“My kingdom is not of this world.”—JOHN xviii. 36.
Perhaps there is no passage of Scripture more constantly misunderstood
than these simple words; and certainly there is no misunderstanding of
Scripture which has exercised a more detrimental influence on the life
and development of the church. The whole passage contains the very
marrow of the doctrine of Christ concerning His kingdom. It is the basis
of its constitution. To this, its subjects have rightly looked in all
ages for instruction as to its fundamental spirit, principles, and aims.
Words more solemn, more pregnant, were never spoken in this world, in
this universe, than these. They were spoken at the very crisis of
universal destinies. They form the dividing line between the two
eternities. From eternity all things had been working towards that
hour—the consummation of the incarnation; and to eternity the influence
of that hour would go forth, remoulding, regenerating all the worlds.
Beyond any words that have ever been spoken, these words are worthy of
intense and reverent attention. They are the words with which the Son of
God passed on to the cross, that He might pass up to the throne.
The two kings stood there in presence. The representative of the king of
this world, who wielded all its force and guided all its movements, the
man who had but to nod and the whole civilized world trembled and
obeyed; and a King, the elements of whose kingship few could discern,
who wielded a strange power and produced a deep impression that He had a
right to rule over men, but who wore no signs of royalty and laid no
claim to the possession of this world’s thrones. Nay, a kingdom had been
forced on Him, and He escaped as from a deadly danger from the homage of
His subjects, while He spake to them such searching spiritual words that
they conceived a great dread of His kingly commands and claims. He bade
them begin to rule themselves when they were dreaming of a splendid rule
over the gentiles; and He turned inwards on the inner obliquity,
foulness, and deformity, those eyes which were watching eagerly for the
signs of an approaching advent of a glorious, celestial imperator to the
world. Jesus looked on Pilate’s kingship, and fathomed it perfectly. He
knew from whence the power sprang, and by what springs it was fed, which
seated Pilate’s master on the world’s imperial throne. Pilate found the
royalty of Jesus unfathomable; none of his worldly experiences helped
him to understand it. Art Thou a king then, poor, worn, tear-stained
Outcast, forsaken of every subject, of every friend, in the hour of Thy
bitter need? And yet the nascent smile of scorn was checked by something
which cast a spell even on that worn-out profligate’s heart. That lonely
wasted Man there had that about Him which made the representative of the
world’s master afraid. It seemed mere idle talk to a man like Pilate: “a
kingdom not of this world;” “witnessing to truth;” “disciples of the
truth:” it was all childish to the trained intellect of this experienced
ruler; and yet there seemed to be some power beyond the grasp of his
intellect, which something within him recognised, and which might create
and rule a kingdom after a fashion which till then had never even
crossed his dreams. But to him the mystery remained insoluble. He wrote
a title to which his instinct gave a reality that his intellect denied,
“JESUS OF NAZARETH, KING OF THE JEWS.” And here in this passage we have
the Lord’s own declaration of the constitution and aims of His kingdom;
the kingdom which, from that hour, has been the ruling element in the
history of this world, and, as we learn from the Apocalypse, of all the
worlds of the great universe of God. And men persistently misread it as
they misread Him, and employ His words as they employed His works, to
frustrate the purpose for which He entered into the world.
Let us see how the misunderstanding of these words arose.
