Jesus,
Spirit, and Kingdom
“Verily I say unto you, among them
that are born of women
there
hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist:
yet
he that is but little in the kingdom of heaven
is
greater than he.”
Matthew 11:11
_____________________________
Jim McGuiggan[1]
taught me that Jesus (like John the Baptist before Him) was not springing
something new and unprecedented by declaring, “Repent, because the kingdom of
God has come near!” (Matt. 3:2, 4:17; Mk. 1:15). For new Christians like myself, who began
their Bible reading in the middle of the Bible at the NT, the kingdom sounded like
a new idea. And, to be sure, Jesus and
John were heralding new developments in God’s kingdom that were then, and now
remain, positively breathtaking.
From
the beginning, God as Creator occupies the throne over Creation as its King and
Sovereign. In this sense, there is
nothing over which God does not rule and nothing lies outside of His “kingdom”. But after Creation has suffered a Satanic rebellion
against its King, God establishes a more narrow, exclusive place for those who
are still loyal to Him. Now, it is as
though there is a “kingdom within God’s kingdom”—the narrow part set off
against the rest of Creation, which is within God’s universal rule over all
Creation. That new “kingdom within a
kingdom” first existed in Israel, as God’s exclusively chosen people among all
the nations of the world. God was King
over Israel; the rest of the nations (or Gentiles) were under the reign of
Satan. When Jesus arrives, He carves out
for himself an even narrower “kingdom”.
It will include not all of Israel, but a narrower “remnant” that
includes those Jews marked by Messianic faith in Jesus. And to this Jewish remnant God will bring in
Gentiles sharing that same faith, thus fulfilling God’s work and promise
through Abraham. Through evangelistic
outreach, this new “kingdom of God” works until the end of history to reclaim from
the rebellion what had been lost to God.
When
does the kingdom come?
One of the most
puzzling aspects of Jesus regards His teaching about “the kingdom.” Especially difficult to grasp is the timing
of the kingdom of God:
a.
Future
(in Heaven).
Since it is called the “Kingdom of Heaven” (or “Kingdom of God”), some say the kingdom is Heaven.
When we die and go to Heaven, we enter Jesus’ kingdom[2]. 1 Cor. 15:24-25 says, “Then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father,
when He abolishes all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He puts all His
enemies under His feet.” The kingdom
is handed over to God the Father by Jesus in “the end”, at a time when all of
His enemies are vanquished. This would
be at the end of the world, when Jesus returns to judge mankind and admits the saints
to Heaven. But notice that even this
passage says that Jesus is already reigning, which is to say that the kingdom
is already in existence before Jesus hands it over to the Father; Jesus reigns
until that happens. The kingdom already
was present.
b. Present (with Jesus). In some sense, the kingdom arrived with
Jesus. Just as John the Baptist had preached
(Matt. 3:2), He declared: “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has
come near!” (or “the kingdom of
heaven is at hand”)[3]. When Jesus arrived and began His ministry as
Messiah or Christ, the kingdom had arrived because Jesus was the long-awaited
King!
It is important to understand that the
kingdom did not begin with Jesus. Long
before (around 1000 BC), God had promised King David an eternal dynasty over
Israel. That dynasty lasted four
centuries, but seemed to have ended when Babylon overthrew the nation around
600 BC. Had God broken His promise? The prophets declared it was not so, that God
would keep His promise by sending another “son of David” to rule over the
kingdom. Jesus was the one to fulfill
all of these kingdom-prophecies, and while He was Christ on earth, the kingdom
was now here! Thus, as McGuiggan has
well taught me, when Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God, He was not creating
something brand new; Jesus came to “restore” the kingdom that began centuries
before and to carry it through new development.
c.
Future
(soon after Jesus, but before the end of the world). Jesus declared to the people of His day, “I assure you: There are some standing here
who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom” (see
Mk. 9:1; Matt. 16:28, 24:30ff.; Lk. 9:27). This arrival then is different from the
sense in which the kingdom already was present, and also different from the
end-times aspect of the kingdom (which, we in modern times now know, lies
centuries future from the time of Jesus).
By this promise, the kingdom was scheduled for a first-century arrival! That promise was made to people who were
contemporaries of Jesus and was guaranteed to find fulfillment before all of
them had faced mortality.
