2.03. The Coming Kingdom Proclaimed
Chapter Three: The Coming Kingdom Proclaimed
Matthew mentions the “kingdom of God” four times in his gospel. He mentions the “kingdom of heaven” thirty-three times. The term “kingdom” is used seventeen additional times.35 Obviously, then, God’s kingdom is a central theme of Matthew’s gospel. Although Walvoord and Vine believe the kingdom of heaven can be distinguished in some fashion from the kingdom of God,36 the vast majority of theologians recognize that the terms are synonymous.37 The Coming Kingdom Prophesied By John The Baptist The kingdom of God is introduced to us in Matthew through the ministry of John the Baptist. John had two roles. He was the last of the Old Testament prophets. In his prophetic ministry, he strongly castigated the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and other Jewish religious leaders. He was also the herald who came before the king, announcing his impending presence. He was Jesus’s forerunner.
Matthew 3:2 encapsulizes John’s basic message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This, our first encounter with the kingdom concept in Matthew, is a pivotal one. Here, at the beginning, we must grapple with several thorny foundational questions.
What did the term “kingdom” mean in the Old Testament?
It seems to me that much of the scholarly discussion of the kingdom of God is at such an abstract level as to be essentially meaningless. Alva McClain has well stated: “The great ideas of the Bible are concrete rather than abstract, and such terms as the kingdom of God are intended to convey meanings which are pertinent to actual situations in the world of reality with which men are somewhat familiar.”38 My goal here is to examine the term “kingdom” in a concrete way.
It is customary to speak of a kingdom (basileia) as being made up of two component parts: [1] an authority to rule and [2] the realm or territory over which the king’s reign is exercised.39 Vine, for example, speaks of the kingdom as being [1] sovereignty, royal power, dominion and [2] the territory or people over whom a king rules.40 Strong similarly states that the kingdom consists of “royal power, kingship, dominion, rule” and “the territory subject to the rule of a king.”41 Bauer, Gingrich and Danker call the kingdom [1] “kingship, royal power, royal rule” and [2] “the territory ruled over by a king.”42 This two-fold division undoubtedly stems from the Scriptural two-fold depiction of the kingdom. It is first of all viewed as a universal, eternal, timeless kingdom (1 Chronicles 29:11-12; Psalms 10:16; Psalms 29:10).43 The kingdom is second of all viewed as a “theocratic” or “mediatorial” kingdom.44 These two perspectives are aspects of one holistic kingdom and should not be rigidly separated into separate kingdoms; indeed, Daniel 7:13-14, Daniel 7:27 combines them. Nevertheless, McClain has profitably written with respect to the latter: The mediatorial kingdom may be defined tentatively as the rule of God through a divinely chosen representative who not only speaks and acts for God but also represents the people before God; a rule which has especial reference to the human race (although it finally embraces the universe); and its mediatorial ruler is always a member of the human race.45
Old Testament theology can be summarized under the central theme of this mediatorial kingdom. From the beginning of history, God worked through appointed mediators in administering the mediatorial kingdom.46 The mediatorial kingdom was in its incipiency during the time of the patriarchs. It began as a historical matter during the time of Moses and continued through the early great leaders of Israel such as Joshua and Samuel. It reached a height of glory during the reigns of Israel’s first three kings. The reigns of David and Solomon in particular “typify the ideal of God’s earthly kingdom during the Mosaic dispensation.”47 Its Old Testament close was recorded in the book of Ezekiel, when the Shekinah glory left the temple in Jerusalem as the covenant people of God were carried off into ignoble exile as judgment for their apostasy (Ezek. ch. 8-11).
