Over the past couple of months, we’ve heard much about the kingdom of God. It was part of the training that we hosted with Donna, and a few weeks ago I had a chance to speak on the topic of the upside-down kingdom. The kingdom of God has also been mentioned in many of the messages we’ve heard over the summer. But what is the kingdom of God? I think all of us have a sense of what the kingdom of God is, but I’d like to offer a definition of the kingdom that hopefully builds and enhances what you know.
One of the first things to know about the kingdom of God is that it was at the center of Jesus’s ministry and teaching. Mark 1:14 says Jesus started his ministry by announcing, “the kingdom of God has come near.” In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3, Jesus begins with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” In Matthew 13, Jesus talks about the kingdom of God through parables, speaking of the kingdom of God as being like a farmer who sows good seed, like a mustard seed, like a hidden treasure, and like a net to catch fish. There are so many ways that Jesus talks about the kingdom that it can be difficult to understand exactly what He means.
When we put all of these sources together, what we have is an understanding that the kingdom of God is really about the reign of God. It’s about the power, authority, and sovereignty of God being established on earth. In Matthew 6:10, Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray using the Lord’s prayer. He teaches them to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” Those two phrases are very similar and tell us something important about the kingdom of God. If the kingdom of God is about the reign of God, then praying for the kingdom of God to come is a prayer that God would reign on earth, and that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
All the parables about the kingdom of God tell us what it’s like when God truly reigns on earth. Every time Jesus mentions the kingdom of God, he is speaking about what the reign and rulership of God looks like. Like I spoke about in October, the reign and rulership of God looks very different from what we would normally imagine one’s reign to look like. Yet this is how God wants to establish his power and authority on earth, in ways that are often upside-down to our natural conception of power and authority.
I think there are two important things to recognize about the reign of God or the kingdom of God. First, the kingdom of God is about the reign of God over all things. What this means is that Jesus is not only Lord over Christians and the people who are followers of Jesus. Jesus rules over everything. This doesn’t mean that we get to see the full implications of the kingdom of God and the fullness of the reign of God on earth right now. There is a time that is coming (the second coming of Christ) when the fullness of the reign of God will be established, but that time is still in the future. But this doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is still Lord over all. When we pray for God’s kingdom to come, we are praying that more of the reign of God would be evident and present on earth.
Second, we need to willfully accept the kingdom of God. We need to accept Jesus as Lord over our lives. Even though God reigns over the whole earth and all its people, God doesn’t force the kingdom of God on us. Instead, God invites us to receive the kingdom of God like a child (Mark 10:15). We need to agree with the reign and rulership of God, and make an effort to align ourselves with God’s will. Every time we decide to say yes to God, we are receiving the kingdom of God–the reign of God is being established in our hearts and our lives.
Just as Jesus taught us, let’s continue to pray that God’s kingdom would come on earth, meaning that God’s authority and rulership would be received and established on earth. And let’s commit to the kingdom of God in our hearts, as we say yes to Jesus in every area of our lives.