CREDIT: RONALD GABRIELSEN

Today as I was having my “thinking time” I was pondering upon the phrase we often meet if we read the Gospels, namely “the Kingdom of God” or “the Kingdom of Heaven”. As I was thinking upon this phrase, I noticed that repentance was a part of Jesus’ proclamation that the Kingdom of God had come near.

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
- Mark 1:14-15

Today I know many Christians with a big focus on the Kingdom, but there are also many who concentrate a lot on repentance. It’s interesting to notice that many of those who focus much on repentance don’t talk a whole lot about the Kingdom of God and those who focus on the Kingdom of God usually don't have a big emphasis on repentance - originally both repentance and the Kingdom of God were a part of the same message.

I believe there is a very good reason for Jesus to connect repentance with the proclamation of the Kingdom of God having come near. Today we might not see it so easily because we don't always know what the different words mean.

According to Strong’s Concordance, the word “repentance” comes from “metanoeó”, which means “to change one's mind or purpose”.

So why did Jesus tell people to repent and believe the good news that the Kingdom of God had come near?

When Jesus appeared on the scene, the Jews had already been in big expectation. There had been prophecies about a coming Messiah who would restore the Kingdom, the Jews had been under oppression for a long time and now John had sparked a new hope that this Messiah was right around the corner.

The people were waiting for the Kingdom of God, but the concept they had of it was that Israel would be fully restored as a nation again.

There are such prophecies and in the future they will be fulfilled. It would take a whole lot of allegorical creativity to link all the prophecies about the restoration of Israel to the church. However, when Jesus appeared on the scene, this was not His agenda.

He came with a message that the Kingdom was already here, even though Israel had not been fully restored as a nation and the church had not been instituted. His presence brought the Kingdom of God near to the people who met Him because He carried the Kingdom with Him.

The Kingdom of God was near, but the people needed to repent, or in other words, they needed to change their thinking. If they did not do that, they would miss the kingdom.

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come. He answered them, "The kingdom of God is not coming with a visible display. People won't be saying, "Look! Here it is!' or "There it is!' because now the kingdom of God is among you."
— Luke 17:20-21

What is the Kingdom of God?

I believe the Kingdom of God is His reign. It’s wherever God manifests His presence and His will becomes a reality.

When Jesus was walking on this earth, He was carrying the presence of God with Him and making God’s will a reality. Where there was sickness, He brought healing. Where there was oppression, He brought deliverance. He brought good news to the poor and sight to the blind (Luke 4:18-19).

When He sent out his disciples, the message of the Kingdom was what He asked them to preach, namely to confirm the message by applying God’s will to the situations they would face. Where they met sickness, they should bring healing and where they met oppression, they should bring deliverance (Luke 10:1.12 + Matthew 10:1-4).

Many are still looking for the Kingdom

I don’t believe God is finished with Israel, but I do believe that the Kingdom of God is already here and that it is our job to bring Heaven to earth wherever we go. Sometimes I also wonder if some Christians fall into the same thinking that the Jews had when Jesus was walking on this earth. They are so focused on the Kingdom of God, as Israel being fully restored, that they don’t notice that the Kingdom has already come. Maybe Jesus would also say to these: “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand”.

Often, those who have injured us the most have been love’s greatest spokesmen.

The unfaithful husband sang, “My bride, my jewel, I love you!” — only to kiss her cheek and depart to his mistress’s bed. A seemingly faithful friend swore, “Brother, I love you!” — only to leave the dagger in your back after his embrace. The co-dependent mother muttered, “It’s only because I love you my child!” as she devoured him like a black widow.

So we may conclude that talk is cheap. The inflation of pretty words and Hallmark sentiments bankrupt the three little words that should be most precious: I love you. In the midst of profuse pleasantries and sweet nothings, how can we — as a friend asked me the other day — trust these words when they come from our Savior’s lips?

A Love from Greater Heights

The answer I wish I had ready for my friend is this: Jesus professes his love from greater heights. Your Romeo may have sung up to you in your tower only to leave the next morning. Your father may have professed his love to you as he tucked you into bed, only to back down the driveway and never return. Your companion may have strode side-by-side with you, laughing with what seemed to be love’s affection, only to travel on and leave you behind. But Jesus does not proclaim his love from below your castle, beside your bed, or while walking alongside you. He declares it from above:

The Savior who loves you says so from above you,

From high on a hill and hung up on a tree.

The Savior who loves you cries so from above you,

His blood paints a picture of love you can see.

