Seeking the Kingdom of God
Much of what has been said about the Kingdom of God has been about the future. Verses in Isaiah 65 and the other prophetic books and towards the end of the book of Revelation give us a glimpse of how the Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to look like. But what many seem to have forgotten is the fact that Jesus Himself said the Kingdom of God (or the Kingdom of Heaven in the book of Matthew) is already here�and He was speaking this around 30 � 33 AD.
How exactly is the Kingdom of Heaven supposed to be already here if the world is still full of problems, evil and suffering? The answer is simple � His work is still not complete and we, the people of God, have been tasked to join Him in completing it.
Establishing the Kingdom of God does not require some sort of conquest. Too often in today�s world, we�ve used the analogy of war to demonstrate how God�s Kingdom gets established. But when we look at the life of Christ, we see the method that He used to do the �conquering� � and it�s not exactly battle -oriented. The methods and manner by which we conquer the world and expand His Kingdom are found in scriptures such as those in Matthew 5 through 7. By living and teaching a set of values that was contrary to the only value system alive and well in those days, Jesus actually showed Himself to be a rebel.
Picture this � His people had been under the yoke of Roman oppression for several centuries and the only system they knew to follow was what the Romans handed down to them � that the way to live a successful life is to conquer your enemies by force, make them submit to you, give them what they deserve, fight them to the death, etc. But Jesus� teachings were revolutionary � forgive your enemies? Pray for them? Walk two miles when they ask for one? Do not retaliate? Serve the people? Are these not the teachings of a counter-cultural teacher? And to demonstrate that those teachings work, He lived it and gave His life without fighting back. In the end, His was a life of service, and He paid the full price to fully serve humanity.
Then He rose from the dead to prove it was all true.
Establishing the Kingdom of God requires that we think, speak and act as Jesus did � not as the world expects us. By serving our fellow man and focusing our efforts on making this world a better place to live in, we will earn the right to tell them about the truths that we have learned in the church � that Jesus came to save us from our sins and that by placing our faith in Him, we can be assured of life in eternity in His presence.
It is said that Jesus earned the right to tell us of His truth because He gave all He can to serve us. In the same manner, we cannot force the truth of God on people until we have earned that right by serving them fully.