One True Thing: The Gospel of the Kingdom of God

This week is vacation time for the Hollenbach clan. We invited friends to stay in our home and we hit the road: 13 states in 10 days (3,000 miles!). So this week is retro-post “One True Thing Week,” in which I share previous posts about the truest things I know. Today: The Gospel of the Kingdom of God.

From February, 2010: 
Hearing the Gospel for the First Time

I have a confession to make: I had been a Christian for five years before I ever heard the gospel.  One night at summer camp I listened to the story of a God who loved the world so much that he sent his only son to pay the price for other people’s sin.  My sin.  I believed the message, I prayed the prayer and asked Jesus into my heart--and five years later began to discover that the good news was so much better than I had been told.

Jesus didn’t proclaim the gospel of forgiveness and heaven, he proclaimed the gospel of the Kingdom of God.  His gospel of the Kingdom of God differs radically from the gospel of go-to-heaven-when-you-die.

Why not take a few minutes and check out these passages:

• John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus by preaching the Kingdom (Matthew 3: 1-2).
• The very first message Jesus shared was the Kingdom of God (Mark 1: 14-15).
• Jesus said the reason he came to Earth was to preach the Kingdom of God (Luke 4:43).
• He said the new birth was the way to enter the Kingdom of God (John 3: 5).

That’s all four gospels, and we’re just getting started:

• The book of Acts opens and closes with the Kingdom of God (Acts 1: 3 & 28: 31).
• The Kingdom of God was Paul’s message from Corinth to Ephesus to Rome.
• The book of Hebrews describes a kingdom that can never be shaken (12:28).
• Peter and James depict the Kingdom of God as the calling of all believers.
• The Holy Spirit inspired more than 150 references to God’s Kingdom in the pages of the New Testament.  And don’t even get me started on pictures of the Kingdom in the Old Testament.

If the words “Kingdom of God” seem awkward when they appear after the word “gospel” perhaps it’s because we have shortened the gospel to mean exclusively redemption from sin and going to heaven. The rediscovery of the gospel of the Kingdom, along with Jesus’ commission to “make disciples and teach them to obey” stand as the greatest need in the North American church today.  Discipleship under the Masters’ hand and maturity in Christ depend on the gospel of the Kingdom of God.

We have confused Heaven with the Kingdom.  Heaven is a great place.  I’ll get there someday because Jesus paid the price, but in the meantime Heaven is breaking into the here and now.  I believe we have become preoccupied with an arrow pointing to Heaven when we should be looking for how God is bringing the Kingdom to Earth.  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus taught us to pray, “Let your Kingdom come, let your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”  (Matthew 6: 10, emphasis added)  Jesus said plainly that God’s Kingdom should be our highest priority: “Seek first the Kingdom of God.” (Matthew 6:33)  Do we really think he meant that we should place going to heaven after we die as our highest earthy priority?

Consider his actions and words at the very end of his earthly ministry.  Jesus chose to remind his friends about the message he had announced from the very beginning: the gospel of the Kingdom of God. He spent the 40 days after his resurrection teaching about the Kingdom of God (Acts 1:3)  In the few days remaining with his friends, the Kingdom of God was still his passion.

The Kingdom of God is the true context for discipleship.  No serious student of Jesus ignores his teaching or demonstration of the Kingdom.  Yes: demonstration.  Jesus explained his actions in terms of the Kingdom of God.  Healing, deliverance, and feeding the masses were all signs of the Kingdom of God.  The world longed for the rule and reign of God to come to Earth, they received their answer in the actions and teaching of Jesus.  In his absence, Jesus expects us to demonstrate and explain God’s Kingdom today.  To be about the Kingdom is to be about the Father’s business.

Perhaps one reason the church struggles in the area of spiritual formation is that we are not making disciples of the Kingdom.  In our enthusiasm over God’s forgiveness and mercy, we have overlooked his purposes and plans.  Everyone who trusts in God can expect to go to heaven, but Jesus is after more than eternal reward.  He wants us to join him in the family business.

