when is the kingdom

Continuing in the series on the Kingdom of God (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8), Mark D. Roberts now deals with the when of the Kingdom.

When is the Kingdom of God Coming? Then?

In my previous posts in this series, I considered the question: Where is the kingdom of God? I showed that in the teaching of Jesus, the kingdom of God is not just in heaven or in our hearts, though it touches both heaven and hearts. Rather, the kingdom of God is not so much a place as it is the reality of God’s sovereignty and power. The kingdom of God ultimately embraces all of creation, including both heaven and earth, including hearts and minds and even bodies (in a new form).

Perhaps even more intriguing than the question “Where is the kingdom of God?” is the question “When is the kingdom of God coming?” This is especially relevant these days, given the recent hubbub over the prediction by Harold Camping that the Day of Judgment would come two days ago on May 21, thus beginning the final restoration of God’s kingdom over all creation. The fact that you’re reading this piece today indicates that Mr. Camping wasn’t quite right in his prediction. But, still, you might wonder when the kingdom of God is coming?

Jesus proclaimed that the reign of God was coming to earth, but when? Did Jesus preach the coming of the kingdom as a future reality, as many Christian affirm? Or did he believe that the kingdom of God was truly present in his earthly ministry, as many other Christians affirm? In this post I want to lay out some of the basic evidence from the Gospels, focusing on the future kingdom. Then, in my next post, I’ll examine passages that suggest the kingdom of God is present. Finally, I’ll try to make sense of what Jesus teaches about the timing of the coming of the kingdom.

The Future Kingdom

In many of his sayings, Jesus appears to state that the kingdom of God will come in the future. For example:

“Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10).

This line from what we call “The Lord’s Prayer” implies that God’s kingdom isn’t present in the moment, but is something that will come in the future. As we saw earlier in this series, this echoes first-century Jewish prayers for the coming of God’s reign.

Here’s another statement of Jesus that points to the future of the kingdom:

“I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 8:11-12).

Note that many “will come” to the great messianic banquet. They haven’t yet arrived. Here Jesus draws on the prophetic hope of God’s future kingdom as “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines” that the Lord will prepare “for all peoples” (Isa 25:6).

“I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matt 26:29).

In this poignant line from the Last Supper, Jesus looks ahead to the time when he will share in the messianic banquet with his disciples. He draws from the eschatological language of the prophets in speaking of “that day” – the future day of the Lord (see Isa 25:9, for example).

One could point to many other places in the Gospels where Jesus implies that the kingdom of God will come in the future. This type of futuristic eschatology (“eschatology” = “doctrine of the end times”) is familiar to many Christians in our time of history. Most recently, I has been exemplified by Harold Camping and his followers.

When I was a young believer, my friends and I were enchanted by The Late Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsey. This book, which has sold over 35,000,000 copies worldwide, showed that the kingdom of God was coming in the future, and that it was coming soon, and how world events made all of this quite certain. But when Jesus didn’t hurry back to earth in the 70′s, for a while the eschatological fever broke.

In 1996, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins published Left Behind , the first volume in their fictionalized account of the end of human history and the beginning of God’s eternal kingdom. So far, 65 million of the Left Behind books have been sold. Why has this series drawn so many readers? When I asked a group of Left Behind fans about this, one woman informed me confidently: “Because these books tell us what’s going to happen in the future.” The others agreed. Future eschatology, with certainty, wow!

Jesus clearly spoke of the kingdom of God as something that was coming in the future. He seemed less enthusiastic than many about predicting the precise timing of this event, however. In fact, Jesus once said:

“Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Matthew 24:42-44)

Even the closest followers of Jesus did not know when he was returning. Yet they were not alone. See who else lacks this information, according to Jesus:

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mark 13:32)

This should give us pause when trying to predict when the kingdom of God will fully come on earth.

Yet, pause comes also from some of the things Jesus said about the kingdom of God as a present reality. I consider this tomorrow.

When is the Kingdom of God Coming? Now?

In yesterday’s post , I examined several sayings of Jesus that suggest the kingdom of God is coming in the future. Today, I want to consider sayings that emphasize the presence of the kingdom now.

The Present Kingdom

If Jesus had only spoken of the reign of God in a future tense, our task would be simple. Unfortunately for those of us who like things neat and tidy, Jesus also spoke of the presence of the kingdom. Here are some examples:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).

Though one could argue that “has come near” isn’t exactly the same as “is here,” the sense of Greek is that the “coming near” of the kingdom has already begun to happen in some significant way. If I said to you, “The tornado has come near,” you wouldn’t wait around before getting into a storm cellar. You’d understand that it was very close by, almost here.

Here’s something else Jesus said about the present kingdom:

“But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Matt 12:28).

