Friday, July 24, 2009

where is the kingdom

One postmodern innovator writes, "It seems to me the primary narrative of the Bible is this exile, this disconnect – we are always trying to come home, always struggling to find the Kingdom and yet most the time remain as Moses looking into the Promised Land we can see it but not quite enter." I'm not quite sure what the author meant but it seems inconsistent with the message of Christ.

John Piper writes the following:

“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said. “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting” (John 18:36). The way of the cross is the way of suffering. Christians are called to die, not kill, in order to show the world how they are loved by Christ. True Christian love humbly and boldly commends Christ, no matter what it costs, to all peoples as the only saving way to God. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

In John 3 it is recorded that Jesus said if we are born again we can see and enter the Kingdom of God. In one sense, the postmodern innovator is correct in that we do not always see and experience the Kingdom. At least I agree in terms of "experience" in our limited senses. On the other hand, I find "we are always struggling to find the Kingdom" and "we can see it but not quite enter" to be sad confessions of a failed faith - a result of the absence of truth stirred to life by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet many embrace these sentiments in a false humility disguised in the code word "brokenness".

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