Jesus’ teaching is centered on the gospel of the kingdom of God, but what does this really mean? The kingdom of God is generally associated with the church, Christianity as a whole, or a physical kingdom on Earth in which the Messiah will administer God’s law to bring peace and prosperity to humanity. In this blog I will explore what I truly believe is the true meaning of the kingdom of God. A good place to start is to explore how the term “kingdom of God” was first introduced.
About one hundred years before the days of Jesus and John the Baptist, the teaching of Machivental Melchizedek about the coming of a Son of God became associated with the establishment of an earthly kingdom of God. The Hebrew prophets presented this kingdom both as a present reality and later as a future fulfillment that would occur with the appearance of the Messiah and after the destruction of unbelievers. This was the kingdom concept that John the Baptist taught and that Jesus of Nazareth tried to modify in conveying the father-child relationship between God and every individual. To the Jews of Palestine the phrase “kingdom of heaven” had but one meaning: an absolutely righteous state in which God (the Messiah) would rule the nations of earth in perfection of power just as he ruled in heaven.
In the New Testament, the kingdom of God is sometimes referred to as a future event, while at other times as an ongoing one. The confusion about the meaning of the kingdom was compounded when Christianity became a religion centered on Jesus; the gospel of the kingdom became more and more about Jesus than about his unparalleled teachings. The Jewish idea of a future earthly kingdom became supplanted by the Christian concept of Jesus as king upon his return to Earth.
To capture the true essence of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom, we can seek clarification of the kingdom concept by turning to epochal revelation. Although Jesus appears to be presenting numerous concepts of the “kingdom” in the New Testament, they can be incorporated into the two phases of the kingdom that Jesus portrayed:
1. The kingdom of God in this world represents the personal realization of the spiritual brotherhood of the sons and daughters of God on Earth; the establishment of the brotherhood of man through every individual’s recognition of God as Universal Father and commitment to doing his will - growing in Godlikeness.
2. The kingdom of God in heaven is the vast expanse traversed by the ascending personality on its journey to Paradise. It represents “. . . the goal of believers, the estate wherein the love for God is perfected, and wherein the will of God is done more divinely.”[1]
The Kingdom of God in This World
To enter the kingdom of God in this world is to believe in God as Father of all, and yourself as a son or daughter of God. Belief in Jesus is not a prerequisite to enter the kingdom. Jesus does not require his disciples to believe in him but rather to believe with him, believe in the reality of the love of God and in full confidence accept the security of the assurance of sonship with the heavenly Father. Jesus desired that all his followers should fully share his transcendent faith; he lovingly challenged his followers, not only to believe what he believed, but also to believe as he believed. This is the full significance of his one supreme requirement, ‘Follow me.”
According to epochal revelation “To Jesus the kingdom was the sum of those individuals who had confessed their faith in the fatherhood of God, thereby declaring their wholehearted dedication to the doing of the will of God, thus becoming members of the spiritual brotherhood of man.” In an attempt to impart this understanding, Jesus tried to substitute many terms for “the kingdom” that would more accurately portray his message about the relationship between God and mortals. Jesus often spoke of it as the ‘kingdom of life.’ He also frequently referred to “the kingdom of God within you.” Among others, he used: the family of God, the Father’s will, the friends of God, the fellowship of believers, the brotherhood of man, the Father’s fold, the children of God, the fellowship of the faithful, the Father’s service, and the liberated sons of God.” Jesus, however, could not escape the use of the word “kingdom.” Resigning himself to using the term “kingdom of heaven” (which he used interchangeably with the expression “kingdom of God”), Jesus explained to his disciples that the kingdom of God in this world is not an earthly kingdom but an individual’s inner experience centered in the dual concept of the father-child relationship between God and mortals. This dual concept was to set a new standard of moral values and provide the ideal of a new order of human society.
To enter this spiritual kingdom, Jesus taught, there are three essentials: The first is the recognition of the sovereignty/fatherhood of God. The second is the belief in the truth of sonship with God. A third essential is the desire to do the will of God. Once these essentials are in place, to do the will of God requires the development of an unshakable growing attitude of loyalty to God and cultivation of the qualities of divinity to live the golden rule from its highest level of interpretation. “Though Jesus taught that faith, simple childlike belief, is the key to the door of the kingdom, he also taught that, having entered the door, there are the progressive steps of righteousness which every believing child must ascend in order to grow up to the full stature of the robust sons of God.”[2] Living in the kingdom while on Earth is, therefore, living a life of growing faith, consciously striving toward the highest expression of love, truth, beauty, and goodness.
This understanding of the kingdom became hazy as the Christian church was organized. Jesus’ ideals of a brotherhood based on the father-child relationship between God and every individual with faith as its only admittance requirement, was replaced with a social fellowship between a group of believers in Jesus - the church. As the early organizers made Christ the head of the church rather than the elder brother of each individual believer in the Father’s family, they struck a deathblow to Jesus’ concept of the divine kingdom in the heart of the individual believer. Membership in the church must, therefore, not be considered synonymous with fellowship in the kingdom; one is spiritual, the other mostly social.
[1] The Urantia Book, Paper 170:2, p. 1861:1.
[2] Ibid. Paper 170:2, p. 1861:9.
