Jesus and the Kingdom (Day 1)
by JM · 30 June 2008

I am intending to be more intentional this week about understanding my role in God's mission. This is a challenge with the many distractions of having several jobs to provide for my family and a one year old son who just started walking, but my wife and I have committed this week to more focused prayer, silence and reflexion.

I would like to invite you to join me on the journey. I have been reading some Bible studies produced by Lesslie Newbigin in early 1986, now published in a booklet entitled, "Mission in Christ's Way" (WCC Publications, Geneva).

When the message of the kingdom of God is separated from the name of Jesus two distortions follow, and these are in fact the source of deep divisions in the life of the church today. On the one hand, there is the preaching of the name of Jesus simply as the one who brings a religious experience of personal salvation without involving one in costly actions at the points in public life where the power of Satan is contradicting the rule of God and bringing men and women under the power of evil. Such preaching of cheap grace, of a supposed personal salvation that does not go the way of the cross, of an inward comfort without commitment to costly action for the doing of God's will in the world—this kind of evangelistic preaching is a distortion of the gospel. It is seductive, and we must be on our guard against it. A preaching of personal salvation that does not lead the hearers to challenge the monstrous injustices of our society is not mission in Christ's way. It is peddling cheap grace.

On the other hand, when the message of the kingdom is separated from the name of Jesus, then the action of the church in respect of the evils in society becomes a mere ideological crusade, inviting men and women to put their trust in that which cannot satisfy. It is to betray people with false expectations. Worse than that, it is to deliver people into the hands of demonic powers, for whenever a particular political or social programme is identified with the kingdom of God, those who follow become the victims of forces that they cannot control. We have seen that in every revolution from the French Revolution two hundred years ago to Ayatollah Khomeni's revolution today.

To separate Jesus from the kingdom, to preach Jesus without the kingdom, or to preach the kingdom without Jesus, is to betray our generation and it is to divide and destroy the church. The gospel is this: that in the man Jesus the kingdom has actually come among us in judgment and blessing. It is now the reality with which we have to deal—whether in our most private devotions or in our most public actions in the life of society.

What do we make of this? Newbigin begins his section on the kingdom of God by establishing that "Jesus is the kingdom". The two are inseparable and unintelligible in a true sense apart from one another. He sketches a short history of theological thought on the relationship between the gospel and Paul's writings, capitalism, Marxism and the Enlightenment. I like his points here very much. Essentially, he is warning us not to be distracted by human things so that we "dethrone" God from our understanding of his kingdom. On the flip-side, we cannot talk of Christ the King without understanding something of his kingdom.

In this entire discussion, Newbigin comes continually back to the devastating effects these errors have upon the church. I am challenged by his conviction that following Jesus leads us to costly action. Take up your cross. It reminds me of some of Bonhoeffer's writings—particularly about "cheap grace" and the "cost of discipleship", two of Bonhoeffer's more famous phrases. I am increasingly encountering people who speak romantically of the kingdom of God, but who do not seem to have a real place for a real Jesus in it. Their motivations seem entirely ideological, though their rhetoric emerges from Christian terminology and tradition. I thinking back to the thought that it all comes back to something quite simple: following Jesus. This is what I hope to reflect on more deeply in the days to come.

Labels: gospel, kingdom of God, Newbigin