CHAPTER 5 — THE LIFE OF THE KINGDOM
JESUS said to Nicodemus, "Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," and " Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" John 3:3, 5). These verses associate the Kingdom of God with eternal life. They indicate that one must enter into life in order to enter into the Kingdom of God; he must be born again.
There is a great hunger in the human heart for life. A person must be abnormal or emotionally unbalanced to surrender the love for life. A university professor had been plagued for years by an endocrine deficiency which had caused life to weigh so heavily upon him that he finally despaired, swallowed poison and snuffed out life. The burden of suffering and weariness had become so heavy that this intelligent man's perspective had become distorted and warped. It is natural for man to love life and to cling to it.
God's Word offers a life higher than the physical life which all men enjoy. It is the life of the Kingdom of God. We are all familiar with this text, " Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." But frequently we dissociate eternal life from the truth of the Kingdom of God and do not usually think of eternal life as an aspect of God's Kingdom. However, these verses join together these two great Biblical realities. They are in fact inseparable. The life which Christ came to bring us is the life of God's Kingdom.
In the previous chapter we have expounded the Biblical teaching about the Mystery of the Kingdom. This Mystery is a new disclosure of the divine purpose which had not been revealed to the Old Testament saints. From the perspective of the Old Testament revelation the coming of the Kingdom of God was expected to bring a transformation of the existing order. God's Kingdom would change the political order and displace all human rule and authority (Isa. 2: 1-4).
We must now add a further Biblical truth: When the Kingdom of God comes, it will effect also a transformation of the very physical order (Isa. 11: 6-9). The earth is to be transformed. There is to be new heavens and a new earth. The creation is to be delivered from bondage to decay and corruption (Isa. 65: 17; 66: 22).
The Mystery of the Kingdom is this: that the Kingdom which will one day change the entire external order has entered into This Age in advance to bring the blessings of God's Kingdom to men and women without transforming the old order. The old age is going on, yet men may already enjoy the powers of The Age to Come. The kingdom of Satan still stands, but the Kingdom of God has invaded the kingdom of Satan. Men and women may now be delivered from this power, delivered from this bondage, delivered from the mastery of sin and death. This deliverance is accomplished because the power of the future Kingdom of glory has come among men in a secret, quiet form to work in their midst.
I have retraced these steps by way of introduction because this same structure is embodied in the Biblical truth of eternal life. Eternal life belongs to the future Kingdom of glory and to The Age to Come; yet this eternal life has become available to man in the present evil Age.
In Matthew 25 we find a prophetic portrait of the separation of the nations by the judgment of the Son of Man. He will judge men as sheep are separated from goats. The result of this separation is announced in verse 34, "Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ' Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.'" If this were the only verse we had about the Kingdom of God, we would have to conclude that it is altogether future, that the Kingdom of God will not come until Christ returns, that there is to be a final judgment of men when the righteous will be introduced into the blessings of God's Kingdom.
But consider carefully verse 46. This verse summarizes the entire passage. "And they"—the wicked—"will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." The righteous will inherit the Kingdom; that means that they will go away into eternal life. The Kingdom of God which will be established when Christ comes again and eternal life are here synonymous. Eternal life then belongs to the future. Eternal life belongs to the Kingdom which Christ will establish by His appearing in glory.
The same truth is found in Matthew 19. We have already studied this chapter in another context. A young man came to Jesus and said, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" (v. 16). This is the same eternal life of which we have just read in Matthew 25: 46. Jesus replied in effect: "You must cut yourself loose from all other loyalties and follow me." Thereupon the young man turned away. He would not pay the price. Then Jesus said to His disciples, "Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" (v. 23). "But, Lord, we thought this young man asked the way to eternal life; and you say, It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Are the kingdom of heaven and eternal life the same thing?" So it appears. The young man might as well have asked how he could enter into the Kingdom of God, and Jesus could have answered, "It is hard for a rich man to inherit eternal life."
Jesus added, "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (v. 24). When the disciples heard it, they were astonished and said, "Who then can be saved?"
Eternal life—the Kingdom of God—the Kingdom of heaven— salvation; all of them belonging to the future, all of them reserved for the disciples of the Lord Jesus.
