The Gospel of the Kingdom and the Gospel of the Church

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Contents

CHAP. PJlGI

i. oue loed's peeaching of the gospel of the

II. The Substitution of the Gospel of the Chuech

I. Our Lord's Preaching Of The Gospel Of The Kingdom

OUR lord's preaching of the gospel of the

KINGDOM.

The conception of a kingdom, at first imperfectly apprehended, in which God is supreme and man is subject, is as old as the human race. Religion itself, which is inherent in human nature, presupposes such a kingdom. The fragments of ancient annals discovered in the last half century, reveal that peoples centuries older than Moses or Abraham not only had their religions and their deities, but they recognized the fact of a Theocratic government.

No thoughtful reader of the first chapters of Genesis can fail to see that, in the garden, at the opening of human history, the idea of God as King and of man as subject was clearly recognized. Indeed, this is the central truth brought distinctly into view in those chapters. All through the patriarchal history this conception of a kingdom, and of God as King, was, by promises and threatenings, by rewards and penalties, so forced upon the attention of men that its reality and importance could

not be misapprehended.

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Not the Old Testament alone, but in those earlyclassic writers from Egypt, Babylon, Greece and other lands, not less than among the Hebrews, the gods were recognized as kings and rulers of men, whose favor and protection they sought and to whom they professed allegiance. But so far as we know, Moses was the first to reduce this universal conception of a theocratic kingdom into definite written form. The whole Mosaic system was that of a Theocracy, in which God was supreme. When, centuries later, the people, ambitious to become like the other nations, desired a king from among themselves they were warned of danger, and accused of wishing to substitute for the Theocracy a form of government not in accord with the kingdom of God. While they denied this they elected and crowned Saul as king. Then their misfortunes began ; and after many centuries of checkered history came the Babylonish captivity.

All the prophets from the beginning and more and more as the centuries passed on, recognized the kingdom, and God as King. Daniel, one of the latest of the Old Testament writers, foretold the coming Messiah who should set up a kingdom and whose dominion should be an everlasting dominion. This was the same kingdom that had always been recognized, except that God was now to be personated in human form. When John the baptizer appeared on the outskirts of the wilderness and began to deliver his great message, his first words were a quotation from Isaiah, — the greatest of the prophets, — " Prepare ye the way of the Lord for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And our Lord's first deliverance was in the same strain. The time He said is fulfilled and the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He went throughout Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

The gospel of the kingdom was ever the central theme of our Lord's preaching, and must therefore be the central theme of Christianity, the focal point towards which all things converge. Sometimes Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, at others of the kingdom of heaven, and often simply of the kingdom, without qualification ; but everywhere and continually the kingdom was His theme. No word of lesser meaning could contain or express the vastness of His thought. About one hundred times, mostly in the synoptic gospels, Jesus is reported to have spoken of the kingdom and to have made it the subject of discussion. Several times, but in different connections, He compares the kingdom to the sowing and growth of seeds ; then it is like a woman putting leaven in her meal, until all was leavened ; then again, it was like a grain of mustard seed, the smallest of seeds which grew to be a tree on whose branches the birds of the air could rest. Now it is like a woman searching for lost pieces of money ; and then it is like a shepherd seeking and finding his lost sheep and rejoicing over it. These are only specimens of the many similitudes Jesus employed in setting forth the nature and work of the kingdom. The kingdom, Jesus said to the Pharisees, is within you, meaning evidently that the human mind is so configured to the Almighty that it needs, and is susceptible of, those qualities of heart and life that the kingdom provides for and enjoins.

In many places where the word kingdom is not spoken, our Lord's discourses have evident reference to it. The whole Sermon on the Mount is an exposition of the principles of the kingdom. What He says of Himself as being the vine and His disciples the branches ; of His being the shepherd and His people the sheep ; of His being the door, the way, the truth and the life, are all expositions of the kingdom. Our Lord's tender discourse and prayer with His disciples extending from the 14th to the end of the 17th of John, is a revelation of the spirit of the kingdom. In a word, Christ and the gospel of the kingdom is the theme of the four gospels.