In response to those who accused Jesus of casting out demons with satanic power, he pointed to the true source of his authority: the Spirit of God. The exorcisms of Jesus are not merely evidence of his compassion for demonized people, they are also evidence that the kingdom of God is already present. The Greek of Matthew 12:28 actually uses a past tense verb (aorist), emphasizing that the kingdom of God has already approached.

Jesus also said:

“The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:20-21).

Jesus is not saying to the Pharisees that the kingdom is in their hearts, but that it is in their midst. Where Jesus is doing the work of God, there is God’s kingdom.

In a previous post I discussed this passage. A perceptive reader challenged my translation of “is among you,” wondering why other translations prefer “is within you.” “The kingdom of God is within you” is found, for example, in the KJV and the NIV. My response is, first, to point to the fact that Jesus was not saying to the Pharisees that the kingdom of God is in their hearts. Rather, the kingdom was among them because they were in the presence of Jesus himself. 

Moreover, most recent translations prefer “is among you” or something similar: “is among you” (NRSV, HCSB), “is in the midst of you” (ESV), “is already among you” (NLT 2, Message, CEB), “in your midst” (TNIV, NIV 2011). Of course it’s possible that all of the translators could be wrong. But at least you see that my translation is not too idiosyncratic.

In certain quarters of Christendom the presence of the kingdom has been a popular theme. Whereas conservative Christians have tended to embrace the future kingdom, more liberal Christians have generally preferred the present kingdom. (There are exceptions on both sides of this rule, of course.) If God’s reign is here, then so is God’s justice and peace, at least in principle. The task of the believer is not to wait around for some dramatic act of God in the future, but to live out God’s kingdom now by promoting divine justice in the world today. Many Christians talk about “making the kingdom come” or “building the kingdom” through their efforts.

Interim Conclusion

If you were to read through all four Gospels, you’d find more evidence for the future and for the present kingdom. This presents us with a riddle. Which did Jesus proclaim? I’ll attempt to solve this riddle in my next post.

When is the Kingdom of God Coming? Then? Now? Both? Never?

I ended my last post with an apparent riddle. Throughout the Gospels Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God, sometimes as coming in the future, and sometimes as a present reality. So which is it? How can we understand the apparently divergent themes in Jesus’ preaching of the reign of God?

Throughout the last 150 years, many New Testament scholars have cut this Gordian knot by claiming that some of what is attributed to Jesus in the gospels is not authentic, but was added by the early church. Ironically, depending on the preference of the scholar, the supposedly inauthentic portion of Jesus’ teaching can be either the future kingdom or the present kingdom. Scholarly methodology bends freely to the whims of the individual scholar.

So, for example, Marcus Borg, a prominent member of the Jesus Seminar and prolific author on Jesus, has repeatedly argued that Jesus did not expect God’s kingdom to come sometime in the future. Gospel passages that suggest this were inserted by the early church, Borg claims, under the influence of Jewish eschatology. Yet, contradicting Borg, a cadre of contemporary scholars insists that Jesus did in fact present himself as an eschatological prophet who proclaimed the coming of the kingdom. John P. Meier is a highly-acclaimed advocate of this view, though he hasn’t received as much popular attention as Borg, partly because Meier’s writings are more scholarly and less sensationalistic than Borg’s. (One of the very best books to introduce you to the scholarly debate about Jesus is co-written by Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright. It’s called The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions . I highly recommend this book.)

If you wade through the tangled bog of New Testament scholarship, as I have, you’ll find circular arguments almost everywhere among those who try to slice and dice the teachings of Jesus. The Jesus Seminar is perhaps the most brazen in this regard, assuming from the outset that Jesus was a non-apocalyptic Hellenistic sage and then excising from the Gospels anything that doesn’t fit this assumption. Other scholars are more subtle. But, in the end, efforts to reduce Jesus’ preaching to either an exclusively future kingdom or an exclusively present kingdom are unconvincing. The riddle of kingdom of God is too deeply embedded in the Gospel accounts to be amputated by responsible scholarship. (For more on the Jesus Seminar, see my article: Unmasking the Jesus Seminar .)

Could it be that Jesus simply contradicted himself? Did he speak of the kingdom as present and future without realizing his confusion? I doubt it. Even bracketing Jesus’ unique identity for a moment, I’d argue that brilliant, influential thinkers are rarely so obviously confused. Moreover, they are rarely easy to fathom. Have you ever tried to understand Plato, or Augustine, or Calvin, or Kant, or Wittgenstein? Good luck! Thus, simply working with historical probability, it’s likely that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God as somehow both future and present, and that he knew what he was doing at the time.

In two recent posts, I cited examples of Jesus’ speaking of the kingdom of God as either future or present. In a few instances, however, he indicated that the kingdom has both present and future dimensions. Take this parable for example:

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade” (Mark 4:30-32)

Jesus invites us to look at the mustard seed from two perspectives. In the present – and it is really present – it is small and insignificant. In the future, however, the mustard seed will be great and notable. Similarly, God’s reign has truly come on earth in the ministry of Jesus. When blind eyes are opened, when deaf ears hear, when demons are cast out, when the hungry are fed, when sinners are forgiven, the kingdom of God is truly present on earth. Yet it’s relatively small, and won’t reach its full, glorious extent until later.