Yet, at the same time, God graciously revealed to his faithful remnant that the glory would one day return and that, one day, the kingdom would once again be established on earth, in the city of Jerusalem. On that day, God would “dwell in the midst of the children of Israel forever@ (Ezekiel 43:7).48 Through the prophetic books of the Old Testament, a small stream of prophecies about the coming eschatological kingdom of God soon became a raging torrent. In the Old Testament revelation about the coming kingdom, there was a “deep note of mystery in the career of the coming King.”49 The Old Testament reveals a striking dichotomy in the person of the King. He is presented as coming in glory to reign on the earth. Yet he is also presented as a man of sorrow, despised and rejected of men; wounded, bruised, afflicted and dying for the iniquities of men (Isaiah 53:1-12). He is the great shepherd of Israel, yet he is smitten by the sword of God, and the sheep are scattered (Zechariah 13:7; cf. Isaiah 40:9-11). He is Messiah the Prince of Israel, ruler of the nations, yet he is “cut off” and has nothing which belongs to his regal glory (Daniel 9:25, Daniel 9:26).50
It is also important to understand that the Old Testament prophets revealed that the coming kingdom would be primarily spiritual in nature. As McClain said:
It will bring personal salvation from the hand of God (Isaiah 12:1-6), divine forgiveness for sin (Jeremiah 31:34), provision of God=s own righteousness for men (Jeremiah 23:3-6), moral and spiritual cleansing, a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:24-28), inward harmony with the laws of the kingdom (Jeremiah 31:33), recognition by men of all nations that Jehovah is the true God, the God who is able to answer prayer (Zechariah 8:20-23), the restoration of genuine joy and gladness to human life (Isaiah 35:10), and the pouring out of God=s Spirit “upon all flesh” (Joel 2:28).51 In sum, the mediatorial kingdom of the Messiah, as prophesied in the Old Testament, is “material and spiritual, sacred and secular at the same time.”52 As McClain put it, the kingdom: is spiritual; with effects which are ethical, social, economic, political, ecclesiastical, and physical. To single out any one of these important aspects, and deny validity to the others, is to narrow unwisely the breadth of the prophetic vision and to set limits upon the possibilities of human life on earth under God.53 What was the nature of the kingdom of heaven as John the Baptist saw it? As noted in chapter two, there is a strong split of opinion among conservative theologians on even the nature of the kingdom. Reformed theologians believe the kingdom to be primarily spiritual. Dispensationalists of all stripes believe it has a strong material or territorial element. Commentators on Matthew likewise have espoused a wide variety of views on the nature of the kingdom proclaimed by John. For example:
Walvoord believes that the kingdom refers to the “climax of world history” which would be “an everlasting kingdom.” It would include “all who profess to be subjects of the King.”54
France believes that the kingdom is “the establishment of God’s rightful sovereignty in judgment and in salvation.” It is the Messianic age.55
Carson likewise stated that the kingdom was “the manifest exercise of God’s sovereignty, his ‘reign’ on earth and among men.”56 Who is right? Walvoord’s statements seem incomplete. As we have seen, the eschatological kingdom was prophesied to be holistic in nature, and that is how John would have understood it. There is no reason to believe that John held to anything other than the same view of the kingdom as did the Old Testament prophets. He expected a physical reign, but with an acutely spiritual focus. This is evident from his message of repentance (3:2), his urging of the people to confess their sins (3:6), his scathing words to the Pharisees that “every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (3:10; NIV). It is also evident from John’s prophecy concerning the work of the coming King—he would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire (3:11).
Like the other Old Testament prophets before him, John did not differentiate between the imminent coming of Christ for salvation purposes and the future coming of Christ in the consummation of his kingdom. This is to be expected, of course, since he did not have the framework to conceptualize one Messiah with two comings separated by a vast gulf in time.57 As Ladd put it, John “looked for a single, though complex, event of salvation-judgment.”58 What did John mean when he said that the kingdom of heaven was “at hand?”
There is a longstanding debate over the meaning of the phrase “at hand” (eggiken). There is certainly a variety of views on the subject. On the one hand, Walvoord believes John taught that, in the person of the coming Messiah, “the kingdom was being presented to Israel and to the world.”59 He states: “The kingdom being at hand meant that it was being offered in the person of the prophesied King, but it did not mean that it would be immediately fulfilled.”60 At the other end of the scale, C.H. Dodd argued that the phrase “at hand” in 3:2 equalled the phrase “has come” in 12:28.61
Offering a somewhat mediating view is France, who observed that the NASB phrase “is at hand” does not do justice to the perfect tense of engizo which literally means “has come near.” In his view, the phrase “introduces a state of affairs which is already beginning and which demands immediate attention.” In his view, even the Anchor Bible’s “fast approaching” is too remote. The time for decision “has already come.”62
Carson as well adopts this view, asserting that “with Jesus the kingdom has drawn so near that it has actually dawned.”63
Interestingly, Glasscock (a dispensationalist) appears to agree, stating that “the major point in the proclamation was that the kingdom promised by God through Messiah was at hand because the Messiah was in the world.”64
