Two sets of two words
Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom.  He formally announced its arrival, and he spends His ministry years from beginning to end defining its nature.

On the other hand, Jesus claimed the Church as His own.  He made it clear that it was His people and that He was absolutely in charge of it from top to bottom, but his action toward the Church was different than his engagement with the coming of the Kingdom.

These two words:  claiming and proclaiming have very distinct meanings and I am using them to promote a simple truth by their relationship to these two very different words:  Church and Kingdom.  Let’s spend some time on this together so we can get a better grip on the claiming of the Church and the proclaiming of the Kingdom.  I think if we can see the beauty and the differences in these two distinct ideas that it will help us mature in a million ways.

First, I would like to jump to the present, and look into how we treat the Church and the Kingdom in our journey with Jesus.

What are we claiming and proclaiming?

Drive down any main street in almost any town in America and what will you see?  At least one, if not many, church buildings.  Big and small, humble and grand, these building fill our cities with a message from Christians everywhere:  join us here because this is where it happens…this is what we are about.  In my little town of 10,000 people (who are never all here at one time) there are at least twenty such churches all with unique identities and welcoming signage.  At my door and in my mailbox I receive countless invitations from those who are hosting programs, events, and meetings designed to help me get to know Jesus better through their church.  Christians in our era have become excellent at proclaiming the activities and the functions of the church.  The single most common phrase from a Christian’s lips these days in an effort to connect people to Jesus is what?

“Will you come to church with me?”

The most common phrase used to inquire about a person’s spiritual journey?

“Where do you go to church?”

Now, Jesus certainly claims the Church, and we are not here to diminish Her in any way.  We learn that She is beautiful in many different ways throughout the New Testament, but Jesus only used the word twice: once when He claims it as His own, and once when He requires reconciliation among its members (Matthew 16 and 18, respectively.)   In modern Christian life, however, I would venture to guess that talk about the form, the style, the function of Church dominates most conversations, especially among leadership.

If, however, we went to each one of these fellowship buildings in my little hometown and cruised through the teaching tapes, the written mission statements, and the program goals for the last year I think we would probably find a serious lack in focus on the Kingdom of God.  Do you think this is strange?  I do.  As a matter of fact, I think it is a fundamental crisis considering the following points that reveal the preeminence of the Kingdom:

1. Jesus begins His public ministry by identifying Himself first with the fore-runner, John the Baptist, whose message was “repent for the Kingdom of heaven has come near.” This anchored Jesus’ position on the priority of the Kingdom.
2. Following after the same message of John the Baptist, Jesus began his public ministry with this message:  From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Matt. 4:17  Then we read further and discover the message of the Kingdom permeates all of the life and words of Jesus–over 100 instances of the word Kingdom in the Gospels alone.  This proves his commitment to the Kingdom, and challenges ours.
3. Even after his death and resurrection Jesus “showed himself to these [apostles] and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.” Acts 1:3   If any of us could return from the dead and speak to those we love the most we would certainly focus on that which was most important–for Jesus it was the message of the Kingdom.  This emphasized the continuation of the Kingdom’s importance.
4. The apostles received this message into their hearts as central to their work, and it continued to dominate their teachings in the rest of the New Testament.  This calls each of us to continue the proclamation of the Kingdom of God.

Friends, this is not a complicated problem, but it certainly is a problem.  We have become distracted by the present world of things and visible forms of the Church, and have slipped from our understanding of the eternal call of God in the Kingdom.  We have allowed our walk with Jesus to become dictated to us by the things and limitations of this earth, and have not pressed in for the promises of heaven where we have been given power to change our world and usher in a new age.  This obsession with the institutional form of the Church has become a pathology, a sickness, that is infecting and hurting the world that God loves.  It is time for change, and I hope some upcoming leaders and visionaries are listening.  It is time for a Kingdom revolution.