Jesus did not whisper he loves you over a candle-lit dinner. He did not tell you he loves you in a penthouse suite. He did not send a card and flowers from heaven. He did not write you a poem in the clouds. He came down to be crucified. He says that he loves you as your sin hammers nails through his hands and hangs him up on a cross. He did not simply say that he loved you, he died to display that he loved you in the most powerful way imaginable: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

So how can you know that Jesus really loves you? How can you really believe that his love will not leave like others who abandoned you? Look to the place where God manifests his love for sinners. Each wound, each affliction, each nail flashes love’s lightning. Every thorn endured in his brow, every claw withstood on his back, every tolerated mock to his misery thunders behind his words of love. He did not give us a red rose; he spilled his crimson blood to prove his profession.

Where He Proved His Love

Don’t let experience steal your great Ruby. Do not let sinners, who vampired love of its blood, keep you from Jesus’s love evidenced by his blood. Jesus is not your ex-boyfriend. He is not your absent mother or abusive father. He is not Judas Iscariot — who came as a friend but kissed as an enemy. Jesus is not like them — nor is he like us. He received the betrayer’s kiss — our kiss — and embraced those cursed nails — our nails.

And he suffered more than nails. He was forsaken by his Father as he bore our sin. He cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Mere men could not inflict this pain. Bring on a thousand bloody crosses before this. Bring on ten thousand thorny crowns and scourging whips before this. Jesus, forsaken by the world, forsaken by his people, forsaken by his disciples, is now forsaken by his Father.

Now consider: Did he writhe in agony on a cross, lay down his life, drink your cup of judgment just to abandon you later like sinners have done in your past? Did he cross the desert of wrath, slay the great dragon, and win his bride, with intentions to eventually divorce her?

Oh How He Loves

We dishonor him by looking at the cross and seeing an unfaithful human love. Others may have abandoned you; he did not. Others may have broken promises; he does not. Others’ love expired or were broken in death; his will not.

Lost soul, return home to God’s love. Beloved saint, warm yourself by the flames of this love.

The Savior built an everlasting memorial of love in his death atop a hill. From these heights, he proved his trustworthiness. He exalted his word of love by lifting up his mangled body. His word stands as far beyond questioning as his body now stands beyond the reach of Roman spears.

He is infinitely trustworthy — even with our love.

Article by Greg Morse

James is a good friend of mine, and he knows God in a way that I can only aspire to. We first met over breakfast. I could immediately feel his deep love for Jesus and his great passion for people. That doesn't mean, however, that James wasn't at least a little confused about love for God and neighbor. After a few minutes of conversation about the Bible, James found his opportunity (a pause in the conversation) to tell me that he thought I cared too much about doctrine. “Doctrine divides, don’t you think? We just need to love people. That’s what it’s all about!”

In a world where feelings are easily hurt and love is often superficial, James had come to see love and truth as being in extreme tension. The author of the Second Letter of John sees things very differently.

As I got to know James better, I continually went back to 2 John to help clarify my own thoughts on the relationship between love and truth, pulling from its deep wells and directly into the heart of my new friend. By God’s grace, James came to see that love and truth are two sides of the same coin, and has since grown in love by strengthening his understanding of truth.

Is it possible that you need to find a better balance between love and truth? Do you see truth and love in competition with one another? If so, I’d like to invite you to take a cursory glance at John’s second letter with me. I really believe that if you do, it will shape your thoughts on the matter in a way that is much more in line with the Bible than contemporary American culture.

Old Truth, Good Truth

There’s nothing new about what I shared with James over the next several weeks and months. When people see two ideas that seem to be in competition with one another, they oftentimes try to reconcile the issue by inventing a third way.

But love and truth being two sides of the same coin is nothing new. We’ve been called to love since the beginning (Leviticus 19:18), and to do so with all of our reasoning faculties (Deuteronomy 6:5). When John calls his readers to walk in love, he is not giving them a new command, but simply echoing that which has been since the beginning (2 John 5).

What Is Hate?

To lie about Jesus is anti-love. The world is full of people who lie about who Jesus is (2 John 7). Such a one is the anti-Christ, and is characterized by his robust commitment to deception. There is nothing loving about lying to someone about God. No, that is hate. In 2 John we see the apostle dealing with those who claim to be loving, but actually show their true colors by lying about who Jesus is (2 John 7). Lying about Jesus is unloving because it bears false witness about God (1 Corinthians 15:15) and leads us to break the first and second commandments (Exodus 20:3–4). If we worship a God that we’ve made up in our own minds, it is no different than worshiping a God that we’ve made out of wood with our own hands. Neither is real. Neither can save us, for we are merely worshiping a God of our own invention, not the God of the Bible.

