PART FIVE
The Man Dimension of God’s Kingdom with a Divine King
Introduction
If, in fact, God created all mankind to be His children, what must Jesus accomplish in the “last days” of time as king over God’s kingdom? What He desired to accomplish is what happened according to the New Testament. This is what we will study in Part Five of this book entitled, “The Kingdom of God.”
To implement God’s purposes, Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, needed to reconcile mankind to God (II Cor. 5:17-19). Jesus’ reconciliation plan has four main parts. They are the evangelism of the world, the seating in Christ of people from the world realm, sanctification of the church and His return trip for faithful children of God. Jesus did the work for His part in three ways: by becoming incarnate, by living in a physical body with the knowledge of good and evil without choosing evil and by His crucifixion on the cross (Phil. 2:5-11; II Cor. 5:21; I Pet. 2:24).
Our kings’ implementation of His kingdom during the last days of time involves evangelism (Matt. 28:19). Without evangelism there would be no advertisement of Jesus’ reconciliation program. Evangelism is the offering of good news to those who do not have it. The power and value attached to the blood of Jesus is good news because it does what we cannot do for ourselves. It makes us acceptable to God, our Creator. This would not be good news unless we perceived that being accepted by God would lead to other things of personal interest such as eternal glory (I Cor. 2:7).
Obtaining the status of sons in God’s eternal kingdom will be of great interest to all who will believe it. This role offers a hope of satisfaction for many of our needs which, hitherto, we have not had hope. Being adopted as a son of God opens the door to our inheritance of God’s kingdom and eternal life (Gal. 4:7). All of this suggests we need to undergo re-socialization, or sanctification, because this is a different status and role than we had in the world (Rom. 6:21; Eph. 4:20). We need to leave the culture shaped by the devil and be re-made in conformity to God, which is life. Evangelism demands Satan be exposed and sin and death be defined.
Evangelists offer God’s new covenant to those who live in the world (Heb. 8:10-12). We have now moved our discussion to another step in Jesus’ reconciliation work. It is the seating of believers “in Christ.” See Eph 2:6; Rom. 4:25. Jesus died, as a sinner, so sinners from Satan’s world can have their old self crucified with Him (Rom. 6:6; I Cor. 6:11).
This was necessary because Satan got an advantage over mankind. He caused Adam and Eve to get the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:22). All of mankind comes from one person, Adam; therefore, all people have this knowledge (Acts 17:26; I Cor. 15:45-49). God, and God alone, is good and cannot be tempted with evil (Mark 10:18; James 1:13). God is true (Rom. 3:4). Satan is void of truth and therefore an evil being. Mankind with the knowledge of good and evil became internalized with Satan, the evil one (John 8:42-47).
Since the internalization of the traits of “significant others” and one’s own society in general, plus the accepting of their cultural norms is the process of linking an individual to his or her culture, we can understand how Satan has a society in the world realm. However, the world contains the very people created to be God’s children. Satan rules the world by deception (John 12:31; II Cor. 4:4-6). God wants every one of them back (I Tim. 4:2; II Pet. 3:9). Jesus, as king, is now waging war against Satan for the people who have suffered cultural diffusion.
The norms of the world culture are not according to God’s law of life; therefore, God’s word defines these norms as sin. Sin is lawlessness and death is the result (I John 3:4; Rom. 6:23). Death is the entity opposite of life – both physically and spiritually. It is a way people interact in a society. God is love; therefore, the way His people interact in His kingdom is in love and other good ways (I John 4:7). This is life, zoe (John 17:3). Hate and other evil ways of interacting in a society are death traits (I John 3:15). Since God will not tolerate sin, the cause of death, He has arranged to forgive our sins. Reconciliation is now being attained for God’s children.
Jesus arranged for sinners to become alive to God (Eph. 2:5). Those who believe must repent, that is, they must accept the new covenant before the blood of Jesus can work for them. Faith in what God will do underneath the water in baptism accomplishes a new birth (Col. 2:11-14). The new birth processes transfer alien sinners from a society dominated by the devil to God’s kingdom in Christ (Col. 1:13). This is the goal of evangelism. It is not the end, it is just the beginning of sanctification or re-socialization into God’s household. Christians are at the entrance of God’s kingdom and Jesus’ plan for our complete reconciliation with God demands that we grow up spiritually in the church (II Pet. 1:11; Heb. 12:14).