Many New Testament scholars today realize that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom as both present and future. You can find a refreshingly concise statement of this perspective in the now classic little book by G. E. Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom . Scholars who hold together both dimensions of the reign of God sometimes speak of it as “already and not yet.” The kingdom is already present in the ministry of Jesus and it is not yet fully present. If you read through the Gospels with this thought in mind, much begins to make sense. The sayings of Jesus and his actions demonstrate both the real presence and the future glory of the kingdom of God.

But the whole idea of “already and not yet” may seem odd and hard to fathom. If you’re accustomed to thinking of the kingdom as either future or present but not both, this new way of looking at Jesus can seem counter-intuitive. What sense does it make, you might wonder, to speak of something as “already and not yet” present?

I have found that three analogies from contemporary life make this seemingly odd concept much easier to grasp. But, since this post is running on, I’ll save these analogies for tomorrow.

When is the Kingdom of God Coming? Some “Already and Not Yet” Analogies

In recent posts I have shown that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God as something both present and future. Like the mustard seed, the kingdom is small in the moment, yet will be great in the future. The more we study Jesus’ ministry without chopping it into disconnected bits, the more we realize that he proclaimed the reign of God as something that was “already and not yet” present. It was already present in Jesus’ own ministry, but it was not yet fully present. Much more was still to come.

I have found that three analogies help people grasp the “already and not yet-ness” of the kingdom. You can probably think of others, but here are my three.

Engagement and Marriage

As a pastor, I have the privilege of sharing with engaged couples as they prepare for marriage. When their wedding day arrives, most couples are well-prepared to commit their lives to each other. In the minutes before the ceremony begins, I visit with the bride and groom, praying with them for what lies ahead. If I were to ask them at that point, “Do you love your fiancé? Will you commit yourself completely to him or her?” they would answer “Yes. Yes.” Are they married at that point? No, not yet. Yet are they deeply committed to each other? Yes. Do they love each other profoundly? Yes. All that’s necessary for a marriage is present and ready to go. In many ways they’re already feeling as if they were married, and yet they aren’t married.

Pregnancy and Parenthood

There’s just about nothing more exciting for a woman who wants to be a mother than being pregnant. From the moment she first hears the good news of her pregnancy, she starts preparing emotionally to be a mother. After just a few weeks, she gets to hear the baby’s heartbeat during a visit to the doctor. Not long afterward, she begins to feel the baby kicking and moving. By the time a woman is nine months’ pregnant, she has thought about her baby for thousands of hours. She has taken new baby classes. She has prepared a place for the baby and usually chosen a name. She loves her baby intensely. So then, is a woman in her last weeks of pregnancy a mother? In so many ways the answer is “yes.” But most people would say that, however real her motherhood may be, something is lacking. The act of giving birth makes it all complete. (Well, actually, it’s just one big step forward in a lifelong enterprise of being a mother.) Is a woman a mother when she’s nine months pregnant? She is already . . . and not yet.

Completion and Graduation

I enrolled as a freshman at Harvard College in September of 1975. Sixteen and a half years later, in May of 1992, I faced the last challenge of my Harvard career: the oral defense of my Ph.D. dissertation. On that fateful day in early May, I sat in a room with four brilliant scholars and defended my academic work. Then they sent me out in the hall to sweat while they decided my fate. After about twenty minutes, my advisor beckoned me back into the room. “We have voted unanimously to approve your dissertation,” he said. “Congratulations, Dr. Roberts!”

In order to make things official, I had to submit four copies of my doctoral thesis to the appropriate office and, of course, pay all of my outstanding bills. I did these things soon after my oral defense was over. And that was that! Done!

But was I really done? Could I truly claim to be Dr. Roberts? Well, not quite. Graduation wasn’t until early June. I wouldn’t hold my Ph.D. in my hand until then. So, was I Dr. Roberts in late May of 1992? In some sense, yes, I already was. And, in some sense, no, I wasn’t yet.

The Kingdom of God: Already and Not Yet

When Jesus began his ministry in Galilee, the reign of God had truly begun to appear on earth. God’s power was present in Jesus, which explains why blind eyes were opened and demons expelled. But the kingdom hadn’t fully come, even though it was already truly present. And Jesus, though he was announcing and inaugurating the kingdom, hadn’t finished everything for his “graduation” as messiah. This work, as it turned out, wasn’t just proclaiming the kingdom and demonstrating its presence through works of power and love. For the kingdom of God to come fully, Jesus had to do something else, something so radical, paradoxical, and unexpected that nobody anticipated it.

In my next post in this series I’ll begin to explore Jesus’ surprising action as I answer the question: “How is the Kingdom of God Coming?”