“Seek first the kingdom of God, and its righteousness…”
Throughout this series, we’ve been looking at the significant beliefs that make up the DNA of the Church of God. In his book, Vision for the Church of God at the Crossroads, Gilbert Stafford makes the bold claim that while it’s true other groups in the wider church consider themselves Gospel churches, or Bible churches, or born-again churches, or holiness churches, or unity churches, or Kingdom of God churches, or missionary churches, it’s the equal commitment to all seven attributes that makes the Church of God unique.
If this is the case, then I would like to suggest that it is the fact that we are a Kingdom of God church that actually holds all seven together. When we neglect the Kingdom of God, I believe we tend to separate the other six elements out, as though they function independent of one another.
What is the Kingdom?
This is the natural first question, though. What is the Kingdom? When Jesus comes and announces that the Kingdom of God has come near, what did he mean, and what did the people hearing him hear?
While it seems people in the Gospel accounts hear something different about what things should be like when Jesus announces the arrival of the Kingdom of God, it seems they all share the belief that coming of the Kingdom would mark a significant point in the history of the world. If this is the coming of the Kingdom of God in Jesus, then God’s rule in the world is about to be made known in the world in ways that it had never been known before, and things were bound to change.
In some fashion, the coming of the Kingdom would mean that God’s anointed deliverer had come to set his people free from their sins and defeat the enemies of the people of God. It would also mean that the promises God had made to his people in their history were fulfilled. It meant that new life was possible and that God would finally give his people hearts to love and to live holy lives. It meant God’s people would be gathered together again, living in harmony, and it would mean that they could once again fulfill their purpose in the world to make God’s glory and blessing known to the nations. Again, there were a number of different ideas for how the kingdom would come about, and likely different ideas about how it would be expressed through the lives of kingdom citizens, but in some fashion, the coming of the kingdom would necessarily address these issues.
It is the Christian conviction that as Jesus announced the coming of the Kingdom of God, he was announcing that these things were about to happen, and that they were happening in and through him. He proclaimed that the people who believed him, the people who gave up whatever identity or allegiance they had previously held, in order to take on the allegiance of this Kingdom, would share in the blessing of his kingdom and abundant life because of him.
The Church as a Kingdom People
Therefore it has been the proclamation of the church that the Kingdom of God has actually broken into the the world in Jesus.
This is the gospel announcement. That the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth, is the Lord, and in his death and resurrection, people find forgiveness and hope. He is central, he is king, he is the one in charge, placed there by the Father to rule until everything is united under his sovereignty again.
It is the kingdom story that the Bible is telling all along. God has sought, from the beginning of creation, to rule the world through the faithful stewardship of humans, and this is made possible by the faithful life and death of the “Son of Man.” The Bible then offers the way to understand who Jesus is and how he brings about salvation, and is also the means through which God teaches kingdom citizens to live faithfully.
As people entrust themselves to the Lord Jesus, they experience being born by the Spirit and are thereby able to live in the Kingdom. Citizenship is available not through noble gestures or hard work, but through submission to the King and the work of the Spirit in the believer’s heart.
Holiness is made possible by this Spirit, but it is also the culture or the nature of the Kingdom. Kingdom citizens will live out the love and character of their holy king. The people of the kingdom are a people meant to look like their king, and therefore will be a people set apart from the world (though always for the sake of the world).
It is the work of the Spirit to create holy citizens, and the Lordship of Jesus who has ushered it in, that makes the unity of the people of the kingdom even possible. People of every race, regardless of social status, age, or gender, are one under the banner of the Kingdom. Churches serve alongside each other, even if they do so differently, because Jesus is Lord, and the love of the Spirit and the heartbeat of the kingdom drives them on. You might live in the northern quadrant of the kingdom or speak with a peculiar dialect, but we are one because of the King!
And in anticipation of our final marker, it is the mission of the church to exist as a holy communities of the Kingdom, putting on display for the world what it looks like when Jesus is Lord, and to invite them to become a part of the kingdom themselves.
Our shape, culture, identity, and mission, the way we relate to one another and to the world, where we learn and how we grow, for the church it is all driven by the coming of the Kingdom of God in Jesus. The church is to be a community of people who are defined by the sacrificial, giving, loving, example of the king. Our identity, both as individuals and as a group, is ever shaped by the leading of the Holy Spirit, so as to reveal the holy character of the Father, made known through the sacrifice of the Son.
We are to be a people who regularly pray, “search me and know me God, see if there is any unclean thing in me.” We are to a people who have said we will submit to the ways of the king, and where our lives aren’t like his, we will seek to change. When the call of the Kingdom is at conflict with the call of our culture, or our nation, or our family, we seek to choose the Kingdom way. And as we do, we become communities of witness, proclaiming to the world that Jesus is Lord, that the story of Scripture is true, that new life is possible in a Spirit, a life of holiness that binds us together, and seeks to begin the work of making God’s love known in the world until the one day when Christ returns and the work is completed.
It is the call of the church as citizens of the Kingdom to give up everything, to become rebels in the earthly kingdom, even when the rebellion leads us to our death, just as it did for our king. This is what it means to be a Kingdom of God church.