The only criteria that matters, then, in assessing whether anything has any value within the kingdom that God is building on earth is love—love defined as Jesus dying on the cross for those who crucified him (1 John 3:16). However impressive a gift or achievement may be in its own right, it has no kingdom value except insofar as it manifests God’s love—except insofar as it looks like Jesus Christ.
How might our churches be different if we took Paul’s teaching seriously? What would happen if the ultimate criteria we used to assess how “successful” or “unsuccessful” our churches were was the question, are we loving as Jesus loved? The truth of the matter is that we are only carrying out God’s will and expanding the kingdom of God to the extent that we answer that question affirmatively. No other question, criteria, or agenda can have any meaning for kingdom-of-God devotees except insofar as it helps us respond to that question.
The rest of the New Testament further confirms this teaching. Paul and Peter, following Jesus, teach that the distinguishing mark of a follower of Jesus is that they imitate Jesus in how they love (Eph. 5:1–2; 1 Peter 2:21). So too, throughout his first epistle the apostle John identifies love as the distinctive characteristic of God’s children, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8). “We know that we have passed from death to life,” John says, “because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death” (3:14). And again, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (4:16; cf. 3:17; 4:7, 12, 21). What’s most significant is that John defines the love he’s talking about by pointing to Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. It is this example we are called to follow (1 John 3:16).
Along these same lines, Paul teaches that everything we do is to be “done in love” (1 Cor. 16:14). As kingdom-of-God people, we should never engage in anything that is not motivated by Christlike love. We are to “live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph. 5:2). “Above all,” Paul says, “clothe yourselves with love…” (Col. 3:14). Peter agrees when he writes, “Above all, maintain constant love for one another” (1 Peter 4:8). Nothing is to at any time be deemed more important to a kingdom disciple than “living in” and “clothing ourselves” with love—“as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” It’s not surprising, then, that so many of Paul’s prayers for his congregations addressed their growth in Calvary-type love (Phil. 1:9; 1 Thess. 3:12; 2 Thess. 1:3).
THE CONTRAST OF THE TWO KINGDOMS
Once again, this is the kingdom of God: It looks and acts like Jesus Christ. It looks and acts like Calvary. It looks and acts like God’s eternal, triune love. It consists of people graciously embracing others and sacrificing themselves in service to others. It consists of people trusting and employing “power under” rather than “power over,” even when they, like Jesus, suffer because of this.15 It consists of people imitating the Savior who died for them and for all people. It consists of people submitting to God’s rule and doing his will. By definition, this is the domain in which God is king.
In this light, it should now be obvious why Jesus said his kingdom was “not from this world,” for it contrasts with the kingdom of the world in every possible way. This is not a simple contrast between good and evil, for, as we’ve seen, God gives the governments of the kingdom of the world power to carry out the service of keeping law and order in a fallen world. Not only this, but kingdom-of-God citizens are to humbly acknowledge that we are the worst of sinners (Matt. 7:1–3; cf. 1 Tim. 1:15–16), acknowledging, as Jesus himself did (though he was sinless), that the only one who is truly good is God (Luke 18:19). The contrast is rather between two fundamentally different ways of doing life, two fundamentally different mindsets and belief systems, two fundamentally different loyalties.
It will be helpful to end this chapter by summarizing these contrasts under five headings.
A Contrast of Trusts: The kingdom of the world trusts the power of the sword, while the kingdom of God trusts the power of the cross. The kingdom of the world advances by exercising “power over,” while the kingdom of God advances by exercising “power under.”
A Contrast of Aims: The kingdom of the world seeks to control behavior, while the kingdom of God seeks to transform lives from the inside out. Also, the kingdom of the world is rooted in preserving, if not advancing, one’s self-interests and one’s own will, while the kingdom of God is centered exclusively on carrying out God’s will, even if this requires sacrificing one’s own interests. To experience the life of the kingdom of God, one has to die to self (Matt. 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 17:33; John 12:25; Gal. 2:19–20).