Not only is the kingdom coeval and coextensive with the human race, and the central theme of the gospels, as we have seen, but it is vastly more. Its field is the universe, and its principles and their operation are as infinite and absolute as is God Himself. Not that the principles and workings of the kingdom are so absolute as to set aside the freedom of moral beings ; for it makes responsible beings responsible, and places God over all and King forever.

Turning now from this more general view of the subject the question to be considered is : "What did our Lord mean by the kingdom as He, in part, unfolded it to the people of His day, and as the principles He taught involve and unfold it to all subsequent ages ?

It is a law of revelation that the sacred writers speak to the people of their own times. As a rule they do not speak exhaustively or ideally upon the subjects treated, but unfold them only so far as those whom they address are able to comprehend and accept. Hence the Bible cannot be in all parts ideally inerrant. If there be any exception to this rule, it is to be found in the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. And yet even here Christ left manythings in a state of incompleteness and uncertainty. Many of the live questions of to-day He never touched upon if, indeed, He ever thought of them. Jesus taught great principles as no one else has ever thought them; and principles that were not comprehended in His own times except in small part, and whose meaning and application have been unfolding ever since, and will continue to unfold while time endures.

We may not then expect to find the doctrine of the kingdom mapped out in full detail in the gospels, but the seed principles are there, and it is for those who come after Jesus to study and apply the principles He taught, thus broadening, enlarging and clarifying, from one generation to another, the world's knowledge of the kingdom.

First, then, we must not take our understanding of the kingdom from the view of it that was held by the people of Christ's own day. When Jesus came to the Jews they understood neither Him nor His teachings. He was regarded by the leaders as either an impostor or a madman. Some of the common people followed Him in the spirit of idle curiosity, some on account of the wonders He performed, and others because they thought Him & prophet sent from God whose words to them were mysteries. He was a mystery to His own family who thought Him a victim of some strange hallucination. Even John in prison was brought into doubt, and His very apostles while He lived, did not understand Him ; and at His betrayal they forsook Him and fled. Clearly then we cannot take our conceptions of the kingdom from what the men of Christ's day thought of it. They were incompetent to judge.

Again, the term religion, not of Scripture origin, and the gospel of the kingdom, are not synonymous. The two terms have much in common, but that of religion includes an amount of form, ceremony, perfunctory service, superstition and other such things with which the gospel of the kingdom has nothing to do. This .gospel cares little for mere outward service, and everything for light, love and life as the ruling principles of the minds and hearts of men. A cold sense of duty and a purpose to perform it is better than nothing, but, apart from love, it is a legal, slavish service that falls far below the gospel ideal as Jesus saw it and as it was expounded by Paul. Much of what is called religion may be delusion, deception or even a sham ; but, being in the kingdom is to serve God and man from love, and this is a joyous, unselfish, restful service. It is a life of Christlikeness and so brings freedom, peace and gladness to all who enter it ; while much that is called religion is only fear and bondage.

The kingdom that Jesus taught and came to establish was no outward, visible organization, civil or ecclesiastical, that could be seen, framed and operated by men. He said distinctly to Pilate, — I am a king, — but immediately added, — My kingdom is not of this world. He did not mean that His kingdom was wholly out of this world and in some other world, but that it was wholly different in character and aim from other kingdoms and human organizations that then existed. He did not mean to depreciate the value of earthly kingdoms, but to differentiate His own from them all.

Jesus came to preach the gospel of the kingdom, but not to bring it within the range or limits of any visible, tangible organization. His preaching was progressive in thought and form, as a comparison of His earlier with His later discourses reveals. Compare, for example, His Sermon on the Mount with His last consolatory address and we see progress as to detail, but no command or even hint of organization. When once His disciples proposed to make Him king in their sense of the term, He instantly rejected the suggestion. He sent out His disciples to preach the kingdom, but never to organize His work or theirs. His last words to His disciples, before He ascended were : Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature ; but He did not say, — Preach and organize the gospel of the kingdom. My point is that Christ's conception of the kingdom never included what we mean by visible organization for its advancement. The only needful organization was in Himself and in the principles of the kingdom which He inculcated. Christ is King and Kuler over all who know and love Him, and they need no other. When men attempt to organize Christ's kingdom and to put its management into human hands, the least that can be said is that they run without being sent.