We love the Church
Everyone who knows me is absolutely convinced that I love the Church. Though I may distinguish between the institutions She occupies and Her true self, I am neither a Church cynic nor an institution basher.   I am obsessed with honoring Her-the people of God.  I am committed to serving Her.  I am excited to be identified in Her.  Let’s take a few moments to define the Church so that we can be clear and encouraging to one another, and avoid any assumption that we would ever want to diminish the beauty of the Bride of Christ.  Here we will choose to be brief and Scripturally to the point as we establish the basics for understanding the Church:

1. The Church belongs to Jesus. He claimed it in Matthew when He says to Peter, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it”  It is not ours and does not belong to men in any century.  We should repent for ever using the words “my” or “your” when trying to identify the Church, it makes us petty to the world, and breeds ignorance between us.
2. The Church is the people of God. It has never been a building or an organization, and we should repent for stupidifying the word by using it in this way almost constantly.  There is no reference in all of Scripture to prove otherwise, and we must stop supporting idol worship by constantly referring to these man-made things as the Church that Jesus died to build.  He did not die for wood and mortar, He died for His people.
3. The Church is identified by the people of God in a city or region that meet together like “the church at Antioch” or “the church in their house” or “the church of God that is in Corinth.”  There has never been more than one Church, and to even consider it is heresy.  Jesus claims one Church, and She may be found in many, many places both big and small throughout the world.  It is only with this understanding that we can use the plural word “churches” like it is used in the Book of Revelation.  We can recognize the Church that meets at First Baptist’s building,  but we will not continue to recognize the First Baptist Church as though it is a different Church than the forty-seven other gatherings in the same city.  The difference is not subtle.
4. As His people we understand our nature as the Church in different, beautiful analogies–each having a unique impartation for us. These analogies include: we the Temple, we the Body, we the Bride, and we the Family–our meta-identity–the one that flows over all.  None of these give support for divisions in the Church based on style, race, doctrine, or history so we are now committed to ignoring the bigotries of men.  We are committed to building the people of God without prejudice.
5. The foundation of the Church, the stuff that gives it stability, is first Christ Himself who is the Chief Cornerstone (the key piece of the building’s foundation), and the apostles and prophets (who are people not concepts.)  This is still true today, and, so, any Church work that is not built on these is destined to be structurally unsound, unstable, and will eventually collapse.  (Ephesians 2:20)
6. The ministry gifts, who are first the apostles, second the prophets, third the teachers and pastors, and the evangelists are all given to build up the Church by building up every believer to do works of service.  They are not called to build organizations or doctrinal fortresses, but to give themselves away to serve the people of God into maturity in Christ alone.  (Ephesians 4 and I Cor. 12) Elders are appointed by the apostles to lead the local gatherings of the Church (Titus 1:5) and are, along with the apostles and prophets, identified as the mature and able leaders of the local fellowship.
7. The Church uniquely identifies the people of God on the earth, not the structures of organization or the traditions of men.  We are the “called out ones”–the ekklesia of God who love to gather together because we are family, not because we all agree with each other about everything.  Church is always used in any New Testament teaching to identity us and our function in the earth, but is not used for our eternal identity because the Church is about the practical-here-and-now-understanding of who we are in Christ and who we are for one another.  This is easy.  We do not imagine our fellowships, gatherings, and affiliations flying up into heaven together at the rapture now do we?

Now, Let’s Be the Church!
Jesus has already claimed us, so let’s just be His!  Let’s come together according to the simple, Biblical directives we have and be His beautiful family.  Let’s not worry with being in charge of the future of the Church, or strive to direct her growth because Jesus has stated as fact that He alone will build it.  He has called us to join Him to build as well, but only on the foundations that He has already laid, and only according the plan that He has envisioned.  If He is both the Head (Ephesians 4) and the primary foundation stone, then we can be sure that He has everything in between covered as well.  The Church is where we enjoy being who we are in Him as sons, and sharing ourselves with one another (do a study on “one another” sometime and get yourself encouraged!)  We don’t have to proclaim the Church, really, because when we come together around Jesus we simply are the Church.  Oh, my friends, if we could only put down all the tools and monies and energies we put into trying to make the Church a certain way, and just rest in being the Church, how full and wonderful our lives would be.  (This is an excellent place to beg you to please stop promoting mega church, or small church, or relaxed church, or formal church, or traditional church– et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseum–as though it will lead to anything other than divisions and prejudices and immaturity.)