Certainly, the bare notion of an “offer” of the kingdom does not go far enough. John viewed the kingdom as “future, but close at hand.”65 It was “approaching in time” and “approaching in space,” but it had not yet arrived.66 The sense appears to be one of an inevitable and imminent approach that could not be halted, similar to that of a freight train bearing down on a car stalled on the railroad tracks. The same word is used in Matthew 26:46-47, where Jesus told his sleeping disciples, “Arise, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand! “ Verse 47 says, “while He was still speaking,” Judas came up to betray him. As Darrell Bock well summarized: The point seems to be that with the coming of Jesus and the preaching of the message he commissions, the kingdom has arrived. Even if one prefers the sense of “approach,” the kingdom is at least very near.67
Accordingly, John undoubtedly believed the advent of the earthly kingdom was imminent. The Messiah would usher in salvation and judgment. John’s pronouncement intentionally caused quite a stir among the Jewish people of Palestine. He set the stage for the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry. The Coming Kingdom Proclaimed By Jesus When John was put in prison, Jesus began his public Galilean ministry. Matthew 4:17 records that “Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’“ It is evident that Jesus explicitly adopted John’s message as his own. Matthew 4:23 also states that Jesus “went throughout Galilee . . . preaching the good news of the kingdom.” His teachings were accompanied by “healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people” (Matthew 4:23; also Matthew 9:35). As with Matthew 3:2, several questions arise with respect to these verses. Did Jesus mean the same thing John meant when he referred to the kingdom? While most scholars agree that John the Baptist had the Old Testament concept of kingdom in mind when he spoke of the kingdom of heaven, the question of whether Jesus meant the same thing has been hotly debated.68 Saucy states:
Most interpreters have understood him to mean by the kingdom of God . . . something akin to the realm of spiritual salvation presently enjoyed in the church. In contrast to John’s understanding of ‘the apocalyptic hope of the visitation of God to inaugurate the Kingdom of God in the age to come,’ Jesus’ meaning is said to be ‘no apocalyptic Kingdom but a present salvation.’ The ‘nationalistic elements in the Jewish concept of the kingdom’ are purged away ‘to lay stress on the spiritual elements.’69
Saucy rightly takes issue with this interpretation: “It is inconceivable that Jesus, knowing the understanding of his hearers, would not have immediately sought to correct their thinking if he in fact had another concept of the kingdom in mind.”70 Accordingly, it simply cannot be said that Jesus “purged” the nationalistic elements of the kingdom from his message. He never ignored the final consummation of the kingdom or even the uniquely Jewish flavor of the millennial reign (see Matthew 24:1-51; Matthew 25:1-46). The key to interpreting Jesus’s view of the kingdom is to understand that Matthew 4:17 and 4:23 are summary statements of Jesus’s message. When that message is considered as a whole, it is apparent that Jesus’s teachings on the kingdom had a two-fold emphasis: (1) the standard of conduct for the kingdom now and (2) the final consummation of the kingdom later. As discussed later in this paper, Jesus made it clear that the kingdom would not be consummated during His first advent. His focus on the spiritual dimensions of the kingdom, the righteousness of kingdom citizens, was not to the exclusion of the millennial period, but in conjunction with and preparation for it. As Saucy states: “The full Old Testament kingdom that had been proclaimed prior to that time was not going to be established now; the kingdom would, however, be present in the world in spiritual power during the interim.”71 What did Jesus mean when he said the kingdom was at hand?
John believed that a unified kingdom (salvation and reign) was imminent. As explained above, Jesus did not modify John’s basic message. He did, however, in the course of progressive biblical revelation, break it out into its temporal components and emphasize each element separately.
Phase 1: At times, Jesus spoke of the kingdom as being present in the person of the king. This aspect was more than “at hand;” it had already arrived. (Matthew 12:28).
Phase II: At other times, Jesus spoke of the kingdom as being present in a “mystery” phase, which appears to refer to more than himself and less than the final consummation. It is valid to speak of this aspect of the kingdom as “at hand” in the sense of being inevitably inaugurated. (Matthew 13:1-58).
Phase III: At still other times, Jesus spoke of the kingdom in its fullness. (Matthew 24:1-51; Matthew 25:1-46). This final culmination of the kingdom was “at hand” only in the sense that it could come at any moment, but no one—not even Jesus—knew the day or the hour (Matthew 24:36). Only the Father knew the time or epochs which he had fixed by his own authority (Acts 1:6-7). By breaking out the different phases of the kingdom into their temporal components, Jesus did indeed diverge from the message of John the Baptist. The Coming Kingdom Proclaimed By The Disciples In Matthew chapter 10, Jesus called his twelve disciples together and commissioned them to go throughout Israel preaching the message that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 10:7). The content of their message was identical to the message of Jesus and John before him. Carson is undoubtedly right in assuming that “repent” is not mentioned but presupposed.72 The kingdom was to be authenticated by the same miracles performed by Jesus: healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing those who have leprosy, and driving out demons. (Matthew 10:8). This foreshadows Phase II of the progressive eschatological kingdom development—the mystery phase, in which the kingdom is played out through the work of kingdom citizens after the ascension of Jesus into heaven.