Spirit
and Kingdom
As it turns out, the
Holy Spirit may be a key factor in keeping these different aspects of the
kingdom straight in our thinking. The
matter turns on when Jesus became King, and the Spirit is there at every step. Since Jesus was God, He ruled over Creation,
as King, since the Creation began, even before His incarnation. In this sense, Jesus was King while “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters.” (Gen. 1:2). In another
sense, Jesus was born “king of the Jews” (Matt. 2:2). We are now at a historical time when the
rebellion against God is full-blown.
Jesus arrives as the King who will address that rebellion. He will restore God’s kingdom so that His
will, once again, may be done “on earth, as it is in Heaven.” This birth had its cause in the working of
the Holy Spirit, when the future mother of Jesus was told by the angel Gabriel: “The
Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall
overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be
called the Son of God” (Lk. 1:35). It
was that the Spirit enabled His conception that caused Jesus to be born a King!
But in yet another sense, Jesus did not
actually become King until He was “anointed.” Going back to the first two kings over
Israel, Saul and David, a person was officially declared king after being
anointed. This was a ceremony in which
olive oil was poured over the head.
However, when King Jesus was anointed it was not with olive oil; it was
with the Holy Spirit in the event of His baptism (see Luke 3:21; 4:1, 14 and
Acts 10:38). It was at His baptism—when the
Spirit descended upon Him—that Jesus became King. When that happened, the kingdom had come! To declare Jesus to be the Christ or Messiah
(both words translate as “the anointed one”) is to declare His kingship and the
arrival of His Kingdom.
The Messiah made a
powerful declaration that ties the Spirit to the kingdom. When Jesus was accused of exorcising demons
by using the power of Beelzebub (Satan), He declared: “If I
drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come to
you.” In Jesus’ words, the presence of the Spirit was indicative of the
kingdom’s presence! By the
Spirit’s power, Jesus wielded kingly authority that put demons (agents of the
rebellion) to flight. Even as He speaks,
the kingdom is “here.” The opponents of
Jesus envisioned just one demonic kingdom divided against itself—Jesus versus
Beelzebul. However, Jesus insisted that
actually two kingdoms had collided when He exorcised and did so by the Spirit’s
power—the newly restored kingdom of God (empowered by the Spirit) versus the
kingdom of Satanic rebellion. As
we have seen, that makes sense because Jesus was anointed as Messianic King
when the Spirit came upon Him in baptism.
From that time on, the kingdom was present. His opponents could not see it.
But what about the
kingdom that Jesus said would arrive in the lifetime of His audience? Since Jesus was destined to die Himself less
than four years after the start of His ministry and since this greater
development did not arrive before His crucifixion, it seems He spoke of a time
between His death and however many decades would remain before His hearers also
died. This allows a time frame of
fulfillment that cannot go beyond the first century AD. Did this happen in the first century?
From
Nation to Remnant
We have spoken of the
room left in the covenant with David that allowed for God’s punishment. That covenant promised an eternal dynasty,
but threatened judgment from God if the “sons of David” became rebellious toward
God (the true King). Israel, too, had
come under the power of Satan’s rebellion.
The result was the total loss of the throne in the Babylonian conquest
in 586 BC.
But the prophets raised-up
promises from God for restoration of the kingdom, for the coming of a new “son
of David”, and for the outpoured Spirit.
Jesus arrived in precise fulfillment of the prophetic timeline set forth
by Daniel, in the days of the fourth Gentile kingdom to rule Israel—Rome.
When Jesus arrived
and declared the at-hand Kingdom of God, the Jewish people knew what He
meant. But Jesus found the rebellion so
deeply entrenched in the Jewish culture and religion that He would not allow
automatic admission to the longstanding people of God. Admission would be only on an individual
basis, conditioned on repentance and faith in the Anointed One.
And God responded to
rebellion in Israel in two negative ways.
First, He brought to an end the “Old Covenant” as the basis on which
people would join to God and so enter His kingdom. That arrangement prevailed since Moses in
1400 BC, and was based on the requirements given through Moses in the Jewish OT
Scriptures. That covenantal relationship
was made concrete through God’s presence in the Jerusalem Temple and through
the religion practiced there. But God
considered that covenant broken and was bringing it to an end.