Now, we certainly do have something to proclaim.  And this proclamation is what defines us as the Church–it is the passion of our work.  It is what we are all about.  It is what we have set our faces toward, and to this end we all dream and sacrifice and believe.  This passion is the Kingdom of God.

We Receive the Kingdom
Remember, Jesus claimed the Church as something tangible that He could see, so we can, too.  Jesus, however, came announcing the arrival of the Kingdom.  He proclaimed that a new era with new rules under new government with new power was here.  We must now receive it!  Receiving the Kingdom is our first step.  Jesus came proclaiming it, so now let’s receive His message.  Receiving is to see and agree as it relates to the Kingdom.  Let’s set our faces together to see it, and then when we do let’s not argue with it. How do we receive it?  Well, I might suggest that we first listen to the words of Jesus as he describes it using parables and stories that begin with “the Kingdom of heaven is like” or “the Kingdom of God can be compared to” and say aloud as we finish, “This is the way the Family works.”

Stop.

Meditate.

This sounds crazy simple, but we are sons [not a gender issue] who are destined to become like their father, and so the more we simply choose to agree with God instead of arguing a point, or looking for crazy details, we show our transformation by first saying, simply, “I believe that this is really how it is in the Family of God–this is how the Kingdom is.” Matt. 13:43  “Then the righteous [that’s us in Christ!] will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father”

Secondly, we can set out a few big Scriptural anchors out to keep us safely inside of the basics of seeing and then receiving the Kingdom.  Let’s try and list some here that will better identify the Kingdom of God.

• Kingdom truth #1: When Jesus shows up the Kingdom is near.  He who has ears, let him hear.   John the Baptist faded out because his message of announcing the entrance of the Kingdom was fulfilled when Jesus arrived.  And though Jesus speaks of a Kingdom yet to come until the next age, and that it is coming in a way that it has not yet fully arrive, He gives us a clear picture that once He stepped into time that the Kingdom Era had specifically launched.  Like a flowing train on the robes of Christ as he walks into our world, the Kingdom comes and flows out and around Him.  He says the “kingdom of heaven is near” and I say to you it is as near as seeing that the King is standing right in front of us!  He inaugurated a new age and set a new calendar in motion from the moment He appeared to us.  In Luke 16:16   he says, “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.” The Kingdom of heaven began to arrive when John was preaching, but he is called the least of the Kingdom because he didn’t live to follow Jesus and see the Kingdom expand around Him.
• Kingdom truth #2: The Kingdom of God is forcefully advancing as the dominate, ultimate Kingdom.  Jesus makes this very clear when He first tells Peter that the “gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” He is saying that the powers of darkness will be weak against the dominating power of the Church.  I bring this Scripture that identifies the Church here, not to bring confusion, but to underline that the Kingdom power that is “forcefully advancing” is at work in the Church–“The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing!” When Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom the blind were healed, the sick mended, and people were set free from the bondage of Satanic power.  He went about “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness” and in Matt. 12:28 He makes clear, “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.” The Kingdom is powerful, and it transforms our broken world.

go ahead chris, let it rip!
• Kingdom truth #3: When we submit to Jesus we become members of His Kingdom, but getting in is not easy.    There are sixteen verses in the Gospels and one in Acts that explain “entering” the Kingdom.  This is a teaching that helps define salvation–this is teaching on receiving our citizenship in the Kingdom.  These Scriptures set boundaries and pathways like: it will be hard–almost impossible–for the rich, we have to become like children or we can’t get in at all, not everyone who says Jesus is Lord will enter but those who obey the Father, our righteousness must go beyond that of the Pharasees, we must be born of water and the Spirit, and Paul says that we “must go through many hardships to enter” it.   You see, a great change must take place in us for us to enter the Kingdom.  It will require repentance and some violence.   Repenting is a dramatic change of direction–to go the opposite way of our personal and corporate history.  The violence might be seen as the force required to leave the old kingdom of this world which lives in our selfishness and rebellion.  Those of us who have tried this on our own and failed have an encouragement:  take heart my friends, the ultimate violence was Christ’s own death on the cross by which all of us can gain the strength and courage we could never have on our own to take hold of the Kingdom of God!  He calls us, and equips us in every way to obey Him!
• Kingdom truth #4: When we agree with God we are revealing our sonship and we release the power of the Kingdom in the world around us.  You see, the Kingdom of heaven or the Kingdom of God (there is no real difference in these terms in the Bible) is only possible when Christ appears, and now by the Holy Spirit He appears in us!  The Kingdom advances as we, the sons of God, continue to receive it and proclaim it.  The coming of the Kingdom is a now happening and the sons of God are authorized to act in accordance with it.   We can release what is in heaven…right here on the earth!  Through our faith we become sons, and as sons we are not just slaves in a kingdom, rather, we are joint heirs with Christ and co-enactors of Kingdom rule and authority.  We really are brothers of the King Jesus!  This is the single most important reason to abandoned the old, misinformed teachings on how gifts, miracles, and graces died with the Apostles of the Lamb in the first century AD.  Most have done this to excuse their own lack of power, but not us–we are empowered sons and people of faith!  Sons enjoy the miracle of the Father’s good pleasure and his empowered purpose in the world through the Holy Spirit.  So so now we receive Jesus’ sending us out “to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” Luke 9:2

