Posted on 01/29/2021 2:07:36 AM PST by Cronos
“Who … hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son. ” (Col. 1:13)
The spirituality of the kingdom of God is offensive to multitudes today. That many stumble over the spiritual nature of the kingdom of God grieves us. But it does not surprise us. Exactly this was the offense of the kingship and kingdom of the Messiah to the Jews of Jesus’ own day.
According to John 6, the Jews had their hearts set on a carnal, political kingdom with earthly power, prosperity, and peace. This was how they understood the Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messianic kingdom, e.g., Psalm 2, Psalm 72, Isaiah 2, Isaiah 11, and Isaiah 65. The Jews stumbled over the spirituality of the kingdom of God in the Messiah. This was the rock of offense that dashed them to pieces both nationally and personally. Nationally, they repudiated the king who rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, dies on a cross, and exercises sovereign power by the preaching of Christ crucified. And nationally they perish in the judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The kingdom is taken from them and given to the believing, largely Gentile church (Matt. 21:43). Personally, the Jews who want to place an earthly crown on Jesus’ head “went back and walked no more with him” (John 6:66).
To His closest disciples, Jesus then put a question that concerned the kind of king and kingdom they desired: “Will ye also go away?” (John 6:67) He puts the same question to us today.
To Reformed and Presbyterian Christians today, the warning is necessary: Beware, lest at this late hour in history you also stumble over the spiritual kingdom of Christ Jesus!
Where now, we must ask, is this spiritual kingdom of God? Where does God rule by the Word and Spirit of Jesus Christ? Where are righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost? Where is truth? Where are the people who bow willingly to God in Christ by believing the gospel and obeying the lawobeying the law truly, with love in their hearts? Where on earth is there at least the small beginning of God’s being all in all?
Where in the past 2000 years or so of New Testament history, since Jesus was exalted as king at God’s right hand in the ascension, have there always been these realities? Where alone have these things been found?
The answer to these questions will be the identification of the kingdom of God.
The answer is: the church. The church is the kingdom of God.
This is the confession of the Reformed faith both among the Reformed churches and among the Presbyterians. The Heidelberg Catechism identifies the keys of the kingdom of heaven as the preaching of the gospel and Christian discipline by which believers are accepted of God in the fellowship of the congregation and by which unbelievers are excluded from the fellowship of God and excommunicated from the church. Thus this creed identifies the church as the kingdom. Thus also, the Catechism teaches that the kingdom is spiritual (L.D. 31). The same Reformed confession explains the second petition of the model prayer, about the coming of the kingdom, this way: “preserve and increase Thy church” (L.D. 48).
The Belgic Confession establishes the identification of the church as the kingdom as Reformed orthodoxy when it declares Christ to be the king of the church: “This church hath been from the beginning of the world, and will be to the end thereof; which is evident from this, that Christ is an eternal King, which, without subjects, cannot be” (Art. 32).
The Westminster Confession of Faith is explicit: “The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel … is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ” (25.2). Significantly, the Confession immediately adds, “the house and family of God.” The phrase that is added is significant because it shows that the Confession has its eye on I Timothy 3, where the phrase is found. And I Timothy 3 is describing and prescribing the life of the instituted church, the church with bishops and deacons. Westminster teaches that the local congregation that displays the marks of the true church is the kingdom of Jesus Christ in the world. Recent hesitation on the part of Reformed and Presbyterian people bluntly to confess, “The church is the kingdom of God,” is strange and ominous departure from the Reformed confessions. Much more reprehensible is the open criticism of this confession by Reformed and Presbyterian officebearers, who have vowed to uphold the confessions.
This recent hesitancy and opposition are also notable departure from the doctrine of Luther and Calvin. Calvin’s commentary on Amos 9:13 expressed the Reformer’s position on the matter of the church and the kingdom.
“The Spirit under these figurative expressions declares, that the kingdom of Christ shall in every way be happy and blessed, or that the Church of God, which means the same thing, shall be blessed, when Christ shall begin to reign” (emphasis added).