“My kingdom is not of this world:” literally “not from,” originally “out
of” this world. A clear understanding of the full force of this will
give us the clue to the interpretation of our Lord’s words. There is an
old sense of the preposition “of,” which closely corresponds with the
full sense of the word employed in the Greek, expressing “out of,”
“springing from.” But “of,” like other words and other things, in the
course of time has got weakened by the wear and tear of life; and the
sense “belonging to,” “connected with,” is its natural suggestion to
modern ears; whereby the sense of our Lord’s words has been grievously
weakened too. Did the Lord mean to say, “My kingdom has nothing to do
with the institutions and arrangements of the worldly life of men: you
need not fear any rivalry, delegate of Caesar; My kingdom is in a quite
different sphere, and will keep there, without touching yours: it only
has to do with men as spiritual beings, with a view to their final
destiny in the eternal state: keep to your secular province, and we
shall never cross or clash: the two spheres are quite separate, and
nothing but mischief can come of their commerce: I leave you to rule;
leave Me to teach, unfettered by conditions; for I aim at no influence
on earth, My one object is to persuade men to live a life separate from
this world, as much detached as possible from its interests and
pursuits, that they may enter into My heavenly kingdom when death
releases them, and where the sphere will be all My own”? Was this His
meaning? or did He mean to say, “My kingdom is not out of this world; it
comes down into this world from on high: this world is, like man, made
of the dust of the earth, ‘of the earth, earthy,’ except some spirit
breathe into it from the higher world—then it lives: My kingdom comes
to the kingdoms of this world, the interests, aims, pursuits, and common
life of men, like this breath of Divine inspiration: without it they all
languish and must perish; with it they live: it is a descent of heavenly
truth, heavenly love, heavenly life, into the sphere of the earthly, to
make it live anew; the earth languishes for My kingdom, for without Me
it dies: leave Me free to fulfil My mission, not because this world is
nothing to Me, and My kingdom will not trouble itself with its affairs,
but because My truth, My life, My love are needful to the life of this
world as vital air to the body; because all business, all domestic life,
all friendship, all society, all government, all thought, all art, all
learning are waiting, are panting, for the living baptism which I bring.
I am not of the world, My kingdom is not of the world, in the springs of
its influence; it is essentially of heaven, and from heaven: but it
seeks the world as the sphere of its influence, the field of its
conquest, the realm of its rule. With yearning desire, eagerly as man
yearns for fellowship, a friend for the brother of his spirit, the
bridegroom for the bride, I seek and claim this world as My own”?
Here are the two ideas of the meaning of these words of our Lord set
fairly against each other. The number of those who would deliberately
adopt and justify the former is happily growing less year by year. Were
we caring only for formal misunderstandings of important passages of
Scripture in these discourses, it would be hardly worth while to discuss
seriously a perversion which is vanishing with the changed aspects of
the times. But the spirit, the savour, of an error continues long to
work after it has been formally exploded; and we discuss this passage
in this present discourse under the strong conviction that the false
view which we have described above continues to tincture very deeply our
theology, our preaching, and our social ideas and habits, even in those
who would utterly repudiate the formal idea of the Lord’s kingdom on
which it rests.
Some of the results of this misconception of the true nature of the
kingdom have been as follow:—
1. The idea has been widely entertained that the aim of the Lord has
been, not to save the world, but to save a chosen few out of the world,
leaving calmly the great mass to go to wreck. The favourite notion has
been that the Lord’s disciples have been in all ages, and still will be,
an isolated band, like Israel in Egypt; hating the world around them,
hated by it, and waiting only the happy opportunity, the hour of
deliverance, to pass out of it triumphant, and leave it to perish by the
strokes of the Lord’s avenging hand. This idea, that the Church is a
little band of chosen ones in the midst of a hostile and reprobate
world, is a very favourite one with the disciples in all ages; and it is
nourished by the tone in which the apostles wrote and spoke to the few
poor men and women who were to begin the work of restoration, and who
needed to be upborne against tremendous pressure by the assurance of the
special and personal intervention of the God of heaven on behalf of the
little company whom He loved. They needed a strong support against a
world which was bent on destroying them as it had destroyed their Lord;
and so the apostle wrote, “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal
priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth
the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His
marvellous light. Which in time past were not a people, but are now the
people of God; which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained
mercy.” “Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to
give you the kingdom.” That the disciples have been the few in all ages
is alas only too palpable to those whose sight pierces no farther than
Elijah’s, and who cannot fathom the secret things which are unveiled to
the eye of God. But it is a dark heresy to believe that the Lord meant
that His own should be the few in all ages, and that the rescue of an
election from the impending ruin can satisfy the heart of Him who cried,
as the hour of His anguish drew nigh, “And I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto me.”
