Why are we not seeing the same results in our modern churches as the first century church did? Evangelical theologian Dr. Scot McKnight writes, “I believe the gospel has been hijacked…Our biggest problem is that we have an entire culture shaped by misunderstanding of the gospel. The so-called gospel is deconstructing the church.”[1]
It’s reasonable to suggest that the preaching of a different gospel other than the one handed down to us in the New Testament will result in different fruit from what we observe in the early church. Paul insisted that the gospel “has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Colossians 1:13). This deliverance from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God resulted in radical transformation. The result was a church described by the Jews in Thessalonica as “those who have turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).
What’s missing? Why are we not seeing the world “turned upside down” by our preaching of the gospel? Could it be that something is missing? I think so.
The Gospel of the Kingdom
A century ago, Philip Mauro, in his book, The Gospel of the Kingdom, wrote, “The subject of the Kingdom of God is of the very essence of the gospel of Christ, and is of immediate and vital importance to all mankind.”[2]
E. Stanley Jones, the famous missionary to India wrote,
“I find myself with an inner compulsion, bolstered with confidence by the fact that the best and most influential man who ever lived, Jesus Christ, made the kingdom of God his central emphasis. I can’t go wrong if I stick close to Him. If I fail, I fail in the right direction. I would rather fail with Him than succeed with anyone else.”[3]
Jesus began his ministry proclaiming, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Matthew defines the teaching of Jesus as “preaching the gospel of the kingdom” (4:23). Jesus’s most famous sermon, The Sermon on the Mount, is all about the ethics of the Kingdom (Matthew 5-7). At one sitting, Jesus gave parables only about “the mysteries of the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 13). In forty parables, nineteen were on the Kingdom of God. Jesus spoke of the Kingdom over a hundred times. The New Testament mentions the Kingdom over one hundred fifty times. No one who studies the New Testament would deny that the Kingdom of God was the main message of Jesus!
Yet we rarely hear about the Kingdom of God in our churches. It’s the great overlooked theme by the church. One pastor writes, “How I have spent a lifetime hearing about Jesus yet never studied or paid attention to the one thing Jesus talked about most? The kingdom has no place in my theology, my church life, or my perception of what it meant to be a Christian.”[4]
I grew up in the church and never heard one sermon on the Kingdom of God. It was not until I was a missionary in Japan that I began to read about, study, and understand “the gospel of the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 4:23). It was revolutionary in my life.
What is it that is missing in our modern gospel? I believe it is the New Testament understanding of a “gospel of the kingdom.” More on this next time.
Pastor Steve
[1] Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), page 26f
[2] Philip Mauro, The Gospel of the Kingdom (Pantianos Classics, 1927) page 129
[3] E. Stanley Jones, The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person, (Abingdon Press, 1972) page 11
[4] Jeremy Treat, Seek First: How the Kingdom of God Changes Everything (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), page 13
