By the time the creeds were written in the third century, what had happened to the conception of the Kingdom of God? The Nicene Creed mentions it once, beyond the borders of this
life, in heaven "Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom". The Apostles Creed and the Athanasian Creed don't mention it. The three great historic creeds summing up Christian doctrine, mention once what Jesus mentioned a hundred times. Something had dropped out. A vital, vital thing had dropped out. A crippled Christianity went across Europe, leaving a crippled result. The kingdom of God was pressed into the inner recesses of the heart, as a mystical experience now, and then pushed out beyond the borders of this life, in heaven as a future kingdom. So there were vast areas of life left out, unredeemed: the economic, the social, the political. A vacuum was left in the soul of Western Civilization.
(E. Stanley Jones)
As I've been working carefully through Matthew, Jesus' talk of the kingdom is getting to me. It's true that we've relegated it now to the "inner recesses of the heart" and pushed it "out beyond the borders of this life" as a future kingdom. If it is sown in the world, as Jesus says in the parable of the weeds, and if we're the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and if we are to inherit the earth, then it does seem that there are vast areas of life that have been left out of being intentionally impacted or influenced by the kingdom or the children of the kingdom.
I have heard and appreciated the following conviction several times over the last year or two:
We exist as a group of believers in a given city/culture/region for the common good and welfare of that city/culture/region (eg. Jeremiah 29). If we were not here would people lament our absence? Or, how much would it cost to re-establish services in the community that are no longer being offered?
In other words, are we really in the world but not of the world (John 15:19;16:33)? Or are we trying to so hard to get out of the world and it's pains and troubles that we're really not even in the world?
Here's another quote from E. Stanley Jones:
"An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body, and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul. One is a ghost and the other a corpse…" (from The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person. Abingdon Press, 1972. p. 40.)
Another way to say all this is that we are God's plan to heal the world. And I think it probably proceeds along the lines of how Jesus did it. Basically proclaiming the kingdom and doing good. Sort of sounds like:
"Restoring lives, forming disciples, caring for creation."
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