If someone was to ask you what the main theme of Jesus Christ’s teaching was during His earthly ministry, how would you respond? Would you talk about His call to love our neighbors – even our enemies (Matthew 5:44)? Would you share His repeated message about His sacrificial death as a substitute for us (Mark 10:45)? No doubt these two themes are primary in Jesus’s teaching, not secondary. But the most prominent theme that Jesus spoke on was the kingdom of God.

This surprises many who grew up hearing about Jesus dying on the cross for their sin and rising again but don’t recall learning much about the kingdom of God. But it is pretty hard to dispute such a claim when you consider what Jesus actually said in the Gospels.

In the Gospel of Mark, the message Jesus first preached was:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel.” (Mark 1:15, ESV)

Likewise, in Matthew and Luke, we see Jesus constantly talking about the kingdom of God. He shares parables about the kingdom (Matthew 13). He tells His followers to pray “Your kingdom come” (6:10). He alluded to Himself in kingly terms, saying things like “A nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return.” (Luke 19:12). He often prompted His listeners to consider, “What is the kingdom of God like?” (13:18-21). He said things like, “But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (11:20).

His famous Sermon on the Mount was all about what life in the kingdom of God looks like (Matthew 5-7). Jesus said, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (5:20).[1] Rather than being anxious about their daily needs, Jesus taught His followers to orient their lives around the coming kingdom: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (6:33). Matthew summed up Jesus’s earthly ministry like this: “And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction” (9:35).

As you read through the Gospels, you can’t help noticing that Jesus loved to talk about the kingdom of God. The arrival of the kingdom was at the core of everything He did. It is no exaggeration to say that Jesus was either talking about the kingdom or showing the power of the kingdom.[2]

So what exactly is the kingdom of God? And why couldn’t Jesus quit talking about it?

God the King

In America, we often struggle with the concepts of king and kingdom. After all, we are a nation birthed through rejection of a king’s authority. The idea of a king reigning over us often sounds either quaint or tyrannical. We might resonate more with the peasant in the Monty Python film Holy Grail. When King Arthur tells him he should show deference to his king, the peasant responds, “Well, I didn’t vote for you.” To which the frustrated Arthur replies, “You don’t vote for kings!”

And yet, there’s just no getting around the fact that the kingdom theme is prominent in Scripture. I think Graeme Goldsworthy summed it up well when he said the kingdom is God’s people, in God’s place, under God’s rule.[3] When we talk about the kingdom of God, we are talking about God’s right and power to reign over His world.

The faithful Jew of the first century would recognize immediately what Jesus meant by “the kingdom of God is at hand.” The Hebrew Scriptures frequently refer to God as the King reigning over the earth (Exodus 15:18; Psalm 93:1; 103:19).

“Who is this King of glory?
    The Lord of hosts,
    he is the King of glory!” (Psalm 24:10)

As Creator, God is the rightful King over His creation. He alone is perfectly righteous and capable of executing justice on the earth.

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness.” (Psalm 45:6)

Despite the privilege of having God as their just and loving monarch, the people of Israel continually pursued false gods and failed to submit to the Lord. When the people demanded a human king like the surrounding nations, God tells the prophet Samuel, “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). While there are flickers of hope throughout, the Old Testament can be summarized as the story of Israel rejecting God as her true king. At its core, sin is rebellion against the kingly reign of God (Romans 1:18-21).

In the words of R. C. Sproul, “Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority.”[4]

Israel’s greatest human king, David, is said to be “a man after God’s own heart” who reigned in the power of the Lord (1 Samuel 13:14; 2 Samuel 5:10). God even promises David that one of his offspring shall build a temple and sit on the throne forever, saying, “And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16).

David was understandably overwhelmed by this promise, often called “the Davidic Covenant.” While David’s son, Solomon does build the temple, he eventually dies. So the promise is not fully realized. From this point forward, the Jewish people look forward to the arrival of this messianic figure in the line of David. Through the prophets, God reassures the people that this son of David will come: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land” (Jeremiah 23:5). For justice to be executed and righteousness to fill the land, God would somehow have to deal with sin, putting down the rebellion that naturally springs from the human heart (17:9).

Over the centuries, we see a long line of kings descending from David who fail to be this “righteous Branch.” In fact, most of these men do not walk with the Lord. Eventually, God judges Judah (David’s tribe) by allowing the people to be conquered by Babylon and taken as subjects to live under the pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar. Things look pretty bleak now. Whereas before they were in the right land but didn’t have the right man, now they weren’t even in the right land!

And yet, God’s promise stood firm. The prophet Jeremiah assured them that his fellow Jews would only be in exile in Babylon for 70 years, at which point a godly remnant would return to land of Israel (Jeremiah 29:10). Hope remained!

A Kingdom that Fills the Earth

Not only that, but in Babylon, God showed His power to fulfill promises through Daniel, a young man who found himself standing before the mighty Nebuchadnezzar. The pagan king had threatened to kill all the “wise men” of Babylon unless someone could interpret a dream that deeply troubled him. So God used Daniel to deliver a prophetic message through the dream’s interpretation.

Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that in his dream he saw a terrifyingly massive statue. He then interprets the dream, explaining that the various portions of the statute (head, chest, middle and thighs, and legs and feet) symbolized Babylon and the three successive kingdoms (or empires) that will dominate the world scene in the future. These kingdom predictions align with what we know of the Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires.

In the dream, however, Nebuchadnezzar saw

“…a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” (Daniel 2:34-35)

Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that during the fourth kingdom “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44).

In the following centuries, the Jews remembered this prophetic dream and eagerly anticipated the kingdom of God that would be established during that fourth kingdom (Roman Empire). They also anticipated the arrival of a “son of David” who would bring in this kingdom as the Messiah, who will deal justly with the poor, destroy the wicked, and bring in an era of righteousness and peace (Isaiah 11:1-5).

The Now and Not Yet of the Kingdom

The kingdom of God, then, is about God coming to reign as King over His people in His world. We cannot abstract the kingdom of God from the person of Jesus. To be in the kingdom and seek first the kingdom is to live for King Jesus. When Jesus announced that the kingdom was at hand, He was saying that the kingdom of God was arriving in and through Him. More specifically, it was in Jesus’s death and resurrection from the dead that the kingdom of God was inaugurated on earth, because in these events Jesus defeated sin (rebellion against the reign of God) and broke the power of death (the result of rebellion). The kingdom would not yet arrive in full until the end of the age when He returns, but His resurrection was the first installment of the powers of the age to come breaking into this age.

It is important for us to understand both the present and future reality of the kingdom of God – what theologians have termed the “already” and the “not yet” of the kingdom. In one sense, the kingdom is already present because all who repent of their sin and trust in Christ are born again and enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:4; 19:14).

Paul can say that already Christ has “rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14, NASB). Because of Christ’s resurrection, the kingdom truly is present on earth today as men and women surrender to the reign of Jesus and experience new spiritual life and forgiveness of sins. Like the nation of Israel, believers are called a “kingdom of priests” (cf. Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:9).

On the other hand, Jesus also spoke of the kingdom’s future arrival as something we should pray for (Matthew 6:10). The fullness of the kingdom has “not yet” arrived in its final form. He also used parables that express both the growth of the kingdom from small beginnings and its future consummation on earth at “the close of this age” when evildoers will be cast into the fiery furnace while the righteous “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:24-43).

The Apostle Paul explains it this way:

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:20-26)

On Earth as It Is in Heaven

The kingdom of God is an essential theme of the story of Scripture. You could even say that the story of the Bible is the story of God’s kingdom coming in and through the redemptive reign of Jesus Christ. From all we’ve seen, one thing should be made clear in our minds. Jesus spoke of the kingdom’s arrival – here on earth. He said it is close “at hand.” Daniel said the stone that shattered the great image “became a great mountain and filled the earth” (Daniel 2:35). In describing the Messiah’s kingdom, Isaiah spoke of creation being restored to its original design, with animals living in perfect harmony under the kingly reign of the Messiah.

“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
    and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
    and a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6)

It will be Eden restored: “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (v. 9).

When Jesus said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God,” Peter asked about the disciples’ payoff for leaving all for the sake of Jesus (Matthew 19:24-27). Jesus responded that “in the renewal of all things” (v. 28), they would be more than rewarded for their sacrifices. This same Peter would later write that “we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).

It is no wonder that, in the Beatitudes, Jesus spoke of His people inheriting both “the kingdom of heaven” and “the earth” (Matthew 5:3, 5). In God’s great plan of redemption, His kingdom will be on earth, when all of creation is restored and rightly ordered under the reign of our Lord.

In that day, God’s people will be comforted because God Himself will be with them and wipe every tear from their eye. And death will be no more. “For… the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21). Christ the King will reclaim His entire creation. As Abraham Kuyper put it, there is not one square inch of the universe, over which Christ does not exclaim, “Mine!”

Therefore, we shouldn’t think of God’s future kingdom as an otherworldly existence in a realm of pure spirit. Rather, followers of the risen King are now called to pray for the kingdom’s full arrival “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

“Joy to the world! The Lord is come.
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground.
He comes to make His blessings flow,
far as the curse is found.”
– Charles Wesley

Have thoughts on this post? Feel free to comment below!

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[1] Many scholars have noted that since “kingdom of heaven” is synonymous with “kingdom of God.” Matthew wrote his Gospel primarily to a Jewish audience, so his tendency to use “the kingdom of heaven” is explained by the reticence of Jews to use God’s name for fear of committing blasphemy.

[2][2] While John’s Gospel favors the phrase “eternal life,” he nevertheless includes Jesus saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

[3] Grame Goldsworthy, Gospel and Kingdom (Homebush West, N.S.W., Australia: Anzea, 1992), 47.

[4] R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God.