The Lord is here; his kingdom has come. (Part 13)

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 13: It is the love of God that transforms our humanity

So, what we end up with is not Christians making a deceitful retreat from facing the reality in the world of evil and suffering, into a “safe” internal psychological space where all that really matters is your own personal, subjective feelings. What we have is a hard-headed acceptance of the external, objective realities in the world and of human nature. There is so much suffering because human nature is not good enough! Remarkably – for I don’t think any other creature does this – we have developed enough to agree with this statement. We are not happy just being human; we want to be better than human. We judge ourselves and find ourselves wanting. However, although we have developed the ability to recognise our inadequacy, we have not developed the power to overcome it. But! – but, when the Lord is here, we do acquire the ability to become different people. Clearly, we remain far from perfect, but when we are in the presence of the love, goodness, truth – and all the other good gifts – of the Lord, we do become better. Our human nature is redeemed from the domination of sin, evil and death, and we become a part of God’s kingly rule. Hence, there is simply no alternative but to locate the kingdom of God initially in the hearts, minds and souls of those who believe in him. The old-fashioned, perhaps trite, comment of the evangelists, is, in fact, a simple truth: God’s kingdom grows one person at a time, and we must stop being a part of the problem and start being a part of the solution. So, we are not retreating from the hard, cruel realities of the world, we are recognising that the only way to improve the situation is for each believer, and each community of believers, to extend the rule of God by our actions.

We can envisage that, initially, the arena of the Lord’s presence, in which his will is supreme, is very small. It is located just within the believer, but wherever the believer goes, so long as they are acting in tune with the love of God, then they expand the arena in which God is known as present and in which his kingdom has come. Everyone of us has our own sphere of influence and we can use our faith to choose to act differently – that is, in accordance with the values that we have learnt from God. However, this is not simply a process of applying principles in tune with a theoretical point of view that we approve of, it is living in tune with the God of love, with whom we are in relationship. Of course, we do not have complete freedom of action; we are subject to powers and systems as everyone is; and we have the weaknesses of human nature which dilutes the effectiveness of our actions. Nevertheless, all of us have the ability to act to change things for the better, and as Christians we can identify our particular opportunities, and this becomes our personal mission. It is a powerful antidote to feelings of powerlessness or despair that are so easy to feel when we see the immense problems in the world and consider our own extremely limited ability to address them. Yet we are not completely without influence. Within my own sphere, I can have very considerable power, and if I exercise the transformative grace of God that my faith has introduced me to, then that influence can make all the difference in the world. When Christians remind themselves that they are a member of the worldwide fellowship of the Church, then we are an extremely powerful agent to change the world into God’s kingdom. We need to do more!