, acting in accordance with the truth of the Lord, who became a servant of all. If we please him in this present world, we will receive the world to come as well, inasmuch as he promised that he will raise us from the dead and that if we prove to be citizens worthy of him, we will also reign with him–if, that is, we continue to believe. 3 Similarly, the younger men must be blameless in all things; they should be concerned about purity above all, reining themselves away from all evil. For it is good to be cut off from the sinful desires in the world, because every sinful desire wages war against the spirit, and neither fornicators nor men who have sex with men (whether as the passive or as the active partner) will inherit the kingdom of God, nor will those who do perverse things.To the Philippians 11.2
But how can someone who is unable to exercise self-control in these matters preach self-control to anyone else? Anyone who does not avoid love of money will be polluted by idolatry and will be judged as one of the Gentiles, who are ignorant of the Lord’s judgment. Or do we not know that the saints will judge the world, as Paul teaches?[Polycarp, The Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians, trans. Michael Holmes, 2007]
In Polycarp’s mind, how we live plays a great role in determining where we will end up. In other words, he does not separate our hope from our lifestyle. Because of our destiny to inherit the kingdom, we should live righteously in the present. Our aim is to please the Lord in this age so that we will receive the future age when resurrection happens.
Notice how Polycarp thinks temporally rather than spatially. He does not talk about going “up” to heaven or “down” to hell at death. Rather he looks “forward” to when the future kingdom arrives. He looks forwards not upwards. The question is not “Where will I spend eternity?” but “Will I enjoy the future age?” He understands, as Paul teaches, that those who turn away from sinful lives in the present will judge the world in the future.
What was Jesus up to in his ministry? What did his miracles mean? We don’t have to guess, because he told us what he thought he was doing in his inaugural sermon in his home town of Nazareth.
Luke 4.16-21 [ESV]
16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
In order to truly understand what Jesus is saying, we need to familiarize ourselves with the context of the Isaiah prophecy that Jesus quoted. Here is a more extended quotation, which begins before Jesus started and continues beyond where he left off:
Isaiah 60.18-61.7 [ESV]
60.18 Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise. 19 The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. 20 Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. 21 Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified. 22 The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the LORD; in its time I will hasten it.61.1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion– to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
4 They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 5 Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks; foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers; 6 but you shall be called the priests of the LORD; they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God; you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast. 7 Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion; instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot; therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion; they shall have everlasting joy.
What I find so interesting about this Isaiah prophecy is that it pertains to the kingdom–a time when God’s people rebuild ancient ruins, when strangers maintain their possessions, when all of them become priests of God, when they will enjoy the wealth of nations, when they will possess the land with joy. God plans on redeeming his people and restoring them to glory in the land. However, if this Isaiah 61 prophecy relates to the kingdom in its original context, why did Jesus quote it and say it was fulfilled?
Before answering this question, consider the various aspects of Jesus’ ministry. He healed people, cast out demons, preached the gospel, invited in the outcasts, taught ethics, and attended dinner parties. Typically, we think of these various avenues of ministry independently or perhaps as ways he loved his neighbor as himself. Nevertheless, we don’t need to guess what Jesus thought about his ministry activities. According to him, he was doing Isaiah 61.
Now, some see here a redefinition of the kingdom, as if Jesus is somehow coming against the notion of God setting up an actual monarchy on earth like the kingdom of old. However, that is impossible since it would make liars out of the prophets. What Jesus is doing here in his inaugural sermon is providing a context or framework for his entire ministry. He is doing kingdom work. He brings about signs of the age to come in the present to testify to the future God will one day bring. Surrounding Jesus, wherever he goes, is a bubble of the kingdom. If he encounters someone with a sickness, he heals him or her. If he runs across an outcast of society, he restores their dignity. If he finds a demon-possessed boy, he casts that demon out. This is because in the kingdom there are no sick, outcasts, or demons. Jesus was a living advertisement proclaiming and demonstrating in a small way what God will one day do globally. Would we expect anything less from the Messiah–the one destined to rule on the kingdom throne?
When Jesus was casting out demons, dealing catastrophic blows to Satan’s kingdom, some Pharisees, seeing that they couldn’t refute Jesus’ spectacular authority over unclean spirits, accused him of casting out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons. What Jesus said next may surprise you.
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Matthew 12.22-28 [NASB] |
Luke 11.14-20 [NASB] |
When the kingdom comes, God will bring his final judgment upon Satan and the unclean spirits who serve him. As a result, those living in the age to come will enjoy harmony with God, without dealing with the temptations and machinations of the prince of the power of the air. Jesus’ contemporaries would likely have agreed with this description of the future. However, Jesus’ point is that this coming kingdom is already somehow present in his exorcism ministry. For Jesus, casting out demons is not merely an act of compassion or grace; it is linked with his beliefs about the kingdom of God. Jesus interprets his own battle with Satan’s kingdom as the encroachment of God’s kingdom.
