Category Archives: Kingdom of God

What Is the Kingdom of God? (Part 1)

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Sometime around AD 30 a Jewish peasant named Jesus (Yeshua in his native Aramaic) began preaching a revolutionary message about the “kingdom of God.” This preaching kicked off his public ministry of healing, exorcisms, and teaching, including clashes with the authorities—ultimately leading to his death and resurrection.

 This kingdom that Jesus proclaimed was rooted in ancient Jewish expectations of God’s direct rule as an alternative to the dominant Roman empire, which controlled the land of Israel by force and oppressed its people; but this kingdom was also meant to be an alternative to the reign of the corrupt puppet “king of the Jews” (at the time, Herod Agrippa), who governed at the pleasure—and under the authority—of the Roman empire.

Jesus’s Opening Proclamation of the Kingdom of God

The Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus came from his home town of Nazareth in the northern province of Galilee to the Jordan River, where he was baptized by his cousin John and confirmed as God’s “son” (a messianic title) by a voice from heaven (Mark 1:4–11). Jesus was then led by God’s Spirit into the Judean wilderness for a time of fasting and testing in preparation for his mission (Mark 1:12–13). Then, after John was arrested by the Judean authorities, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news (or “gospel”) of God (Mark 1:14). His announcement was terse and to the point: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and trust in the good news” (Mark 1:15).

God, in other words, has begun to reign in a way not previously seen. In response to this good news, radical change is required (this is what “repent” means) and trust (the positive side of repentance) is called for. The implication is that Jesus’s listeners needed to switch allegiance from all other regimes to the kingdom of God.

Matthew’s Gospel has an even more compact version of Jesus’s opening message: “From that time, Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (Matthew 4:17). Matthew uses the phrase “kingdom of heaven” (which alludes to God’s universal reign—from heaven—over all the earth) in place of “kingdom of God” (something he does in other places too), while using “repent” as a shorthand for the pair “repent” and “trust.” He also introduces Jesus’s announcement by noting that this fulfilled an ancient prophetic expectation from Isaiah 9 that a light would dawn on the people of Galilee, who had been waiting in the darkness of oppression (Matthew 4:12–16, citing Isaiah 9:1–2).

The Problem of Monarchy/Kingdom

The “kingdom of God” is central to the teaching of Jesus; this term (or variants, including “kingdom of heaven,” “my kingdom,” “his kingdom,” “the kingdom,” “my Father’s kingdom”) occurs over one hundred times in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Yet this talk of a “kingdom” of God is often troubling to modern people. Isn’t the very idea of “kingdom” an oppressive idea? Apart from the gender-specific nature of the term, perhaps enshrining male dominance, we are aware of the abuses of various monarchies throughout human history. Indeed, “kingdom” merges too easily into “empire,” a top-down system of oppression and injustice, which needs to be resisted rather than celebrated.

In order to grasp the significance of the kingdom of God in the preaching of Jesus (and, more generally, in the Bible), we need to take seriously the ancient historical context in which Jesus and the biblical writers lived. Not only were monarchies the dominant form of political governance, but they were typically oppressive regimes, ruled by kings, emperors, or their deputies (called governors or a host of other terms) who typically guarded their own privilege, at the expense of the masses over whom they ruled. The point is that political systems of the ancient world were generally oppressive kingdoms. So what was required to challenge the abusive use of power was an alternative kingdom—one that operated on significantly different principles

A Reversal of Power Dynamics

Once, when some of Jesus’s disciples expressed their desire for places of privilege in the coming kingdom (Mark 10:35–37), Jesus called them all together and explained that a reversal of typical power roles was required: “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:42–44) And he went on describe his own mission as follows: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

So there will be a reversal of power dynamics in the kingdom of God. But beyond that, what did Jesus mean by this term?

This is the first installment of a longer piece I am writing on the Kingdom of God for a volume of essays introducing Christianity to a broad, international audience (to be published by Routledge). The second installment can be found here. Stay tuned for more installments.

Speaking on a Christian Worldview in South Korea

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I’m excited by my first trip to South Korea.

Last year I was invited to give two plenary lectures on a Christian worldview at a conference at Handong Global University, in Pohang, South Korea. The time has now come for the conference and I am finally in Korea.

The conference is called, “Christian Scholars: Forming Identity, Building Community.” It is sponsored by the International Network for Christian Higher Education (INCHE) and is for Christian academics throughout Asia and Oceania. I’ve been told that scholars and teachers from twelve different countries will be attending.

Why was I invited to give these talks? That’s something I asked when I received the invitation.

It seems that lots of Koreans have read my work, and not just my first book on a Christian worldview, which I wrote with Brian Walsh (The Transforming Vision). The Korean translation of that book sold as least as many copies as (if not more than) the original English edition!

It turns out that all of my books have been translated into Korean (The Transforming Vision is also in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Indonesian). Given my career as a biblical scholar since The Transforming Vision, it seems that the conference organizers wanted to hear how I would articulate a Christian worldview today in our contemporary global context.

My two lectures will introduce participants to serious biblical theology, focusing on humanity as the image of God and the movement of the biblical story towards the eschaton. I will attempt to draw implications from this deep dive into Scripture for Christians in academia (connecting to the twin conference themes of identity and community).

My lectures are entitled “The Vocation of the Christian Scholar: Called to Image God” and “Teaching towards a Vision: A New Heaven and a New Earth” (you can read a summary of the lectures here).

