Tag Archives: Kingdom of Heaven
On the Kingdom of God and this World
In my opinion, one of the most profound scenes of Jesus’s passion is his examination before Pilate in John 18:28–40. In the middle of this scene, Jesus makes a startling statement: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here” (John 18.36). This statement is pregnant with significance for understanding the nature of the kingdom Jesus preached, but it is often misunderstood. When Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” many understand him to mean something like, “My kingdom has nothing to do with the earth.” This can create the misconception that the Christian hope is ultimately to escape the physical world for an immaterial heavenly existence. But is this what Jesus is really saying? To answer that question, we must distinguish between two others: Where does Jesus’s kingdom come from, and where will it ultimately be manifested? Jesus’s kingdom is not an immaterial or purely spiritual kingdom removed from the earth. Rather, its origin and authority do not derive from the present world order, and it will ultimately be manifested in its fullness when Christ reigns over a renewed creation.
However, in order to understand this, we must first consider Jesus’s statement in its immediate context. The question Jesus is answering sets the scene. Pilate asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33). In response, Jesus does not deny the implication of the question, but he uses the opportunity to clarify the nature of his kingdom: “My kingdom is not [from] this world.” The preposition (ἐκ) indicates the source or origin of Jesus’s kingdom, not its geographical location or ultimate destination. In other words, Jesus does not mean that his kingdom has nothing to do with this world, that it will never exist upon the earth, or even that it is purely spiritual. Rather, Jesus is saying that his authority does not stem from the world’s powers and that his kingdom does not operate according to the world’s principles and values. This is why he goes on to say, “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews.” If his kingdom were a kingdom derived from this world, then his servants would advance it according to this world’s methods. But his kingdom is from above, even as he is from above. It is defined by a different set of priorities and values. Or, to put it another way, Jesus’s point concerns the origin and character of his kingdom, not the permanent exclusion of the earth from its rule.
This distinction between the kingdom’s heavenly origin and its earthly significance is consistent with a larger pattern in John’s Gospel. Earlier, Jesus tells his opponents, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23). The language closely parallels Jesus’s description of his kingdom before Pilate. Yet when Jesus says that he is not “of this world,” he obviously does not mean that his mission has nothing to do with the world. Jesus comes from above precisely in order to enter this world and accomplish God’s saving purposes within it. His heavenly origin identifies the source of his identity and authority without removing his mission from the earthly sphere. The same is true of his kingdom. Because it is not “from this world,” Christ’s kingdom does not derive its authority from earthly rulers like Pilate or advance through the coercive power by which worldly kingdoms maintain their rule. Its authority comes from God and therefore confronts the fallen world’s values rather than conforming to them. A kingdom that is not from this world, then, need not be a kingdom that has nothing to do with this world. Indeed, the larger biblical story reveals that God’s purpose is not to abandon the world he created, but ultimately to redeem and renew it.
In the beginning, God created the physical world and all it entails, and then he pronounced it to be “very good.” When sin entered the picture, however, it corrupted God’s good creation. But rather than simply abandon what he had made, God set in motion a plan to redeem the created order and restore what was lost in the garden. This is why Paul says that creation itself longs to be “set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children” (Rom. 8:21). Significantly, Paul connects the liberation of creation with the redemption of our bodies (8:23). The Christian hope, therefore, can be summed up in one word: resurrection. Jesus was raised bodily, and those who believe in him await a resurrection in which our mortal bodies will be glorified. (On Christian hope as resurrection rather than simply “going to heaven,” see here.) Our hope is not for some kind of disembodied existence, nor is it to be saved from material creation. Rather, we await the glorification of our bodies so that we might live as embodied creatures within a restored creation. The biblical story does not move from creation to the abandonment of creation, but from creation through fall and redemption to new creation.
This is ultimately how the kingdom of God will be manifested on earth, i.e., in a new creation; this is the goal of the Bible’s story. In Revelation 21:1–3, we read of a new heaven and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth. John records it this way: “Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God” (Rev. 21:3). The direction of this movement is significant. God’s people do not permanently leave the earth to dwell with God somewhere else; God comes to dwell with his people in a renewed creation. This vision brings to fulfillment Isaiah’s earlier expectation of “new heavens and a new earth” (Isa. 65:17) and the declaration in Revelation that “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15). Christ’s reign, therefore, does not culminate in the abandonment of the created world, but in God’s reign being fully manifested throughout a renewed creation. The present world order characterized by sin, rebellion, death, and corruption passes away, but God’s purposes for his creation do not. The kingdom is not from this world, but it is ultimately for this world—not the world as presently corrupted by sin, but the world judged, renewed, and brought completely under the reign of Christ.