2. Closely associated with this is the notion that all which belongs to
the earthly life of men has a certain taint of evil upon it, is corrupt
and corrupting in its very nature; so that if a disciple touches it he
must touch it like pitch, cautiously, and expect contamination with all
his care. That if he must enter into the world’s activities, buy, sell,
and get gain, marry and give in marriage, rule households and take part
in the government of states, he must do it under protest and under the
spur of a sharp necessity, and is bound to long anxiously for the time
when the need of all this will be over, and he will be free to meditate
on Divine things and to praise through eternity. If Christ’s kingdom be
not of this world, he argues, then all which is of this world, politics,
literature, art, society, trade cannot be of Christ’s kingdom; and His
subjects, hampered by these evil cares for a time, must be ever looking
forward eagerly to the day when they will be freed from them for ever.
And this is the meaning which is constantly veiled under the phrase,
“the coming of the Lord Jesus,” and expressed in the prayer, “Even so,
Lord Jesus, come quickly.”
3. Then further there is the notion that it is only in a very partial
sense that we can talk of Christ’s kingdom here, that it belongs
essentially to the future and eternal state, and can only be fully
comprehended by him who can separate it in thought from all the
blemishes and accidents of time, and behold it, pure from the defilement
and degradation of the earthly (that is the human) in this world, in its
glorious Divine form in eternity.
And surely there is a great truth here. The perfect image of it, as
Plato said of the polity of which he dreamed, abides only in the
heavens; and we need to refresh both courage and hope, when we see the
blots and fractures of the kingdom here, by contemplating the pure form
of it which abides in the heavens with God. But dreams and
contemplations will never bring it down from the heavens; it is here, or
nowhere. It is this earthly image which is to be translated into that
heavenly likeness; and if we would be near to and like the King, we must
follow Him into the very heart of the world’s business and throngs, not
that we may seek His chosen there and rescue them from the world, but
that we may rescue the world from all that makes it other than Christ’s
kingdom, by driving out of it “everything that defileth, or worketh
abomination, or maketh a lie,” and thus purify its atmosphere, cleanse
the ducts and channels of its life, invigorate its energy, and
consecrate its activity, till it grows like its ideal in heaven.
And what has been the history of the kingdom? Since the first hour of
its establishment, perpetual intervention in an action upon the worldly
affairs of men. It is literally true that Dean Milman’s history of Latin
Christianity is the completest history of the Western European world
during the middle ages, extant in our language. And why? Because during
the middle ages, and until now, the Church has been the backbone of
human society. All man’s dearest interests and hopes have gathered
around the kingdom; over its destinies, and under its banners, all man’s
deadliest battles have been fought. “Yes!” it may be answered; “but this
is just the corruption of the kingdom; because it mixed itself with
worldly affairs, and suffered worldly men to administer it, it became
the centre and pivot of all the movements of human society.” But this
state of things was at any rate the confession that the men of this
world could not get on without the kingdom, that when it was once
revealed it inevitably tended to gather around itself all the vital
activity of the world. Since Christ appeared, men have felt everywhere
that they must place themselves and their concerns in some kind of vital
relation to the Church. And this has been the key to the public life of
Christendom; in fact it has made Christendom in opposition to
heathendom, as the province of all the most cultivated and progressive
races of mankind. The forms of relation which men created were no doubt
worldly enough; but the sense that they needed the relation, and must
find it to live out a true man’s life was not worldly, but true, noble,
and Divine. The Church from the very hour of the ascension of its Head,
began to act on human society as incomparably the most powerful
influence extant in the world. It literally re-made society from the
very foundations. Far from contenting itself with mastering the will of
individual subjects, and wooing them away from the pursuits and
interests of the world around them, it entered the homes of men, and
cast out the harpy passions which had befouled them; it gave marriage
new sacredness, parents new authority and new responsibility, and
children new grounds of obedience to their sires. It entered the market
and established just weights and balances, honest word, and loyal trust.
