Kingdom-Driven Church

By John Nugent

Many evangelicals are convinced that the gospel has fallen upon hard times. They believe that a good number of Christians have confused the benefits of the good news with the good news itself. I was skeptical of these claims, but recent experiences have made me wonder.

When teaching about the gospel I begin with a simple exercise. I hand each participant a blank card. On it I have them summarize the good news that Jesus and his followers proclaimed. Then I collect the cards and read them aloud.

The answers are similar: “Jesus loves me and will help me through life.” “My sins are forgiven and guilt is removed.” “Jesus died so I may rise from death and live eternally.” Though these statements reflect important components of what Jesus has done and the benefits he confers upon us, participants are often surprised to learn that, by themselves, these benefits do not comprise the gospel that Jesus and his followers preached.

I expose students to the biblical gospel in the most straightforward way I know. I hand them another card. Each contains a different verse from the Gospels and Acts in which the good news that Jesus or his followers preached is summarized in a sentence or two. One by one they read the verses aloud, and when they are through the message is clear. According to Scripture, the good news John the Baptist preached (Matthew 3:1, 2), that Jesus preached (Matthew 4:17, 23; 9:35; Mark 1:14, 15; Luke 4:43; 8:1; 9:11; 16:16), that Jesus commissioned his followers to preach (Matthew 10:7; Luke 9:2, 60; 10:9-11), that Jesus said would be preached until the end (Matthew 24:14), that Jesus preached after his resurrection (Acts 1:3), and that Jesus” followers preached in their earliest mission work (Acts 8:12; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31), was the gospel of God”s kingdom.

Importantly, however, one notices in the book of Acts that after Jesus ascended into Heaven, the apostles preached not simply about the kingdom of God, but about the kingdom of God and Jesus. Notice that John the Baptist and Jesus preached about the kingdom of God. Jesus” earliest followers preached about the kingdom of God and Jesus. But many Christians today preach about Jesus and not the kingdom of God.

My aim in this essay is not to trace the complicated history of how “kingdom” language dropped out of contemporary explanations of the good news, nor to claim that those who neglect kingdom language do not understand the good news. People may certainly comprehend the gospel but use different terms to discuss it. I only want to raise awareness of kingdom language, clarify its meaning, and suggest two reasons why recovering such language may empower churches to fuller witness today.

What is the Kingdom of God?

The kingdom of God is best understood as a period in history ushered in by the Messiah when God”s reign over all creation takes hold. To better understand this, we must review the broad scope of the biblical narrative.

In the beginning, God created humanity to enjoy his generous gifts to us””gifts of living, shaping our own lives, loving others, enjoying God”s creation, and worshiping God. Human sin distorted these gifts and thwarted our enjoyment of them. It alienated humans from God, one another, and creation. This has resulted in reckless living, strife between people, separation from God, and death itself.

God did not leave creation in this condition. He formed a people, Israel, whom he taught what it means to live according to God”s design and through whom he showed the world what right-living entails. God did not mandate such living for his own benefit. Rather he desires his creatures to fully enjoy his generous gifts.

Needless to say, Israel struggled to fulfill its calling, but when all seemed hopeless, God cast a vision through his prophets of a future Israelite who would inaugurate a new era in world history. This Messiah judged God”s enemies, restored creation, and gathered all nations under God”s reign. In short, God”s original intentions for creation became reality.

This promised era, the kingdom of God, began with Jesus Christ. In Jesus, God became human. In living, Jesus showed us what it means to live rightly. In dying and rising, he released the stranglehold sin and death formerly held on our lives and over creation.

In forming the church and gracing us with his Spirit, God furnished us the place and power to embody and bear witness to his kingdom. However, God”s reign has not yet been fully realized. Out of love for all humans and desire that more may enjoy his reign, God has allowed the kingdoms of this world to continue for a time. Their continued resistance to God”s reign stands as a reminder that his kingdom has not fully come.

Yet opposition to God”s reign is not the final word. Christ promised to return. When he does, the counter-kingdoms of this world will be vanquished permanently. God will raise his faithful who have died and gather them unto his faithful who are alive and he will dwell among them forever in the new heavens and earth. This subjugation of all things under God”s rule is the broadest sense of what the kingdom of God means in Scripture.

Implications for the Church

As leaders in the Restoration Movement have rightly restored key practices of the early church, it may now be time to revisit how the early church proclaimed the gospel. Here are two ways restoring kingdom language will empower the church”s witness.

