I've been talking on the blog the last couple weeks about Sent, the Threads Bible study resource I'm releasing that walks churches through some key ideas about how to live missionally together. You can read the previous posts here and here. In Session 2 of Sent, we talk about the hot-button and often divisive issue of the kingdom of God. What is it? What is it not? And what does it mean to be kingdom people? One of the key ideas we try to grab onto here is the "already but not yet" nature of the kingdom of God. Here's a couple of excerpts from the session:
The kingdom of God burst into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. He came in power, and His death on the cross secured victory over death. The end is no longer in doubt. And yet there are still battles to be fought. There is still a kingdom to be advanced. We have work to do, and we do it until the day when Jesus splits the sky and comes back again. We find ourselves living in the already but not yet.
...In the kingdom of God, the values, priorities, and goals of God in Jesus Christ are paramount. It encompasses the spiritual realm, sure, but it also encompasses the physical one. Things like justification, sanctification, and glorification are rightly discussed in the kingdom, but so are issues of the unborn, the poor, those who are sick, and caring for God's creation. The goal of the kingdom is to make things as they should, but it's still in process. And we get to partner with God in the creation of that kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. God has left us to represent this kind of kingdom on earth and - by the power of the Holy Spirit - to move it forward in the time between the already and not yet.
Understanding the nature of the Kingdom of God is critically important to living missionally as the church corporately, and as followers of Christ individually.
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