Of course, this does not mean that Christ is not already reigning. Christ does not have to wait until the new creation to become King. He is King, and he is seated at the right hand of the Father, where he reigns over his church by his Spirit through the Word. His kingdom is already present, and his authority is already real. Through his death, resurrection, exaltation, and the giving of the Spirit, Christ presently reigns. We call this inaugurated eschatology, or the already and the not yet. (On inaugurated eschatology in the preaching of John and Jesus, see my post here.) The kingdom of Christ has already begun, but it has not yet reached its full realization. However, it is important to note that just because Christ’s kingdom is already present, this does not mean that it is a purely spiritual kingdom. It is presently manifested on earth through his church, and one day it will be consummated throughout the new creation. The difference is not between a spiritual kingdom now and an earthly kingdom later, but between a kingdom already inaugurated and a kingdom not yet consummated. The kingdom that has already broken into the present through Christ will therefore reach its appointed goal when his reign extends in all its fullness throughout a renewed creation at his return. (On the already and the not yet of the Kingdom, see Thinking Theologically here.)
So, we can now return to that profound scene with which we began. Pilate looks upon what appears to be a powerless Jewish prisoner and asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus’s answer is that he possesses a kingdom, but that his kingdom is “not from this world” (John 18:36). Far from denying his kingship or consigning his kingdom to some immaterial spiritual realm, Jesus identifies the divine source and radically different character of his reign. His kingdom does not originate from the fallen powers of this world, nor does it advance through their methods of coercion and violence. The Christian hope, therefore, is neither the establishment of Christ’s kingdom through worldly political conquest nor an escape from the physical world into an eternal disembodied existence. Instead, we await the return of the King, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of evil, and the renewal of creation, when the reign that already belongs to Christ will be manifested in all its fullness. Jesus’s kingdom is not from this world because its authority, power, and character come from God. But that does not mean that Christ intends to abandon the world to sin, death, and decay. The King who once stood before Pilate will return to renew creation and manifest his reign over all things. The kingdom is not from this world, but God’s purpose is ultimately to bring this world, renewed and restored, under the reign of its rightful King.
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On the Preaching of John the Baptist and Jesus
Have you ever wondered why all four Gospels begin the story of Jesus’s public ministry with the ministry of John the Baptist? Could it possibly be because John came preaching, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near!” (Matt. 3.2), and Jesus began his own ministry by preaching, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near!” (Matt. 4.17)? They begin their preaching with virtually the same message. What, then, is the relationship between the preaching and ministry of John the Baptist and that of Jesus? Sometimes John is treated as little more than a necessary but largely preparatory prelude to the more important ministry of Jesus, almost as though his primary purpose were simply to baptize Jesus and then disappear from the story. But the Gospels reveal remarkable continuity between the preaching of these two figures. Jesus’s preaching stands in fundamental continuity with John the Baptist’s proclamation of the approaching kingdom, repentance, salvation, and judgment; yet it also develops John’s message by announcing that the kingdom has become present in Jesus’s own ministry while its final judgment remains future. The transition from John to Jesus, therefore, is not a transition from one eschatological message to another, but from the announcement of what God is about to do to the inauguration of that promise in Jesus himself. To understand this development, however, we must first consider what John was actually announcing.
Of course, John the Baptist’s preaching is fundamentally eschatological. He appears in the wilderness announcing, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near!” (Matt. 3.2). The nearness of God’s kingdom means that Israel has reached a decisive moment in the history of salvation, and repentance is the necessary response to what God is about to do. Indeed, John warns his hearers not to presume upon their covenantal identity: “Don’t presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’” (Matt. 3.9). Instead, they must “produce fruit consistent with repentance” because “the ax is already at the root of the trees” (3.8, 10). John’s proclamation therefore contains both salvation and judgment. On the one hand, he announces the coming of one more powerful than himself who “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (3.11). On the other hand, this Coming One already has “his winnowing shovel” in his hand and will separate the wheat from the chaff, burning the latter “with fire that never goes out” (3.12). John therefore stands at the threshold of Israel’s eschatological expectation, announcing that God’s promised intervention is no longer located in some distant future—it has drawn near. His call to repentance, promise of the Spirit, and warning of judgment all derive their urgency from this conviction. Most importantly, however, John does not present himself as the one who will accomplish these things. His entire proclamation points beyond himself toward the Coming One through whom God’s promised salvation and judgment will arrive.
The preaching of Jesus stands in basic continuity with the contours of John’s message. As noted above, Jesus also comes proclaiming the nearness of the kingdom and the need for repentance. In Matthew 4.17, Jesus declares, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near!” repeating verbatim the proclamation of John (Matt. 3.2). Similarly, Mark summarizes Jesus’s preaching: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1.15). The point is that Jesus retains John’s basic eschatological framework: kingdom, repentance, salvation, judgment, restoration, and accountability before God. He does not correct John by suggesting that his expectation of judgment was mistaken or that Israel’s eschatological hopes were misguided. On the contrary, Jesus repeatedly warns of a coming judgment, whether in his teaching concerning Gehenna (Matt. 10.28), the separation of the righteous and wicked (Matt. 13.40–43), or the future judgment of the Son of Man (Matt. 25.31–46). We must therefore resist the simplistic dichotomy that John preached judgment while Jesus preached grace. Both proclaim salvation and judgment as dimensions of God’s coming kingdom. The fundamental difference between their preaching must be located somewhere else. The question is not whether Jesus abandoned John’s eschatological message, but what happened to that message once the One whom John announced actually arrived.
