Living in Light of the Kingdom
2 07 2007
Over the summer, each Sunday we are looking at the parables of the Kingdom: parables where Jesus starts by saying “the Kingdom of God is like…” At the beginning of each week, I (or someone in my stead) will be posting the parable we are looking at the following Sunday with an image for reflection. First one tomorrow. I would love to hear your reflections…
This last Sunday, I was speaking, introducing the topic of the parables of the Kingdom by putting them in their bigger context of the Kingdom that has come and is coming …
The image I have of the “now” and the “not yet” of the Kingdom is of dawn coming, but the son has yet to rise above the horizon. Isaiah prophecies that a light will come in the midst of incredible darkness ( Isa 60); Jesus came as a light to the world (Jn 1), but there is still darkness. This is the dawn, light has start reflect around the sky, the same light that will blaze above the horizon, but has yet to be fully revealed.
In reading Rev 21, we see the end of the story, the Holy City comes to earth … the Kingdom has come in all its fullness. The sun is shinning in all its glory, and there is no night, no darkness. To use a phrase that Rob Bell has used: Heaven has crashed into earth … but will it be heaven for you?
When this light comes, it brings into the light:
1. Our actions - Jn 3: 19-21 where Jesus talks about people loving the darkness as their deeds remain in the darkness. But when the sun rises above the horizon, there will be no darkness … all will be laid bare and exposed.
All the things that we have done in darkness will be brought into the light. The God who is generous, forgiving & pure will come, and the things we have kept in the darkness will be brought into the light …
2. Our words - Lk 12: 2-3 where Jesus says that everything that has been said in secret will be bought into daylight or shouted from the rooftops.
All the things that we say about others but won’t say to them, all the things that we say to make ourselves look good, or to down others will be brought into the light.
3. Our motives- 1 Cor 4:5 where Jesus says that our motives will be exposed and bring to light all that has been hidden.
Where we are judgemental, or competitive, or compare ourselves to others, or do things for our glory, the Light will reveal all.
We have the opportunity to live, preparing ourselves for heaven, so that when heaven does come, when the sun rises above the horizon, all has already been brought into the light. The Kingdom has come, but not in all its fullness … we can chose to live in light of the coming Kingdom, in the Light of the coming Kingdom … or in the darkness which still covers the earth, ignoring Kingdom drawing near…
I have spent such a long time talking about God’s grace, kindness and love. These are all foundational in my understanding of God. But God also calls us to respond to His love and live a life worthy of Him. I feel challenged by these Scriptures and thoughts … what about you? If you were there, what did you think?
Tags: Kingdom, Kingdom of God, Rob Bell, Heaven
thanks rupert, that sounds like a great thing you’re community is doing over the summer.
I like what you said, not least how we have the opportunity now to voluntarily submit to the light, invite it to examine us now. For me i am finding that the path of honesty is often about admitting those sorts of faults now, to try and work out where the light is shining in my life and to invite people to help me not run back under my stone…
Darkness has its own unique seductive pull to it, bringing people down to my level and doing pretty much want i want under its cover being just two of the attractions of it that i find…
Paul - thanks. I think it will be interesting, and I find the parables so challenging. You have summed up what i was wanting to community really well … the light is here now, but so is the darkness, so where are we going to live?
I think although much more challenging to do, it is far better to live in the light now … and that is what God is calling us to do…
Hi Rupert,
Still have my reservations about the whole blog thing but thought I’d try it and see. Who knows, I might come to like it!
I confess that I wasn’t there on Sunday to hear the full thing but I was interested in your comment above, “I have spent such a long time talking about God’s grace, kindness and love. These are all foundational in my understanding of God. But God also calls us to respond to His love and live a life worthy of Him.”. It seems that you here contrast “grace, kindness and love” with the need to “respond to his love and live a life worthy of Him”?
I don’t want to read too much in to your words but it echoes a view that seems to me to be dominant, though mostly implicit, today. This view could perhaps be expressed by the following kind of statements:
Jesus taught in parables about the good news of the kingdom of God and he also told us some things we ought to do (in order to live up to some kind of expectation God has of us?).
Paul writes amazing doctrine about God and the gospel but then throws in few lines at the end of his letters to tells us things that we ought to do (because it’s the ‘Christian’ thing to do?).
