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What is "The Gospel of the Kingdom"


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During Jesus’s earthly ministry we are told he came preaching the “gospel of the Kingdom.” How is this Gospel of the Kingdom different from what we all have come to know as the “Gospel?”

 

The Gospel of the Kingdom

 Jesus began his ministry in this way:

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news (Gospel) of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. (Matt. 4:23)

In fact, in the Gospel of Matthew alone, Jesus referred to “kingdom” 54 times! So what is the Gospel (good news) of the Kingdom and how does it differ from the Gospel of Salvation that we usually refer to? The most explicit chapter in the Bible on “the Gospel” is 1 Cor. 15. There Paul references this Gospel of Salvation which every Christian is familiar:

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you,which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Cor. 15: 1-4)

This is the good news!! Christ died for our sins and rose again. In dying for our sins, Christ took them upon himself and substitutionally gave us his righteousness which will allow us to enter the presence of a Holy and Awesome God.

Unfortunately, most Christians stop reading 1 Cor. 15 right there and think they understand the entire Gospel. Many (if not most) Christians feel this is all they need to know; that faith in Jesus’s substitutional death is their ticket into heaven. Paul, however, corrects this “partial Gospel” thinking just a few verses later:

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. (1 Cor. 15: 12-14)

So it is the resurrection from that dead that is the greater hope of our faith, not simply “going to heaven.” Paul continues to explain the Gospel’s good news:

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep . . . But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Cor. 15: 20, 23-25). 

Paul continues to explain the Gospel by showing the resurrection is not the end, rather it is the beginning of the end. The true “end” comes when Jesus hands over the Kingdom to God the Father. And this won’t happen until he puts down all rebellion and destroys death itself. This process will take 1000 years and that period of time is known as the Millennial Kingdom. Jesus will reign during this kingdom, but the resurrected saints will reign with him as well and share in his work of restoring all things:

And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.  (Rev. 20: 4)

This then is the Gospel of the Kingdom; the good news that Jesus is returning and will resurrect the saints and they will reign with him over the Kingdom for a thousand years. During that 1000 years, Jesus will conquer every last enemy including death. The Gospel of the Kingdom is about an earthly kingdom, the restoration of Israel with Jesus ruling from Jerusalem, not one set up in heaven.

Contrast With the Gospel of Salvation

Salvation is a critically important facet, but it is just the beginning of the “good news.” In the Book of Joshua, we learn about Joshua leading the Israelites into the promised land. What if Joshua stopped right there after Israel crossed the Jordan without conquering the land? Would that be good news? Well, yes, but it would only be partial good news. The same is true of our salvation. It is great news but it is only the beginning of the restoration of all things that Jesus is returning to undertake.

That restoration:

  1. begins with our salvation
  2. extends throughout our lives
  3. continues with our resurrection, and finally
  4. consummates after Jesus subjects all enemies under his feet.

It is a four step process. When we truncate the process and say it ends with our salvation or even with our death, we downplay the good news. The Gospel of the Kingdom is much greater and more complete than that.

1) The Gospel of Salvation

Prior to our salvation we are dead in our sins. When we place our faith in Jesus and his death for us on the cross, we move from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light and life. It is the gift of God, not something of our own doing. Through this process we are made into a new creation:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Cor. 5:17)

This creation is a new heart of flesh in place of our previous heart of stone:

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. (Ezek. 11:19)

2) The Gospel of Sanctification

This heart of “flesh” is indicative of a living heart not a dead one. Into that living heart Jesus places the Holy Spirit. The grace of God that has placed the Spirit within us saves us from our sins. Without the Spirit, we are unable to overcome our sin nature. With the Spirit’s help we can be sanctified. Although we cannot live “sin-free,” we have the power to overcome sin.

And so he condemned sin in the flesh,  in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. (Rom. 8:3-7)

And by living by the Spirit, we are also able to begin to redeem the world around us becoming ambassadors of God’s Kingdom in this fallen world.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God,who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. (2 Cor. 5:17-20)

And as Jesus’s ambassadors, he is allowing us to participate with him in the beginning of the restoration of all things. During our lives, that is our mission: to work on behalf of the Kingdom to come to make appeal to the lost and to work to redeem the systems of this fallen world. We are citizens of a Kingdom that is coming.