Some Christians allege that Jesus redefined the kingdom from a political reality to a spiritual one and use this text to make that point. However, if Jesus changes the kingdom from the time when God reestablishes the throne of David in Jerusalem with his Messiah on it forever, then what are we to do with all of the prophecies in the Hebrew scriptures? Should we call Isaiah and Daniel false prophets? Should we dismiss David’s messianic psalms as irrelevant to what the messiah will actually do? Rather than such a radical reinterpretation, a simpler explanation is that Jesus fully expected a future kingdom to come, but in his own ministry he was already bringing forth fresh signs of the kingdom as a way of validating his own role as messiah as well as giving people a taste of what the kingdom will be like.
Gaius was a presbyter in Rome living in the early third century who wrote against another Christian named Cerinthus. He may be the first mainstream Christian to write specifically against the kingdom coming on earth. His reason for denying an earthly hope resulted from his own cultural bias. Here is what Gaius wrote:
…Moreover, Cerinthus, through revelations supposedly penned by a great apostle, offers us false tales of wonders allegedly shown to him by angels. After the resurrection, he says, the kingdom of Christ will be on earth, and humanity living at Jerusalem will again be enslaved to lusts and pleasure. He is the enemy of the Scriptures of God and, in his anxiety to deceive, claims that the marriage festivities will last a thousand years…(Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.28, trans. Paul L. Maier, 2007)
According to Gaius, Cerinthus believed that the kingdom would be on earth after the resurrection with people living in Jerusalem. This aligns quite well with dozens of scriptures from the prophets. For example consider this text from Micah:
Micah 4.1-2 [ESV]
1 It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, 2 and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
Why should Gaius oppose such a biblical idea? We don’t have to wonder; he tells us himself. He is concerned with lusts, pleasure, and marriage festivities. In the ancient world, many people thought that all pleasure was inherently evil, an idea called asceticism. This notion is not native to the Jews or the bible, but was very common in the Greco-Roman world. Although Gaius embraced an ascetic mindset, it is clear from the scriptures that God is not against pleasure, whether the enjoyment that accompanies eating rich foods, drinking alcohol, or even marital intimacy. From the Garden of Pleasure (Eden means pleasure) to the bold poetry of the Song of Songs, to Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana, the bible affirms the goodness of both our bodies and the built-in pleasures our bodies experience while at the same time placing boundaries on our enjoyment. To learn more about how asceticism influenced some Christians to reject the kingdom, read How the Kingdom Was Lost 2: Too Hedonistic.
Clement of Rome wrote and epistle to the church at Corinth between a.d. 80 and 100 because the younger generation ousted the established leadership. In the course of his epistle he mentioned the kingdom twice:
1 Clement 42
The apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ…Having therefore received their orders and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and full of faith in the word of God, they went forth with the firm assurance that the Holy Spirit gives, preaching the good news that the kingdom of God was about to come. So, preaching both in the country and in the towns, they appointed their first fruits, when they had tested them by the spirit, to be bishops and deacons for the future believers.1 Clement 50
…All the generations from Adam to this day have passed away, but those who by God’s grace were perfected in love have a place among the godly, who will be revealed when the kingdom of Christ visits us. for it is written: “Enter into the innermost rooms for a very little while, until my anger and wrath shall pass away, and I will remember a good day and will raise you from your graves.”…
The first of these quotes shows that Clement recognized Christ’s disciples performed the same ministry as Jesus. Mark described Jesus’ own gospel message with the following words:
Mark 1.14-15
14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
It is hard to miss the continuity between how Clement describes the disciples and what Mark said about Jesus himself. They both preached the kingdom as gospel. Furthermore we can also observe that Clement does not believe the kingdom came during Jesus’ ministry or even on the day of Pentecost. The disciples carried on the ministry of preaching the kingdom gospel right up until the time when they appointed overseers in the various churches that were present in Clement’s time.
The second text attests not to the proclamation of the kingdom message but to Clement’s own expectation. He looks for the time “when the kingdom of Christ visits us.” Thus, for Clement, the kingdom was undoubtedly a future expectation.
The sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7) is the most comprehensive and well-known teaching about how we should follow Jesus. In it Jesus addresses topics as diverse as anger, lust, divorce, retaliation, prayer, fasting, forgiveness, and handling anxiety. Jesus clearly meant for his disciples to immediately put into practice the instruction he gave them in this sermon. All of this is non-controversial and generally well-known, which leads me to my question. Why does Jesus feel compelled to mention the kingdom eight times in a sermon that has nothing to do with the future? Before moving on, here are the texts:
Matthew 5.3
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Matthew 5.10
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Matthew 5.19-20
19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.Mattehw 6.10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 6.33
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.Matthew 7.21
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Beyond these explicit 8 usages of God’s coming “kingdom,” we find these 2 additional references to the age to come:
Matthew 5.5
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.Matthew 7.13-14
13 Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
Altogether we find 10 references to the kingdom in Jesus’ teaching on ethics. This wouldn’t surprise me if I were examining, say, Jesus’ Olivet Discourse in which he details the events at the end of the age, but to find so much kingdom focus on a sermon on daily living really grabs my attention.
The simple fact is that Jesus cannot separate his present from his future or his ethics from his hope. He sees them together. Because of the coming kingdom we need to live this way now. We should feel the pull of the future in the present such that we already begin conforming our lives to a new standard, beyond what Moses had commanded. We seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness in the present. As we do this we testify to the coming age when God makes everything wrong with the world right.
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