“¢ Emphasize the new life of the kingdom that Jesus offers believers now. I have been preaching the good news of Jesus and the kingdom of God for more than a decade now. Each time, without fail, many who hear it for the first time flood me afterwards with appreciation. The reason is almost always the same. Many Christians have thought that, although Jesus came to fix their afterlife, he left their current life as is. Of course they heard preachers talk about repentance and new life, but they never realized that life now is supposed to be radically different from that of nonbelievers. They assumed that this life, even in Christ, was meant to be a drag, whereas abundant life begins in the hereafter.

This often results from well-intentioned Christians preaching Jesus without the narrative framework of the gospel. From the hearer”s perspective, however, there is a big difference between these two statements: “Jesus died for your sins and rose from the dead so you may inherit eternal life after you die.” “In his life, death, and resurrection Jesus inaugurated God”s kingdom so that you may live in newness of life now and may experience the fullness of that life when Jesus returns to finalize God”s reign.”

This in no way invalidates other, more familiar elements of the good news””like how the cross of Jesus pardoned our sins, vanquished God”s enemies, and so on””but it properly situates them in the narrative framework shared by the early church.

When people hear this for the first time, they receive it as good news. It means old self-abusive habits need not remain with them until death. It means not being judged according to social status, talent, biological relations, or academic credentials. It means there is a real-life body of believers who value them as Jesus does. It means that this kingdom-seeking, Spirit-empowered body will be with them each step of the way to warn them of dangers, pick them up when they fall, appreciate and incorporate their unique gifts, and love them tirelessly. This is why Jesus said of Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9), and of his followers, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

God raises up leaders to cast a vision of new life under God”s reign. Unfortunately, we seldom rise above the vision such leaders set before us. We come to expect from life and faith only what our imaginations have been formed to perceive. Thus when all we are taught to expect from faith is a happy ending, we may live only a mediocre life. But when the abundant life of God”s kingdom is set before us, we may blossom with the new life God intends for us.

“¢Â Elevating the “to be” of the church”s mission alongside the “to do.” Put differently, the kind of corporate life believers share is as important as the tasks they carry out. In the past decade, visionary leaders have challenged churches and individual Christians to clarify our purpose. They have directed us to church growth books and encouraged participation in seminars aimed at getting churches to ask the same kinds of questions that successful businesses ask, namely: What is our purpose or mission? What do we exist “to do”? If we could focus on such questions, they propose, we can streamline church life, major in majors, and avoid time-consuming distractions.

We were right to recognize that if God”s people are not intentional about our mission, we may drift from it and fail to bear fruit. A problem arises, however, when the church”s mission is driven by a truncated gospel message. If the good news is that Jesus died for our sins to secure us a pleasant afterlife, then the purpose of many streamlined churches becomes, in practice, to get as many people as possible to fulfill the minimum requirements necessary to share in the resurrected life. However, if the good news includes, among other aspects, immediate newness of life according to God”s kingdom, then the “to be” of the church”s mission is just as important as the “to do.” Our job is both to spread the good news about Jesus and his kingdom and to embody that news in our life together.

Jesus” parables about the kingdom were not pie-in-the-sky visions of the distant future. They were pictures of the new reality Jesus was making possible””a reality that demanded an immediate response that would transform how his followers viewed the world and lived their lives. This new life is central to Christian witness. It is what makes us savory salt, bright light, and a city on the hill worth noticing. The kingdom of God must therefore serve as the rudder that guides Christian decision-making. We must always ask how this or that course of action both leads others to Christ and gives them a glimpse of God”s kingdom. A decision that accomplishes the former without the latter falls short.

For example, unbelievers may be drawn to Christ more easily if churches gave up on racial or social reconciliation and chose to focus on only one race or economic class. This choice would remove one barrier that may prevent a racist or classist from joining a church. However, that decision would also shape that church”s life so as to bear witness””not to the kingdom of God, where ethnicity and net worth do not segregate””but to the fallen world where they do. The “to do” and the “to be,” like the message of Jesus and God”s kingdom, should not be separated.

For a long time the world has noticed a strong break between what Christians preach and who Christians are. For this reason many have rejected the faith altogether. Emphasizing the church”s mission to proclaim Christ and embody his kingdom in our life together may therefore strengthen our witness.

In Matthew 24:14, Jesus said, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Most Christians agree that the end has not come. So we must continue to preach the good news Jesus preached, though perhaps with one significant difference.

Following the example of the early evangelists, we must never proclaim the kingdom of God independent of the Jesus who died, rose, and now sits at his Father”s right hand. Emphasizing the kingdom does not mean downplaying Jesus” death nor ignoring various benefits of the good news that are often mistaken for the full gospel message. It means preaching the entire gospel as best we understand it, humbly aware that we know in part and preach in part, but when Christ returns to bring his kingdom in its fullness, only then shall we know fully.

 

 

John Nugent is associate professor of Old Testament at Great Lakes Christian College, Lansing, Michigan.