Luke 17:20-21 (NIV) Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”
To the Pharisees, indeed, to many of the people of Jesus’ day, the kingdom of God was entirely different than it was to Jesus and to God. To them, it meant a restoration of their self-sovereignty, expulsion of the Romans, and them being remade into the preeminent kingdom of the world, as they had been in the days of Solomon. And it also meant the removal of the Herods, and a restoration to the throne of a descendent of King David.
So when they asked Jesus when the kingdom of God would come, they asked it sneeringly as a sort of underhanded shot. They completely rejected the very idea that Jesus was the Messiah, the one who would reestablish the kingdom. So their question actually came out something like this: “If You are the Messiah, tell us when You are going to reestablish God’s kingdom.”
But with such a different definition of the kingdom, there was no way for Jesus to give them a simple answer, a date or circumstance that would usher in the kingdom. The sort of kingdom that they were waiting for would never come. Their careful observation of the law would not usher it in. And when the actual kingdom was established, it would not be in a place or in a governmental system that someone would be able to point to and say, “There is the kingdom of God!”
Instead, though they had no eyes with which to see it, the kingdom of God was already right in their midst, established in the person of Jesus Himself. Wherever Jesus went, the kingdom was there in Him. Whatever He did was a physical manifestation of the spiritual reality of the kingdom.
The kingdom would be restricted to the immediate person of Jesus for a short time more. But after His resurrection from the dead, after His ascension to the right hand of the Father in heaven (Hebrews 1:3), and after His sending the Holy Spirit to indwell His followers on Pentecost, the kingdom became a reality in their hearts as it had been in His. And from there, it grew and spread until it covered the whole world.
The kingdom of God is still present in the world today, although it is much smaller than it could be, than God really wants it to be. It consists of every person who lives in the reality of Jesus as their Lord and King, who have been saved by grace, and who now live and work in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and who do God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) The whole purpose of the establishing of the Church and of the Great Commission was not to create a people waiting patiently for the kingdom to arrive. It was to create a people who, like Jesus, live consciously and continually in the kingdom; who take the kingdom everywhere they go; and who continually act in ways that are a physical manifestation of the spiritual reality of the kingdom.
Father, thank You for bringing me into Your kingdom, and for the power and grace to live there continually. And thank You for the multiplied millions in the world who live and work in the kingdom alongside me. Help us all, Lord, to live that kingdom life so fully, to obey Your commission so thoroughly, that Your kingdom grows and flourishes as You want it to. Amen.