A Contrast of Scopes: The kingdom of the world is intrinsically tribal in nature, and is heavily invested in defending, if not advancing, one’s own people-group, one’s nation, one’s ethnicity, one’s state, one’s religion, one’s ideologies, or one’s political agendas. That is why it is a kingdom characterized by perpetual conflict. The kingdom of God, however, is intrinsically universal, for it is centered on simply loving as God loves. It is centered on people living for the sole purpose of replicating the love of Jesus Christ to all people at all times in all places without condition. The kingdom-of-God participant has by love transcended the tribal and nationalistic parameters of whatever version of the kingdom of the world they find themselves in.
A Contrast of Responses: The kingdom of the world is intrinsically a tit-for-tat kingdom; its motto is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” In this fallen world, no version of the kingdom of the world can survive for long by loving its enemies and blessing those who persecute it; it carries the sword, not the cross. But kingdom-of-God participants carry the cross, not the sword. We, thus, aren’t ever to return evil with evil, violence with violence. We are rather to manifest the unique kingdom life of Christ by returning evil with good, turning the other cheek, going the second mile, loving, and praying for our enemies. We are to respond to evil in a way that protects us from being defined by it and that exposes the evil as evil, thereby opening up the possibility that our “enemy” will be transformed. Far from seeking retaliation, we seek the well-being of our “enemy.”
A Contrast of Battles: The kingdom of the world has earthly enemies and, thus, fights earthly battles; the kingdom of God, however, by definition has no earthly enemies, for its disciples are committed to loving “their enemies,” thereby treating them as friends, their “neighbors.” There is a warfare the kingdom of God is involved in, but it is “not against enemies of blood and flesh.” It is rather “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).
Conservative religious people involved in kingdom-of-the-world thinking often believe that their enemies are the liberals, the gay activists, the ACLU, the pro-choice advocates, the evolutionists, and so on. On the opposite side, liberal religious people often think that their enemies are the fundamentalists, the gay bashers, the Christian Coalition, the antiabortionists, and so on. Demonizing one’s enemies is part of the tit-for-tat game of Babylon, for only by doing so can we justify our animosity, if not violence, toward them. What we have here are two different religious versions of the kingdom of the world going at each other. If we were thinking along the lines of the kingdom of God, however, we would realize that none of the people mentioned in the above lists are people whom kingdom-of-God citizens are called to fight against. They are, rather, people whom kingdom-of-God citizens are called to fight for.
Our battle is “not against flesh and blood,” whether they are right wing or left wing, gay or straight, pro-choice or pro-life, liberal or conservative, democratic or communist, American or Iraqi. Our battle is against the “cosmic powers” that hold these people, and all people, in bondage. Whatever our own opinions about how the kingdom of the world should run, whatever political or ethical views we may happen to embrace, our one task as kingdom-of-God disciples is to fight for people, and the way we do it is by doing exactly what Jesus did. He defeated
the cosmic powers of darkness by living a countercultural life characterized by outrageous love and by laying down his life for his enemies. So too, we contribute to the demise of the “power over” principalities that hold people in bondage when we refrain from judgment of others and rather extend grace to them, when we let go of anger toward others and instead “come under” them in loving service.
A person may win by kingdom-of-the-world standards but lose by the standards that eternally count—the standards of the kingdom of God. We can possess all the right kingdom-of-the-world opinions on the planet and stand for all the right kingdom-of-the-world causes, but if we don’t look like Jesus Christ carrying his cross to Golgotha—sacrificing our time, energy, and resources for others—our rightness is merely religious noise. Jesus taught that there will be many who seem to believe right things and do religious deeds in his name whom he will renounce, for they didn’t love him by loving the homeless, the hungry, the poor, and the prisoner (Matt. 7:21–23; 25:41–46; cf. Luke 6:46–49). However right we may be, without love we are simply displaying a religious version of the world, not the kingdom of God.
