The Calling of Time on the Kingdom
Many Christians have a tendency to view the Kingdom of God in too narrow or superficial terms. One the one hand some platonise the Kingdom by seeing it as being essentially invisible and inward, of the thoughts, motives and intentions of the human heart only. In this view, the Kingdom is essentially between God and the individual believer. The Kingdom is largely restricted to the conversion of souls. The coming of the Kingdom refers to the growing number of the converted in heaven.
This theory of the Kingdom is too narrow, and arises from the mistake of dividing the created world into non-Christian platonic categories. Now, of course, no-one can be a completely consistent platonist. The created world is not platonic; the cosmos is not as Plato and his followers described it. Consequently, platonic Christians have to live in the real world, which means that their platonic gloss on the Christian faith and the Kingdom is necessarily inconsistent. But press hard enough, and they will tell you that working to see souls saved is the essence and realistic extent of the Kingdom upon the earth, prior to our Lord's return.
On the other hand, others fall into the mistake of viewing the Kingdom's coming to be identified with some great cause or other. For example, fighting the evil of abortion. If only we could see abortion being outlawed, the Kingdom's presence and reality in the world would have taken a huge step forward. Well, possibly. But if people are still murdering in the hearts the evil represented in abortion will only end up manifesting itself elsewhere—and, the institution of abortion will be inevitably back like the Terminator himself.
The coming of the Kingdom upon earth is far more comprehensive, far more complex, thorough, rich, thick and all-encompassing than either of these reductionisms. It involves, as our Lord instructs, the doing of God's will upon earth in the same way in which it is done in heaven. In heaven the Kingdom is truly totalitarian. Upon earth, the will of God is to be equally totalitarian (although power and authority does not reside exhaustively with any one human institution, so that the Kingdom as it truly comes never makes any human institution—whether church, state, family, the individual, or the academy, or any other created thing--absolute).
In this sense redemptive history to date has only seen glimpses and adumbrations of the full coming of the Kingdom upon all the earth. There is so much more ground to take, so much more Christianizing to occur.
The coming of the Kingdom is like the sanctification of the individual Christian. When one first believes upon the Lord Jesus Christ one is justified by faith. The Believer is declared sinless and holy by God for the sake of Christ's atoning sacrifice for all our sins. But the matter does not end there, for the Believer is called to live a life of increased conformity to the commands and teaching of Christ by faith. The Spirit of God, uniting the Believer to the death of Christ, also unites him to the resurrection of Christ. He progressively becomes dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. He grows in the obedience of faith.
The coming of the Kingdom upon a culture is precisely the same: as more and more Believers live more and more faithfully to Christ, so the Kingdom of God comes progressively into existence upon the earth. It brings a thoroughgoing, root and branch, transformation of everything it touches--and finally it will touch everything.
One of the most debilitating mistakes made by Christians in this regard is to hold to a belief in the soon or imminent Final Advent of our Lord. Now it is true that the Apostles and the early Christians believed that something really big was about to happen in their lifetimes. But a careful exegesis of the relevant passages shows that they refer to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ at the head of the Roman armies to judge Israel and to end forever the types and shadows and symbols of the Old Covenant.
But of the time of the Final Advent no-one knows. It will take as long as it takes, as long as God has ordained. It will take as long as the Kingdom takes to come upon earth. And that may well be thousands upon thousands of years. God knows. That we have not been given to know. But what is clear is our ordained duty to work and pray in our generation to see the Kingdom extended as far as we are enabled: in our own hearts, lives, families, schools, businesses, and communities—as far as the Lord blesses us and enables us. And there is to be a certain urgency about this because our own lives are short. We fade like the new grass in the noonday sun. Our live spans are like a vapour. Every day counts. So biblical urgency comes not from a false belief in the Final Advent being imminent, but from the knowledge that for each of us our days upon the earth are very short, our work immense, and no time can be wasted. Every day counts.
But, at the same time the nature of our work is to be gradual, slow, patient and therefore comprehensive and deep. For example the raising of children to live faithfully in the covenant as adults in their turn takes years and years of daily patient consistent labour. The work is all encompassing, but it cannot be rushed. God has forbidden it. There is no one “quick-fix” solution. The same is true with our personal sanctification: all encompassing, never ending, but gradual and progressive. The same with growing churches and schools and Christian institutes such as hospitals. The Kingdom of God is not a turn-key operation. It is too deep, thick, complex, profound and all encompassing for such superficialities and “get rich quick” schemes.
In regard of the coming of the Kingdom we are to be like the Lord. We are to see the big picture, as painted for us in Holy Scripture. Seeing the big picture we can see a thousand years of redemptive history as one day. But we are also to see the detail and the rich, glorious complexity and manifold splendour of the Kingdom so that we are driven to pay careful attention to daily duties and details. Thus, for us also one day is to seem like a thousand years—not in the sense of one day being a burden, but a single day being weighty and important, holy, noble and great, even though it may involve dirty diapers, dishwashing, and what the world might otherwise call the ordinary and the mundane.
This is what it means to work consistently with our prayer that His Kingdom would come and that His will would be done upon earth as it is in heaven.
No comments:
Post a Comment