When Jesus taught his disciples to pray he taught them to recognize God: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Immediately after recognizing God for who He is, Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” These things are the foundation of our prayer life with God, according to Jesus.
As I think about this today, the realization strikes me that praying, “Thy kingdom come,” needs to be accompanied by a willingness to reflect God’s kingdom and God’s will in the way we live. If we pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven and don’t think that prayer means anything for us in the way that we live, do we really mean it?
These thoughts came to me as I was worshipping God and thinking about the song we were singing, which was an expression of faith in the promises of God. If we
pray or sing these words to God without any intention to reflect the God we are worshiping and praying to in our daily lives, is our worship and prayer anything other than a clanging gong or a banging cymbal that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13?
When Jesus began his public ministry, the message he preached was the coming of the kingdom, which he said is near at hand. (Mk. 1:14-15l Matt. 4:17, 23) Jesus said that the reason he was sent was to preach the coming of the kingdom of God. (Luke 4:3)
When Jesus spoke in his hometown synagogue, he said it a little bit differently: he said that he came to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom to prisoners, to give sight to the blind, and to set the oppressed free. (Luke 4:18-19)
Throughout his public ministry Jesus demonstrated what he came to do. He touched lepers, though doing so would make him unclean under Jewish law, and he healed them. He gave sight to the blind. He healed the sick and the lame. He set people free from demonic influences. He forgave sins. He lived out a tangible demonstration of what it means for the kingdom of God to come, and he extended God’s favor to Samaritans, a Canaanite woman, and a Roman centurion.
He also challenged the religious people of his day. He repeatedly healed people on the Sabbath. He even went right into the synagogues and healed them in front of the religious leaders, knowing that it would provoke them in their religiosity, because they didn’t understand what it means for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
The religious leaders were angry when Jesus challenged their understanding of the law and therefore of God. In their best moments they were just confused.
When Jesus healed ten lepers and instructed them to go show themselves to the priests, only the Samaritan leper came back and thanked Jesus. The priests asked, when would this kingdom that Jesus was preaching come? Jesus said, God’s kingdom isn’t any particular place, because God’s kingdom is within us. (ἐντός (entos), meaning inside (us) (adverb or noun) — within (us), sometimes translated “among us” or “in our midst”)
They still didn’t know what he meant. All they could see was that he was breaking the rules – the requirements they had established to protect people from breaking the mosaic Law of not working on the Sabbath. They didn’t understand that the Lord of the Sabbath was standing in front of them, telling them they were getting it wrong.
Jesus said the kingdom is in the midst of His followers. He come to announce that God’s kingdom has come, though it is also still to come. He introduced his kingdom, and he called his followers to recognize it, to repent, and to live in its reality.
The question I want to ask today of myself and anyone who might be reading this is this: Are we doing that?
Jesus concluded the Sermon on the Mount by telling his disciples to do his teachings. He warned his disciples that they can fool ourselves into thinking they are good just having heard what he said. He warned them of the danger of merely hearing what he said and not doing it: if they rely only on hearing his word, he said, they are standing on ground that is sand that will be washed away under their feet.
I think a lot of religious people are still confused today. Our confusion may sound different, but it has the same flavor. We have established a rule that people who confess Jesus with their mouths and believe what Jesus said in their hearts are good, and we discount the importance of doing what Jesus said for fear that we might fall into the trap of believing that our good works save us.
A long time ago Jesus anticipated that confusion when he said, “‘Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21)
Jesus also anticipated the response: “But we have prophesied in your name, cast out demons, and performed mere miracles!” And, Jesus will say plainly, “I never knew you.” (Matt. 7:22-23) These are the responses of people who think that faith, is only about believing and not about doing the will of the Father.
True faith is understanding the will of the Father, understanding what the kingdom of God means, and doing the will of the Father. True faith is not believing enough to prophesy, cast out demons, and perform miracles. True faith is taking on the character and will of the Father and to live into the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
We can know God and not really know Him. It’s not enough that we merely know Him, intellectually. Even the demons believe but they bristle at God. They do not embrace Him. They do not want to be like Him. They do not do His will.
It’s interesting to me that the response of Jesus to those people who said to him, “Lord, Lord,” but did not do his teachings, is that he never knew them. We need to do His teachings so that He knows us! We do not really know Jesus, and he does not know us in a relational sense, unless we embrace and reflect who he is in the way that we live.
Jesus came to preach good news to the poor. He came to set prisoners free and to set people free from oppression. Jesus came to give sight to the blind and to declare the the Lord’s favor. We can over-spiritualize these things and, thereby, miss the point.
Consider Jesus. He demonstrated the kingdom of God in material ways by healing the sick and lame, casting out demons, and and giving sight to the blind. Jesus broke social boundaries by welcoming tax collectors, sinners, the poor, and the marginalized to his table, modeling kingdom values that reverse worldly status.
In the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus taught a lot about the kingdom of God, he explained how to live into the kingdom now – by loving our neighbors and even our enemies, by showing mercy, and seeking righteousness.
James expands on what Jesus taught – by not showing favoritism to the wealthy and influential – by keeping the royal law found in Scripture to love our neighbors as we love ourselves and by showing mercy to others that we have been shown by God. (James 2) Like the person who said, “Lord, Lord,” but didn’t have true faith, James says,
“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
James 2:15-17
Our actions do not save us, to be sure. Our actions, though, reveal the character of our faith. If our faith does not lead us to reflect the kingdom of God as Jesus did, we are fooling ourselves about the character of our faith. Not that we can be like Jesus in his perfection. We can’t, yet Jesus insists that we try: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt. 5:48) And, lest we might be confused about what perfection means, he tells us:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”
Matthew 5:43-48
He sums those phrases up by saying, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The perfection Jesus expects us to strive for and to model is the perfection of love. It isn’t perfection of faith. It’s not perfection of theological understanding or intellectual knowledge. It is the perfection of love.
Preaching the Gospel is not enough if we do not back it up the way Jesus did with actual care and compassion in meeting the physical needs of people. Preaching the gospel and teaching people to believe the right things without teaching people to no and be like Jesus leads to intellectual assent, but it does not lead to true faith.
If all we have for people are words, knowledge, and intellectual understanding, but we do not demonstrate the love of God in material and substantial ways like Jesus did, we are no better than a clanging gong and a banging cymbal. As John says, “How can we love God and hate our brother?”
Jesus expects us to live out and reflect the kingdom of God among us – in our midst. He expects us to invite Jesus into us and embrace the kingdom of God within us. Can the kingdom of God truly be within us if we do not live it out? I don’t think so. To the extent that we embrace and reflect Jesus in the way we live, we know God with the integrity of true faith, and only then does God know us in a relational and salvific sense.
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“Christianity means living in Babylon and being redemptive there.”
Rev. Dr. John Perkins, founder of the Christian Community Development Association