Theft could be no virtue, and lying no graceful accomplishment, where it
established its reign. It entered states, and changed tyrants into
kings, serfs into subjects, slaves into freemen, nobles into guardians,
pastors, and captains of industry to the poor. That very Rome which
doomed the King to a malefactor’s death, it entered as a conqueror, and
it broke that proud empire to fragments. The time came when Rome could
live no longer in the moral atmosphere which it created; and then it
summoned purer, nobler, hardier races to occupy the homes and to till
the fields which Rome had depopulated and destroyed. It introduced its
laws into every code in Christendom. King Alfred begins his statute
book by reciting the laws of the kingdom of God.[A] In truth it has
penetrated and permeated every vein and fibre of human society, and it
has made it all anew. There is literally nothing with which you in this
nineteenth century can concern yourself,—trade, literature, politics,
science, art, government, social and domestic life, human rights, human
duties, human powers, human fears, aspirations, hopes and joys,—there
is not one element of our complex social and political life which is not
what it is, because eighteen centuries ago the Lord Jesus witnessed this
good confession before Pilate “Thou sayest that which I am, a king.”
From the world it has asked nothing, taken nothing, but its reverence
and love: of the world in that sense it has never been. But in the
world, and through the world, the stream of its heavenly virtue and life
has wandered, and the wilderness and the solitary place have been made
glad by it, and the desert has rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. It
has sought studiously to mix itself up with all the relations and
interests of mankind; it has a word about them all, it has a law for
them all; the weight in the pedlar’s bag, the sceptre of the monarch on
the throne, are alike under its rule and cognisance, for it claims man
as man to be its subject. It says that man was made to be the subject of
this kingdom, and all man’s life is the true domain of its sway. It
looks upon this worldly life of ours—our life as men of this world—as
the most solemn, most sacred thing in this universe; God’s school of
culture of the beings who are to fill His heavenly kingdom through
eternity. It cannot spare one relation of men, one art, one industry,
one field of activity, one interest, one joy, one hope, one love, from
its domain of empire. The whole man, the whole world, in the wholeness
of its life, it claims absolutely; and it aims to present the whole man
and his whole life, body, soul, and spirit, perfect before the presence
of His glory at last. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable
unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
And now let me ask your attention to some principles which are suggested
by a true understanding of this statement of our Lord.
1. His kingdom is not _of_ this world. It is from above, and all the
springs of its power are above. The attempt to help it from beneath, to
bring the strength, the riches, the honour of this world to help the
Spirit who is from above in the work of the kingdom, cripples its
energies, frustrates its aims, and exhausts its life. Its one power is
the power of truth; “to this end was I born, for this cause came I into
the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth,” said its Founder
and King. It has absolutely no other power. “Every one that is of the
truth heareth my voice;” and all the efforts of men to force, tempt, or
bribe mankind to support it, but silence that witness, which is all that
it asks to win the world to itself.
One can understand the argument of those who support a state
establishment of religion and the whole apparatus by which men seek to
win for it the supremacy to which it rightfully aspires. They say, “It
is of God, it is the heavenly truth, it is worthy of all that men can
give to it and of all the power which man can bring to bear on the
accomplishment of its work: the state does itself honour, and gives
itself stability by supporting it; monarchs are never so royal as in
lending to it their influence; all the world’s riches are never so
precious as when they are poured into its treasuries, and are employed
in the promotion of its ends.”