The Truest Things I Know (So Far)

When something you discovered twenty years ago can still overpower you with tsunami-strength, you know you’ve found one of the truest things you know.

Truth varies depending on its degree of impact. Two plus two will always equal four, but such truth does not lift my heart or draw me closer to Jesus. Jeremiah warned us, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” which is certainly true but it doesn’t move me to worship or action. Some truth is practical: my father taught me: “Never play cards with a man named Slick.” It has saved me tens of thousands of dollars, but it’s hardly a life-mantra.

God’s truth, like his creation, is infinitely-faceted. It fills the universe and moves the hearts of men and women. While I am not moved by the structure of numbers, the mathematician extends his arms in worship for God’s order, majesty, and wisdom. The Father has made all things beautiful in their time. I believe he has also made each of us individually to marvel at certain aspects of his revelation. If we discover just one breath-taking aspect of his truth for each decade we live, we will go to the grave with as much wonder and worship as a child who has first discovered mother-love.

I still have some decades to go, but I’d like to share five of the truest things I know. The kind of things that can still cause my heart to skip a beat, like the first time I saw my wife.

Thankfulness is the doorway to God’s presence. Eugene Peterson says “Thank You” is the password to God’s presence. G.K. Chesterton became a believer by recognizing impossibility of feeling thankfulness apart from having Someone to thank. I have been a father for twenty-five years: when one of my children expresses gratitude, my heart leaps inwardly--not because it strokes my ego but because I know it is the key their advancement in the Spirit. Thankfulness opens the way. Won't you come in?

Worship and sanity walk together. You should come, too. For some people the 30-45 minutes of praise and worship on Sunday mornings is the only time of the week in which they are in their right mind. Music is song-voice of mathematics. Lyrics focused on Jesus is the true end of language. That our mouths and ears can be simultaneously focused on him is to surround ourselves with truth.We needn’t wait until Sunday: some people are wise enough to worship at every free moment of the week. They are saturated in adoration. They are the sober ones in a world drunk on selfishness.

The gospel is “the gospel of the Kingdom of God.” I’m grateful for my Evangelical roots, but I’ve discovered that the gospel of go-to-heaven-when-you-die differs radically from the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Isaiah saw the Kingdom as a present reality. John the Baptist proclaimed the Kingdom. Jesus did the same. The story of the early church opens and closes with the Kingdom of God. The irrepressible E. Stanley Jones declared the secret of the universe is the Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person. I am following the trail Dr. Jones left behind. You should come, too.

God created time for our benefit. This is the most recent discovery for me: life is daily because the Creator set it up that way. The creation-song of Genesis repeats the chorus over and over: “there was evening, and there was morning, another day.” Do not set these lyrics aside a no-brainer. It is the revelation of God’s wisdom for his children: we cannot live in the past, the future is beyond our understanding, we were made to live in the moment--with Him.

Forgiveness is perhaps the most essential life skill. “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” St. Augustine’s counsel is still wise today. Jesus not only forgave the sins the world, he modeled forgiveness so that we should do the same. Who could disagree? The challenge is in the doing. “Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” Forgiveness contains so many other truths: we are sinful people; we live in a sinful world; sin hurts us all. Yet the One wounded most by sin is the One who demonstrated the only way through: Forgive.

In fifty-plus years I have a handful of the truest things I know. Perhaps, by the grace of God, I will end up with two hands full.

What about you? What has found its way into your hand? Why not leave a comment and share the truest things you know.

Everyone's Entitled to My Opinion: About E. Stanley Jones

In his 89-year lifetime E. Stanley Jones published 28 books. Baltimore-born and Asbury College educated, the man gave his life to the King and his Kingdom. Jones was a confidant to Franklin D. Roosevelt and friend to Mahatma Gandhi. He wrote a biography of Gandhi that inspired a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. to adopt the means of non-violent protest as a change agent. That’s a pretty good legacy.

Just before his death in 1973, E. Stanley Jones published The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person, which proved to be his summary of life in Christ and how to live for the Kingdom. I found this book while I was still a college student--it charged me with a passion for the King and his Kingdom and ruined me for anything else.