Unfortunately, many churches call this Gospel of Sanctification the Gospel of the Kingdom as if Jesus’s Kingdom has already come on earth and its restoration was the Church’s responsibility only. This is horribly mistaken. We know from Rev. 11:15 that Jesus does not begin to reign until the seventh trumpet and currently Satan is the ruler of this world. Christ won the right to the dominion of the world on the cross but he doesn’t stake his claim until Armageddon. The theology of “Kingdom now” misses the whole point of Jesus’s restoration of all things that is coming and leaves one with a nearly hopeless feeling that the Church needs to restore all things and can’t.

3) The Gospel of the Resurrection

Our sanctification will not be  completed during our lifetimes. These fallen bodies we live in are incapable of being completely sin-free. If we return to 1 Cor. 15, Paul addresses this as he continues to explain the multifaceted Gospel:

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;  it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. . . I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. (1 Cor. 15: 42-44, 50-52)

Without our resurrection (or transformation in the Rapture) we cannot overcome this fallen flesh. That is why Paul is so emphatic about the value of the Resurrection from the Dead. Not only will we be sin-free, we will also be imperishable (immortal). That is pretty good news!

4) The Gospel of the Kingdom

Finally, in our new resurrection bodies we will reign with Christ in the Kingdom that is coming. This is what Jesus taught his disciples about after his resurrection. It was his primary topic after his suffering:

After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God . . . Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:3, 6)
 
In fact, as can be seen from this passage, after this forty day discussion about the Kingdom, the disciples wondered if Jesus was about to restore the Kingdom back in the first century. As we have learned in multiple articles on this site, the Kingdom and dominion is transferred at the Seventh Seal:
 

The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.” (Rev. 11:15) 

Then at the seventh bowl, Jesus will physically return to the earth, fight the battle of Armageddon,  and claim his right to the Kingdom. Then at the end of the 1000 years, Jesus will put all enemies under his feet and death will be destroyed and Satan cast into the lake of fire. Then Jesus will present the Kingdom to his Father. At that point the New Jerusalem will descend and God the Father will also dwell with us in the “eternal state.”

That is the complete Gospel; the complete good news. Every aspect of it is found in 1 Cor. 15. Read the entire Chapter! Jesus never came to bring an incomplete Gospel of Salvation only or two separate gospels (one for the Jews and one for the Christians). He came to bring the complete Gospel of the Kingdom .

An article from The Gospel in the End Times

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The Good News of the Kingdom of God began in Genesis (His Gospel). It will be completed when His enemies are destroyed and devoured and the New Jerusalem is established. The progressing account of this is throughout the scriptures and this is God's Plan for His Kingdom. It is still unfolding...

It is His Kingdom and He wants to share it with us and His Redeemed Israel, the seed of Abraham. All believers will be in His Glorious Council reigning with His Blended family of spiritual and natural beings. It is His Creation in His Eden. His Gospel.

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Here's a link to a paper I wrote on The Kingdom of God.

 

Edited by Butch5
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2 hours ago, Tampered With said:

It is sad that so few Christians understand so little about this extremely important aspect of the plan of God and Jesus soon coming return and reign on earth. It is not surprising however since "the Kingdom of God" is so rarely taught in the modern day churches and not at all by some denominations!  

Would you please kindly expound some from your paper on this thread that some might learn from it? Some also may ask questions and expand their understanding also. :th_praying:

I for one would love the discussion. :)

Thanks! Sure, I can expound on it. It's quite a bit to put on a forum but we can try. The gist of it is that the Kingdom of God, the hope of the Christian, is based in the promises that God made to Abraham. In Genesis God made a four fold promise to Abraham. He promised,

1. That He would make him the father of a great nation.

2. The father of many nations

3. That all nations would be blessed through him

4. That He would give him all the land he could see. 

We see all through the Scriptures mentions of the inheritance. The inheritance is the land that was promised to Abraham. That is the hope of the Christian. God made that promise to Abraham and his seed. He reiterated it to Isaac and Jacob. The Jews believed that they were heirs of the promise because they are the seed of Abraham. However, the apostle Paul points out that when God made the promise to Abraham and his seed, He meant seed in the singular, not seed as a collective group. He tells us in Galatians three that the Seed is Christ. Christ is the Seed to which the promise was made and Christians obtain that promise by being joined to Christ.  Paul said to the Galatian, if you are in Christ you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. He also wrote in Romans 8,

 16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
 17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. (Rom. 8:16-17 KJV)

Again, the inheritance is the land that was promised to Abraham. However, the inheritance was expanded to include the world.

13 For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. (Rom. 4:13 KJV)

So, the hope of the Christian is not to spend eternity in Heaven. It is to live in the Kingdom of God on earth. That's a quick summary of the paper.

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