What did Jesus mean when He spoke of the kingdom of God? The idea as set
forth in the Gospels is so complex, the phrase is used to cover so many
and different conceptions, that it is practically impossible to frame a
definition within which all the sayings of Jesus concerning the kingdom
can be included. The nearest approach to a definition which it is
necessary to attempt is suggested by the two petitions in the Lord's
Prayer which are quoted above. The second petition explains the first:
the kingdom comes in proportion as men do on earth the will of God. For
our present purpose, therefore, we may think of the kingdom as a
spiritual commonwealth embracing all who do God's will. To much that
Christ taught concerning the kingdom--its Head, its numbers, its growth
and development--it is impossible, in one brief discourse, even to
refer. Here again, it must suffice to single out one or two points for
special emphasis:
(1) In the doctrine of the kingdom of God, we have set before us the
social aspect of Christ's teaching; it reminds us of what we owe, not
only to Him who is its King, but to those who are our fellow-subjects.
Of particular duties it is impossible to speak, though these, as we
know, fill a large place in the teaching of Jesus. But let us at least
bring home to ourselves the thought of obligation, obligation involved
in and springing out of our common relationship as members of the
kingdom of God. The obligation is writ large on every page of the New
Testament--in the Gospels, in the doctrine of the kingdom; in the
Epistles, in the corresponding doctrine of the Church. It can hardly be
said too often, that, according to the New Testament ideal, there are no
unattached Christians. The apostles never conceive of religion as merely
a private matter between the soul and God. All true religion, as John
Wesley used to say, is not solitary but social. Its starting-point is
the individual, but its goal is a kingdom. Christ came to save men and
women in order that through them He might build up a redeemed society in
which the will of God should be done. We do, indeed, often hear of
Christians whose religion begins and ends with getting their own souls
saved. This simply means that so far as it is true they are not yet
Christian. To think only of oneself is to deny one of the first
principles of the kingdom. Wesley taught the early Methodists to sing--
"A charge to keep I have.
A God to glorify;
A never-dying soul to save,
And fit it for the sky;"
and some of his followers, both early and later, seem to have thought
that this was the whole of the hymn; but the verse goes on without a
full stop--
"To serve the present age,
My calling to fulfil;
O may it all my powers engage
To do my Master's will!"
And until we who profess and call ourselves Christians have learned this
lesson of service, and have entered into Christ's thought of the
kingdom, with its interlacing network of obligations, we have still need
that some one teach us again the rudiments of the first principles of
the oracles of God.
(2) Again, the kingdom of God, Christ taught, is _present_; it is not
of, but it is in, this world, set up in the midst of the existing order
of things. There are, it is true, passages in which Christ speaks of the
kingdom as in the future, and to come. Thus, _e.g._, He speaks of a time
when men "shall come from the east and west, and from the north and
south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God"; when "the righteous
shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father"; when they
shall "inherit the kingdom prepared for" them "from the foundation of
the world"; and so forth. But there is no real contradiction between
this and what has been already said. The kingdom is a growth, a movement
working itself out in history, and therefore it may be said to be past,
present, or future, according to our point of view. In the sense that it
has not yet fully come, that its final consummation is still waited for,
it is future; and so sometimes Christ speaks of it. But it is simply
impossible to do justice to all His sayings and deny that in His thought
the kingdom is also present. Its consummation may belong to the future,
its beginnings are here already. When Christ calls it the kingdom of
_heaven_, it is rather its origin and character that are suggested than
the sphere of its realization. In parable after parable He speaks of it
as a secret silent energy already at work in the world. He called on men
here and now to seek it, and to enter it. So eagerly were the lost and
the perishing pressing into it that once He declared that from the days
of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffered violence. Not in some
future heaven but here "on earth" He bade His disciples pray that God's
will might be done. "When Jesus said the kingdom of heaven, be sure He
did not mean an unseen refuge, whither a handful might one day escape,
like persecuted and disheartened Puritans fleeing from a hopeless
England, but He intended what might be and then was in Galilee, what
should be and now is in England."[30] "Thy kingdom come"--it is here on
earth we must look for the answer to our prayer. And every man who
himself does, and in every possible way strives to get done, God's will
among men, is Christ's co-worker and fellow-builder.
"I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land."
That is the spirit of all the true servants of Jesus.
(3) But the most important fact concerning the kingdom in Christ's view
of it is that it is _spiritual_. And, because it is spiritual, it failed
wholly to satisfy the earth-bound ambitions of the Jews. For generations
they had fed their national pride with visions of a world obedient to
Israel's sway, and when one who claimed to be the Messiah nevertheless
told them plainly that His kingdom was not of this world, they turned
from Him as from one that mocked. He and they both spoke of a kingdom of
God, but while they emphasized the "kingdom" He emphasized "God." So
wholly did men fail to enter into His mind that on one occasion two of
His own disciples came to Him asking that they might sit, one on the
right hand, and one on the left hand in His glory. And even when He was
just about to leave them, and to return to His Father, the old ambitions
still made themselves heard. "Lord," said they, "dost Thou at this time
restore again the kingdom to Israel?" But with all such dreams of
temporal sovereignty Christ would have nothing to do; He had put them
from Him, definitely and for ever, in the Temptation in the wilderness.
