The Gospel is about the Good News of God’s kingdom that is at hand for all. The kingdom of God – the sovereign rule and activity of God - wasn’t always “at hand”. It was inaugurated on earth through the ministry of Jesus. The kingdom had come near He preached …
Mark 1:15 (NIV) [Jesus] "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!"
And again …
Matthew 4:23 (NIV) “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”
Of course, this did not mean that God’s sovereignty had never been seen or experienced before. It had - but not like this, and people were amazed. “At hand”, or “has come near” simply means that it was now so close to every human being and was ready to be revealed and experienced - ready to come bursting into one’s life. Jesus demonstrated this new “on-earth” reality in His ministry that was filled with many miracles that changed lives. These were signs of the kingdom. They pointed to the new reality.
Many have realised this, of course, and have committed their lives to Jesus Christ, having found salvation in His atoning death and resurrection. There is now a new created order of things in which they live, which is far superior to the old order of things … which is passing away. The apostle Paul made this point so clearly.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:
The old has gone, the new is here!”
The point here is that the arrival of the kingdom of God in Jesus, albeit not in its ultimate manifest reality yet to come, has reset everything. The old order of things, the former stereotypes, the patterns and presumptions we once clung to (before we were Christians) have all passed away because the kingdom is superior; it is divine in all its standards, wisdom and values. When we stop to think carefully about this Gospel of the kingdom, we inevitably come to the realisation that it is so beyond anything we’ve known. Yet, by the grace of God, we are called to live in this “beyond” order of things. We are invited into a new created order, and we are learning to be in harmony with it.
Again, the apostle Paul helps us understand a few things in this regard.
Galatians 3:26-28 (NIV)
“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is now neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
And there it is. The Gospel of the kingdom takes us and calls us to live beyond gender stereotypes – male and female – beyond ethnicities, and beyond social constructs that place artificial values and inequalities upon human beings. That is, beyond the old order of things. In Christ, these all disappear as the Gospel takes us beyond and into the new created order. This is where the Christian now lives. It is not where we will one day live, but where are called to live right now. This means, of course, that we now need to fully embrace the kingdom, and learn to live within its new creation harmonies.
For many Christians this is difficult because the stereotypes and non-kingdom assumptions of our pre-born-again life are still so strongly influential. They have been dragged into our new life in Christ and, in many cases, have not been challenged. These are so strong, in fact, that they even distort the way we read and interpret scripture, leaving us with our own preferred understandings. Really? Yes, really. Just one, classic example is in what Paul stated in Galatians 3 above: “There is now neither … male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The Gospel takes us beyond what we have ever thought about male and female roles, capabilities, ministries, callings, spiritual gifts and so on. In Christ, these old order understandings have been erased. For example, the kingdom values set does not make provision for spiritual gifts specific to either gender – we are all one in Christ, any spiritual gift can be given to anyone at all. The same goes for roles in the church, and ministries, too – and we haven’t got to anything else, yet.
Yet this does not prevent many a preacher of the Gospel from reinforcing the old order gender stereotypes and divisions. And this is, of course, a continuing heresy in the church today. When we cannot let go of the old order of things to which we died in our baptism, we will always distort the scripture to our own preferences – and we miss the richness of all we are called to in the new creation – which is not merely eschatological. It’s now.
The remedy to all this? We need to accept by faith the authority of God’s word, starting with the essence, the very core, of the Gospel that calls us beyond, as Paul has written in Galatians 3, and elsewhere. This is crucial. It is the core of the Gospel that trumps all else. It is the Gospel to which all scriptures points, and which teaches us how to properly interpret the whole of scripture so that our churches are living manifestations of the new creation. Through the priority of the Gospel – of the kingdom – we come into the rich wisdom and revelation of the rest of scripture. In fact, I would argue that without a proper understanding of the Gospel, the wisdom of the whole scripture cannot be fully grasped.
The Gospel calls us beyond what we have known. Therefore …
2 Corinthians 5:16 (NIV)
“… from now on we regard no one from a worldly (a flesh) point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.”
No one.
Are you living beyond in the new created order of things? Or, is old creation thinking, prejudices and preferences – the worldly way of regarding things - holding you back?
In a nutshell, the Gospel is about the kingdom of God – and His kingdom supersedes and has supremacy over all other kingdoms, including yours and mine. Including the church, too. The church is provisional; the kingdom is eternal. And so, we learn as much about the kingdom of God as we can – its power, its values, its expectations, its demands and its promises – and learn to live in that divine harmony. The rest follows …
Matthew 6:33 (NLT)
“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously,
and He will give you everything you need.”
Think seriously about these things.
Ps Milton