The Building Blocks of the Kingdom
Three key ingredients required to make a kingdom, and how God is going to judge our place within it once it is established on the earth.
A kingdom is comprised of three key ingredients.
First, you need a territory to govern. Second, you need a group of people to both govern over and to assist with governance. And lastly, you need a king, because it’s not a “kingdom” without a central figurehead of absolute authority. If you take any one of these elements away you no longer have a kingdom, you have something else.
So when the Bible describes the “Kingdom of God”, we must make the necessary correlations. The king is Jesus. Jesus gets to select others to partner with himself in ruling. Many of those key positions have already been decided and handed out:
Matthew 19:28 Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Others will be assigned at some point in the future:
Revelation 20:11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.
Revelation 22:12 “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.
Now notice, are people being judged based upon their faith alone? By what standard are they being judged? You tell me.
It is very clear, they are being judged by their works. We are only able to stand righteous before God and gain entrance into his kingdom based upon expressing believing loyalty to the person and work of Jesus Christ. But once we stand there, our place within the kingdom will be evaluated based upon our words, actions, and choices in this life. Rank and positions will be handed out accordingly (Matt. 5:19-20, 1 Cor. 3:10-15, Luke 19:11-27).
The territory to be ruled is planet earth.
The epicenter of the government is located in the nation of Israel, in the city of Jerusalem, planted on the temple mount. While we anticipate a “new heaven and a new earth”, it’s still going to be the same earth. The comparison we would make would be to our resurrected bodies, we will be resurrected with a new body with new qualities, but we will still be recognizable to those who knew us in life in this age. It will be a new body, but the same body, just like Jesus’ resurrected body. The tomb is empty.
Finally, you need a people to both govern and assist in governance. The people of the Kingdom of God is comprised of two distinct groups. Firstly you have the descendants of Abraham who are related to God by faith. Next, as a consequence of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, all those who are related to God by faith in his person and work. There is one people of God containing the remnant of Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church. At the return of Jesus to the earth (He’s returning to the earth to stay, not turn back around and immediately leave again which is utter nonsense), this group will be resurrected from the dead in new bodies that will be what the scripture describes as “imperishable” (1 Cor. 15:52-54) in order to enjoy eternal physical life on this same earth.
The reason this paradigm is so important to understand is that it provides us with the objective of discipleship.
The church is God’s breeding and training ground for the coming and future Kingdom of God, which will be inaugurated at the return of Jesus Christ. Our objective is to gather believers together in order to submit our hearts and minds to the grace of God, freely available to all who are willing to obey, so that they can become a fully mature reflection of God, or a finished product.
Colossians 1:28-29 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.
God has predestined roles for each of us within his kingdom. Through our participation in God’s predestined means of salvation, the church, we are being trained and prepared for our roles. While we can gain entrance to the kingdom by faith alone, we can only become prepared (or properly “saved") for our predestined assignment through being faithful in participation in the body of Christ.
Based upon Acts 2:42-43, God has provided 3 primary means by which we receive the power of the Holy Spirit to be transformed into a fully mature and prepared citizens of the kingdom:
Prayer - by which we are building a relationship with God.
Scripture - by which we are growing in our understanding of God.
The Sacraments - by which we gradually receive grace, (which means the power of the Holy Spirit) (Phil. 2:13), to make the necessary changes we need to make in order to be transformed into citizens of the Kingdom of God. We recognize two sacraments:
Baptism - all believers are commanded to submit to baptism, which is how we are initiated into the physical body of Christ. Genuine faith in Jesus Christ will lead to real works which will at some point culminate in being obedient to be baptized. When we are baptized, we receive grace we wouldn’t otherwise receive to be set free from the power of sin and to grow into the image and likeness of God.
Communion - The transformation into fully prepared citizens is very slow and gradual and typically takes a lifetime to achieve. Faith is expressed through obedience, and Jesus commanded us to gather together and share communion in remembrance of his life and ministry. When we gather with the body of Christ and give expression to our faith by receiving communion we receive grace which we wouldn’t otherwise receive to have our mind and will shaped into being conformed to the image of God.
This is our message. This is the gospel.
“I am glad brother D — has more light with regard to full sanctification (fully mature, perfect). This doctrine is the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists; and for the sake of propagating this chiefly He appeared to have raised us up.” ~ John Wesley - September 15, 1790