Getting the Kingdom

Although it is the first chapter of the Book of Acts, chapter one depicts for us very briefly the last chapter of Jesus' life on this earth. Last words, as you know, are pretty important, because they give priority to what the person values above all else in life, because they know that they are about to die. This is also true for Jesus, except he was about to ascend, which I am pretty sure is unique. The thing, though, that is remarkable is that Jesus' last words concerned one primary subject, the kingdom. Now, what is interesting is that if your understanding of the kingdom is completely future, then it makes absolutely no sense that Jesus would spend his final forty days talking about something that wasn't even relevant to their lives. What is indeed noteworthy is that most of the verses in the gospels having to do with the kingdom of God or the kingdom of Heaven (they are the exact same, by the way) all refer to some type 0f a present, spiritual kingdom. I won't take the time to bore you with all of the verses, but check it out and see if that is true. Now, I don't mean to say that there will be no future aspect of the kingdom at all, because you will also find verses that speak of a future kingdom. What does all of this have to do with anyway?

The point is that the kingdom has a relevance for our lives today, and if we don't get it then we miss out on a wealth of knowledge concerning what God wants from us. However, some will see that the disciples, after having been with Christ all this time, asked about the restoring of a kingdom to the Jewish people. In light of a spiritual kingdom, what is that all about? Well, I think there are a couple of possibilities for this: (1) They didn't fully get what Jesus had been talking about, because they were still seeing things from an Old Testament Jew's perspective, or (2) Jesus really did talk about the restoring of the kingdom to the Jews when he talked to them about the kingdom. There are strengths and weaknesses to either view. I personally am not decided on the nature of the kingdom, or what it will look like in the future. What I do believe is that there are two aspects of the kingdom of God, a future and a present one.

Regardless of which approach one uses with this passage, I think you have to look frankly at Jesus' answer, and therein lies the ethos of the kingdom. Jesus responds by directing their attention back to the priority of communicating Him to all the peoples of the earth. It could, of course, be argued that in doing that he was in a sense debunking their limited view of the kingdom. I think that is probably true if you interpret it either way. Regardless, the first eleven verses of chapter one give us a tremendous insight into the priority of living for Christ as one of His disciples. If we get what He is saying, we will (1) understand Christ's kingdom as relevant to our lives now, (2) go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit, (3) try to spread the name of Christ all over the world, and (4) realize that Christ is coming back some day to set up the future aspect of His kingdom. When we have these priorities active in our life, then we enter the inner circle of Christ's disciples, and begin to get the true meaning of the kingdom.