This brings us to still another part of Jesus’ work as king. It is to establish God’s rule, or kingdom. Jesus arranged things so that God’s will is being maintained in an organized primary group while functioning as His family on earth (Eph. 2:19-22). This called out group, or church of God in Christ, is being socialized into God’s eternal kingdom by their growing up into the head, Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:11-16). Jesus modelled Christians’ role in the kingdom with His Son of God status as the Son of Man. This truth is being revealed to us by the Holy Spirit through the word. The process of making a son is the identification with and the internalization of this truth (James 1:21; John 6:63).
Socialization of some type is a part of developing the personality of a human being. God created human beings for socialization as children into His eternal kingdom. Since faith and the volition of man are factors that are a part of the man dimension of God’s kingdom, it is necessary for Jesus to start our socialization now “in Christ.” There are many unearned favors, or graces, and spiritual exercises in Christ that makes sanctification possible, or as sociologists would say, socialization.
Since mankind is incomplete without socialization, God is calling people who have faith into the “group of called out beings,” that is, the church. Socialization is the process of achieving perfect harmony between the individual and a society. The fact that mankind is incomplete, made it necessary for a complete being to become the model for the church. Jesus Christ is this perfect and complete being. He is our “looking glass,” our significant other, our reference. He is our law of life (John 1:4). His way of thinking, acting and feeling is being internalized by each member of the church, as we are being linked to our new culture, the kingdom of God. In the following scripture, the Apostle Paul summed up the foregoing accomplishments of Jesus Christ as king and priest in His plan to reconcile man to his God.
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. I Cor. 1:30
Is this God’s eternal goal for us or is there more? Paul said, “If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men to be pitied.” I Cor. 15:19. There is more and it becomes the motivating force leading Christians in our personality and character changes. This growth lets us work in God’s evangelism plan now. Our part in Christ’s evangelism program actually plays a part in our character change. Evangelism develops love in the evangelist. We will investigate “the more to come” in Part Six, the final part of this series of lessons. We will study about Jesus’ final work of reconciling faithful Christians to God. The title of Part VI is “Biblical Eschatology.”
The foregoing are spiritual activities that happened because God appointed a divine king over His kingdom. Jesus Christ, our king, also serves as our high priest and perfect sacrifice for our sins. These are some of the subjects we will study in Part Five. We will see how a new realm identified as “in Christ” becomes a spiritual reality for each Christian because of our faith in these and other spiritual blessings. We will see how a new birth and justification accomplishes and maintains the reconciliation of man to God. Our studies will reveal Jesus Christ in His strategy against Satan to gain children for God’s household “in Christ.”
We will define the Holy Spirit’s role in Jesus’ plans to attain the four goals listed in this introduction. Another subject will be the church, functioning as Christ’s body under the direction of the apostles and other men directed by the Holy Spirit for Jesus the king. We will see this apostle directed church become elder overseen. Christian sanctification in its relationship to the New Testament church and God’s eternal kingdom will be another study, as well as the work and worship of God’s people. We will maintain historical continuity of the man-dimension of His kingdom with what God has been doing throughout the Old Testament and in the Gospels.
Several technical terms are being used in this introduction from the field of sociology. These terms are common language in our society today. In our Bible studies with some people, it may help them to grasp the concepts more easily by comparing some Bible terms with sociological terms. For instance, sanctification is a Bible word that means spiritual growth. This growth in our character and personality is growth away from the society in the world and into the kingdom of God. The term our present society uses to express the same thought is socialization. We do not need to replace the Bible terms; however, we may want to clarify their meanings, when they are not common to our daily language. The following glossary contains the definition of the technical terms found in this introduction.
Glossary
- Society: Organization of people or other forms of life, inhabiting a particular territory, persisting through generations, and more or less independent of other societies.
- Culture: It refers to the way of life of the people in a society.
- Socialization:
a. The process that links together the individual and his or her culture or subculture.
b. The process by which individuals absorb the values, mores and folkways of the society, making them a part of the self.
c. The way personality is developed in keeping with societal or sub cultural values, although an individual can interpret those values and even modify them. - Resocialization: A deliberate attempt to remold a person’s life and personality in certain aspects.
- Status: A position one holds in society. It can be ascribed or achieved.
- Role: The behavior expected of the person who occupies a designated status.
- Identification: The process by which a person imaginatively places himself or herself in the role of someone else and takes on the traits of that person.
- Internalization: Absorbing attitudes and beliefs and making them one’s own.
- Significant others: Describes those who have an important influence on our thoughts, emotions and actions.
- Cultural diffusion: The process by which cultural traits are transmitted from one culture to another.