The kingdom as Jesus saw and preached it was mainly for this world and not for angels and redeemed spirits in heaven. The same kingdom is already consummated in heaven, and Christ came to establish it on earth as it was and is in heaven. He taught us to pray, Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. It is true that Jesus brought life and immortality to light, and that He said to His disciples, — In My Father's house are many

20 TEE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM.

mansions ; but all this, and all that He said about heaven, was to lead men into the kingdom while yet they lived in this world. It was for men and not for angels that Christ came and preached the good news of the kingdom, otherwise He would have preached to angels and not to men. Unless we see and accept this view, we shut ourselves and the world out from the kingdom and its blessedness that Jesus came to establish on earth as it is in heaven. If we are not in the kingdom while we yet live in the body we shall not be prepared for it when we go out of the body. The kingdom that Jesus preached is for men to enter while they yet live here on the earth.

The kingdom that Jesus preached was not the premillennarian or the sub-resurrection kingdom that some think it to have been. The belief is general that there is to be a period of at least one thousand years during which Christ shall reign supreme over all the world. One class of Christians, not large, but many of them intellectual, educated and devout men, hold that Christ is to come in visible form, and in great splendor on the clouds of heaven at the opening of the millennial period ; that when He so comes those who are then living will be changed, the dead will be raised and the kingdom of which Jesus spoke so constantly will be set up with Himself as the visibly enthroned King, probably on the Mount of Olives ; and that this kingdom will endure for at least one thousand years. This view of the kingdom is derived partly from the book of Daniel, partly from what Jesus said in the twenty-fourth of Matthew and other kindred passages, and partly from the apostolic epistles including the book of Revelation. The Christians of the first century, including the apostles, were ever looking for the immediate coming of their ascended Lord, whom they confidently expected would appear visibly in their day. He was to be seen in glory with the holy angels before that generation should pass away. They were mistaken ; they were disappointed ; their expectations were not fulfilled.

The Scriptures contain scenic and spectacular representations and prophecies which, if construed literally appear to support that view. But every Bible student should know that this whole class of scenic prophecies was never intended to have a literal, or any other than a spiritual fulfilment. To put any other construction on this class of passages is to deny their truthfulness.

Jesus did come in that generation as He prom-

22 TEE GOSPEL OF TEE KINGDOM.

ised, but not in the spectacular sense which they anticipated. This subject is treated at length in my book on The Problem of Final Destiny. Christ's kingdom was not outward to the senses but inward and spiritual, in the hearts of men.

All I care now to emphasize is that the kingdom which Jesus preached was not something that He Himself was miraculously to set up two or ten thousand years in the future, but was something practical and personal for the people of His own day and of our day. It was a kingdom into which those whom He then addressed were encouraged, by repentance and faith, then and there to enter and to enjoy its privileges. Any other view would, to my mind, make Christ's teaching of the kingdom mystical, impracticable, misleading, and so worse than useless. The kingdom that Jesus preached was a present kingdom and not some scenic, miraculous manifestation thousands of years away, or it was nothing of worth to the people of His own day or of ours.

Having settled some mistakes as to the kingdom we come now to a fuller study of its nature. The kingdom that Jesus preached was a spiritual kingdom to be set up in the hearts of men. It was a kingdom of righteousness. It was not outward form but inward life ; it was not letter but spirit ; it was not creed but experience ; it was not profession but reality ; not intellection but heart-choice ; not authority but reason ; not tradition but truth in the lives and souls of men. This is what Jesus meant by the kingdom.

