When and Where is the Kingdom of God?

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." - Mark 1.15

In the fast-paced Gospel of Mark, Jesus returns from the wilderness to roar forth a revolutionary message: "The kingdom of God has come near." This is Mark's version of Matthew's phrase, "the kingdom of heaven." The phrase constitutes Mark's single-sentence summary of Jesus' entire message. If the disciples had ordered red baseball caps to hand out at the feeding of the five thousand, they would have emblazoned this slogan on them.

But what does it mean? For many modern believers, the "kingdom of heaven" is where our souls go when we die. For those of a more dispensational bent, it may mean the thousand year reign of peace sandwiched between the Great Tribulation and the Battle of Armageddon.

But Jesus' rhetoric rules these readings out of order. The words "has come near" translate a single Greek verb which Our Lord places in the perfect tense, a grammatical construction which refers to a thing already done and never to be undone. The New American Standard's "at hand" renders it nicely.

When Jesus finds his disciples hitting the snooze alarm for the third time in the garden of Gethsemane, he uses the same word to arouse them with the warning cry, "See, my betrayer is at hand." He does not mean, "My betrayer will arrive after you have died and gone to Heaven." He does not mean, "My betrayer will arrive at some unknown hour of debatable eschatological fulfillment." He means that he can already hear the Judas' scaly belly slithering through the dead leaves beneath the olive trees that surround them.

And Jesus declares that, since the moment of his own arrival in Israel, fresh from the triumph of his baptism and his decisive KO of Satan in a three-round cage match, God's way of living has been available as a present reality in which we can choose to live each moment - or choose not to do so.

Dallas Willard likens this to the arrival of electricity in the rural Missouri farm country of his childhood:

"When those lines came by our farm, a very different way of living presented itself. Our relationships to fundamental aspects of life - daylight and dark, hot and cold, clean and dirty, work and leisure, preparing food and preserving it - could be vastly changed for the better. But we still had to believe in the electricity and its arrangements, understand them, and take the practical steps involved in relying on it."

This gets at the second part of Jesus' mini-manifesto: "Repent, and believe in the good news."

Around AD 60, Josephus journeyed from Jerusalem to Galilee to negotiate with a freedom fighter who also went by the name of Jesus. He offered himself to Israel as a savior who would defeat the Roman empire through military might. Josephus, as the voice of the establishment, thought this a disastrous course of action and wanted the fellow to suspend his suicidal campaign. He told the man to "show repentance and prove his loyalty to me." A more faithful translation of Josephus' Greek would be, "repent, and believe in me." He did not mean, "Have an emotional experience followed by a mystical awareness of my indwelling presence." He meant, "Admit that your way of seeking life does not work, and promise to try mine instead."

Two lessons follow: Jesus does not so much demand tears as a change of strategy, and He wants action more than emotion. When is the Kingdom? Now. Where is the Kingdom? Here. Our Savior calls us to enter the Kingdom of God by deciding, even while surrounded with the earthly empire of self, wealth, and weapons, to act as if He really knows what He's talking about in terms of the daily actions that truly lead to a better life.

Jesus stands ready to electrify your life. Flip the switch.