His commentary on Amos 9 is especially telling because the passage prophesies the coming kingdom of the Messiah and describes this kingdom in the typical language of earthly power, prosperity, and peace that both kinds of millennialists love to take literally.
Louis Berkhof accurately described the view of the Reformers:
“The Reformers did not formulate a doctrine of the Kingdom as clear-cut and elaborate as that of the Middle Ages, nor could they point to such a concrete embodiment of the earthly reign of Christ as the Church of Rome. They agreed in identifying it with the invisible Church, the community of the elect, or of the saints of God. For them it was first of all a religious concept, the reign of God in the hearts of believers, the regnum Christi spirituale or internum. At the same time they did not overlook its ethical implications, as Ritschl often contends. One and all they opposed the fanatical attempts of the Anabaptists and their kin, to set up in the world an external Kingdom of God; and recognized the legitimacy of the authority of civil governments, though their relation to the Church was a matter of dispute among them. They did not expect the external visible form of the Kingdom of God until the glorious appearance of Jesus Christ” (The Kingdom of God, [Eerdmans, 1951], p. 24).
In identifying the church as the kingdom, the Reformed confessions are biblical. The issue is virtually decided by Scripture’s teaching that the kingdom is not earthly, or carnal, but heavenly and spiritual. Some of these passages, I have brought up and explained in previous articles.
One outstanding text is that which appears as the heading of each of the articles in this series: “Who … hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Col. 1:13). When Paul wrote the Colossians that they and all believers had been translated by the gospel into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, what did those Colossians understand by “the kingdom of God’s dear Son”? What did they understand this kingdom to be when the apostle declared that the main blessing to be enjoyed in this kingdom is “redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (v. 14)? Does anyone suppose that the Colossians understood the kingdom to be some earthly rule that dominated culture and “Christianized” society? Does anyone question that the Colossians understood the kingdom to be Christ’s church?
In addition to the texts that teach that God’s kingdom is spiritual, the following passages of Scripture are among those that plainly teach that the church is the kingdom of God. There is the well-known word of Jesus Christ to Peter after the disciple confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:18, 19).
The passage explicitly mentions the church: “I will build my church.” To the church is given “the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” These keys are the spiritual power to bind in sin or loose from sin and thus admit into or exclude from the kingdom of heaven. Only the kingdom itself exercises its keys. The church, therefore, is the kingdom of heaven. This is confirmed by the Lord’s teaching that the church fights the gates of hell. The church fights the gates of hell inasmuch as she is the kingdom of heaven fighting the kingdom of the devil, sin, and death.
The beatitudes in Matthew 5 and indeed the entire “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7 identify the church as the kingdom. This sermon by the king of the kingdom Himself describes the law and life of the kingdom of heaven. And this law and life are the law and life of the church.
Likewise, all the parables of Jesus prove that the church is the kingdom. The parables teach various aspects of the kingdom of heaven: “The kingdom is like unto ....” And the realm thus described, the realm where these aspects of the kingdom are reality, is the church. To take one example, where is it that the king forgives his servants ten thousand talents so that the servants are called to forgive each other, as is taught in the parable in Matthew 18:21-35? Christ Himself gives the answer in Matthew 18:20: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name” and where Christ is “in the midst of them.” This realmthe kingdom of heavenis emphatically not a legendary godly Scotland, or a mythical Christian America, or a “Christianized” world, or a fantastic Jewish state in Palestine. It is the church. It was the church in Jesus’ day, no matter how numerically small, physically powerless, and culturally insignificant by the standards of man. It is the church today. And it will be the church until the day that Christ returns.
Sheesh is right. All languages mean nothing until God translates, just baby babble in a pagan belief..Has God translated, not man, not priest, not wafer addiction, God himself, if not, religion is only words that man interprets as wisdom in his fake walk..
or latin..lol
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