CHAPTER 3
KEEPING THE KINGDOM HOLY
Jesus concerns Himself hardly at all with the solution of worldly problems…. His word is not an answer to human questions and problems; it is the answer of God to the question of God to man. His word is…not a solution, but a redemption.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER1
THE OBVIOUSNESS OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Though the word has come to mean a multitude of things these days (many of them negative), the word Christian originally suggested one who follows and looks like Christ. By definition, therefore, the distinctive mark of a Christian is that one aspires to think, feel, and act like Christ. “To be a disciple,” Yoder notes, “is to share in that lifestyle of which the cross is the culmination.”2 Indeed, since Jesus is the incarnation of God, a Christian is one who, by definition, imitates God, as Paul says in Ephesians (5:1).
The Greek word for “imitate” (mimetai) literally means to “mimic” or to “shadow”—to do exactly what you see another doing, nothing more nor less. Thus, as disciples of Jesus we are to do what we see God doing in Jesus, just as our shadow does everything we do. Paul spells out what this shadowing looks like when he goes on to say: “Live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph. 5:2). To be part of the body of Christ, to be a participant in the kingdom of God, means—by definition—that we mimic Jesus’ love by how we live. We aren’t to love just on occasion, when it’s convenient, or when our enemies aren’t attacking our nation. We are to live in this Calvary-quality love when we’re breathing, when our brain is active, when our heart is beating. All we do is to be done in love (1 Cor. 16:14), and insofar as we do this, we manifest the kingdom of God.
When the kingdom is manifested, it’s rather obvious. It doesn’t look like a church building. It doesn’t necessarily look like a group of religious people professing certain things—including the profession that they are Christian. It doesn’t necessarily look like a gathering of people advocating the right political or ethical causes. It doesn’t look like a group who are—or who at least believe themselves to be—morally superior to others, telling them how they should live. It doesn’t look like a group using swords, however righteous they believe their sword-wielding to be. It rather looks like people individually and collectively mimicking God. It looks like Calvary. It looks Christian, whether it identifies itself as such or not. When people are “coming under” others to love and serve them, without regard to how much or how little those others deserve it, and without regard for their own interests and reputation, the kingdom of God has come.
In a Homeric world filled with self-serving violence, this sort of love is not difficult to detect. People sometimes distinguish between the visible and invisible church as a way of distinguishing between the institutional church that is visible to all and the true body of disciples that only God can see. The distinction is valid if used to make the point that one can’t assume they’re a true disciple of Jesus just because they visibly associate with a church. But the distinction is not valid if it’s meant to suggest that there’s anything invisible about the kingdom of God—as though we can’t know the extent to which an individual or institution is or is not manifesting the kingdom of God. For there’s simply nothing invisible, or hidden, about the kingdom of God. It always looks like Jesus. The church is called to visibly manifest this kingdom. Indeed, this is why it’s called “the body of Christ.” As Eberhard Arnold notes:
The fact that the church is the body of Christ means that Christ receives a body, a form or shape, and becomes visible and real in the world. Otherwise the word “body” is meaningless. And when theologians say that what is meant here is the “invisible Christ,” they are simply demonstrating the nonsense of which only theologians are capable.3
The kingdom of God is not an opaque concept, and when it’s manifested, it’s not an opaque reality. It always looks like Jesus, dying on Calvary for those who crucified him. It always has a servant quality to it, and in this fallen world in which individuals, social groups, and nations are driven by self-interest, this sort of radical, unconditional, and scandalous love is anything but invisible.
In seeing the kingdom, people see what God is like. No one can see God directly, John tells us, but in seeing our kingdom love for them, enacted in service, they see God’s love manifested (1 John 4:12). By God’s design and through the internal working of the Holy Spirit, this “seeing” is to convince them that Jesus Christ is the true revelation of the Father, if they are open to it (John 13:35; 17:20–26). By God’s design, people are not to be won over to his kingdom primarily by our clever arguments, scary religious tracts, impressive programs, or our sheer insistence that they are going to hell unless they share our theological opinions. No, they are to be won over by the way in which we replicate Calvary to them. They are to see and experience the reality of the coming kingdom in us.
