| Jesus and the End-Time The Church and the End-Time The Church and the Kingdom |
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written therein; for the time is near.In chapter three we touched upon the difference between the Church and the Kingdom. In order to understand the place of the Church in the end-time this distinction must be clarified; that is difficult to do, since no New Testament passage speaks directly to the subject. The early Christians knew what the Kingdom was and what the Church was; it did not occur to them to confuse the two. SO we must rely on inferences in order to grasp the distinction. Why is this necessary? Why not skip the subject entirely? Because in modern church practice there are two tendencies: one is to restrict the Kingdom to the Church-to evangelicalize the Kingdom, as it were-and the other is to universalize the Church; the first tends to make the Kingdom into the Church, and the second tries to make the Church into the Kingdom.1 Both are corruptions of New Testament teaching. If we yield to either one, this chapter on the Church will become a repetition of the chapter on the Kingdom, rather than a discussion of the Church in the end-time. The introduction to the book of Revelation gives us insight into the distinction of Church and Kingdom, though that is not the primary reason for the passage. Rather, it was written, as was the whole book, to show the servants of Jesus Christ "what must soon take place" and to encourage them thereby when they were faced with persecution or the threat of it. For these Christians to whom the book was addressed-the seven churches in the province of Asia-did not have the benefit of our hindsight. They had no sense of history; indeed, the Christians of that generation did not believe they needed any, since Jesus was coming soon. But time was moving on. Some sixty years had passed since the resurrection of Jesus, and he had not returned. Almost all those who knew him face to face had died. The Church had become almost entirely second- and third-generation Christians. Should they still wait for the coming of the Lord? Were the promises still valid, since the Lord had not returned? Then to the troubled churches of Asia came an authoritative yes. "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John." The message of Revelation was not a call for them to cool their expectations and redirect their energies to more realizable goals on this world's terms; rather, it was a renewal of the same promises, and stated even more uncompromisingly than they were at first. "The lord is coming soon!" The message to each generation of the Church is the same: Expect him! What does this have to do with the Church and the Kingdom? The Christians knew that they were the Church, and they knew what their responsibilities were as the Church. They believed also that, as the Church, they were the inheritors of the Kingdom that would appear with Jesus. The Church was not the Kingdom, but at the return of Christ they were to share his reign with them. Remember the words of chapter three as applied to the Jews of that century would apply also to the Christians: "The Kingdom for them was not a place at all…but the reign of God himself, through his Messiah, over his chosen nation." In that reign the Church hoped to share, in fulfillment of the promise of Jesus: "Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32). It is reasonable to say that most Christians then, as now, put more stock in the appearance of the Kingdom than in its reality. To the Church John made two statements about the Kingdom. The first is ambiguous because the Greek text has more than one reading,2 but it is clear enough. "To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." He has made us a kingdom. But he has not made us the whole Kingdom. He has made us a kingdom of priests. You may recall from chapter three that the servants of the household had responsibilities in the kin's household during his absence. Here the same principle is applied to the Church; its responsibilities are defined s those of priesthood. This is no mere quibble. If the kingdom of priests were equated with the Kingdom of God, we would be saying that God is concerned only with priests and with mankind only as they are priests. (this is what I meant about the evangelicalizing of the Kingdom.) But God is not so narrow; he is concerned with carrots and waterfalls, kangaroos and watermelons, circuses and hamburger stands; they are all in his Kingdom. But we are a kingdom of priests. Nowhere is the "priesthood of all believers" more apparent than in John's definition of the Church. We have a specific role to play in the world. If we do not arrogantly assume that we are the sole representatives of God in the world, we can fill our role effectively. We are the priests. We are not the politicians, not the generals. We have no power of our own and no right to seek power. We have authority-the authority to serve in the name of Jesus, the authority to witness, the authority to proclaim good news. And the authority to die for his sake. That is all. To be sure, Christians have from time to time throughout history forgotten their priesthood and their powerlessness and have taken up arms in the name of Christ. They have believed that God gave them that authority. But he didn't. Whether or not as citizens in this world they had the obligation