Secondly, God issued
a solid threat to bring His judgment and wrath on the entire Old Covenant
arrangement—that kingdom (or nation), that Temple, that religion. There would be those who escaped by ending
the rebellion and joining the Messiah.
But one aspect of the Messianic ministry of Jesus was to declare God’s
righteous anger and to declare the rapid approach of judgment. Specifically, Jesus threatened a destruction
of Jerusalem and its Temple. This
actually happened in 70 AD and when Jesus voiced the threat in Matt. 24, this was
also conjoined with a declaration that the kingdom would come in a way made
visible in the lifetime of some of those listening to Jesus.
Matthew 24 is
difficult to interpret, but let me try briefly.
Jesus threatens destruction that will utterly dismantle the magnificent
Temple structure (vs. 1-2). His
disciples respond by putting three specific questions to Him:
·
When will this happen?
·
What will be the sign of your coming?
·
What sign will indicate the end of the
world?
The rest of the
chapter answers these questions.
Kingdom
arrives with Spirit, at Baptism
Just as the kingdom had
arrived with the Spirit at Jesus’ baptism, the kingdom would arrive again (in a
new stage of development) at the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” on Pentecost! Had not Jesus declared that they would see
the kingdom arrive “with power”? And in Luke/Acts, when promising the Spirit
to His disciples, did He not declare the Spirit’s arrival and their reception
of that gift would come “with power”? See Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-8, which link promises
regarding Spirit and kingdom. In other
words, when the church—the new body of Christ—would be anointed with Spirit on
Pentecost, the kingdom would again be present!
Jesus was born to be
King, later was anointed as King and, still later, even on the Cross the sign
posted by the executing powers declared Him to be “King of the Jews.” We might say that Jesus always was King! But Jesus did not actually ascend to the
throne of David (now situated not in Jerusalem, but in Heaven) until after He
rose from the dead. I see Jesus,
Son of David, as the heir of a lost throne.
Although He was King by right, Jesus yet had to defeat the usurping
enemy to reclaim that throne (similar to the way David was often on the run,
away from his throne, until he showed himself to be king and reclaimed the seat
of power). The King came to reclaim a
kingdom that had thoroughly been overtaken in rebellion. Listen to Peter in the second chapter of Acts:
“Brothers, I can confidently
speak to you about the patriarch David: He is both dead and buried, and his
tomb is with us to this day. Since he
was a prophet, he knew that God had
sworn an oath to him to seat one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing this in advance, he spoke concerning the resurrection of the Messiah: He was not
left in Hades, and His flesh did not experience decay. God
has resurrected this Jesus. We are all witnesses of this. Therefore, since He has been exalted to the
right hand of God and has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit,
He has poured out what you both see and hear.
For it was not David who ascended into the heavens, but he himself says:
The Lord declared to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies
Your footstool.’ Therefore let all the
house of Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus, whom you
crucified, both Lord and Messiah!”
It was the
Pentecostal outpouring that put supply of Spirit in Christian baptism. Now, each and every Christian baptized into
Messiah Jesus would receive the Spirit in his/her own anointing (2 Cor.
1:21-22). With Pentecost, and in the event
of every Christian baptism that ensued, the kingdom has come with power. The Spirit has twice descended upon the
“body” of Christ; first upon His own body that would go to the Cross, then upon
the body of Christ that would emerge from the Cross as the church.
Greater
than John?
This understanding
illumines a number of passages—potentially any Scripture mentioning “kingdom.” The prophet Isaiah wove together prophetic
promises of the coming Messiah with promises of the outpoured Spirit and with
notions of the restored Davidic Kingdom.[4] In view of the way that Jesus would later
link kingdom and Spirit, that makes sense.