He completely reversed the current notions concerning the kingdom.
"Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God cometh, He
answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation;
neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of God
is within you." And when self-complacent religious leaders flattered
themselves that, of course, the first places in the kingdom would be
theirs, He sternly warned them that they might find themselves
altogether shut out while the publicans and harlots whom they despised
were admitted. Through all His teaching Christ laid the emphasis on
character. Pride, and love of power, and sordid ambitions, and all
self-seeking--for these things, and for them that cherished these
things, the kingdom had no place. "Blessed," Christ said, "are the poor
in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "Except ye turn, and
become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of
heaven." "Whosoever would become great among you, shall be your
minister; and whosoever would be first among you shall be servant of
all"--these are they that are accounted worthy of the kingdom of God.
The earliest account of Christ's preaching which has already been
quoted, gives us the right point of view for the interpretation of
Christ's idea of the kingdom as spiritual: "Jesus came into Galilee,
preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God is at hand: Repent ye, and believe in the gospel." He had
come to establish a kingdom whose dominion should be for ever, against
which the gates of hell should not prevail, and the foundation of it He
laid in the penitent and obedient hearts of men. This explains why
Christ had so little to do with programmes, and so much to do with men.
If a man's right to the title of reformer be judged by the magnitude of
the revolution which he has effected, it is but bare justice to call Him
the greatest reformer who ever lived. Yet He put out no programme; He
made Himself the spokesman of no party, the advocate of no social or
political reform. To the disappointment of His friends, as much as to
the confusion of His enemies, He absolutely refused to take sides on the
vexed political questions of the hour. "Unto Caesar," He said, "render
the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."
But on individuals He spent Himself to the uttermost. "He is not only
indifferent to numbers, but often seems disinclined to deal with
numbers. He sends the multitude away; He goes apart into a mountain with
His chosen disciples; He withdraws Himself from the throng in Jerusalem
to the quiet home in Bethany; He discourses of the profoundest purposes
of His mission with the Twelve in an upper room; He opens the treasures
of His wisdom before one Pharisee at night, and one unresponsive woman
by the well."[31] Always His work is done not by "external organization
or mass-movements or force of numbers," but from within: "Repent ye and
believe in the gospel."
Now, this was the vary last kind of message that the Pharisees of
Christ's day were looking for. They wanted the world put
right--according to their own ideas of right--it is true; but to be told
that they must begin with themselves was not at all what they wanted.
Are not many of us in the same case to-day? We are all eager for
reforms, at least so long as they are from without. We have a touching
faith in the power of machinery and organization. We are quite sure that
if Parliament would only pass this, that, and the other bit of
legislative reform, on which our hearts are set, the millennium would be
here, if not by the morning post, at least by the session's end. And
there is much, undoubtedly, that Parliament can and ought to do for us.
Nevertheless, was not Christ right? Instead of the old prayer, "Create
in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me," some of
us, as one writer says, would rather pray, "Create a better social
order, O God; and renew a right relation between various classes of
men." We are ready to begin anywhere rather than with ourselves, at any
point in the big circumference rather than at the centre. "I don't deny,
my friends," wrote Charles Kingsley to the Chartists, "it is much
cheaper and pleasanter to be reformed by the devil than by God; for God
will only reform society on the condition of our reforming every man his
own self, while the devil is quite ready to help us to mend the laws and
the Parliament, earth and heaven, without ever starting such an
impertinent and 'personal' request as that a man should mend himself."
Yet without self-reform nothing is possible. "The character of the
aggregate," says Herbert Spencer, "is determined by the characters of
the units." And he illustrates thus: Suppose a man building with good,
square, well-burnt bricks; without the use of mortar he may build a wall
of a certain height and stability. But if his bricks are warped and
cracked or broken, the wall cannot be of the same height and stability.
If again, instead of bricks he use cannon-balls then he cannot build a
wall at all; at most, something in the form of a pyramid with a square
or rectangular base. And if, once more, for cannon-balls we substitute
rough, unhewn boulders, no definite stable form is possible. "The
character of the aggregate is, determined by the characters of the
units." Every attempt to reconstruct society which leaves out of account
the character of the men and women who constitute society is foredoomed
to failure. Behind every social problem stands the greater problem of
the individual, the redemption of character. We may get, as assuredly we
ought to get, better houses for the working-classes; but unless we also
get better working-classes for the houses, we shall not have greatly
mended matters. And no turn of the Parliamentary machine will produce
these for us. We can pass new laws; only the grace of God can make new
men. "For my part," says Kingsley once more, speaking through the lips
of his tailor-poet, "I seem to have learnt that the only thing to
regenerate the world is not more of any system, good or bad; but simply
more of the Spirit of God." "_Except a man be born anew, he cannot see
the kingdom of God._"
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