If this were the entirety of the Gospel, I would have to conclude that I cannot now enjoy eternal life. Salvation, eternal life await us in the future. Some day, we shall be saved. Perhaps we could say that we are saved today in the sense that we are confident that some day we shall enter into eternal life. But salvation in this sense is only the guarantee that when Christ comes, then we shall enter into the Kingdom, then we shall enter into eternal life. If these verses constituted the totality of the Gospel, we could enjoy no experience of eternal life here and now. Life would belong exdusivdy to the future, to the glorious Kingdom of God. How can eternal life be both a future blessing and at the same time a present reality?
Life does indeed belong to the future. Paul makes this dear in his discussion of the resurrection in II Corinthians 5. He looks forward to a day when we shall receive " a building from God, a house not made with hands" (v. i). This hope will be fulfilled at the Coming of Christ when the saints will put on resurrection bodies. In our present mortal bodies, we "sigh with anxiety" (v. 4) and long for a different body. Death is a repelling experience for it suggests departure from the body—"nakedness." What Paul longs for is not to be "unclothed"—disembodied—but to be "clothed upon," i.e., to put on the resurrection body, "that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life" (v. 4).
This is eternal life. Eternal life has to do with the total man. It concerns not only my soul but also my body. When we finally inherit the Kingdom of God (I Cor. 15:50), that which is mortal —our physical, frail body—will be swallowed up in life. Eternal life includes the redemption of our bodies. The inheritance of the Kingdom of God means the transformation of these bodies of flesh and blood (I Cor. 15:50). All of us, even though we have received the gift of life, are dying. With some, the descent to the grave will be a long, gradual, painful one. With others, it occurs with shocking suddenness. Some will enjoy a large measure of vigour until the very end. But we are all on our way to the grave, for we are dying, mortal creatures.
God has something better for us. There will come a day when that which is mortal shall be swallowed up in life. The backaches, headaches, jangled nerves, arthritis, strained hearts, ulcers and cancers will all be healed in the influx of the life of The Age to Come. Our doctors, dentists and surgeons will have no more patients. Our hospitals, sanatoriums and institutions will be empty. Eternal life will mean the salvation, the transformation of the body.
The futurity of eternal life is again taught in the Revelation. John writes, "Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city ;also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations" (Rev. 22: 1-2). This is a beautiful promise of the full realization of life. The river of the water of life: we shall drink of it and die no more. The tree of life: we shall eat of its fruit, and the frailty, the decay, the suffering, the misery and the dying will all disappear. Then we shall experience the full meaning of the life which God has for us. The leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations. Shall we make a liniment of these leaves and rub it on our pains, or shall we make a brew and drink it? To ask such questions indicates that this is a picture, it is poetry; but it is a poetical representation of a glorious, objective fact. Mortality will be swallowed up in life.
John goes on: "There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him" (v. 3). Here is the greater reality. Wonderful as is the salvation of the body, the greater reality is that God will dwell in the very midst of His people. "They shall see his face" (v. 4). Barriers of the flesh and sin will be swept away. We shall see His face. Here is perfection of fellowship, full enjoyment of God's love. "And his name shall be on their foreheads" (v. 4). Here again is a symbolic way of saying that God will perfectly possess His people and enjoy untroubled fellowship. We shall perfectly belong to Him, and God's purposes will be completely fulfilled within us. This is life; this is life eternal; this is the life of the Kingdom of God.
This is proved by Paul's words in the resurrection chapter, where we read in I Cor. 15: 24-26, "Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father. . . . For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." Then, He will restore the Kingdom to the Father. Then, eternal life will reign, for death will be destroyed. Then, the Kingdom of God will be all in all, for its enemies are no more. This is the eternal life of God's Kingdom. It is not merely a life which relates to our spirits; it has to do with the whole man. God cares for our bodies; He has purposed to redeem them.
Life is future. And yet, in the Gospel of John, we find such a statement as this: "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly" (John 10: 10). Jesus came to give us life today—not only in the future at the end of the age, but now. Somehow the life of The Age to Come has come to us here and now while we are still in our mortal bodies living in the evil Age.
This truth is reiterated," He who believes in the Son has eternal life" (John 3: 36). "He who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life" (John 5: 24). We have everlasting life; it is our possession now. In its fulness? Hardly. An aeroplane plummets to the ground destroying all its human cargo. Christian and pagan—believer and unbeliever—both die. We are not preserved, we are not removed from the ravages of sickness and suffering and death. Yet the Word of God says, "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life." How can this life be both future and present?