Note also how the
many “parables of the kingdom” begin to glow when they are read as expressive
of Spirit power. For example, the three
trajectories of failure in the Parable of the Sower are starkly contrasted with
the production of miraculous increase for the seed that found good soil. Is this not consonant with later, epistolary
descriptions of the Spirit’s power in the life of Christian (as opposed to
“living by the flesh”)? When Jesus sets
forth childlikeness as just the thing demanded by the kingdom, might this not
presuppose the new birth, and that of the Spirit? Again, when Jesus declares at the Last Supper
that He will drink the grape anew not until He drinks it anew with the
disciples in His Father’s kingdom (Matt.26:29), can we hear this as anything
other than His promise to join the eventually Spirit-filled community when the
Last Supper has become the Lord’s Supper?
We get to such understandings merely by picking up on the link between
kingdom and Spirit.
There is more. Consider the places where Paul forbids
entrance into the kingdom to sinners, but grants access to those cleansed by
Spirit (1 Cor. 6:9-20; Gal. 5:13-26).
Spirit and kingdom share identical concerns. The rebellion is kept outside the kingdom and
does not receive the Spirit. It is those
who end their rebellion—through faith, repentance and baptism—who enter the
kingdom and receive Spirit. We find much
the same from Peter (2 Peter 1:11ff.), where the abundance of the Christian
virtues (and these, doubtless, come from the Spirit) promises entrance to the
“eternal kingdom.”
And this seems to
shed bright light on this passage: “I
assure you: Among those born of women no one greater than John the Baptist has
appeared, but the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matt.
11:11). Just who—even in the Christian circle—could
equal, much less surpass, the greatness of John the Baptist, when he himself
was greater than any who had been “born of women”? It starts to make sense when we remember
that the great forerunner, the wilderness voice of God, prophesied the coming
of One greater than He, and “greater” precisely because He would baptize in
Spirit (while John merely baptized in water). The coming King was identified to John when,
during the baptism of Jesus by John, the Spirit descended upon Him as a dove
(John 1:29-36). Jesus, in a privilege
uniquely His as Messiah—a privilege not shared by any other baptized by John,
nor even by John himself—received the Spirit!
And that “kingdom privilege” would be received by “the least in the
kingdom”, making them greater than John—not because of any inherent greatness
of their own, but because of the greatness brought upon them by the Spirit of
the living God. Every Christian—baptismally
indwelt by the Spirit—by privilege of grace, becomes greater than John, who
himself was greater than all other humans (born of women). Recall that Jesus discussed together
the approach of both kingdom and Spirit, both bound to a promise from God, at
the close of Luke and in the opening chapter of Acts. And just as the kingdom gave demand to
repentance (Matt. 3:2; 4:17), so did the offer of reception of the Spirit (Acts
2:38).[5]
The link is rather
subtly drawn in Scripture, but the connection between kingdom and Spirit is
undeniable. It offers meaning to many
passages, as shown in demonstrating why the likes of people like us could ever
surpass John the Baptist in greatness.
Spirit and kingdom converged in the Messiah, and they converge in
Christians who are baptized for the remission of their sins of rebellion and
baptized in order to receive the Holy Spirit.
They thus enter the kingdom, and all of this because of the baptismal
outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost.
[1] See
McGuiggan’s excellent little book The
Reign of God (Lubbock, TX: Montex
Publishing Company, 1979) for an essential outline of the development of the
kingdom across Bible time. His kingdom
theology has become so deeply woven into my own belief system that I will credit
him appropriately, not with this insight and that particular, but with making a
deep and lasting imprint on my own entire conceptual framework.
[2] This is an
inadequate view, especially if one ignores the kingdom’s existence in the here
and now, while simply waiting to enter Heaven.
[3] Note that
Jesus preached this (Matt. 4:17) and sent His apostles out to preach the same
(Matt. 10:7).
[4] See Isaiah 7:13-14;
9:6ff.; 11:1ff.; 16:5; 32:14-15; 42:1ff.; 59:20-21; 61:1ff.
[5] John was said
to have preached “a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” The demand for repentance as prerequisite to
receiving New Covenant blessings (such as Spirit) is explicitly mentioned in
connection with baptism only in Acts 2:38.
Twin blessings attend repentant baptism here: remission of sins and reception of Spirit.
However, the same demand to repent is also set forth in Luke’s form of Jesus’
Commission (Luke 24:47) and here also sin-remission is promised. It is inconceivable that apostolic preaching
of Gospel would ever omit repentance as a conversionary requirement.