“I’ve been shedding labels all my life,” he told a group of students in 1969. “I hope to shed them all except one: ‘he was a Christian in the making.’” Page after page of The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person rings with wisdom and challenge. It’s the kind of book that should take a month to read and a lifetime to apply.

In an age when many believers have been inoculated against the Gospel of the Kingdom, Jones caught the virus like a man overcome with AIDS. The echoes of his voice have now died away. Few in our day have even heard the name E. Stanley Jones, and fewer still have been exposed to his contagion for Jesus. In my opinion every serious student of Jesus should catch the same Kingdom fever that consumed E. Stanley Jones. The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person will infect you for life.

The Tree Grows from the Seed

Could you summarize Jesus’ ministry in one sentence? Be careful--your answer will say more about you than it will about him. The Apostle Peter (my friend Pete) gave a one-sentence summary in Acts 10:38:

"You know . . . how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him."

It’s a fascinating account. Peter has a remarkable encounter with God, filled with revelation and mystery, and before he has time to sort it out he is called upon to share the gospel of the Kingdom to a roomful of people who are completely foreign to him. This passage is pivotal to the growth of the church; it’s the moment when Peter’s experience overwhelmed his theological understanding of the gospel; it’s when the Holy Spirit sovereignly decided to demolish the walls and renovate the church.

Peter's response is instructive because it not only gives the essentials of Jesus’ ministry, it provides the essence for us as followers of Jesus. Peter was after more than a mere presentation of gospel message, he was out to make disciples. First impressions, as the saying goes, are lasting ones, and I suspect Peter wanted his hearers' first idea of Christianity to include the notion that they were called to be just like Jesus. The tree will grow from the seed, and Peter sowed the seeds of the divine nature becoming flesh--not only in Jesus, but also in us.

What kind of tree will grow from the seed we plant? Perhaps we should measure our summary against Peter's inspired example. He are five points of comparison:

• Peter’s gospel message includes Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working together.  (“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit”) The tree will grow from the seed. Do we present the full picture of God at work in the earth, or limit the image of God to only One Person? Peter’s example is instructive. A “full gospel” requires the presentation of the full Godhead.
• Peter’s gospel message doesn’t point to heaven as a future event. He paints a picture of heaven and earth linked together through the work of the Holy Spirit, who spans the divide and pours the stuff heaven into the words and works of Jesus. In one simple sentence, we get to see how “Let-your-Kingdom come-let-your-will-be-done-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven” works.
• Peter’s gospel message does not limit Jesus’ mission to redemption only. We see Jesus going from place to place, “doing good and healing.” We see God in action, expressing his goodness and power. How many gospel presentations affirm his essential goodness as well as his power to express that goodness. True, redemption is part of the story, but Jesus embodied a much bigger “good news” than we dare to imagine.
• Peter’s gospel message reminds us that we are called to conflict. Those who are in need of healing are “under the power of the devil.” Even the most “Missional Churches” of the western world fail to highlight the nature of spiritual conflict. His intent was not to win an argument, his intent was to win freedom for the captives.
• Peter’s gospel message presents the presence of God as a necessity for ministry. This final point is worth of a separate post (or a book). Jesus--Immanuel--operated in the presence of God. That presence was essential, not optional. If Jesus needed it, how much more do we?

Verses 39-43 indicate that Peter had more to say, but the Holy Spirit had heard enough. He was ready to harvest. He was ready to start a wildfire. Even those who were strangers to the Jewish covenant flooded into the Kingdom of God. The church would grow from pagan soil. The barbarians in Europe were about to see the light. If we were only dealing with church history this verse would be interesting enough. Strangely, God’s not into church history, and certainly he didn’t inspire the book of Acts merely to interest us.

How we summarize the gospel is the seed of our expectation. The tree grows from the seed. Peter called the seed “imperishable” because he wanted us to become partakers of the divine nature. Do we partake? Isn't it time to revisit the gospel Peter preached?