Doctrines To Be Rejected (Part 15 of 0)

Church – Part 16

Doctrine to Be Rejected # 12: That the Kingdom of God is “the church.”

This can be stated in a positive way: the Kingdom of God is a divine political empire to be established on earth at the return of Jesus Christ.

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD” (Isa. 2:2-5).

This can be compared with the BASF clause 19:

That God will set up a Kingdom in the earth, which will overthrow all others, and change them into “the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ.”

Dan 2:44; 7:13-14; Rev 11:15; Isa 32:1, 16; 2:3-4; 11:9-10.

We note that this belief has been part of our Statement of Faith from its earliest times: John Thomas included it in 1867 as part of his synopsis among the doctrines as Perverted by the Apostacy: “The Kingdom of God, the ‘Church.’ ”

The belief of most of Christendom

The belief that the term “The Kingdom of God” does refer primarily to the present Church goes back around 1600 years. To quote a summary:1

Early church writings talk about the Kingdom of God, yet its meaning wasn’t articulated fully until St. Augustine. Augustine (AD 354-430) was the first Catholic theologian to thoroughly define the Kingdom of God. In his book “City of God,” Augustine describes two kingdoms: The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man. For Augustine, the Kingdom of God on earth was the Catholic Church. Augustine also described the Kingdom of God as encompassing a heavenly element: those believers who had already passed away. The Kingdom of Man consisted of everyone outside the Church.

This has been echoes in many more recent creeds:

1) The Heidelberg Catechism identifies the keys of the kingdom of heaven as the preaching of the gospel and Christian discipline by which believers are accepted of God in the fellowship of the congregation and by which unbelievers are excluded from the fellowship of God and excommunicated from the church. Thus this creed identifies the church as the kingdom. Thus also, the Catechism teaches that the kingdom is spiritual. The same Reformed Confession explains the second petition of the model prayer, about the coming of the kingdom, this way: “preserve and increase Thy church.”

  • The Belgic Confession establishes the identification of the church as the kingdom as Reformed orthodoxy when it declares Christ to be the king of the church: “This church hath been from the beginning of the world, and will be to the end thereof; which is evident from this, that Christ is an eternal King, which, without subjects, cannot be” (Art. 32).
  • The Westminster Confession of Faith is explicit: “The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel … is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ”. Significantly, the Confession immediately adds, “the house and family of God.” The phrase that is added is significant because it shows that the Confession has its eye on 1 Timothy 3, where the phrase is found.

The threefold meaning

It is perhaps unfortunate that our Christadelphian statements, such as the BASF, lack the acknowledgement that the term “Kingdom of God” (or “Heaven”) is used in several senses in the Bible, which sometimes force us on the defensive when discussing this. It has, unfortunately, also sometimes caused internal controversy, as some have pointed this out and have been assailed for so doing. This was particularly so in the 1970’s, a time of some turmoil in our community in the UK. This caused Bro. Fred Pearce to contribute a valuable article on the subject, in which he commented:2

“It is evident from our correspondence that there is some discussion at present about the meaning of ‘the kingdom of God (of heaven)’ in the Scriptures. Some would maintain that the expression refers only to the future Kingdom to be set up by Christ at his return to the earth; others would add to this an occasional reference to the person of Jesus Christ as the embodiment of divine, kingly power; and still others would say that, in addition to these senses, ‘the kingdom of God’ in the New Testament sometimes refers to the sovereignty of God and of Christ over the saints during their probation.”

There had been wise words written by Bro. LG Sargent many years before when discussing the Sermon of the Mount:3

“ ‘The Kingdom’, then, has a threefold meaning. First and last it is the future reign into which men may enter through judgment, and this must govern all secondary meanings. But it is also the power, authority, sovereignty, vested in the King; and in this sense the Kingdom was in their midst when he was among them, searching and testing them by their response to him. Further, the Kingdom is the message through which men become related to the future order. The use of ‘Kingdom’ in this sense is something more than a metonymy, because the message is an operative power working among men to prepare the materials out of which the future Kingdom is to be formed; and the relation to the Kingdom of those who accept the message is more than a hope: it is a covenant. Because covenant and kingdom are inseparable for the people of God, the present possessive can be used even of the time of their probation: theirs’ is the Kingdom. The ground of their blessedness is their relation to God and His King.”

Past Kingdom

There is, of course, a further aspect to this topic, that of the Kingdom of Israel:

“And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel” (Exod 19:6).

“And the Lord said unto Samuel, hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them” (1 Sam 8:7).

“And of all my sons (for the Lord hath given me many sons) he hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel” (1 Chron 28:5).

Of course, this Kingdom was taken away from the inhabitants because of their wickedness, and the prophets described the future glorious kingdom.

