The Kingdom of God and His Church.
The divine plan of salvation required that God be made flesh in Jesus Christ for the purpose of redeeming man from the power of Satan which he procured by craftiness from Adam. God then required those who received His mercy to stop living for themselves but to be part of a new reality that was hidden from human understandingthroughout the ages. That plan is the emergence of a new spiritual family of God amongst human beings. Before then, the world was divided into two classes: Jews and Gentiles.
The plan of God was to create one new being - The Church - as prime beneficiary of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ Ephesians 2: 11- 18. Those who claim that the Church is irrelevant or dead are jokers. They do not know the Word of God! The Church which was birthed at Pentecost will exist until Jesus returns to consummate it. The Church is the fullness of the Body of Christ and comprises all the saints who are beneficiaries of the grace freely released in Christ.
The true gospel of the Kingdom reveals that there are two phases we will enjoy: The Kingdom that now is in our hearts, which is the spiritual dimension Luke 17:21; John 1:12. All who have Jesus the King enthroned in their hearts, fully submitted to His sovereign rule are part of it. They are the true Church within the physical Church!
We are not to fold our hands and wait for when Jesus returns! We have great work to do: Occupy or do Kingdom business on His behalf and in so doing, be the Salt and Light of our depraved and dark generations! We are the instruments Jesus will use to save others who are part of the Kingdom but are yet in the world! Luke 19:11-27. It is an active and fully engaged life we are called to live, making every moment count!
In spite of all the Lord will do with us and how far He blesses us in the now, we are instinctively conscious that a Day is coming when Jesus will return to rule and reign in a physical sense from Jerusalem, when the kingdoms of this world give way! That is the Kingdom to come which Jesus taught the disciples to pray about in Matthew 6:10. That Kingdom to come is graphically illustrated in the parables of Jesus as worth losing all else for, living and dying for!
The return of Jesus to rule and reign on earth was obscured by the spirit of religion and now basically denied by the pseudo-kingdom preachers who insist that all there is about the Kingdom is now. In so doing, the divinity of Jesus, authority of the scriptures and reality of His return have faded in the minds and hearts of many who once believed. What a great falling away! Revelation 11:15; Revelation 20:1-6.
To get saints to understand these truths and be built up in them is one core reason Jesus distributed His Five fold offices to different saints! |