And this is no more than the simple truth. The kingdom is worthy to
receive the tribute of all the monarchs, the nobles, the wise ones, the
rich ones of the world: the more it has of the good-will and help of
every man, from the king to the beggar, the better for the kingdom, the
better for mankind. All that we say is, Let it win them. Let it win in
its own way, by putting forth its own power, the nursing care of the
noble, the rich, and the wise. Leave it to employ its own spiritual
force to do this and all at which it aims. Lend your heart to it, your
hand, your tongue, your pen, your purse, and everything else which it
can command and use to win its way to human hearts. But if you bring
your human authority to bear to win from your subjects and dependants an
outward homage, if you endow it with dead gifts administered by the
scribes and lawyers of this world, if you lend worldly pomp and power to
those who claim to be its ministers, you oppress and stifle it, and
destroy its power of progress in the world. It wants free air, the free
air of willing obedience, loyalty, and love. Rob it of that, it dies. It
is not of this world. Every gift that is wrung for it from an unwilling
hand beggars it. Its riches are the gifts of free will. Mere gold, with
no spirit of loving loyalty in the giver, is worse than dross to it; it
cankers and eats into its life. The power which has troops of soldiers
and legal tribunals behind it blights it by its very breath. All that it
asks is freedom; power to do what Christ did, in the way in which He did
it; power to bear witness to the truth, and weaken the long silent
echoes of truth in human hearts. We have cut off its heavenly
connection, and rooted it in the powers and policies of this world; and
now we wonder that it languishes, and that one half the people in a
Christian kingdom believe nothing of its truth and care nothing for its
King. Oh! for the days of apostolic trust and simplicity, when the
disciples, “continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking
bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and
singleness of heart, praising God and having favour with all the
people.” Oh! for the baptism of Pentecostal fire from on high. Oh! for
one of the days of the Son of Man, whom the Father sent into the world,
armed with no authority but that of truth, clothed with no power but
that of love. How eagerly then, eager as the thirsty earth when the
sound of rain is in the sky, would men drink in the words of Him who had
more faith in the power of truth to conquer hearts than in the arms of
twelve legions of angels, and whose supreme trust was in the
all-mastering force of a love stronger than death—a love that laid down
its life that death might not for ever tyrannise over the world.
2. Make your life, your man’s life in its wholeness the domain of its
empire in you. Beware of a double allegiance. How earnestly and
emphatically the Lord denounces it: “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.”
Beware of yielding to Christ a part of the empire which is all His own.
Beware of that fatal distinction between the man as a Christian, and the
man as a citizen, the man as a man of business, which has grown out of
the misunderstanding of the principle laid down by our Lord. Christian
saint, Christian worshipper, Christian citizen, Christian merchant,
Christian parent, be Christian wholly. Refuse to touch a thing in any
department of your activity, which will not square with your Christian
ideas and aims. Let your daily transactions be as freely open to
Christ’s inspection as to the world’s honourable judgment: let it be the
aim of your life at home, abroad, in the shop, the exchange, the forum,
to show what the laws of Christ’s kingdom can make of a life which is
square with their precepts. Adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour, not
by fellowship with His people only, but by winning men to worship Him by
the spectacle of your diligence, your industry, your purity, your truth,
your charity, gentleness, patience, faith, and hope in God; and when
they learn that these are the King’s gifts to you, at once the signs and
the fruits of His reign, they will, like the people of old, break forth
into thanksgiving, and confess joyfully that God is with you of a
truth.
3. Count it your chief work on earth to be His fellow-helper in His
kingdom; help to win for Him the empire of the world.
His kingdom is not of this world. But it is over this world, and it
claims this world as its own. The Lord has a heart so large that only
the world can fill it. He uttered its whole longing as He entered the
cloud of the last agony:—“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto me.” Bear witness in the world that the one thing
needful to it is Christ. Tell statecraft that it needs the laws of the
kingdom, to regulate its methods and to indicate its ends. Tell monarchs
that they need to observe _the_ Monarch, that their rule may be a
benediction to loyal subjects instead of a curse to cringing slaves.
Tell citizens that they need to become citizens of this kingdom, that
the commonwealth on earth may be the image and the vestibule of the
commonwealth of the skies. Tell classes that they need the instructions
of this Master, that society may be less a den of selfish contentions,
and more a field of gracious ministries and ennobling toils. Tell
commerce that she needs the inspiration of this duty, that the dull, the
common, the base may be transfigured and wear the forms of beauty,
nobleness, and truth. Tell life that it needs the quickening of this
spirit, that it may not drop piecemeal through the corruptions of sin
into the darkness and rottenness of the pit. Above all, tell every soul
that hears you, that it needs Christ, the living Bread; the bread of
Christ’s truth, the bread of Christ’s life, the bread of Christ’s love,
that it may not settle into the darkness of death for ever, but “have
everlasting life,” where Christ lives and reigns at God’s right hand
eternally.