We then struggle with the things that we feel we ought to do (love enemies, bless those who curse us, etc.). We think they can’t be “rules” because that doesn’t fit with our conceptualisation of grace. So we end up with no logical, psychological, or practical connection between our understanding of ‘the gospel’ and actually doing the things that Jesus said we were to do. Hence we remain pretty much unchanged as we’ve abstracted the gospel to such an extent that it has no natural intersection with our actual lives. This is overly brief and simplistic of course, and I don’t mean to insinuate that this is your view. I don’t have space to develop it here (Dallas Willard does it better anyway) but I hope the broad point makes sense.
This is one of the many areas where I’ve found Willard so helpful (and why I keep banging on about it to anyone who’ll listen!). In ‘The Divine Conspiracy” (which I note has been on your “books to read” list for quite some time… would be interested to know your thoughts when you’ve read it… perhaps you could ask Pippa to read it to you during the long drive to France?!
) he has a very helpful analysis of the sermon on the mount which shows how Jesus intelligently and systematically sets out the goodness of life in the kingdom of God. It really is better (and possible) to live without contempt, anger, lust and manipulating relationships. In other words; the moral aspects are the good news of the kingdom. They involve re-integrating our whole person with the life of God. The key, according to Willard’s interpretation, is not to try to do these things but to become the kind of person who routinely and easily does these things. Pulling all this together requires a different understanding of the gospel, grace (even law!), the kingdom of God and discipleship from those that I’ve picked up in my Christian life so far. But here I really must stop. Can’t recommend ‘The Divine Conspiracy’ highly enough.
Has anybody else read it? Thoughts on the above?
I appear to have written a short essay. Apologies if this breaks some kind of blog etiquette, I’m new around here!
Stu (Airey – in case you hadn’t guessed!)
Stu … so glad you have joined the blogging world. And no blogging etiquette broken.
You pick up a good point, and one that i wasn’t sure that i had said that well … I certainly wasn’t trying to put grace and christian living on two sides of a coin, but i was trying to say that i think we are called to live differently. I think Christian living springs from the love and grace and God … the good news of the gospel, that enables us to live a life that is better by far and worthy of God. I haven’t read all of Willard yet, but i love what you have written here…
I think you are right that i probably didn’t say on Sunday how much better it is to live the way that Jesus wants us to … it isn’t so much rules for living, but rather this is the best way to live. For example, it is good to forgive, not because we have to, but actually it is the best way for deepening relationships, living stress-free peaceful lives, where anger doesn’t eat us up etc. Is that part of what you are saying?
I would love to hear more of your thoughts on Willard …?!?!?!?
Hi Rupert,
I realise that I am broadening the point somewhat but perhaps the following will help to clarify where I’m coming from. Most of it is heavily influence by Willard - but I wouldn’t want to misrepresent him so please take any rubbish bits as being mine! I present this as a broad outline. I don’t pretend to have worked out all the details, but I have started to experience more of God as I try to put it into practice. “Obedience is the organ of knowledge in the Kingdom of God” (Willard).
Jesus’ good news was that the Kingdom of God is available, that people can enter into it. Now, for this to be ‘good news’ to me it has to be attractive, I have to see the goodness of it and see it as better than the way that I am currently living (hence my need to repent; to turn from one towards the other). Clearly it was attractive. Many of the people who met Jesus, were healed or heard his teaching, saw the amazing goodness of a life lived in the Kingdom of God and wanted to enter into it. The goodness of this life was characterised, in Jesus’ life and teaching, by healings, miracles, loving enemies, blessing those who curse you, not worrying about tomorrow, being full of joy, having a deep contentment (peace), letting your yes be a yes (i.e. not feeling the need to manipulating others to get what you want), and so on. I don’t know if ‘getting to heaven when you die’ was a big part of it, or even any part of it… We’re told that eternal life is “interactive relationship with Jesus” (John 17:3 – my paraphrase). We don’t need to wait until we die for that.
So, if the Kingdom of God is available to me now and I really see the goodness of it, then I want to do these kinds of things (perhaps I might even want to obey the law!). These things are what God is like, i.e. they’re what God is doing, i.e. they are the Kingdom of God. Therefore I want to bring my kingdom, the range of my effective will, what I am doing, into His Kingdom by living that way also.