Now, Let’s Proclaim the Kingdom!
We are called to follow the model that Jesus set before us.  We have received the Spirit of God that bubbles out of us in agreement.  We should claim and love the Church as the Bride of Christ, and we should commit ourselves to proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of God.  To proclaim the Kingdom is to first announce that the King is here!  He is not our teacher like Buddha.  He is not our prophet like Mohammed.  He is our King of Kings and Lord of Lords and His Kingdom knows no worthy adversary.   Then we proclaim that the authority of the Kingdom has come and is available in the here and now.  As the King directs us we touch the sick and pray for their healing, on the demon possessed and they are set free, on the broken and they are put back together.  Why?  Because the Kingdom is advancing and we have no choice but to agree with its healing power.  We don’t work in our own authority but under the direction of our Father who has sent us out as sons to do His heart’s work.  We call out to the lost and invite them not to join the Church, but to repent and believe in Jesus, be reunited with Father, and enter the Kingdom of God.  They become part of the Church as a relational byproduct.  We believe for all to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as it is the obvious gift of God to empower us to live according to the Kingdom’s expectations.  We don’t see it as an option, just as the apostles in the New Testament expected it in all that chose to repent and follow Jesus.  Now we are agents of supernatural change and healing everywhere we go as the power of the Holy Spirit is released in us.

Isaiah 61 is the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, and we are to continue to live into it.  Jesus quotes it when He first speaks in a synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth, in Luke 4, and that ended in religious folks trying to throw Him off of a cliff.  Well, this is true today.  As soon as we begin to proclaim the Kingdom–the present power of God and Kingdom requirements, instead of promoting the church organizations that some people think they own…they are immediately ready to throw us off a cliff, too!  My wife and I taught a simple Kingdom lesson from Matthew 25 in a huge, hip gathering last summer which simply required people to take up their responsibilities to take care of others and pastor them (begin at Matthew 25:14) and you would have thought we were teaching heresy by the way the lead pastor reacted after the event.  He thought we were being to directive and bringing too much responsibility and, therefore, opportunity for the people to fail.  Well, this is common among good men who have learned to love and protect the form of Church, more than they understand the charge to proclaim the Kingdom of God.  I can be empathetic to his sensitivity, but I was sad for the Kingdom message being so diminished.  We must move beyond this notion that as pastors we are primarily here to  protect people from challenge and failure, and as fathers we must equip and challenge and release them to obey God.   Don’t be distracted by revelations, leaders, and systems that do not take hold of the Kingdom of God with force.  We don’t need to judge each other either–we simply need to be ready for traditional points of view to receive this like a cat being rubbed the wrong direction, and not let it deter us from our work in proclaiming the Kingdom!

Some Practical Steps and Personal Notes
I have written in this article a very fast overview of the basics of seeing the Church and the Kingdom. 

One is the people and one is the purpose.

One is the body and one is the DNA code.

