WHAT IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD LIKE?

Is this Kingdom of God real?

No, this is not part of the series I have been writing about Jesus. I’ll return to that very shortly.

When I ask about the Kingdom of God being “real”, I don’t mean, “is it real through mystic faith”? I don’t mean to ask whether or not it is like the boogeyman, only real if we believe in it. I mean, does it exist physically?

There seems to be an awful lot of preaching out there in bloggyland about mysticism, and things being done which clearly aren’t. There is an awful lot of spiritualization going on, and I am left wondering, what happened to the REALITY of the Kingdom? Since when does the reality of this world look anything like the Kingdom of God?

In truth, this world looks nothing like the Kingdom of God, which if a man found in a field, he’d go and sell everything he has, and then come back and buy the field. I don’t see much in this world worth selling everything I have for, save for the reality of Jesus Christ. Him, and people.

But this world? No, it’s not the kingdom, and everything is not finished, otherwise we might as well believe that the Kingdom’s influence is very distant, and very, very, very weak. For what we see in this world is the same thing we have always seen. We see selfishness, we see instant gratification, we see murder, and all manner of people being taken advantage of by other people who don’t consider them as valuable. In essence, we still see what we have seen since the time of Jesus, and before. Pardon me, but isn’t the Kingdom of God something more?

Paul, John, and Peter all told us we wait for something that has not yet been fully revealed, and that reality still exists in this world today. If it did not, things in this world would be a lot different.

I see love in this world, and I see hate right alongside of it. If Jesus had set up His government, I don’t think we’d see much of the hate thing. I see murder, and I see people helping each other. If Jesus’ government were set up right now, I can safely believe we would not see the murder thing.

Between the Kingdom of God, and the government of this world, there can be no comparison. The Kingdom of God exists in power and not in words, and in this world, the governments we see are pretty much all talk, and no do. Oh yeah, they do a pretty good job of spending money too.

But to say that everything is complete, to me, is to say that the Kingdom of God looks no different than the world has always looked. Check back into the things Jesus said about the Kingdom, and see if that is what He described. Paul talked about things being changed in an instant, and Peter described it in such a way as to use fire as a description of how things will change so rapidly, as if the world is burned by fire, and remade in an instant.

The difference between the Kingdom of God, and this world will be greater than night and day, when it has been fully manifested and revealed. We haven’t seen it fully revealed yet, we wait for it. Otherwise, what’s been revealed looks weak, impotent, and pretty much the same old same old. No one is going to sell everything they have for that.

I understand that we live by faith and not by sight, but I don’t think that verse has anything to do with the reality of the Kingdom. I think it has everything to do with doing just as Abraham did; waiting.

Faith being what it is, we look forward to what we hope for but cannot see. If it is already here, what in the world do we need faith for? We haven’t seen it yet, but when we do, we’ll know what it is, because it will look completely, totally, and in all other ways, different from what we see today.