The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God

INTRODUCTION

ESCHATOLOGY has always been a fascinating subject. It appeals to both Christian and non-Christian alike. Everyone is curious about the future. That is why we have always had so many magicians and fortune-tellers. Especially today do men long to know what lies ahead. However, apart from the Word of God we can only speculate. It alone discloses God’s purpose both for the present and the future.

I have read many books on prophecy. I am familiar with the various schools of thought and interpretation. Much has been written about the Kingdom of God. But of all the books I have read, I have never come across one that so clearly and so Scripturally deals with the Kingdom as does Dr. Ladd’s new volume, The Gospel of the Kingdom.

Dr. Ladd shows that the Kingdom of God belongs to the present as well as the future. He conceives of the Kingdom as the rule, the reign, the government of God in this age in the hearts and lives of those who yield themselves to Him, and in the next age over all the world. He sums it up in the second chapter in this way:

The Kingdom of God is basically the rule of God. It is God’s reign, the divine sovereignty in action. God’s reign, however, is manifested in several realms, and the Gospels speak of entering into the Kingdom of God both today and tomorrow. God’s reign manifests itself both in the future and in the present and thereby creates both a future realm and a present realm in which man may experience the blessings of His reign.

His interpretation of the parables is most illuminating. He does not believe that an interpretation has to be found for every detail. His understanding is that the Kingdom, though insignificant in appearance at present, is a reality and that it is destined to dominate the whole world. God will some day rule over all. This is a conception quite different from the usual interpretations given by the various schools of prophetic study. It should encourage the discouraged and give hope to the hopeless. God’s government regardless of appearances is bound to triumph at last. Nothing can withstand it.

Dr. Ladd’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is the clearest I have ever read. No one can study it without being deeply convicted. It cuts squarely across the practices and teachings of our day. Divorce, lust, anger, oaths, etc., are dealt with in no uncertain way. The interpretation is evangelistic and Scriptural in every sense of the word. It will make the Bible a new book.

It seems to me that the author’s emphasis on the absolute necessity of a decision with all that it involves is of the utmost importance. Dr. Ladd does not minimize the cost. Discipleship always costs. There is a price to pay. The rich young ruler had to give up all. God’s government demands complete submission. His subjects must put Him first. The Kingdom is entered only when a decision has been made and the price paid.

Then too, he makes it clear that the Church is to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom right up to the end of the age, and that only when the task has been completed will the King return.

It is my hope that this book will be studied by ministers, students, and Christian workers everywhere. I congratulate Dr. Ladd upon having written it. He has made a real contribution to the Church in our day.

OSWALD J. SMITH

Los Angeles

February, 1959

CHAPTER I

WHAT IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD?

WE live in a wonderful and yet a fearful day. It is a wonderful day because of the amazing accomplishments of our modern scientific skills which have provided us with a measure of comfort and prosperity undreamed of a century ago. Great metal birds soar through the air, swallowing up thousands of miles in a few hours. Floating palaces bring to the ocean voyager all the luxuries of the most elegant hotel. The automobile has freed man to explore for himself scenes and sights which to his grandparents were contained only in story-books. Electrical power has brought a score of slaves to serve the humblest housewife. Medical science has conquered the plague, smallpox, and other scourges of physical well-being and is on the threshold of other amazing conquests.

A marvellous age, indeed! Yet happiness and security seem further removed than ever, for we face dangers and hazards of unparalleled dimensions. We have come victoriously through a war in which the foundations of human liberty were threatened; yet the columns of our newspapers are stained with unbelievable stories of the suppression of human freedom, and the fight for freedom goes on. New discoveries in the structure of matter have opened unimaginable vistas of blessing for man’s physical well-being; yet these very discoveries hold the potential, in the hands of evil men, of blasting society from the face of the earth.

In a day like this, wonderful yet fearful, men are asking questions. What does it all mean? Where are we going? What is the meaning and the goal of human history? Men are concerned today not only about the individual and the destiny of his soul but also about the meaning of history itself. Does mankind have a destiny? Or do we jerk across the stage of time like wooden puppets, only to have the stage, the actors, and the theatre itself destroyed by fire, leaving only a pile of ashes and the smell of smoke?

In ancient times, poets and seers longed for an ideal society. Hesiod dreamed of a lost Golden Age in the distant past but saw no brightness in the present, constant care for the morrow, and no hope for the future. Plato pictured an ideal state organized on philosophical principles; but he himself realized that his plan was too idealistic to be realized. Virgil sang of one who would deliver the world from its sufferings and by whom the great line of the ages begins anew.

The Hebrew-Christian faith expresses its hope in terms of the Kingdom of God. This Biblical hope is not in the same category as the dreams of the Greek poets but is at the very heart of revealed religion. The Biblical idea of the Kingdom of God is deeply rooted in the Old Testament and is grounded in the confidence that there is one eternal, living God who has revealed Himself to men and who has a purpose for the human race which He has chosen to accomplish through Israel. The Biblical hope is therefore a religious hope; it is an essential element in the revealed will and the redemptive work of the living God.

Thus the prophets announced a day when men will live together in peace. God shall then judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (Isa. 2:4). Not only shall the problems of human society be solved, but the evils of man’s physical environment shall be no more. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them (Isa. 11:6). Peace, safety, security—all this was promised for the happy future.

