Tag Archives: kingdom

Can’t spread the Kingdom without the King

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)

seeking

Kingdom values aren’t kingdom values without the King. Loving one another wasn’t new; loving as Jesus loved was new.

If we are going to proclaim the kingdom, we must proclaim the King. If we are going to “bring heaven to earth,” then we will necessarily bring the One whose very presence fills heaven.

So let me put it this way: if you’re feeding and building and digging and giving for the sake of the Kingdom, tell people about the King. Talk about Jesus, who he is, what he’s done for us, and the eternal life he wants to give to us.

Bonus: “Trying to have a Kingdom with no King is just -dom.” :-)

Worldview and the Kingdom of God

Transforming Worldviews book coverI’m really dragging out my discussion of Paul Hiebert’s Transforming Worldviews, so I’ll limit myself to one last post. There’s lots more to examine in this landmark work on Christianity and culture, but you’ll just have to read the rest for yourself.

Toward the end of the book, Hiebert discusses a biblical worldview. He recognizes that there are many different worldviews represented in the Bible, but insists that there are certain ideas that are central to who we are as Christians. One of the main ones has to do with the King and the Kingdom. Hiebert notes that it is the King that defines the Kingdom. There is danger in overemphasizing the Kingdom itself, rather than the King:

A weakness of this view is that it loses sight of how lost human beings are without Christ and the urgency of evangelism. Another is that the church becomes a political player in the arena of world politics. It is no longer a countercultural community on earth, a prophetic voice of the reign of God in the lives of his people. Christianity becomes a civil religion, used to justify democracy, capitalism, individual rights, and Western cultures. (Kindle location 5921)

Bingo. In a pendulum swing, the church has moved from focusing only on evangelism to totally neglecting it. We build houses, feed people, promote justice… but don’t tell people about the King. The Kingdom only exists because there is a King.

Newbigin observes, “An entity can be defined either in terms of its boundaries or in terms of its centre. The Church is an entity which is properly described by its centre. It is impossible to define exactly the boundaries of the Church, and the attempt to do so always ends up in an unevangelical legalism. But it is always possible and necessary to define the centre. The Church is its proper self, and is a sign of the Kingdom, only insofar as it continually points men and women beyond itself to Jesus and invites them to personal conversion and commitment to him” (1980, 68). (Kindle location 5988)

When we emphasize the King, we talk less about who is in and who is out. The focus is on moving people toward Jesus, toward the center.

What about boundaries between saved and lost? For God, who sees into our hearts, the category “Christian” is digital. He knows who are truly his followers and who are worshiping other gods. For us humans, the boundary is often fuzzy. We see the outside, not the heart. Some whom we believe to be Christians may not be so, and some we believe to be lost may, indeed, be followers of Christ. (Kindle location 6035)

Our task isn’t to decide who is “us” and who isn’t. We aren’t defined by our relationship with other Christians, nor their relationship with us. It’s about our relationship with Jesus. We’d do well to spend less time fighting about who is and who isn’t part of the family and more time strengthening relationships with Jesus.

One last quote. This one is worth the price of admission:

The church and believers are called to worship God, to have fellowship with one another, and to bear witness to the gospel in a lost world. Of these three—worship, fellowship, and mission—the church and believers will do the first two better in heaven. It is only the last that they can do best here on earth. (Kindle location 6075)

Sharing the gospel deserves a privileged spot in the work of the church. It’s what we do uniquely now that we won’t do when the Kingdom is fully realized. That’s why attempts to define the church’s mission solely in terms of the Kingdom are inadequate. We can’t limit ourselves to what we will do when the Kingdom is restored. We have to be about pointing people to the King.

Christian tribalism

I’ve been waiting for someone to call my hand on something. Laymond kind of touched on it the other day. What about the Christian nation as our “tribe”; can we treat non-Christians differently than we do Christians?

I’d say no, not in the sense of being willing to harm non-Christians or cheat them in any way? But I do think it means something to be part of the same family, to be brothers and sisters. Paul wrote, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” (Galatians 6:10) We do good to all, but especially to other Christians.

It calls for a balancing act, being fair to others while showing preference to our brothers. Our tribe transcends borders and barriers, but it is our tribe, our people, our nation. We are first and foremost citizens of heaven.

The church: God’s answer to tribalism

I don’t think it’s easy for us to understand the barrier that existed between Jew and Gentile in the first century. Not so much in terms of social interaction (although that definitely existed), but especially in terms of religion. It would have been extremely difficult for a Jew to look on a Gentile as an equal, spiritually speaking. This was still true even in the early church.

Because of this, it was a stunning message that Paul and others preached, a message of equality in the gospel: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:14-18) Christ had torn down the wall of division. He had brought Jew and Gentile into one body.

To Paul, this was one of the great truths of Christianity, a mystery that God had kept hidden in the past: “This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 3:6)

At the heart of all of this was the church, God’s masterpiece which he had to show off to all creation: “Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Ephesians 3:8-11)

The rulers and authorities which would divide people, placing them in rival clans, tribes and nations, these powers would be shown God’s power to reconcile, to bring people together. Where is that power seen? In that church. Because of this, the Lord’s church must be an agent of reconciliation, a force for bringing all people together, regardless of nationality, language, race or other human division.

Tribalism is an enemy of the church, a tool of the powers and authorities that set themselves up against God’s authority. God’s truth is that all men are made in his image and all men can be brought into the body of Christ, the holy Christian nation. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:28-29)

Because of this, Christians must work at bringing people together. We must learn to ignore nationalities and other aspects of tribalism that would separate us from others. We have to come to an awareness of the length, depth, width and height of our kingdom, spanning borders, time zones and continents. The church is God’s answer to man’s tribalism.

Tribalism or Christianity

Tribalism was a problem in New Testament times. Although the universality of the gospel seems obvious to us, it took the early Christians years to realize that the message of salvation wasn’t just for Jews. Then they shared it with Samaritans, since they already believed in the same God, practiced circumcision, and held to a very similar religion. It took divine intervention to get the early disciples to share the gospel with non-believers, and even then, some weren’t too happy about it.

In Acts 11, we see that the believers were scattered from Jerusalem and went out spreading the good news… to Jews. Over time, some came to share the message with Greeks, and many non-Jews were converted. The church in Antioch was one of the first integrated churches. The people around this church came to realize that this was not just another Jewish sect, yet it wasn’t one of the Greek mystery religions either. Astonished at the disappearance of tribalism, the citizens of Antioch had to invent a new term for these disciples: Christians.

When Christians overcome the barriers created by man, the world takes notice.