What is the kingdom of God?

We’re hearing a lot of kingdom talk in sermons, books, and popular podcasts these days. But what is the kingdom of God? Did you know that answering this question (and living the answer to this question) is one of the most important things you’ll ever do?

That may sound a little over the top, but consider that Jesus speaks of no other topic more than he speaks of the kingdom of God. He began his public ministry with the declaration that the kingdom of God had drawn near (Mark 1:14 and Matthew 4:17, then summarized in Matthew 9:35). Apparently the arrival and availability of this kingdom was very good news to first century Israel. How do we know? Because when Jesus tells them to stop whatever they were doing and to follow him into the reality of this kingdom (which is what ‘repent and believe’ means), they did! The offer as they understood it was simply too good to pass up, as if they’d stumbled on priceless treasure hidden in a field, so they gave up everything else so that they could possess it (Matthew 13:44).

As his ministry unfolds, Jesus makes frequent mention of this kingdom and relates much of his other teaching to it. At one point, he places the pursuit of the kingdom of God first among all other priorities in life (Matthew 6:33).

Fair warning, there’s way too much to the kingdom of God to do proper justice to it in a couple of blog articles. Like God himself, the idea of the kingdom is big enough to fuel a lifetime of searching for its depths and reach.

But let me begin with this: We have much to gain by developing a working knowledge of this kingdom that Jesus places at the center of his preaching and teaching. What is this kingdom? Where is it? How does it work? What is our relationship to it? What does it mean for us and for the world?

What exactly is the kingdom of God?

If we are looking for a precise definition from Jesus, we won’t find it. Jesus himself never comes out and directly defines the kingdom, which should cause us to pause and pay attention. On the one hand, we should seek this kingdom first and somehow everything else will fall into place. But on the other, he never quite comes out and tells us exactly what it is. Why?

There are two reasons for this. First, Jesus assumes his audience knows certain things already based on their cultural heritage. He was speaking to Jews in 1st century Palestine, who had a very well-developed understanding of who they were and where they had come from. They had been expecting the coming of the kingdom of God because God himself had made certain promises to the Jews since the time of David (hundreds of years earlier) and then later through the prophets. The Jews were expecting God’s kingdom to come: a kingdom that would displace the unjust and oppressive rule of foreign powers that had cruelly abused Israel for a very long time. By the time of Jesus, there was some disagreement about what form this kingdom would take. Some thought the kingdom would arrive in the form of an earthly king like David, who would lead Israel in triumphant battle. This powerful king would overthrow the foreign powers oppressing Israel and restore Israel’s place at the center of the world stage. God had made exactly such promises. But other Jews thought the line of human kings too corrupt for such a thing, and were expecting a heavenly figure called “the son of Man”. This mysterious figure (from the book of Daniel) would come with divine glory and power and accomplish the same thing: the redemption and restoration of Israel. But there would be no more fooling around with sinful human kings; at last, God himself would finally take center stage once and for all, restored to his rightful place as king over all the earth.

But the really interesting thing is that Jesus deliberately defied both of these expectations, playing off both of them but refusing to give into popular expectations. Because while both of these expectations were rooted in promises made by God at various points in Israel’s history, neither expectation measured up to the more glorious thing that God had planned.

This is why Jesus can speak of the mystery of the kingdom (Matthew 13), a secret hiding in plain sight for any who would sit with Jesus long enough to open their eyes and ears. And while Jesus didn’t come out and say exactly what the kingdom is, he spoke often in vivid parables, beginning with the phrase, “the kingdom of God is like…”. These illustrations were meant to take popular expectations and correct them, leading people into the path of the very kingdom Jesus was referencing.

Where do we start with understanding the kingdom of God?

Since we’re not 1st century Jews, we still need some place to start. So let’s start with the basics: a kingdom is the authority exercised by a king. We moderns are used to thinking of a kingdom as a place or a realm (like the United Kingdom) where a monarch has sway. Sometimes we think of a kingdom as a people, those over whom the king exercises authority. But both of these ideas are derivative of the core idea: a kingdom is the authority that a king possesses. Stated another way, a kingdom is the king’s power to realize his intentions.

If you want to see this in Scripture, see Psalm 103:19, where God’s kingdom authority rules over all (obviously the land of Israel or the Jews are not what is meant here). Sometimes the same Hebrew word group is translated “royal power” or “dominion”. In the New Testament, we find the same idea in the strange parable in Luke 19:11-27. Here Jesus tells the story of a noble going to a distant country to be made king—to receive the authority he needs to rule. Then the king comes back and exercises that authority. The first and most important thing a king needs is authority, the power and right to rule. This is the first meaning of the idea of kingdom.

So by extension, the kingdom of God is the authority that God exercises. It is his power to accomplish his intentions. And this is where things start to get interesting. In one sense, the whole universe is under the authority of God; Scripture speaks often about the fact that God is in control, that he is Lord and Master of all creation, that the whole cosmos trembles at his mighty power. No foe can stand against him, no feat is too difficult for him to perform, no outcome beyond his reach, no higher power or law to which he must conform.

But God isn’t the only one with intentions. God permits each person a “kingdom” of his or her own. We each have a limited space in which we have been granted authority, a sphere in which we can cause our will to be done. We have this space because we have been given it by God as an act of love. God’s power is such that he could force every person’s conformity; if he wished, he could meticulously determine every action of every person everywhere, to enact his intentions and extend his authority over all the cosmos by force. But he doesn’t. God’s love is such that he allows other wills to have their sway. He makes room for us so that our choices mean something in the world.

This is an astonishing fact. On its face, it seems right—we instinctively (and rightly) recoil from the idea that someone would determine our thoughts, desires, or actions. This is the farthest thing from love. Love is what we call the relationship with someone where our mutual wills are aligned toward one another’s common good, where we live with one another in a shared life that is somehow larger and richer and more beautiful than a life we might live alone. God desires a shared life of love with every person, and because of this, God grants to each of us this freedom. We each possess a limited freedom to go our own way: to choose what we believe to be true, to cultivate certain desires, attitudes, and habits, to decide for ourselves what to do, how to act, and who to become.

But such freedom comes with a price and most of the problems in our world stem directly from this fact. Our world is a vast collection of individual wills jostling against one another, each of us sloshing around in the pain, rejection, oppression, violence, ignorance, loneliness, and fear that has resulted from us attempting to get our own will done in competition with one another. As the Apostle Paul put it in Romans 8, along with all creation, we groan for deliverance from such a world, longing for the good for which all of us were made.

Ultimately, this is the reason why Jesus did not come to fulfill popular expectations for the kingdom of God. Military conquest or violent divine judgment would have involved the destruction of exactly those people God came to save. And it would have exalted the same corrupt Israel, placing their sinful wills at the center of the world stage, leaving the world essentially unchanged. So Jesus came not as conqueror or world-destroyer but as a humble servant, pointing the way into a kingdom that comes quietly like a tiny mustard seed, like invisible leaven that would spread invisibly among the dough. In Jesus, every person is given the opportunity to enter willingly into this in-breaking kingdom of God, into the renewed and restored world that God is bringing into existence. This requires setting aside our own authority (“repent”) and learning from Jesus how to live under the authority of God (“believe the good news [that the kingdom of God is near]”).

We’ve got much more to say on this topic, but this is more than enough for one blog post. Up next, we’ll dive into what this kingdom is like as we look at what Jesus had to say about it. But for now, consider this: are you willing to set aside your own will in order to receive and to enter the good life of God’s kingdom?