Then came Jesus of Nazareth with the announcement, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matt. 4:17). This theme of the coming of the Kingdom of God was central in His mission. His teaching was designed to show men how they might enter the Kingdom of God (Matt. 5:20; 7:21). His mighty works were intended to prove that the Kingdom of God had come upon them (Matt. 12:28). His parables illustrated to His disciples the truth about the Kingdom of God (Matt. 13:11). And when He taught His followers to pray, at the heart of their petition were the words, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10). On the eve of His death, He assured His disciples that He would yet share with them the happiness and the fellowship of the Kingdom (Luke 22:22–30). And He promised that He would appear again on the earth in glory to bring the blessedness of the Kingdom to those for whom it was prepared (Matt. 25:31, 34).

When we ask the Christian Church, What is the Kingdom of God? When and how will it come? we receive a bewildering diversity of explanations. There are few themes so prominent in the Bible which have received such radically divergent interpretations as that of the Kingdom of God.

Some, like Adolf von Harnack, reduced the Kingdom of God to the subjective realm and understood it in terms of the human spirit and its relationship to God. The Kingdom of God is an inward power which enters into the human soul and lays hold of it. It consists of a few basic religious truths of universal application. The more recent interpretation of C. H. Dodd, conceives of the Kingdom as the absolute, the wholly other which has entered into time and space in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

At the other extreme are those who, like Albert Schweitzer, define Jesus’ message of the Kingdom as an apocalyptic realm to be inaugurated by a supernatural act of God when history will be broken off and a new heavenly order of existence begun. The Kingdom of God in no sense of the word is a present or a spiritual reality; it is altogether future and supernatural.

Another type of interpretation relates the Kingdom of God in one way or another to the Church. Since the days of Augustine, the Kingdom has been identified with the Church. As the Church grows, the Kingdom grows and is extended in the world. Many Protestant theologians have taught a modified form of this interpretation, holding that the Kingdom of God may be identified with the true Church which is embodied in the visible professing Church. As the Church takes the Gospel into all the world, it extends the Kingdom of God. An optimistic version holds that it is the mission of the Church to win the entire world to Christ and thus transform the world into the Kingdom of God. The Gospel is the supernatural redeeming Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the Kingdom is to be established by the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel. The Gospel must not only offer a personal salvation in the future life to those who believe; it must also transform all of the relationships of life here and now and thus cause the Kingdom of God to prevail in all the world. The Gospel of redeeming grace has the power to save the social, economic and political orders as well as the souls of individual believers. The Kingdom of God is like a bit of leaven placed in a bowl of dough which slowly but steadily permeates the dough until the entire lump is leavened. So is the Kingdom of God to transform the world by slow and gradual permeation.

Still others have understood the Kingdom of God to be essentially an ideal pattern for human society. The Kingdom is not primarily concerned with individual salvation or with the future but with the social problems of the present. Men build the Kingdom of God as they work for the ideal social order and endeavour to solve the problems of poverty, sickness, labour relations, social inequalities and race relationships. The primary task of the Church is to build the Kingdom of God. Those who are interested in the history of interpretation will find a brief but comprehensive survey with documentation in the author’s book, Crucial Questions About the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952).

In the face of such diversity of interpretation in the history of Christian theology, many readers will react by saying, Let us be done with all human interpretations. Let us go directly to the Word of God and find what it has to say about the Kingdom of God. The perplexing fact is that when we turn to the Scriptures, we find an almost equally bewildering diversity of statements about the Kingdom of God. If you will take a concordance of the Bible, look up every reference in the New Testament alone where the word kingdom occurs, write down a brief summary of each verse on a piece of paper, you will probably find yourself at a loss to know what to do with the complexity of teaching.

The Word of God does say that the Kingdom of God is a present spiritual reality. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom. 14:17). Righteousness and peace and joy are fruits of the Spirit which God bestows now upon those who yield their lives to the rule of the Spirit. They have to do with the deepest springs of the spiritual life, and this, says the inspired apostle, is the Kingdom of God.

At the same time, the Kingdom is an inheritance which God will bestow upon His people when Christ comes in glory. Then the King will say to those on his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’ (Matt. 25:34). How can the Kingdom of God be a present spiritual reality and yet be an inheritance bestowed upon God’s people at the Second Coming of Christ?

Another facet of Kingdom truth reflects the fact that the Kingdom is a realm into which the followers of Jesus Christ have entered. Paul writes that God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son (Col. 1:13). This verse makes it very clear that the redeemed are already in the Kingdom of Christ. It may of course be objected that we must distinguish between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Christ; but this seems impossible, for the Kingdom of God is also the Kingdom of Christ (Eph. 5:5; Rev. 11:15). Furthermore, our Lord describes those who received His message and mission as those who now enter into the Kingdom of God (Luke 16:16).

At the same time, the Kingdom of God is a future realm which we must enter when Christ returns. Peter looks to a future day when there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 1:11). Our Lord Himself frequently referred to this future event. Many will come from the east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 8:11).

This future coming of the Kingdom will be attended with great glory. Jesus told of the day when the angels will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers.… Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matt. 13:41, 43). On the other hand, when asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God was coming, he answered, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or, ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you’ (Luke 17:20–21). The Kingdom is already present in the midst of