What I Meant by "The Kingdom"

Words to Know

Kingdom — a territory with a ruler. A political word, not a spiritual one.

Gospel — “good news.” The Greek word is euangelion. It was also the word empires used to announce a new emperor.

The Magnificat — the name for my mother’s song in Luke 1:46–55.

Almost everything I said came back to one phrase.

The kingdom of God is near.

Every word in that sentence has been changed. Let us take them one at a time.

Kingdom.

That is a political word. It means a place with a ruler.

And I used it in a country that had a ruler it had not chosen, under an emperor who was called the son of a god.

Here are the names, so you can check it. The emperor when I was born was Augustus, who ruled from 27 BC to AD 14. After his adoptive father Julius Caesar was declared a god, Augustus put son of the divine one on his coins — which put the phrase in the hand of everybody who had money. The emperor while I was preaching was Tiberius (AD 14 to AD 37). His head was on the coin somebody held up to me when they asked about taxes.

And Augustus’s birthday was announced to the provinces as good news. That is not my word for it. There is a stone from the city of Priene, in what is now Turkey, cut in 9 BC, that reorganizes the local calendar around his birthday and calls that day the beginning of good news for the world. You can read a translation of it in an afternoon. ¹

How does a birthday get announced across an empire with no newspapers? The same four ways everything did. A decree read aloud in the town square by an official. Words cut into stone in the middle of the city, where everyone walked past. The emperor’s face on every coin in every hand. And a temple to him in the provincial capital, with a priest, a festival and a holiday.

The empire was not shy about itself.

So when I stood in a village and said good news, the kingdom is coming, I was using the empire’s own words against it. The Greek word is euangelion — the one your Bible translates as gospel.

Everybody heard it. That is not a clever modern reading. It is the plain sense. And it is why the story ends the way it ends.

Your church has taught you that kingdom of God means heaven, or means your heart, or means the church.

It meant a government.

Of God.

Meaning: not Rome’s. Not Antipas’s. Not the Temple leadership’s.

And you should know who those last men were, because they come back in Lesson 12. The Temple was run by a high priest and a circle of chief priests, drawn from a few wealthy Jerusalem families. The high priest did not inherit the job and was not elected to it. He was appointed — and removed — by whoever held the country: Herodian kings first, then the Roman governor. The high priest through my whole adult life was Caiaphas, who held the office about eighteen years and was removed from it in the same year Pilate was sent home to Rome. ²

Sit with what that does to a man’s judgment. His office is in the gift of the occupier.

God’s kingdom is not run from a palace by men who take a cut of the harvest — and the cut was real: the tenth of your produce and the first of it, which is what paid for the priesthood.

Is near.

Near meant near.

Not eventually. Not somewhere above the sky after you die.

I said some of the people standing in front of me would still be alive to see it (Mark 9:1). That sentence is in your Bible. Read it as it is written.

And now be honest about what follows from that, because I promised you I would not point at a verse and walk away.

On the face of it, that did not happen. The people standing in front of me died, and the world went on being run by Rome.

The people who came after me knew it too. There is a letter in your own New Testament — 2 Peter, one of the very latest books in it — where somebody is already answering the complaint out loud: where is the promise of his coming? Ever since our ancestors died, everything continues as it was (2 Peter 3:4). The answer it offers is that God’s clock is not ours, and a day with the Lord is like a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8).

You can decide for yourself what to do with that. What you cannot honestly do is read the word near as meaning two thousand years and counting and then tell yourself that was the plain sense all along.

So what did I think was coming?

An overturning.

My mother sang about it before I was born. Look it up. It is right there and almost nobody hears it. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52–53).

I said the first will be last and the last will be first (Mark 10:31). That is not advice about being modest. It is a description of a reversal.

I said blessed are the poor. Luke writes it plainly, and four verses later adds: woe to you who are rich (Luke 6:20–24).

And now the objection you were going to make anyway.

Matthew has that line differently. Matthew 5:3 says blessed are the poor in spirit. Two gospels, two versions, and your church almost certainly reads you Matthew’s.

I am not going to pretend that away, and you should never trust a book that would.

Here is what to look at instead. One version says poor. The other adds two words that turn a hungry man into a humble one. Now watch the direction of that change, every time I show you one.

It never goes the other way. Nobody ever takes in spirit out. ³

One more verse somebody will quote at you.

My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). You will meet that sentence within a week of reading this lesson, so let us do it now.

Two things. First, it is only in John — the last of the four to be written, sixty years or more after I died. The other three never have me say anything like it.

Second, look at the words even there. Not of this world means not from this world. It is a sentence about where the kingdom comes from, not about where it arrives. And the prayer I taught in Lesson 1 says your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth (Matthew 6:10).

On earth. That prayer is in the same Bible.

Now here is a test you can run yourself.

Every time you meet the phrase kingdom of God in the gospels, try swapping in these words:

“the way things would be run if God were in charge here.”

Now read the stories again.

The kingdom is like a landowner who pays everyone the same, top to bottom (Matthew 20:1–16). Like a king who cancels an impossible debt (Matthew 18:23–35). Like a banquet where the invited guests do not show, so the host sends servants into the streets to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame (Luke 14:15–24).

Read those with the swap in place, and every one of them is about how a society is arranged.

Read them the old way, with kingdom meaning heaven, and every one of them is about who gets in after they die.

Those two readings give you two different gospels.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Luke 1:52–53, my mother’s song.

You will find: the rich being sent away empty. Ask yourself when you last heard that read aloud in church.

Then look up: Luke 6:20 and Luke 6:24, four verses apart.

The Short Version

• Kingdom is a political word. I used it in an occupied country on purpose.
• I meant something arriving here, soon — not a place you go after death.
• What was arriving was an overturning: the bottom goes to the top.
• Swap in “how things would be run if God were in charge here” and the parables change completely.

Think About It

1. Why is “kingdom means heaven” a more comfortable teaching for a wealthy church?
2. My mother’s song is in the Bible. Why do you think it is rarely preached?