But what do I find? I find that I can’t do them! In fact, trying to do them by my own effort, or strength of will, is the trap of legalism that we all find so appealing – it seems so much easier, so much more controllable, to just know the rules! This is why Jesus made disciples and commanded us to make disciples. Willard defines discipleship as ‘being with Him learning how to be like Him’ or ‘learning from Him how to live my life as He would live my life if He were I’ or ‘being an apprentice of Jesus in Kingdom living’. Part of this will involve submitting to certain activities (spiritual disciplines) to transform the various parts of my self (mind, body, spirit, soul, social relationships, etc.) so that they stop hindering and start helping me to achieve this goal of Kingdom living. As I do this I learn to increasingly trust (have faith in) him with my whole life, my deepest fears, insecurities and needs, as well as where the next meal is coming from. I receive his grace (God acting in my life) to be able to become the kind of person who routinely and easily does what Jesus said to do. A person who increasingly lives in the goodness of the kingdom of God.
For me, this seems to be a much more joined up way of seeing things and avoids many of the false distinctions / dichotomies that we try to make or have been made historically. Also, in my experience, the ‘gospel’ widely preached today doesn’t have any natural tendency to produce disciples as outlined above. Nor does it take very seriously the command to “go and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20).
How does this sound? Does it make sense? Is it different or just what others have thought all along? Anybody further down the line in living this stuff who can help me out?
Stu
Hi,
Firstly, Stu - would like to hear more about the different understanding you’re talking about and what it might consist of sometime.
Rupert - I thought it was a challenging, but in many ways necessary, preach on Sunday. I agree I think we do have a choice about whether we bring things into the light now or later and that its probably going be to a less painful process if we do it sooner. Also, the balance of grace must always be remembered - theres nothing too big that we could reveal that God’s grace cannot cover it.
I guess the thoughts I would add would be a question about whether bringing things into the light is just about confession or whether there’s something about healing in there too? I think often our desire for hiddeness can come from very deep wounds and shame that has been put on us at different times in our lives. I guess, I’m thinking about some of the stuff we did on the counselling course - look at some of the action tendancies for unconstructive emotions - they’re alot about hiding and withdrawing (fear of the light). (sorry for the jargon , those who weren’t on the course). My thinking’s not totally clear on this at the moment, but would be interested in your thoughts.
Great comment Tony - thanks.
I think you are bringing a really good point in your last paragraph … I guess that desire to hide / shame has really been in all human being since the first man and woman hid their sin and shame from God! If I understand what you are saying: it is as easy just to say to people that they should just come into the light, but we may need to look deeper than that and explore why someone wants to keep it hidden. Is that what you are saying?
What would you suggest in bringing that message to the church?
Hi Tony,
See my further comment above where I’ve tried to set out some of it.
Cheers
Stu
Hi Rupert.
I really liked the first half of your preach but struggled with some aspects of the second half. Briefly:
- the idea of “will heaven be heaven for you” was interesting but it seemed a bit silly! The scriptures tell us that we will be perfected in heaven (e.g. Hebrews) and from Paul’s theology it seems that it is the body that ties us to sin in this world (argued by Wright). Therefore I can’t really see anyone sitting down at the marriage supper of the Lamb and making awkward conversation with someone they still hate or something like that!
- there is a tension here which needs to balance the “bringing into the light”. I don’t understand this myself but it would have been helpful to flag up: the scriptures also promise that God will not remember our past sins once we are in Christ. Therefore I am not sure that the coming of the Light would necessarily cause any concern for any confessed sin. I don’t think you mentioned this, and I was worried that people may have unneccesarily walked away with some sort of guilt or burden. On the other hand, it was welcome change to hear about judgement for Christians - I congratulate you for bringing up the subject.
- you mentioned that entering heaven through the fire of judgement, which was really cool. But then you said that when the bible talks about people “gnashing their teeth” etc, its talking about saved saints that are annoyed about their trial by fire into heaven (or something like that). I’ve studied references to hell quite a bit and I’m certain these are references to final judgement / hell.
# Matthew 8:12
But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
# Matthew 13:42
They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
# Matthew 13:50
and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
# Matthew 22:13
“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
# Matthew 24:51
He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
# Matthew 25:30
And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
# Luke 13:28
“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.