to fight in this or that war is a separate ethical problem; but it is certain that they did not have the right to fight and to conquer in the name of Jesus Christ. Christians are priests, not soldiers. John reminds the Church of its privilege and responsibility when he calls it a kingdom of priests. One cannot be too specific about who is in this group and who is not; there is an enormous difference between a person who is a servant of Christ in this world and one who is a servant of the world. The kingdom of priests, the Church is certainly part of the Kingdom of God; God reigns in the Church. One might even say that the mission of the Kingdom is committed to the Church in the present age; the Church is the body of people who apprehend the reality of the Kingdom now. But that by no means restricts the Kingdom to the Church nor extends the Church to the limits of the Kingdom. The clue to this understanding is in the second reference to the Kingdom in the passage: "I, John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance." Conservative scholarship, following tradition, says that this John is the last of the apostle, the brother of James, the son of Zebedee-one of the "sons of thunder," as Jesus called them. The book itself does not assert this, and John was a common enough name for there to be more than one of them among the early Christians. But let us suppose the scholars are right. If so, the message came to the churches of Asia from an almost legendary figure, a man about who stories were told continually in the Church (the same stories which now comprise our gospels). He was a man greatly venerated, the Church's last fleshly link with Jesus himself. Yet this man of great authority addresses the Church, not as its master, but as a brother, as a sharer in its destiny. He shared tribulation with them; he shared endurance with them; and he shared the Kingdom with them. What a bold and brave thing to say! He was a prisoner on the island of Patmos, put there because of his preaching the Word of God and his testimony for Jesus; certainly in that situation he shared tribulation, and if he had the grace for it, he shared the patient endurance, too. But in the midst of it he shared the Kingdom: the Kingdom as a present reality because Christ has already won the Kingdom. He wants the Church to know that the victory is theirs, and they share the Kingdom now. Can those outside of the Church share the Kingdom now? The promise is not given to the world, for the world depends on appearances rather than on Faith. The Church alone celebrates the Kingdom in the present age, the Church alone knows as a certainty that God reigns! In the fulfillment of the Kingdom all will know this; but our knowledge today gives us hope for the future and opportunity for the present. So the Church is an integral part of the Kingdom. It is difficult from a New Testament point of view to separate the Church from the Kingdom since it is the Church that shares the kingdom at the present time. For this reason I am not an enthusiast for the interpretation-relatively new in the history of biblical studies, less than a hundred years old-that declares the Church to be a "parenthesis," an interruption in the plan of God which he has allowed to take up the period of time between the first rejection of the Kingdom by Israel and its ultimate acceptance by Israel. It is as much a mistake to limit the Kingdom to Israel as it is to limit it to the Church. The Church was certainly more significant than that to John as he boldly declared them a kingdom of priests and sharers in the Kingdom even as they share in tribulation. The distinction between Church and Kingdom implies the following: 1) The Church is God's instrument to share the Gospel of the Kingdom with the world. 2) The Church is a functioning, integral part of the Kingdom of God. 3) The Church ought not assume too much for itself. There is more to do in the world than be religious; on the other hand, the Church must not forsake its identity as the priest of God. 4) The Church shares both the present reality of the Kingdom and the future appearance of the Kingdom. The Church offers more than itself. WE offer the Kingdom as good news to anyone who will receive it. 1 Obviously this idea needs analysis; it could easily form the basis for an article or even a book on the doctrine of the Church. But since such an elaboration would be irrelevant in this book, you can take it or leave it-at least for the time being. 2 English translators have taken their choice here among the variant readings in the Greek text. RSV and NAS follow Nestle's text literally: kingdom. Phillips, Williams, and TEV follow the same reading but take a chance at John's intention: "kingdom of priests (my preference). NEB follows a variant reading, translating "royal house" (a different word in Greek from "kingdom". KJV follows yet another alternate, "kings and priests." But no reading of the text limits the Kingdom to the Church. Theology has no problem with distinguishing Kingdom from Church, but hymnology, liturgics, and homiletics-not to say the day-to-day operation of the Church-are not always so careful. For example: I love thy kingdom, Lord, The house of thine abode; The Church our blest Redeemer saved With his own precious blood (The Covenant Hymnal, #477). » Next Page — A Plan for the Fullness of Time » Table of Contents » Home |