I hope that you can see that they are not the same.  Like many of you I grew up in an environment where traditional Church life was everything, and so I fell quickly into perceiving my value and future only from that viewpoint.  Of course, I was learning some Kingdom values and, yes, the Kingdom was coming in my life from the very first point that I began to see Jesus for who he really was.  As soon as He appeared to me, as it were, the Kingdom was coming in my life. But does that mean that I couldn’t receive more?  Does it mean that I didn’t need to pray for more of the Kingdom to “come here on earth as it is in heaven?”  Of course not.  We shouldn’t take these strong teachings as judgements against us, rather as encouragements for us to press on and hunger for more.  The Holy Spirit is here to guide and empower us as we go.

Everywhere I go I meet two distinct kinds of people: those who want the life of the Kingdom to come more and welcome the revolution, and those who want to defend only what they have known according to their tradition.  Which one are you?  To the first group I would like to encourage you.  Here are some practicals that seem to be in the form of warnings and challenges

1. Choose your battles wisely. Do not war against people who are trapped in the traditions of men, but feel free to reject being owned by any system that sets itself against the knowledge of Christ.  Why burn down buildings when there are good people inside?  Alternative, anti-tradition people, be careful in this area.
2. Receive the ministry graces given to the Church. These are people.  Be open to living and loving apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers, and evangelists who were given to us to build us up.  Don’t get locked into only one emphasis from leadership in these areas or you will grow up abnormal and unfit for service (see Ephesians 4.)  Missionaries with hot, happening orgs be careful.   Those of you who have never recognized any leadership grace other than the pastor-teacher be just as vigilant.
3. Don’t mistake a new way of doing Church with the Kingdom of God. There are many ways of doing Church, and different forms of structures and leadership styles, and it is foolish to attach to only one with deference to the rest.  Small church/simple church people, please chill.
4. Please don’t stop meeting together for teaching and worship and prayer.  Heb. 10:25 “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”  So what if the last fellowship you went to offended you…what has that to do with you obeying God and being family?  I just don’t have a way to envision God’s family coming into unity if you choose to walk alone.
5. Receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and expect to speak in tongues and see miracles.  Why would we, in a desire to be progressive and modern, throw out the very thing that gives us power to love, and to be agents of change.  You didn’t think that a reform teaching or a social activism would replace the power of God did you?

Now to the second group–those who struggle with feeling like this kind of article and conversation is a contradiction or an offense to what they know–here are some encouragements for you as well, dear ones:

1. You are the Father’s favorite son. So am I.  We can each be His favorite.  This is the way Dad is.  You are dearly loved and will be carefully taken care of.  Have no fear about his preserving love.  There is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus, and I only desire to help and encourage you.
2. Ask God for more hunger. Hunger for Him.  Hunger for the Kingdom.  Hunger for intimacy with Christ.  Hunger for the Holy Spirit.  Hunger for His purposes.  There is no way this prayer could possibly go wrong for you…so give it a go!  I love to say, “More, Lord!” when I pray because I figure it will be much better than, “Less, Lord, Less of You!”
3. Stop raging against charismatics.  Stop raging against other Christ-loving denominations and fellowships for that matter.  It’s a waste of time.  So what if they have done and taught some crazy things that you don’t agree with…like your deal hasn’t?  I have never met a family whose membership was built on agreement…they are built on blood and adoption.  I encourage you to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling and don’t let judgement and prejudice stunt your growth in God.
4. Choose the Tree of Life. There were two trees in the garden and we can still choose to eat from either one today.  If we only want to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil, then we will live and die inside of the judgements and divisions that we bring to everything, and, frankly, no one will want to invite us to their parties.  Choose to eat from the Tree of Life, Christ Himself, who pours out on us the wine of joy and the oil of healing leaving the old ways behind.
5. Go where the good voices are helping you. If every time you hear your teachers open their mouths they are diminishing others, then stop listening to their teaching.  Find another place to worship and fellowship, it isn’t that hard, and if you have to move across the State then it will be worth it simply to bring a smile to our God.  “I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name — the name you gave me — so that they may be one as we are one.” John 17:11

I pray these words for you will be life to your soul.  May God pour out the Spirit of Adoption on us all, by which we cry out “Daddy, Father!” and on that profession may His Kingdom come!

Ben Pasley

Download the PDF: kingdom_church

Tags: church, kingdom, people of God

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