In Matthew 11.2–3, John sends messengers to Jesus to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” We are not told exactly what prompted John’s question, but the apparent disconnect between his preaching and Jesus’s actual ministry was likely part of the equation. John had proclaimed the nearness of the kingdom alongside warnings of impending judgment, yet the ministry of Jesus did not seem to indicate that such judgment had arrived. This is why Jesus’s answer to John’s question is so significant. Rather than simply answering yes, Jesus points to the fruit of his ministry: “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are told the good news” (Matt. 11.5). These signs reflect the expectations of eschatological restoration found throughout the Book of Isaiah (especially Isa. 35:5–6; 61:1–2). The healings, exorcisms, forgiveness, restoration, and proclamation of good news therefore demonstrate that Israel’s promised salvation has begun. John announced what God was about to do; Jesus points to what God is now doing through him. Here we encounter the essential development from John’s preaching to that of Jesus: John announces the Coming One; Jesus announces and embodies the arrival of the kingdom because he is the Coming One. The transition from John to Jesus is therefore the transition from eschatological expectation to eschatological fulfillment. The promised blessings of the kingdom have begun to enter the present through the ministry of Jesus. But if the blessings have arrived, what has happened to the judgment John so urgently announced?
John had proclaimed that the ax was at the root, that the winnowing fork was in the Coming One’s hand, and that the chaff would be burned with unquenchable fire. Yet Jesus heals, forgives, restores, eats with sinners, and proclaims good news. What is important to remember, however, is that John was not wrong: judgment is coming. Rather, the ministry of Jesus brings greater clarity to the temporal structure of John’s eschatology. The kingdom has arrived in the earthly ministry of Jesus, but final judgment has not. This distinction is illustrated particularly well in Jesus’s sermon at Nazareth in Luke 4. There Jesus reads from Isaiah 61:1–2 and then proclaims, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled” (Luke 4:21). Interestingly, however, Jesus’s reading stops with “the year of the LORD’s favor” and does not include the following phrase, “the day of our God’s vengeance.” We should probably not build too much upon this omission alone, but it fits the larger pattern of Jesus’s ministry remarkably well. The promised blessings of Israel’s restoration are being inaugurated in the present, while final judgment remains future. This does not mean that Jesus abandons John’s expectation of judgment. As noted above, Jesus repeatedly warns of a coming judgment and associates its consummation with the future coming of the Son of Man in glory. Judgment has not disappeared from God’s eschatological program; Jesus has revealed that the kingdom’s saving blessings enter history before its final judgment arrives.
The point is that John’s basic expectations were correct. The Coming One would bring salvation, the Spirit, restoration, and judgment. But the earthly ministry of Jesus reveals that these realities do not all arrive simultaneously in their consummated form. The preaching and ministry of Jesus operate according to what is often described as the “already and not yet,” or inaugurated eschatology. This simply means that in the earthly ministry of Jesus, the kingdom of God was already present even though its final consummation remained future. For example, Jesus declares, “If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). His ministry of healing, exorcism, forgiveness, and restoration therefore demonstrates that God’s saving reign had already broken into history. Yet Jesus continues to speak of realities that remain future: the resurrection of the dead, the return of the Son of Man, final judgment, and the consummation of God’s kingdom. The kingdom is therefore genuinely present without yet being present in its fullness. Salvation has been inaugurated, while final judgment and consummation remain future. This is not a rejection of John’s preaching but its clarification and fulfillment. The Coming One has arrived, just as John announced, but Jesus reveals something John did not fully articulate: his first advent inaugurates the promised salvation of the kingdom before his return brings that kingdom to its consummation in final judgment.
In the final analysis, the preaching of Jesus neither abandons nor merely repeats the preaching of John the Baptist. Both proclaim the nearness of God’s kingdom, call Israel to repentance, announce the arrival of eschatological salvation, and warn of coming judgment. This is why Matthew can summarize their preaching with precisely the same words: “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near!” (Matt. 3:2; 4:17). Yet those words take on a new significance when spoken by Jesus. John stands at the threshold of fulfillment, announcing that the kingdom is near and pointing forward to the Coming One who will bring it. Jesus is that Coming One, and through his preaching, healings, exorcisms, forgiveness, and restoration, the saving power of the kingdom begins to enter the present. The transition from John to Jesus is therefore the transition from eschatological expectation to eschatological fulfillment—not yet fulfillment in all its fullness, but fulfillment genuinely inaugurated in history. John announces that God’s kingdom has drawn near; Jesus announces and demonstrates that in him its saving power has begun to arrive. Salvation has entered the present, while final judgment remains ahead, awaiting the return of the King who first came proclaiming good news.
