The Way of the Kingdom
The Kingdom of Heaven was the central teaching of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. It is not an easy concept to define and Jesus used parables to try and describe it to open our minds to the possibility of what it is. However, there are also a clearly set out series of verses in Matthew which do tell us about the Kingdom and how important it is. And then when Jesus returns in Acts for 40 days we are told he spends these 40 days specifically teaching about the Kingdom rather than anything else – so this teaching is significant, but often totally neglected. It is therefore good to look at these teachings further.
Entering the Kingdom
Apart from the Kingdom being very important for us to seek, Jesus sets out a way for us to enter into it – essentially by “doing the will of the Father”. Since Jesus comes to reveal the nature of the Father we can assume that we do the will of the Father by following Jesus’s commands. The central ones of these Jesus tells us are to love God, love our neighbor, love our enemy, to forgive, be merciful, not judge, not be angry or anxious. The extent to which we follow these is the extent to which we enter into the Kingdom as a spiritual reality, within us and all around us. This is what is referred to in this site as “The Way of The Kingdom”.
The nature of the Kingdom
We know the Kingdom as Jesus talks about it is not the afterlife or a physical reality on Earth (either now or later) – as we are asked to enter it now. It is also referred to as being within us and around us, although we do not see it. It is therefore primarily a spiritual reality that is available to us now if we choose to seek it. And when we do, everything changes. However, this is just scratching the surface. A majority of Jesus’s parables are dedicated to expanding our minds as to what the Kingdom is like – either subtly or very explicitly: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”. The descriptions are enigmatic and profound and often not what you would expect.
Verses on the Kingdom
A summary of the key verses on the Kingdom can be found on the Kingdom page.
Blog articles
A snapshot of the articles are below, with the main blog page here.
Following the example of Jesus
What would it mean to “become more like Jesus”? This is the topic of Day 22 of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. The image above is “Jesus, the good shepherd” from the ceiling of the San Callisto catacombs. These started…
Was Jesus teaching ‘The Way’?
An interesting clue to the nature of early Christians is found in Acts, when a pre-conversion Saul (Paul) is seeking out those people who were known as “belonging to the Way“: But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the…
Four views of the Kingdom and Heaven
There are many overlapping concepts relating to the Kingdom of Heaven, the afterlife and life of Earth in the future that it is worth separating them out. Key to this is an attempt to answer the question “What was Jesus…
Is “Metanoia” the same as repent?
“Repent” is such a common word in Christian thinking that we will rarely question it: Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God…