The conference runs for three days; my lectures are on days 1 and 2 (you can see the conference schedule here).

There are also thirteen breakout sessions planned, with three presentations in each (thirty-nine presentations in all). You can see the range of topics here.

I am both honored to be at this conference and somewhat intimidated by my assignment. But I am trusting in the grace of God and in my wonderful Korean hosts.

A selfie with Shin Gyun Kim, my Korean host who picked me up from the airport in Seoul.

I’m very much looking forward to fruitful engagement with fellow Christians in academia from different cultures and diverse fields of study.

A Conversation on Biblical Eschatology with J. Richard Middleton (Interview with Seminary Now)

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Seminary Now recently released my Biblical Eschatology course, where I look at how the Bible’s vision for the end connects with the entire biblical story.

In connection with the course, Seminary Now posted this blog interview in which they asked me various questions about my journey to eschatology, my understanding of creation to the end times, and the role of the pastor as it relates to teaching churches about eschatology.

How did you become interested in eschatology?

I was a 20-year old undergraduate theology student trying to understand God’s purposes for the world beyond the church. Since I wasn’t planning on going into pastoral or church “ministry,” I wondered about how—and to what extent—God cared about life in the ordinary, so-called “secular” world. I guess I was wondering if I could serve God if I wasn’t doing something intrinsically “spiritual” like pastoring.

This led me to study the theme of the kingdom of God throughout the Bible, both where it was explicit—as in the teaching of Jesus—and where it was implicit. I traced the kingdom theme from God as ruler of creation to the consummation of God’s purposes in the new heaven and new earth, when the kingdom fully comes and God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. 

So, I found biblical eschatology to be very helpful for understanding where history is going and how much God values (and wants to save) this created world. Ultimately, I came to understand that earth is meant to be the sacred realm in which we serve God and that all sorts of ordinary human activities are equally “spiritual.”

What does preaching on eschatology look like from the pulpit? How and why is introducing the church to the concept important for redeeming each day and God’s work in it?

Preaching on eschatology rarely has to be explicit. Mostly it is about communicating a strong sense that God cares about earthly life and wants to redeem us in the fullness of our humanity. 

The point is that eschatology (like every other theme and topic in the Bible) isn’t there for our intellectual curiosity. Rather, the entire Bible is meant to empower us to live more faithfully as disciples of Jesus. 

But this requires that we frame our lives by the wonderful biblical story of God’s desire to redeem the world he made, centered in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Given that our lives are typically framed by the idolatrous narratives of our culture (which we are socialized into and come to believe at an implicit level), good preaching is meant to ground us in the alternative narrative the Bible tells, while challenging us to let go of those attitudes and practices that are not congruent with this narrative. 

So the primary duty of preaching is to reshape the imaginations of God’s people to take this story and its goal (the new creation) so seriously that it transforms how we live in the present. As I write in my book, “Ethics is lived eschatology.”

Many of us find it hard to understand the connection between heaven and earth. What is that connection and why does it matter?

The place to start is Genesis 1:1, which says that in the beginning God created heaven and earth. Heaven and earth in the Bible are the two primary aspects of the created order. 

According to Psalm 115:16, “The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, / but the earth he has given to human beings.” Earth is our realm; heaven is not. Heaven is the realm beyond the earth; it is thus “transcendent,” which simply means “beyond.” The Bible claims that heaven is where God has set up his throne (Pss. 2:4; 11:4; 103:19; Isa. 66:1; Amos 9:6; Matt. 5:34; 23:22). Yet heaven is also the realm of the sun, moon, and stars—along with the angelic host (Ps. 148:2–3). 

This doesn’t mean that God literally lives “up there” among the stars or out beyond Saturn or Alpha Centauri. Instead, God’s throne in heaven, from which he rules the earth, is a way of speaking of God’s transcendence. Yet, paradoxically, because heaven is part of the created order (in the Bible), God’s throne in heaven also speaks of God’s immanence. Having created the world, God took up residence in part of it. But the earth currently lacks the fullness of God’s presence. The Bible anticipates that God will bring history to its goal at Christ’s return, when God will make all things new. 

At that time, God’s throne will shift from heaven to earth (Rev. 21:3, 5; 22:1, 3) and God’s glory will so fill the earth that the earth will finally be conformed to heaven. 

How has your own view of God and creation been changed as a result of your study of eschatology?

My study of eschatology was the beginning of a trajectory that led to me becoming a biblical scholar and teacher of the Bible. Biblical eschatology was the starting point for me coming to a more holistic vision of God’s purposes for this world. This vision has inspired and energized me to live towards the vision of God’s kingdom in my personal life and to communicate this amazing vision of God’s unfailing love for his creation (both human and nonhuman) to others. 

My study of eschatology led to a more profound understanding of—and love for—God. And it generated in me a passionate desire to share what I have learned with Christ’s church. 

So many of us have been confused about eschatology, and I don’t mean just about the crazy predictions of the future that Christians have tried to get from the Bible. More importantly, we’re confused about God’s purposes for earthly life. But it’s really pretty simple. It’s summed up in Micah 6:8: “What does the Lord require of you? / To act justly and to love mercy / and to walk humbly with your God.” Biblical eschatology is focused on helping us to live according to God’s righteous intentions for human, earthly life.