If we accepted the simple principle that the kingdom of God looks like Jesus, and if we were completely resolved that our sole business as kingdom-of-God citizens is to advance this kingdom by replicating Jesus’ gracious love toward others, neither we nor the world would have to deliberate about where “the true church” is. Once we understand that the kingdom looks like Jesus, attracting tax collectors and prostitutes, serving the sick, the poor, and the oppressed, it is as obvious when it is present as it is when it is absent. There’s nothing invisible about it.
PRESERVING THE HOLINESS
Nothing is more important to the cause of the kingdom of God than that we who are its subjects live out this Christlike vision of the kingdom. Which is to say, nothing is more important than that we keep the kingdom of God distinct from the kingdom of the world, both in our thought and in our action. We must keep the kingdom of God holy, which essentially means set apart, consecrated, or distinct. Only by doing so will we not be distracted from our sole task of living “in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”
Not everything about the kingdom of the world is bad. Insofar as versions of the kingdom of the world use their power of the sword to preserve and promote law, order, and justice, they are good. But the kingdom of the world, by definition, can never be the kingdom of God. It doesn’t matter that we judge it good because it stands for the principles we deem important—“liberty and justice for all,” for example. No version of the kingdom of the world, however comparatively good it may be, can protect its self-interests while loving its enemies, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, or blessing those who persecute it. Yet loving our enemies and blessing those who persecute us is precisely what kingdom-of-God citizens are called to do. It’s what it means to be Christian. By definition, therefore, you can no more have a Christian worldly government than you can have a Christian petunia or aardvark. A nation may have noble ideals and be committed to just principles, but it’s not for this reason Christ
ian.
The all-important distinction between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world entails that a kingdom-of-God citizen must take care never to align any particular version of the kingdom of the world with the kingdom of God. We may firmly believe one version to be better than another, but we must not conclude that this better version is therefore closer to the kingdom of God than the worse version. “The kingdom is not simply some cipher that we can fill in with our ideas about what a good society ought to look like,” argues Hauerwas.4 If we think in this fashion, we are comparing apples with oranges, and Calvary with petunias and aardvarks—and, as we shall later see, nothing but confusion and harm to both kingdoms ensue.
To be sure, a version of the kingdom of the world that effectively carries out law, order, and justice is indeed closer to God’s will for the kingdom of the world. Decent, moral people should certainly encourage this as much as possible, whatever their religious faith might be. But no version of the kingdom of the world is closer to the kingdom of God than others because it does its job relatively well. For God’s kingdom looks like Jesus, and no amount of sword-wielding, however just it may be, can ever get a person, government, nation, or world closer to that. The kingdom of God is not an ideal version of the kingdom of the world; it’s not something that any version of the kingdom of the world can aspire toward or be measured against. The kingdom of God is a completely distinct, alternative way of doing life.
KEEPING A HEALTHY SUSPICION
In fact, far from aligning any version of the kingdom of the world with the kingdom of God, kingdom-of-God participants must retain a healthy suspicion toward every version of the kingdom of the world—especially their own (for here it is most tempting to become idolatrous). After all, on the authority of God’s Word, we know that however good a particular government may be by world standards, it is nevertheless strongly influenced by fallen principalities and powers. Consequently, no kingdom-of-God citizen should ever place undue trust in any political ideology or program. Nor should they be overly shocked when kingdom-of-the-world leaders or parties act contrary to Christ’s ways. The Roman officials of Jesus’ day frequently behaved in grossly immoral ways, but neither Jesus nor any New Testament author exhibit any surprise or concern over this.5 It was, it seems, par for the course for kingdom-of-the-world leaders in their view.
The Myth of a Christian Nation Page 5