On Guard

John tells us to watch out for those who lie about who Jesus is because there is nothing less at stake than our very souls (2 John 8). The risk is so great that John calls us to not even give the opportunity for the watching world to think that we’re on the same team as such a person (2 John 10). To do so would be to take part in wickedness itself (2 John 11).

Over the course of our early friendship, my heart was heavy to make sure that James understood this grave reality, with all of its weighty implications. I knew after the first two minutes of our first conversation that he rightly understood the importance of love. That one’s a no brainer. After all, the one who fails to love has not God (1 John 4:8). For this very reason, many who love doctrine more than our brothers and sisters would do well to reread 1 John. Nevertheless, I couldn’t let James continue without reminding him of 2 John 9: “Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God.”

Are love and truth in competition? Absolutely not! To love is to tell the truth about Jesus, and to talk about God with humility-driven precision is to love him and our neighbors well. Brothers, watch yourselves (2 John 8), abide in Christ’s teachings (verse 9), obey his commands (verse 6), and reject anything or anyone that says anything different (verses 10–11) so that your joy may be complete in receiving your full reward (verse 8).

Article by Sean DeMars

He is still months away from being born, and already I love him with a fierce mother-love, which would defy the world to defend my boy.

His merits, thus far, are small: He rendered me quite ill for three or four months running, he already disrupts my sleep, he has destroyed my waistline, and he necessitates a move from our cozy newly-wed nest. In the future, he will no doubt exhaust, try, defy me, and wring my heart with a million hard emotions of which, childless, I was free. And yet I love him.

God made parent-love and designed it on purpose so that when he tells us he has compassion on us the way a father has compassion on his children, when he tells us he gives good gifts to us the way a father gives good gifts to his children, we can have just a glimmering notion of God’s character. Made in God’s image, in some way I love in his image — though my loving is just as inadequate and broken an image of God’s love as I am of his glory. Marveling at the love I already have for my baby boy, I am blown away to think of how God loves me.

God’s Love for His Children

God’s love for us surpasses human parent-love by far. We aren’t simply inconvenient children — though we are that. We aren’t simply dependent upon him for every breath — though we are that. We lived from the day of our birth in open rebellion against him, predisposed to war with him, incapable of pleasing or loving him, lacking all the charms that endear infants to parents, and yet God loved us, chose us, set us apart to be his own, gave us the ability to love him, and gave his Son for us.

That last is the thought that caught me totally off guard, as I folded laundry and thought about my baby. He is infinitely dear to me, and as he is now physically protected inside my womb, I already feel myself building emotional and intellectual walls to protect him once he’s born. In some part of me, I have pitted my tiny family against the whole world if necessary: Baby boy is mine and shall be safe, and the rest of the world can go — just anywhere, so long as baby boy is left with me.

But God’s love is not like this. In the very fact that God loves me, his parent-love differs from mine. John’s Gospel puts it this way: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). You’re finishing the verse in your head, but stop there for a moment. God loved the world. God gave his Son.

We take comfort in this verse because it declares that God loves us — because we are the world for which his Son was given, “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” But do we realize the weight of the gift?

Before God made us his children, he already existed as Father. Not to sin-rotted beings like us, but to Jesus Christ “who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). And lest you think there was no love lost between this Father and Son, mark the Father’s witness at Christ’s baptism: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).

Jesus was God’s “only” and “beloved” Son. God loved the world and gave this only beloved One for us: a sacrifice in this world for a kingdom that Christ said is not of this world.

Learning to Love Like God

So I think back to my baby boy and wonder how being conformed to God’s image must change my loving of him. Abraham took his son, his only son Isaac, whom he loved, to a mountain and raised a knife to sacrifice the boy at God’s command — and, at God’s command, stopped (Genesis 22). And Christ’s own words come heavy with demand:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:37–39)
It isn’t that I’m supposed to stop loving my little boy. As we already established, God designed this love. But I am supposed to love God and his kingdom more than I love this child. As I wear God’s image in loving my child, I am also to wear his image in loving the world. Baby boy is not my treasure to hide from the world — ultimately, he’s a gift with which God has entrusted me: a gift, if the Lord allows, for the kingdom.

It’s a weighty prospect, and I don’t know how to love as God does; I don’t know what that may look like in raising this boy. But I know whom I can ask for help. And because he did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, I know that he will graciously give me all things (Romans 8:32) — including the ability to love as he calls me.

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