In these verses about eternal life we find the same structure which we have discovered in our study of the two ages and the Kingdom of God. The Age to Come belongs to the future, and yet the powers of The Age to Come have entered into the present evil Age. The Kingdom of God belongs to the future, and yet the blessings of the Kingdom of God have entered into the present Age to deliver men from bondage to Satan and sin. Eternal life belongs to the Kingdom of God, to The Age to Come; but it, too, has entered into the present evil Age that men may experience eternal life in the midst of death and decay. We enter into this experience of life by the new birth, by being born again.
What is this eternal life? Of what does this blessing consist? First, eternal life means the knowledge of God. "And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (John 17: 3).
The Biblical idea of knowledge is not simply the apprehension of facts by the mind. That is a Greek idea. Knowledge in the Bible is far more than intellectual apprehension. Knowledge means experience. Knowledge means personal relationship. Knowledge means fellowship. I know my friend John. That does not mean that I have read a sketch about him in Who's Who and can recite some facts as to his place of birth, his age, his wife, children, profession, etc. I could recite all these facts and yet not know him. I could know much about him and still not know the man. To know a person means that I have entered into fellowship with him, that I have a relationship with him, that we have shared each other in the mutuality of friendship.
This is life eternal, not that you may be able to recite a creed, or quote some Bible verses, or recite some facts about God. That is not knowledge of God. "This is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God." Fellowship with God; friendship with God; personal relationship to God: this is life eternal.
Let us go back to the book of Revelation: " The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads" (Rev. 22: 3-4). In The Age to Come, the life of that glorious Kingdom means perfection of our fellowship with God and of our knowledge of God. We shall see Him face to face.
Life eternal means that we have already been brought into a personal relationship with God here and now. Life eternal means that we have already been introduced to God. Life eternal means that God has become our God and we have become His people, and that we have begun to share a fellowship with Him; we have begun to share His life.
This knowledge of God properly belongs to The Age to Come, to the day when the Kingdom will finally be established. This is made clear in Jeremiah's prophecy (31: 31-33) of the day when God's Kingdom comes in power and glory. "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.... But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Note particularly the next verse: "And no longer shall each man teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord." In that day there will be no more Bible conferences, no Bible Schools and Seminaries, no Sunday Schools and classes of instruction, for all will know the Lord and will need instruction no longer.
Here is a picture of a consummated fellowship when men have entered into a personal, profound, perfect knowledge of God. But this knowledge of God properly belongs to The Age to Come, to that day when God's will is perfectly consummated upon the earth. That is the vision of Jeremiah 31. It is this intimate, direct knowledge of God which constitutes eternal life.
But the teaching of our Lord in the Gospel of John is that already we have entered into eternal life; already we have been introduced into this knowledge of God. Somehow, the future has become present. The blessing of The Age to Come has been made available to men now. Not in its fulness and perfection, to be sure: yet the knowledge of God in John 17:3 is not promise; it is realization, present experience, a present fellowship which will be wonderfully enlarged and perfected in The Age to Come.
This knowledge of God includes an apprehension of God's truth, not merely in the intellectual realm but in the impact of truth upon life. Knowledge of the truth includes the intellectual element but it does not stop there. Thus Scripture speaks of "doing the truth" (John 3: 21). When we attain to a perfect knowledge of God, we shall also enjoy an apprehension of God's truth which we do not now possess. Then we shall not have Presbyterians and Baptists, Calvinists and Arminians, premillennialists and amillennialists and postmillennialists, but we shall all understand perfectly what the truth of God is, for we shall be taught of God.
God has permitted us to attain something of the knowledge of divine truth here and now; yet at best, it is partial and incomplete. Nevertheless, it is real. Although imperfect, it is the greatest and most wonderful reality in life, because the truth of God brings men into fellowship with God.
