Luke 17:20-21
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.
The Lord said that the Kingdom of God is within you. Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God is coming, because they held tremendous hope for the Kingdom of the future. They forgot, however, that the Kingdom is not just about the future, but also the present. They expected to share the blessings of the Kingdom with the Lord, but they forgot the responsibility and mission that will come with the Kingdom, which is also the dilemma for many of today's Christians. What exactly does God want the Christians on earth to do? Why doesn't He just lift us to the heaven, and to spare us of all the suffering in the world? Such thinking was prevalent in the early church. The brothers and sisters in the church of Thessalonica thought that the Lord was about to come, so why not abandon your job and just wait for the Lord? So, Paul rebuked them, saying that if they didn't work, they should eat.
The black slaves of the 17th century were under the tormenting rule of the slavery system, so they came up with the hymn "this world is not my home," believing that living on earth has no significance and the only meaning thing is the enter heaven. Under such erroneous belief, many Christians naturally divided everything in life into worldly and spiritual matters. Worldly matters are meaningless and thus don't need to be pursued after. In the view of non-Christians, Christians are like spiritual monsters that have the Bible on one hand and chanting "halleluiah" all the time. To Christians, we seem to be caught between the worldly and the spiritual, not sure which way to go, but the root problem is that we don't have a correct understanding of God's Kingdom.
In order to understand the objective of mission of Christians on earth, we must have the correct view of the Kingdom. Kingdom of God is not a place in heaven where we can go and live, because God is omnipresent and His authority rules the universe without any constraint by time and space. In the original text of the Bible, the word "Kingdom" means two things: One is the authority and rule of God, and the other is the complete rule by the Kingdom in the end time. When Jesus was preaching on earth, He said that "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." He didn't mean that the signs of the end times were present, but He meant that the authority of God would begin to be executed on earth. God is exercising His authority, and He is saving those who belong to Him but are in sin. Therefore, the Kingdom is not about the future, but it can be experienced today, for God's rule can be manifested today in you and me!
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