The Lord is here; his kingdom has come. (Part 11)

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 11: The kingdom really has come – here in the world as we know it to be

Let’s consider, “the kingdom has come” more carefully, because on face value it is so ridiculous a thing to say as to be offensive. God’s kingdom has clearly not arrived because the suffering and evil in the world make this manifestly the case. The arrival of God’s kingdom implies that his rule holds sway, in which case there would be no selfish exploitation of others, no greed, hatred, anger or fear. Violence would cease and compassionate service to heal and restore all that is wounded would be everywhere. Yet for Christians to say, “the kingdom is coming” does not do justice to what they believe God has already done in Jesus. If it’s coming then it’s clearly a future event. This might raise uncertainty: perhaps it won’t happen after all. Even if the claim was made in complete confidence because believers in God have complete confidence in the ultimate complete triumph of his omnipotent will, it still implies a sadness that we are still waiting for it. Most of all, it belittles what Christians believe that God has already done in Jesus. Our salvation has been achieved. It is not a future event or hanging in the balance. The fundamental aspect of the kingdom having come is that the Lord is here. Christians often make sense of the situation by adopting the idea of the kingdom as already here but not yet fully here – though even this does not do justice to the crucial aspect that the Lord is fully here. Again, the language becomes difficult to find precise words, and the paradoxical situation remains that Christians want to say contradictory things – not because what they say is false, but because they believe that all the elements are true, and they refuse to sacrifice one or more of them even to gain a coherent whole picture. So, we might say that the kingdom has already been fulfilled – because it has fully “arrived” in the person of Jesus, but it has not been consummated, as in final completion, and this is to take account of the manifest facts of the continuation of evil and suffering in the world.

Secularists may feel that Christians are adopting “a cop out”. Full of faithful enthusiasm they declare that God’s kingdom has come – and sometimes they point to all sorts of progress that is genuinely being made in the life of the world, and often they may point to the growth in the number of Christians, and project that at some point in the future the tide will turn and we will progressively see God’s kingdom being established in practical terms – “on earth as it is in heaven”. However, the evidence doesn’t really support this sort of optimism. Hence secularists may accuse my sort of approach as a retreat from the reality in the world. If I locate the reality of the kingdom in the reality that the Lord is here, I seem to be retreating from the claim that God’s kingdom is making a tangible difference in the external world, and instead locating the kingdom primarily in the hearts and minds of believers – which may be a very profound experience, but which is an internal, personal experience, not subject to objective testing by others.