The partial character of this knowledge creates practical problems. It will indeed be a wonderful day when all of God's people can agree in their understanding of God and of God's truth. That day lies in the future; it is not yet-here. Many problems arise because God's people do not recognize the teaching of Scripture about the incompleteness of Christian knowledge. Sometimes, people insist that there ought to be a complete conformity in all details of understanding of God and of Christian doctrine which is not warranted by the Word of God. The Scripture is clear that our knowledge is partial. It is because of the very imperfectness of our knowledge, says Paul in I Corinthians 13, that we must exercise the gift of love. The various ministrations of the Holy Spirit in the early Church in prophecy, tongues, knowledge (supernatural disclosures of divine truth) were given to men because now we know in part (I Cor. 13:12). They belong to our "childhood," i.e., to out earthly life. When we attain perfect maturity, when we see face to face and know fully even as also we were fully known (I Cor. 13:11-12), we shall put away childish things. We shall no longer need these aids of the Holy Spirit to help fill in our ignorance. However, when other gifts have passed away, love abides. Love is that gift of the Spirit, above all others, which will characterize our perfected fellowship in The Age to Come. This love we now enjoy, and the Church on earth will be a colony of heaven, enjoying in advance the life of The Age to Come to that extent to which we permit the Holy Spirit to manifest the gift of love in our mutual relationships, especially in those areas where our imperfect knowledge leads to differing interpretations of the Word of God in the details of theology.
Paul clearly asserts this fact in I Cor. 13:12. Now in This Age, "we see in a mirror, dimly." The ancient mirror was a piece of polished metal which tarnished and pitted easily. It gave an imperfect image. One could recognize the reflection, but it was far from perfect. Now, in This Age, we see in a mirror, imperfectly; "but then face to face." In The Age to Come, we shall no longer see a reflected likeness, we shall see face to face.
Now look carefully at the last part of verse 12. " Now I know in part." There is no man who ever lived, apart from the Lord Jesus Himself, who can say, "I am the truth. You must follow me." The inspired Apostle said, "Now I know in part." This puts us all in a place of humility before God. We must search the Scriptures, we must study God's Word, we must wait on God. But because we are still in the evil Age, when we have done our best, we are compelled to say, "Lord, I have searched Thy Word; but I know only in part; I do not perfectly understand."
"Now I know in part." This lays a demand upon us that we hold the Word of God both in humility and in charity: in humility towards God and in charity towards our brethren. One day, we shall see face to face and shall know even as we are known by God. But what a precious thing it is to be permitted to enjoy the fundamental verities of this knowledge of God before we attain to The Age to Come. "This is eternal life, that they know thee." The second meaning of eternal life is the life of God's Spirit dwelling within us. "Except a man be born again, , . . except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see,... he cannot enter the kingdom of God." The life of The Age to Come is the work of the Spirit of God. In I Corinthians 15, Paul looks forward to the life of The Age to Come, the life of the Kingdom of glory, the life when these mortal bodies will be transformed; and he describes this life with the words, "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body" (I Cor.15: 42-44, A.V.).
What is a spiritual body? At first thought the very phrase might seem to involve a contradiction in terms. How can one talk of a spiritual body? A body is material, and spirit is the opposite of matter, It is true that the ancients sometimes conceived of spirit in terms of very fine matter, but such is not Paul's thought. A "spiritual body" is not a body which consists of spirit. It is rather a body whose life, whose energy is derived from Spirit—God's Spirit. A spiritual body is therefore a real body, a tangible, objective body, but one which is completely and perfectly energized and animated and empowered by the Holy Spirit of God.
We have already met this essential thought in II Corinthians 5 where Paul is looking forward to the day when mortality is swallowed up in eternal life (v. 4). Now look carefully at verse 5: " Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given us the earnest of the Spirit" (A.V.). And in Ephesians 1: 13-14, Paul says, "In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it." What is this inheritance? It is the fulness of life, the redemption of the body, the transformation of our mortal frame into the fulness of the strength and power and glory of a "spiritual body." This inheritance is in view in all three passages: I Corinthians 15: 42-50; II Corinthians 5:1-10, and Ephesians1: 14. But we do not yet have possession of this inheritance. However, we have more than a promise; God has given unto us the Holy Spirit as an earnest (A.V.) or a guarantee (R.S.V.).
