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The Kingdom of God Is Now

We have mentioned a number of times and we will no doubt mention it again, that Christianity isn’t only about something that happened 2000 years ago. Oh yes, the coming of the Christ in real time was the hinge point of all history but if we simply think of our faith as expressive only of that coming, we have missed the purpose of the incarnation.

The Gospels tell us of the event and provide little future thinking. Their purposes included to authenticate the life of Jesus and to establish his claim to be the Messiah and the savior of the world. Within the Gospels there are indications that the events recorded will impact the future,  but their themes are God’s keeping His promise to Israel.

It isn’t until we enter the world of Acts and read the epistles that we get the idea firmly established that the message of Jesus is applicable to all, and is expected to have an impact far into the future. The Spirit is given to empower and help the new communities of disciples grow in the character of God as they live among their neighbors.

But not everything is rosy for the disciples. We find in the New Testament, evidence that the communities were beset by a number of problems. Those problems are based in a failure of disciples to believe that they were part of the story of God. Some of them continued to think that simply belonging to a group would be sufficient; some thought the incarnation was a historical event that had passed; many of them struggled with letting the Spirit lead them toward transformation. The readers of the New Testament were urged to continue to believe that Jesus was God incarnate and the promised Messiah. They were told that if they really believed, their lives had to reflect the character of Jesus.

Much like those early disciples, we are in danger of making the same mistakes. It has been a very long time since Jesus walked the earth, and the world doesn’t seem to be responding to the reign of God. Our stories remain two thousand years old and we have spent multiple fortunes and lifetimes studying texts and arguing the fine points of theology thinking that those activities are what disciples should be doing. We find in communities of disciples the same moral decay experienced in the first centuries. We too are tempted to treat Christianity as though it is defined and fulfilled by “church.”

We must read the New Testament as though it was written to us, as exhortation and correction, as well as reminder and assurance that our faith is real and is to impact our lives right now. We must believe we are living the revelation of God and that we have been given the Spirit and power of God to assist us in our transformation into the very images of God in the world.


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