by which the gospel wounds the world for the sake of the world’s healing. So it is that it could be said that “Jesus Christ was the supreme divine intrusion into the world’s settled arrangements.”4
Kingdom was not an unfamiliar concept among first century Jews. They were certainly well-steeped in the triumph and tragedy of their own national existence. The nation’s encounters with a multitude of other kingdoms and empires were the essence of lore. The practice of remembrance recalled an exodus of massive proportions: a departure from life in one oppressive kingdom, only to encounter numerous others on their way to a land promised by the God of Jacob, and a home for the descendants of Joseph who were the great nation of promise to Abram. The cumulative reality for ancient Israel was one of struggle for identity and independence. Their current status, as underlings in the powerful and ever-present Roman imperium, was a daily reminder of a unique ethnic and religious heritage to which they could give only partial expression. Their place in the world was not entirely their own.
Into this environment of incomplete dominion came John, the one known as the baptizer, proclaiming the nearness of the kingdom of heaven. His message was not original. Isaiah had predicted that a proclaimer would come, one who would precede a promised Messiah. The kingdom to be established by this Messiah would be an eternal one, for which failure was not a possibility. Accustomed to less successful ventures in creating and sustaining dominion, the kings and people of Judah looked forward to a kingdom without fail. Some seven hundred years or so later the post-Isaiah Israelites who encountered John’s message were still hoping for Messiah, though with a skewed character. Since the commencement of Roman rule six decades earlier, Jewish expectations for Messiah had taken a decidedly nationalistic turn with nearly unqualified inclination to a worldly means-to-an-end. Those expectations quite missed the point of the prophet’s inimitable message.
The people who heard John’s statements and responded to his plea for repentance and baptism were yet clueless about the true nearness of heaven’s kingdom. The baptizer’s message made it clear he himself was not the promised one of Israel. There was another coming that would transcend John’s own identity as messenger. John’s audience was witnessing the arrival of the kingdom, if they would but discern its manifestation among them. The arrival of the long-awaited Messiah was shocking, not because of its force but for its lack of force in worldly terms.
Jesus Christ’s own declarations regarding the kingdom of God were as numerous as they were enigmatic. Christ was constantly and pointedly drawing attention to the kingdom of God. No doubt the expectations of his hearers were culturally formed. Their hope for a warrior-king, much in the model of David, was deep-set and constantly nurtured. These expectations were clearly evident as Jesus approached Jerusalem days before his execution as the people shouted, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”5 To be sure, Jesus’ own lineage was traceable to mighty king David. Yet Jesus clearly proclaimed the kingdom of heaven—that of his Father God—not the rule of David. The misunderstanding represented by this praiseful acclamation was telling. Their hope was in the true Messiah, yet their goals were inconsistent with his aims of faithfulness to his Father’s will.
This much they knew: freedom would come at a price. All that was lacking was someone willing to accept the mantle of leading the uprising, one surely to signal a return to sovereignty over their own affairs. This person would also assume enormous risk, a dare most were generally unwilling to take. Was it not the word of the Lord God through the prophets that Messiah would come? Jesus Christ resisted the efforts of the Jews to cast him into their agenda, steadfastly preferring the agenda of his Father’s kingdom.
It would be unwise to overlook the second Testament’s focus on the kingdom of God. The term kingdom appears more than 160 times in the New Testament. It is understood to refer to a realm in which a particular king reigns. It is inclusive of the authority and sovereignty exercised by and fully vested in the ruler. A majority of the uses of three Greek forms6 are credited to Jesus Christ in referring to his Father’s kingdom, identified interchangeably as the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. The terms are also used by Luke, Paul, John, and the writer of the book of Hebrews. The language reveals clear pronouncements about the impending arrival, present reality, and future fulfillment of God’s kingdom.
The kingdom of heaven was declared to be imminent in the words of John the baptizer, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” and of Jesus himself, “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’”7 In other instances, the original language delivers news of the kingdom as being present. Jesus persistently spoke of the kingdom as a present reality: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” and “the kingdom of God is among you” and “My kingdom is not from this world.”8 In the first instance, Jesus is teaching about blessedness among those who seek and live humbly. Jesus offers the second in response to the Pharisees’ inquiry about the arrival of this kingdom. The third comes in response to Pilate’s question about Jesus’ kingship. While there was a sense in which the kingdom was in existence before their very eyes, Jesus’ audiences were many times either unable or unwilling to see it. The kingdom of God was not new, yet it was newly near.
Jesus’ encounter with the chief priests and elders in the temple is instructive as well. At the conclusion of a parable regarding wicked tenants—itself a pointed accusation of the elders and priests—Jesus declares, “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”9 The suggestion here is that something cannot be taken away unless it is first available to the persons from whom it is to be taken.
The biblical narrative indicates that on the Passover night prior to Jesus’ arrest, he blessed bread and cup, encouraging his disciples to eat and drink with new understanding of what it means to be in covenant with God. He then astounded them by saying he would drink the fruit of the vine with them next in the kingdom of his Father—and not until then.10 Here Jesus invests the kingdom with a discernible futurity, a promise of fulfillment those present in that gathering could scarcely comprehend in that moment.
Jesus’ life, ministry, and teachings were, among many things, political. The politicality represented in Christ is an accurate reflection of the reign of God, and the politics of this reign are distinct from all worldly politics. If, indeed, all things were created through Christ and for Christ, then the most direct path into the kingdom of heaven is through Christ himself. God’s reign in Christ is the kingdom of God.
Jesus Christ was, indeed, the full embodiment of this new kingdom. In fact, some early church fathers referred to Jesus as autobasileia—the “Kingdom in himself.” By extending the force of Paul’s descriptions of Christ in his epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, that very assertion is appropriate: “For [Christ] is the King of the heavens, and as He is absolute Wisdom and absolute Righteousness and absolute Truth, is He not so also absolute Kingdom? . . . if you enquire into the meaning of the words, ‘Theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’ you may say that Christ is theirs in so far as He is absolute Kingdom.”11
Such striking language is evident in contemporaneous thought as well, given expression from another quarter of the Christian faith: “Jesus himself is the Kingdom; the Kingdom is not a thing, it is not a geographical dominion like worldly kingdoms. It is a person; it is he. On this interpretation, the term ‘Kingdom of God’ is itself a veiled Christology. By the way in which he speaks of the Kingdom of God, Jesus leads men to realize the overwhelming fact that in him God himself is present among them,
