Quotes about Kingdom

Our churches have not discipled people in the last forty years in Christoform power but have instead discipled them into playing Babylon's power games. They have decided who might be their next king, only to realize that kings become wild things. Instead of giving more and more power to presidents, to senators, to representatives, to Washington DC and states and cities and villages and towns, we need to search again for Christoform power.

In each instance Jesus advocates grace beyond retribution and expectation. He does not advocate passivity but active generosity that deconstructs the system because of the presence of the kingdom. Surrendering one's rights for the good of the other manifests the Jesus Creed and its variant, the Golden Rule

There is no kingdom mission apart from submitting to Jesus as King and calling others to surrender before King Jesus.

Second, there is a clear eschatological focus in the word "blessed."9 If a focus of the Old Testament was on present-life blessings for Torah observance, there is another dimension that deconstructs injustice and sets the tone for Israel's hope: the future blessing of God in the kingdom when all things will be put right; no text in the Old Testament fits more here than Isaiah 61.10 This second dimension shapes the Beatitudes because Jesus' focus is on future blessing.

We in the Western world are obsessed with our individual relationship with God, which leads us to read the Bible as morsels of blessings and promises and as Rorschach inkblots. But reading the Bible as Story opens up a need so deep we sometimes aren't aware we need it: oneness with others under the King who rules his Kingdom.

This has to be emphasized, because today too many of us emphasize kingdom but ignore the Holy Spirit and Pentecost and church—as if kingdom meant nothing more than justice and peace and love in the world (or in their country or in their state or in their local village).

One of my favorite kingdom preachers is Minneapolis pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church, Efrem Smith.

God's kingdom happens when human beings are empowered by God's Spirit to do God's kingdom work in the shape of a new community.

Jesus is probing into the heart of his followers to ask them if they value life more than kingdom and righteousness.

For Jesus the word kingdom meant "God's dream for this world come true.

Any serious pondering of all of life through the Golden Rule is dangerous for our moral health because it will summon us — I know I feel this way just writing the above paragraphs — to live under the King and as one of his kingdom citizens.

The clearest way to put this is to say that Jesus thinks that following him means following the Torah. Those who follow him (and his teaching of the Torah) will be called "great" in the kingdom. Anyone who denies his teachings and teaches others not to follow him (and through him the Torah) will be called "least" in the kingdom.