3 posts tagged “jesus”
Walking a tightrope between two kingdoms?
"..for I do always those things that please Him."John 8:29
We who follow Christ are aware of the fact that we inhabit at once two worlds, the spiritual and the natural. As children of Adam we do live our lives on earth subject to the limitations of the flesh and the weaknesses and ills to which human nature is heir.
In sharp contrast to this is our life in the spirit.
There we enjoy a higher kind of life; we are children of God. We
possess heavenly status and enjoy intimate fellowship with Christ!
This tends to divide our total life into two departments, as we
unconsciously recognize two sets of actions, the so-called secular acts
and the sacred.
This is, of course, the old "sacred-secular"
antithesis and most Christians are caught in it's trap. Walking the
tightrope between two Kingdoms they find no peace in either.
Actually, the sacred-secular dilemma has no foundation in the New Testament. Without a doubt a more perfect understanding of Christian truth will deliver us from it. The Lord Jesus Christ himself is our perfect example and He lived no divided life. God accepted the offering of His total life and made no distinction between act and act. "I do always those things that please Him," was his brief summary of His own life as related to the Father.
We are called upon to exercise an aggressive faith, in which we offer all our acts to God and believe that He accepts them. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there!
In Matthew chapter 13, Jesus teaches about the Kingdom of Heaven. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like..." is the often repeated introduction to a number of parables. Wheat and weeds, mustard seeds, hidden treasures, pearls, and nets. All qualify as metaphors for the Kingdom of Heaven.
Wheats and weeds. In this parable, Jesus uses a common agricultural problem to demonstrate the nature of his kingdom - the infestation of weeds in the garden that seem to spoil that which God has provided. God blesses us with something good - our relationships, our health, our community, our church - and we find out that it has somehow gone terribly wrong. Should we just cut our losses and move on or continue to do the hard work of living in the midst of, well, weeds?
This parable has particular application with much that goes on in Christian and conservative politics. Here we are establishing a perfectly good political agenda and empire when danged if those milk toast moderate squishes don't screw the whole thing up. How are we every going to see the completion of the Republican revolution with RINOs like Ahnold, and McCain getting all the press?
In Matthew 13, Jesus teaches to live in the midst of the weeds and moderates. Why? Because the field is the Lords, not ours. He knows who is in control and that, at the harvest, justice will be done and the Righteous Judge will separate the good and the bad.
Kingdom politics seems to indicate that we would do well to accept that fact that we are to live and operate in the midst of the weeds and moderates. Let us then pray for those with whom we rub elbows so that, in the final day, they would join with us in the harvest.
What did Jesus mean when he proclaimed "The kingdom of heaven is at hand"? We know that Jesus' incarnation meant an end to the reign of sin and death. But Jesus was also to referring to a whole new order for our lives; a re-ordering of values, priorities, and relationships. Jesus summarized this new order in the Beatitudes.
The Kingdom of Heaven is now here whether this current kingdom is ready or not. It is breaking through like the light of dawn breaking through the clouds. It is still overcast but we know that nothing can keep the sun from dispatching the clouds and shedding its light over all. Our task is to look forward and act on the reality of the coming kingdom as oppossed to the apparant kindgom we see all around.
As change agents of the Kingdom of God, it is our mission to help pull away the facade of the currrent kingdom. Our goal is to change the world we touch by identifying with Christ and letting his redemptive power move through us to others. Surrendering out heart to God's will opens us up to his transformation and the redemption of the old to the new.
The key is our hearts. Christ came to heal, renew, and make whole our hearts so that, as we live and move through our lives in this corrupt decaying world, our friends, associates, neighbors, and co-workers will catch a glimpse of Jesus in our lives.
As C.S. Lewis wrote, we are agents behind enemy lines inflitrating a kingdom whose fate is sealed. Nothing will stop the new redemptive kingdom. Let us conform our wills to that of the Lord's and, in so doing, advance his Kingdom.
