The Kingdom, Part 5: The Church

In Part 1 of this series, I wrote:

The kingdom of God, then, is where God reigns. It's the space where God has authority, and where God exercises that authority. (This is an important detail. If a king fails to enforce his law, is it really his kingdom?) The kingdom of God is where God is in charge, no questions asked. 

This is why the kingdom of God is often called the "kingdom of heaven" in scripture. In heaven, God is in charge, no questions asked. The borders of God's kingdom extend throughout heaven; all of heaven is under God's reign. 

But God's kingdom is growing. It's growing beyond the borders of the heavenly realms into the borders of the earth. God has big plans for the earth, for the creation that has become broken. The King is coming, and the King is going to make things right again. The King is going to establish his kingdom on the earth, to rule once again over a land that had rebelled against God's authority. Heaven and earth, together, will become the kingdom of God. 

Matthew 4:23 refers to this as "good news of the kingdom." And for most of us, it is good news! If you are tired of a broken world full of pain and sin and cruelty and death, then you can't wait for the kingdom to come. ... 

When we give up our crowns, we invite God's kingdom into our lives. That's why Jesus teaches his followers to pray "Your kingdom come. Your will be done." If God's will is done, then God's kingdom has come, at least for us. 

And one day, God's kingdom will come fully. ... But in the meantime, we have a choice: are we going to submit ourselves to God's authority, or are we going to keep living in our little kingdoms?

 (For a great visual description of this idea, check out this video by The Bible Project.)

This week, I'd like to argue that church, in its ideal form, looks like the kingdom of God. If you were planting a church today, your goal should be to imitate the kingdom of God.

This is why Paul describes us as ambassadors:

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. (2 Corinthians 5:20a NIV)

Christ is king, so if we are ambassadors of Christ, we're ambassadors of Christ's kingdom. We represent God's kingdom to the world around us.

This also forces us from an individualistic conception of the kingdom to a communal one. Nobody lives in the kingdom alone; we all live there. Nobody follows Christ alone; we follow Christ in community...as the church. Church wasn't a club that the apostles started after Jesus left. Church was the plan Jesus had announced well before his death and resurrection (Matthew 16:18). While we view Pentecost as the "birth" of the church, it's more accurate to say it was the "empowering" of the church by God's Spirit (Acts 2).

Moving forward, I plan to look at specific ways the kingdom is described in the New Testament. (For a list, revisit Part 4. This time we'll move more slowly and discuss them in depth.) But as we look at these descriptions of kingdom life, we are not merely planning for the future of heaven. We are also defining what our lives should look like, and what our churches should look like.