Its hard to read all this and maintain this is referring to heaven!
Thanks Alastair … good comment … let me look at the 3 points you make…
1. I agree that we will be perfected, but isn’t there a “judgement” for Christians? Perhaps i pushed it too far by talking about the marriage supper … I am not suggesting that heaven won’t be heaven for us … but was asking a slightly different question: when heaven crashes into earth, when the light rises above the horizon, will that be heaven for you? If we have prepared for that, then i think it will, but if we haven’t i think it will be pretty uncomfortable…
Am I pushing it too far by referring to Isaiah when he stands before the throne: woe is me? I know you could argue that he is not redeemed or perfected … but is there not going to be some response in us when we see the Lord in all His light and glory: “oh my goodness me!”.
What do you think?
2. You are right i didn’t mention in my preach, but did as we were about to take bread and wine … with hindsight i should have put in as part of the preach. What i said as we were taking bread and wine, that as we bring something into the light, we break the power of darkness. That is why we are encouraged to confess our sin to each other and to God…
3. I might have to come back to you on this. It was a bit of an after thought saying that … and only one sentence right at the end of the preach! On reflection, it may not have been the best thing to say at the point, as may have taken away from what i was saying, but didn’t really have time to explain why! It was a long time ago i looked at this, so will need to look at my study of it. But what i understood at that time of studying was this phrase referred to a judgement of Christians, rather than non-Christians. It doesn’t refer to the punishment of non-Christians, but rather to the “regret” of Christians who have failed to live a life worthy of God.
I will try to dig out my study of that, and get back to you…
It doesn’t actually seem that you disagreed with much?
Thanks Rupert. Replying to your comments:
1 - As I indicated in my first comment, yep, I am with you with the judgement of Christians/God’s people. I would prefer to refer to this a kind of liminal stage before Heaven itself. From the scriptures it does seem that this judgement will be/can be fearful for some. But once we are “perfected”, I don’t see any more reason for someone to be uncomfortable in the light. Would you agree?
Regarding the Isaiah 6 verse, John 12:41 implies that Isaiah saw the pre-incarnate Jesus (i.e. Yahweh is Jesus!). Isaiah knew the sin of his people and himself, and he was afraid to approach (in his vision?) his holy God. If there is anything that the NT teaches, it is that we Christians can boldy approach the throne of grace (Hebrews etc). Its a complete contrast: our redemption through Christ’s blood secures our entry in God’s presence and our confidence in approaching him. The day a Christian says “woe to me” when coming to God is the day that person needs to start trusting in Jesus and his work of redemption!
2 - OK.
3 - I really can’t see this referring to judgement of God’s people. If we think about the function of theses sayings when Jesus spoke them. He was prophetically warning ethnic Israel that they should not count on their ethnic status to belong to the coming Kingdom. On the contrary, they would be excluded and the sinners/Gentiles would be included (the great reversal). In a way, it was saying that those who thought they were God’s people (ethnic Jews) were about to be thrown out. At the end of the day, if you are not in God’s Kingdom, you are in hell, post judgement-day. I mean, do we really expect Jesus to approach one of his beloved, tie them up, cut them to shreds, chuck them into the fire, and banish them into the darkness, and then say “after you’ve recovered, feel free to join me in heaven?”. Its crazy! I can’t think how Jesus could have more clearly painted a picture of ultimate rejection from God’s light-filled kingdom than the above sayings…to be thrown into darkness is to be thrown into hell, by your own implicit definition (Christ being light, the world filled with darkness).
To be honest, any scholar/commentary which tries to maintain this I would highly suspicious of, it smells to me like a universialist agenda.
It reminds me of a teaching I have come across that tries to maintain that the “outer darkness” is the suburbs of heaven, as if the awesome Light of Revelation 21 fades away after a few miles. Surely this is Gospel 101 stuff: darkness = bad; light = good!
In reflecting on this discussion, it seems to me that a good follow up to your preach would be a study of the book of Hebrews…would cover most of the issues!
As a parting comment, I can’t for the life of me figure out when the judgement of Christians happens. Is it when we die, or when we are resurrected? Anybody got any thoughts here?
[...] the summer, as I mentioned in the previous post (which was also an introduction to the series), we are looking at the parables of the Kingdom. [...]