The Kingdom Present and Future

The kingdom present and future
 

When Jesus healed people, when he celebrated parties with all and sundry, when he offered forgiveness freely to people as if he were replacing the Temple itself with his own work – in all these ways it was clear, and he intended it to be clear, that this wasn’t just a foretaste of a future reality. This was reality itself. This was what it looked like when God was in charge. God’s kingdom was coming, as he taught his followers to pray, ‘on earth as in heaven’. On one occasion, indeed, Jesus said sharply to those who were accusing him of being in league with the devil that, if it was indeed by God’s own Spirit that he was casting out demons, ‘then God’s kingdom has come upon [them]’ (Luke 11.20). A great deal of what Jesus was doing and saying only makes sense on the assumption that he really did believe that God was already becoming king in the new way he had promised. It was happening, and this is what it would look like...