My Kingdom Summary…in Luke

Here’s how I concluded my marathon paper entitled, ‘What is the Kingdom of God in Luke’s Gospel?‘:

On one level it is easy to see why this particular subject has generated so much debate and caused scholars to often have little in the way of consensus over some of the issues relating to the kingdom of God. In many ways it is difficult to give a definitive answer to the question posed at the beginning, even when limiting oneself to the kingdom as it appears in Luke’s gospel. However upon a careful reading of the text one can begin to put parameters in place and through these parameters begin to draw the outline of this dynamic kingdom of God. In closing then it would be helpful for us to briefly re-sketch our outline of the kingdom.

Luke paints for us the picture of a kingdom that is built, in part, upon the Old Testament and, to an even more limited degree, Jewish expectation of a liberating messiah who would establish a new age. He places Jesus at the center of his narrative as that liberator, but his act of liberation and restoration far surpasses any previous expectation. For Luke Jesus comes proclaiming a kingdom the purpose of which is to bring restoration to poor and beggarly Israel. Luke’s kingdom however is not limited to Israel but extends beyond to allow for people from the north, south, east and west to enter in. It is a restoration that doesn’t merely overturn the exile but goes to work on the many damaging effects of the fall. It is a kingdom that was present in the ministry of Jesus and that since the cross has been in effect, to some degree, and will continue until Christ returns and consummates the kingdom by complete restoration.

As Christians today we live in the middle of that timing process and as we do we would do well to heed the words of New Testament scholar, Craig L. Blomberg,

‘Understanding this combination of future and present elements of the kingdom gives us both hope and a certain realism about the Christian life and task. On the one hand, we dare not underestimate how much we can accomplish for God when yielded to his Spirit. He wants to create an outpost or colony of heaven – of the world to come – in our lives individually and corporately now in this age. Thus we become the salt of the earth and light of the world. On the other hand, we dare not underestimate the strength of the opposition. We will not Christianize the earth or establish God’s righteousness in any wholesale way in this life; that remains for Jesus himself to do after his return.’ (Jesus and the Gospels: 1997: 286)

Thoughts? Comments?

Blomberg on Eschatology

Craig Blmoberg wrote this in his conclusion to a 1998 article in Themelios, entitled “Eschatology and the Church: Some New Testament Perspectives“

“It is precisely because we understand God’s plans to supernaturally transform our universe that we can function as little outposts of heaven to model his designs for the universe. We pray ‘your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt. 6:10). A healthy understanding of the inaugurated eschatology of the NT will save us from the twin errors of a despair or defeatism that attempts to do nothing for this world but save souls from it and the currently more prominent mistake of replacing a hope for a supernaturally recreated universe with utopian socio-political programs for this world. Only God knows how much good we as Christians can bring about socially, politically, ethically, and ideologically in our world. We have seen in our time relatively peaceful revolutions in Europe and the former Soviet Union due in part at least to Christian intercession and non-violent action. It is not a little perverse when certain North American dispensationalists continue to see European unity as a sign of the fulfillment of prophecies in the book of Revelation of satanic activity.81 But euphoria over the collapse of the Iron Curtain quickly gave way to grief over mass genocide in Rwanda, a country boasting eighty percent of its population as professingly Christian! So, quickly on the heels of events seemingly influenced by the divine came the demonic again, and the tribalism that generated that African holocaust in less extreme ways tends to fragment our world on every continent at the end of this second Christian millennium, notwithstanding all attempts to create structures reflecting socio-political or even ecclesiastical unity.”