I’m late blogging about this week’s lesson, partly because the topic can seem a bit large and overwhelming. In fact, I think I would have been completely overwhelmed if I hadn’t been unknowingly prepared for this week’s lesson by reading N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope three times in 2011. The book was so revolutionary and life-changing for me, and, though it’s focus is also broad, it’s probably best to describe its subject matter as “the Kingdom of God.”

Have you ever noticed how much Jesus talks about His Kingdom in the gospels? Almost every time He speaks, He mentions something about the Kingdom. But for some reason, it’s a topic that I believe a lot of Christians are uninformed or misinformed about. I know that I was.

Here’s what Perspectives has to say about it: “God’s kingdom is a progressive victory over satanic dominion in order to rescue people of all nations from the power of darkness, and ultimately, to undo the curse over all creation.” And also, “The kingdom has already arrived! But it operates in a more hidden way, breaking satanic power, delivering people of all nations from the grip of evil’s power and offering the many blessings of God’s rule.”

I think that what can be most confusing to believers is the timeline. We sometimes tend to think that God’s kingdom is something that we will experience after the return of Christ. But I believe that the bible indicates that God’s kingdom is something that is present and active on earth . . . today. I believe that the “Kingdom of God” arrived with the first coming of Christ. It is here, invading the darkness of this world, and one day, when Christ returns, it will be complete.

Here’s a hint that puzzled me for quite a while. In Luke 9, Jesus sends out his apostles to “proclaim the kingdom of God.” And Luke records that they went from village to village “preaching the gospel.” Now, what do you consider to be, “the gospel?” I always thought of “the gospel” as the death and resurrection of Jesus. But if that’s all that “the gospel” is, then what on earth were the apostles preaching about in Luke 9, before Christ had been killed and resurrected? They were preaching that the Kingdom of God had arrived, and that fact is a significant, very important part of “the gospel.” If we are spreading “the gospel” by only telling them about Christ’s death and resurrection, we are not giving them the whole story.

God’s invasion of this Satan-occupied world began with Jesus’ birth. Satan was fully defeated at the death and resurrection of Christ, and Satan’s kingdom will be fully and completely destroyed at Christ’s return, at which time Christ will restore and reconcile all creation to Himself.

So, if God’s Kingdom is alive and well on earth today, what does that mean for us? Well, if you’re a believer, it means that you are living in the Kingdom. It means that Jesus is more than just your Savior (as vital as that is), He’s also your King. As J.P. Moreland writes, “The gospel of the Kingdom is the idea that the direct rule of God is now available to all in and through Jesus Christ, and that one may live from the power of that rule in the realm of the Kingdom.” Right now the Kingdom is invisible (to some), but at the return of Christ everyone will see and know it.

Now here’s why this truth, and specifically N.T. Wright’s book, was life-changing for me. I used to believe that this present world was in horrible shape and that the best that Christians could do was just to “grin and bear it” until Christ returns and takes us away from this place. As Wright says, “Why try to improve the present prison if release is at hand? . . . That is precisely the effect created to this day by some devout Christians who genuinely believe that ‘salvation’ has nothing to do with the way the present world is ordered.” Wright says that actually “classic Christianity is a sense of continuity as well as discontinuity between the present world (and the present state), and the future, whatever it shall be, with the result that what we do in the present matters enormously” (emphasis mine).

So, we are actually living in a time of transition, as Satan’s hold on the world is being further and further weakened, and Christ’s Kingdom is spreading. It may not appear that way, but that is reality. Our purpose in this world is to be “agents of the transformation of this earth, anticipating the day when, as we are promised, ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea’” (Wright). Jesus works through us, His followers, to spread His Kingdom.

The things we do, the people we touch, the systems that we set right, the justice we seek matters immensely in this present world. As you can see, this leads to many more issues and topics. I’ll save that for another day and end with one more quote from N.T. Wright. (You really should get the book.)

“Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.”