What is an earnest? We do not use this word frequently in everyday conversation, but we have a different word to express the same idea. An earnest is a down-payment. It is far more than a "guarantee," as R.S.V. translates it, it is partial but actual possession. If you decide to buy a house, you search until you find the house you want. Perhaps it costs twenty thousand dollars; the price is a bit high, but it is the house for which you have been looking. Thereupon you promise the owner that on an appointed day you will deliver the money, and you sign a bill of sale. Does that give you a claim upon the house? It does not. Suppose you say, "Let us go down to the notary public, and I will put myself under oath that on such and such a date, I will pay for the house." Will that give you a claim on the house? It will not. Suppose you bring a group of friends as character witnesses who testify what an honest, honourable fellow you are and what a good bank account you have. Will that give you a claim on the house? It will not. There is one thing that will bind the agreement: Money! Cash! Not $20,000, not the entire cost of the house, but a substantial down-payment. This is "earnest money,"
The present possession of the Holy Spirit is a down-payment. It is more than promise although it is promise. It is more than guarantee although it is a guarantee. It is the present although partial possession which guarantees the full possession at the proper time. This is the life of the Spirit, eternal life. The fulness of life awaits the Coming of Christ; but until the mortal is swallowed up in life, God has given us His Spirit as a down-payment. The indwelling of the Spirit is the down-payment of that life which we shall one day experience in its fulness. The new birth is the beginning, partial but real, of the life of The Age to Come. This means that already we have within us the life of heaven. It means we already participate in the life that belongs to God's future Kingdom; not indeed in its fulness, but nevertheless in reality.
Let us look at one more phrase which describes this same truth in different terms. In Romans 8: 22-23 Paul is describing the future redemption of the whole creation in The Age to Come, the day when God's redemptive purpose will be completed and the creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." Here we have the same wonderful truth again. Some day our very bodies are to be redeemed. Some day the whole physical creation is to be transformed. Some day the life which flows from Christ's resurrection will renovate the whole structure of human existence. Until that day, what? We groan: we are burdened. We have pain. We suffer. We die. But not only so: we have the firstfruits of the Spirit.
What are firstfruits? Let me illustrate firstfruits by some fruit trees in my garden. In the late winter, I prune the trees and spray them. When spring comes, the blossoms break out and I know the trees are alive. But blossoms are not firstfruits. They are promise, for if there were no blossoms there would certainly be no fruit; but I have seen trees loaded with blossoms which never produced fruit. After the blossoms the leaves break out, but there is as yet no fruit. Soon after the leaves the little hard green fruit sets. Is this the firstfruits? One year, one tree was loaded with small hard plums, but later there came a wind storm which blew them all off the tree. I had a peck of small green plums on the ground, but I had no harvest. This is not the firstfruits.
Firstfruits come when the fruit has begun to ripen. You watch the tree day by day. Then comes the day when that first peach is at last ripe. You have been waiting for that day and you pick off that luscious peach, the first peach of the season, the only one on the tree which is quite edible. All the rest are a little green, too hard to be eaten. But here is one peach. You sink your teeth into it and the juice titillates your taste buds, and you revel in the flavour of the first peach. That is the firstfruits. It is not the harvest, but it is the beginning of the harvest. It is more than promise; it is experience. It is reality. It is possession.
God has given us His Spirit as the firstfruits of the life to come in the resurrection. When Christ comes, we will receive the harvest—the fulness of life from God's Spirit. But God has already given to us His Spirit as a firstfruits, a foretaste, an initial experience of that future heavenly life.
Has the realization gripped you that the very life of heaven itself dwells within you here and now ? Did you ever know that? I am afraid we live most of our life in terms of promise. We often sing of the future, and so we ought to sing. Our Gospel is a Gospel of glorious promise and hope. Yes, the best, the glorious best, is yet to be. And yet we are not to live alone for the future. The future has already begun. The Age to Come has reached into This Age; the Kingdom of God has come unto you. The eternal life which belongs to tomorrow is here today. The fellowship which we shall know when we see Him face to face is already ours, in part but in reality. The transforming life of the Spirit of God which will one day transform our bodies has come to indwell us and to transform our characters and personalities.
This is what eternal life means. This is what it means to be saved. It means to go about every day in the present evil Age living the life of heaven. It means that every local fellowship of God's people who have shared this life should live together and worship and serve together as those who enjoy a foretaste of heaven here on earth. This is what the fellowship of a Christian Church ought to be. May God help us to live the life of The Age to Come in the midst of an evil Age. God has already brought us into fellowship with Himself. This is the promise, the down-payment, the earnest, the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, the life of The Age to Come. This is the Gospel of the Kingdom. This is the life of The Age to Come.