Present possession

To further quote from the article by Bro. Pearce concerning the third aspect:

“In Romans 14 the Apostle Paul is insisting that the right way to ‘live unto the Lord’ is not to demand that certain days must be observed, nor that certain foods or drink must be banned; for ‘the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’ (v. 17, RV). Here ‘The kingdom of God’ is directly identified with qualities of the mind, as in the Apostle’s description of ‘the fruit of the Spirit’, which begins: ‘love, joy, peace …’, and of course righteousness is implied anyway. To come under the influence then, of the Spirit of God and the spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9), in place of ‘the spirit of the world’ and ‘the natural man’ (1 Cor 2:12, 14), is to come under ‘the kingdom of God’. That this is the right understanding is shown by the way Paul goes on: ‘For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God’ (v. 18). To be ‘in the kingdom of God’ in this sense is a matter of serving him in the right way, in the spirit and not in the flesh.

“Even more striking is Paul’s description in his Letter to the Colossians of the change of status which had been granted to the believers. God has ‘made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: (he) hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Col 1:12-13). Both the verbs are in the past tense, implying that their actions have already been accomplished. ‘To translate’ here means to remove from one place to another, and what this involves for the saints is ‘redemption … even the forgiveness of sins’ and being ‘reconciled’ to God (v. 14, 21). Abundant confirmation that this is what Paul means by the transferring of the saints ‘into the kingdom’ of Christ is found in parallel passages like these:

“Paul describes his commission to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles as ‘to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God’ (Acts 26:18).

‘Ye were once darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light …’ (Eph 5:8).

‘Ye are … a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye should shew forth the excellencies of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light’ (1 Pet 2:9 RV).

‘Ye turned from idols to serve the living and true God …’ (1 Thess 1:19).

“To be ‘translated into the kingdom’ of God’s Son then is to serve God, to be ‘in the light’ (as John puts it, 1 John 2:10) and so to walk as ‘children of light’, or, being ‘good seed’, as ‘children of the kingdom’ (Matt 13:38).”

The future Kingdom in the BASF

Of course, we must emphasize the primacy of the future Kingdom in this discussion. It is clear that this aspect dominates most the Old and New Testaments, and it is rightly the focus of our preaching and is the larger part of our Statement of Faith: “The Things of the Kingdom”. As such, it compromises just about 25% of the statement.

As it says (clause XVII): That the things of the Kingdom of God are the facts testified concerning the Kingdom of God in the writings of the prophets and apostles, and definable as in the next twelve paragraphs:

  • — That God will set up a kingdom in the earth, which will overthrow all others, and change them into “the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ.”
  1. — That for this purpose God will send Jesus Christ personally to the earth at the close of the times of the Gentiles.
  • — That the kingdom which he will establish will be the kingdom of Israel restored, in the territory it formerly occupied, viz., the land bequeathed for an everlasting possession to Abraham and his seed (the Christ) by covenant.
  • — That this restoration of the kingdom again to Israel will involve the ingathering of God’s chosen but scattered nation, the Jews; their reinstatement in the land of their fathers, when it shall have been reclaimed from “the desolation of many generations”; the building again of Jerusalem to become “the throne of the Lord” and the metropolis of the whole earth.
  • — That the governing body of the kingdom so established will be the brethren of Christ, of all generations, developed by resurrection and change, and constituting, with Christ as their head, the collective “seed of Abraham”, in whom all nations will be blessed, and comprising “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets”, and all in their age of like faithfulness.
  • — That at the appearing of Christ prior to the establishment of the Kingdom, the responsible (namely, those who know the revealed will of God, and have been called upon to submit to it), dead and living — obedient and disobedient — will be summoned before his judgement seat “to be judged according to their works”; and “receive in body according to what they have done, whether it be good or bad.”
  • — That the unfaithful will be consigned to shame and “the second death”, and the faithful, invested with immortality, and exalted to reign with Jesus as joint heirs of the kingdom, co-possessors of the earth, and joint administrators of God’s authority among men in everything.
  • — That the Kingdom of God, thus constituted, will continue a thousand years, during which sin and death will continue among the earth’s subject inhabitants, though in a much milder degree than now.
  • — That a law will be established which shall go forth to the nations for their “instruction in righteousness”, resulting in the abolition of war to the ends of the earth; and the “filling of the earth with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.”
  • — That the mission of the Kingdom will be to subdue all enemies, and finally death itself, by opening up the way of life to the nations, which they will enter by faith, during the thousand years, and (in reality) at their close.
  • — That at the close of the thousand years, there will be a general resurrection and judgement, resulting in the final extinction of the wicked, and the immortalization of those who shall have established their title (under the grace of God) to eternal life during the thousand years.
  • — That the government will then be delivered up by Jesus to the Father, who will manifest Himself as the “all-in-all”; sin and death having been taken out of the way, and the race completely restored to the friendship of the Deity.

General summary:

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14).

“The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever” (Dan 2:44).

  1. From http://peopleof.oureverydaylife.com/views-roman-catholics-kingdom-god-2441. html: extracted 2016.
  2. The Christadelphian, 1977, p 411.
  3. The Teaching of the Master, LG Sargent, Christadelphian Office 1961.