The Good News of the Kingdom
What were the life and teachings of Jesus all about?
What was Jesus all about?
The churches that raised me seemed pretty sure of the answer. Jesus came to forgive my sins so I could go to heaven when I die.
Some of my friends today would have a very different answer. Jesus, they say, was all about loving people and caring for the poorest and most vulnerable.
Others focus on Jesus’ moral teachings. What to do and what not to do.
But when I read about the life and teachings of Jesus in the Bible, I notice something else. Something he returns to again and again. Something at the center of everything he says and does: “The kingdom of God.”
But what is that?
Jesus assumes we’ve read the first page of our bible. Back there God creates a good world and entrusts it to humans. God is the king of the world, but God rules it through humans. God tells them to manage the world God’s way. If they do, there will continue to be abundance and peace for everyone.
But humans don’t trust God’s rule. They want to be the rulers of themselves and the world.
The world ruled their way is a world in which scarcity displace plenty and violence displaces peace.
The story of the Bible then follows just one family, the family of Abraham. God invites them to live under his reign. And order their lives and their whole society God’s way. Through them God will show everyone all that human life was meant to be under God’s good rule.
But they refuse. Again and again.
Eventually they end up enslaved in Egypt.
Egypt is not just a place in the Bible. It’s a picture of what the world inevitably becomes when it’s run by humanity and not God. It’s a kingdom fueled by violence. It’s a society that hoards abundance and deprives others of what they need to live.
God confronts that dysfunctional kingdom and liberates Abraham’s family from it. Then, God invites these freed people to live under his reign. Again, he wants to rule through them to restore plenty and peace to the world.
They fail spectacularly.
They reject God as king and install human kings of their own. And slowly, their society becomes just like the one they were rescued from. They enslave others. They grow violent. They hoard wealth and exploit the poor.
So God sends prophets and poets to them with a promise: God himself will come someday. In person. God will reassert his rule as king of the world.
God will confront the powers that enslave humanity. God will topple systems built on violence and exploitation. God will liberate!
And once again, God will invite freed people to live under his good reign. To experience abundance and peace. And through them, God will restore abundance and peace to the world.
There are four biographies of Jesus preserved in what Christians call the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. When you read them, notice what Jesus talks about most.
It’s the “good news” of “the kingdom of God.” And he assumes you know the backstory—God’s plan to rule through humanity to bring abundance and plenty to the world. And humanity’s rejection of God’s rule and their insistence on ruling themselves and the world their own way.
The “good news” Jesus announces is not that people can escape this mess and go to heaven someday. It’s that God’s reign has come to earth right now!
Jesus demonstrates this reign everywhere he goes.
Over sickness, by healing.
Over hunger, by feeding.
Over isolation, by welcoming.
Over sin, by forgiving.
Over demons, by exorcising.
Over death, by raising the dead.
Jesus is God on earth in person! God is ruling through Jesus the way God always intended to rule through humanity. Restoring abundance. Restoring peace.
And then Jesus is crowned king. Not with gold, but with thorns. Not in a palace, but on a Roman cross.
This is how God becomes king. Not through violent revolt. Not through armies or assassinations. Not by taking life, but by laying his down.
Jesus allows the violence of human rule to exhaust itself on his own body. Unretaliated. Unopposed.
And when he steps out of the tomb three days later, we’re meant to see this as God’s reign over death itself.
Jesus is king over the grave!
Liberator of humanity!
His resurrection launches a new beginning for the world. Jesus invites humans to live under God’s reign so that God can rule through them.He forms a new people to restore abundance where there is scarcity and peace where there is conflict.
The Bible does not end with God snatching humanity from earth and taking us somewhere else. It ends with God coming to live with us here. The next to last chapter of the story describes a future day when God and humans will rule this world together forever.
That part of the story was missing from the churches that raised me. God’s work of restoring abundance and peace through us. Now. And forever.
But there’s also a part of this story that my justice-loving friends today leave out too.
When Jesus announced that the kingdom of God had arrived through him, he issued an invitation: “Repent and believe this good news” (Mark 1:15)
There was a Jewish general named Josephus who helps us understand. Josephus was captured by the Romans and went to work for them as a historian. His writings help us grasp how people in the first century used certain words and phrases.
In one of his journals, Josephus describes chasing down two servants who had run off to join a revolt against Rome. He knew they would be slaughtered. So he begged them to stop.
“Repent,” he said, “and believe in me.”
He was asking them to abandon their plans, stop what they were doing, and return to him, trusting that his way of dealing with the Romans was better.
In the ancient world, when a king conquered a land, messengers would often ride out to announce “good news” of the victory to everyone who lived there. Then came an invitation. Stop resisting. Trust the new king. Believe that his rule will be better for you.
“Repent and believe in me,” was the victorious kings message.
Jesus is not denying the importance of feeding the hungry, ending slavery, caring for the vulnerable, or welcoming the excluded. The Bible insists on all of this.
But the Bible also shows, again and again, that humans are terrible at doing any of this on their own. Even our best efforts at liberation bend back toward domination. We oppose violence with violence. We pursue tolerance through new forms of intolerance. We try to shut down insult with more insult.
So Jesus’ invitation goes deeper. He wants our allegiance.
He invites people to surrender themselves to God’s rule—to call him “Lord” (Romans 10:9-10). To have our thoughts ruled by his thoughts, our desires by his desires, our beliefs by his beliefs, and our lives by his way of life.
God wants to rule in us first. Only then can God rule through us.
Jesus’ life and teaching weren’t primarily about getting me to heaven when I die. He wasn’t focused solely on personal morality or acts of justice either.
Jesus came proclaiming the good news that God is king on earth.
Jesus invites us to stop ruling ourselves and our world our way. To trust that God is good and his way is better. To be ruled and restored by God, so that through us, God can restore abundance and peace to this world.