It follows then that the central virtue, and the only essential thing in Christ's gospel of the kingdom is love, love of God and love of man. It is a love that means good- will and unselfishness ; a love that expresses itself in accordant life. Love is of God, for God is love. He that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Love is the fulfilling of the law. It is the central staple on which all the commandments hang, and from which they derive their character and value. Love, rightly expressed, is the only law of Christ's kingdom, and must therefore be made emphatic in this investigation.

Love is not only the central truth of Christianity and of the kingdom, but it is the central truth throughout the moral universe of God. It is in the spiritual world what gravitation is in the physical ; — the one principle that holds all moral and eternal interests in harmony, that unifies them and binds them to God from whom they all proceed. Without this central principle of the kingdom nothing of enduring value could be secured ; nothing great would be undertaken and nothing good accomplished. Where love reigns moral evil, and that alone, is destroyed. Love is of God, for

" God is love saith the Evangel, And the world of woe and sin, Is made light and happy only When a love is shining in."

Christ's kingdom then is the kingdom of love burning on the altar of human hearts and shining brightly in Christian lives, and so of necessity, moulding character and regulating conduct. When all men, each for himself, has this experience, then will Christ's kingdom be established on earth as it is in heaven. The intellect may still be at fault, but the heart will be true to Him who is God over all and King forever, as the needle is to the pole.

The kingdom that Christ preached is, in its character, instrumentalities and aims, both individualistic and socialistic ; that is to say, it applies and appeals alike to individuals as such and to organized society. Hitherto, until recently, Christian teachers have been mainly intent upon preaching the gospel of the kingdom to individuals in order to secure individual conversions to Christ and the upbuilding of individual Christian character.

This point of individualism has been urged too exclusively. True, in a sense, " every tub must stand on its own bottom." Each moral being has responsibilities and duties that he cannot delegate and may not shirk. While it is true that every man must bear his own burdens, it is equally true that we are to bear one another's burdens. The kingdom stands in the same essential relations to organized society that it does to individuals. Men are to be instructed, reformed, elevated, converted and brought into the kingdom in their associated capacity no less than as individuals. Families, communities and nations, all organized bodies existing for useful ends are, as bodies, proper subjects for the kingdom ; and every existing agency that tends in any way, direct or indirect, to advance society and the world towards the kingdom is an element of that kingdom. The principles that Jesus taught carried to their natural limits, involve all this, and show that the kingdom is a much larger thing than has generally been supposed. It is not only for the saving of individuals but for the uplifting of society, of organizations, of nations and of the world. This great subject is only referred to here as explanatory of the nature of Christ's kingdom, and will be considered more fully in its proper connection.

We have now before us a general description of the gospel of the kingdom, but not a full definition. Even if every essential element of the kingdom were included, this, of itself, does not sufficiently differentiate the kingdom from all that closely resembles it, but is not identical with it, and therefore is not a complete definition. Not till we have studied the gospel of the Church, its scope, modes of working, and its relations to the gospel of the kingdom can a full definition of either Church or kingdom be reached. The two are alike while yet they differ. Our second chapter is upon the substitution of the Church for the kingdom, and this will open the way for comparison between them, which must result in bringing the kingdom more fully into view than any study of it apart by itself, could do. The one conception I have of the gospel of the kingdom, as Jesus saw it, is that it relates to and includes everything in human history that works away from ignorance and selfishness and towards enlightenment, morality and spiritual life. All such agencies and influences belong to the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel of the Church, as we shall see, means much less than this. Its thought and movement are individualistic and apart from the general field of advancing civilization.

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THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE GOSPEL OF

THE CHUECH FOE THAT OF THE

KINGDOM.

II

THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE GOSPEL OF THE CHUECH FOE THAT OF THE KINGDOM.

We have seen that the central theme of our Lord's preaching was the gospel of the kingdom ; and also what the kingdom was that Jesus preached. Most naturally and without hesitation, we should anticipate that the apostles and their associates would follow closely in their Master's steps, and preach for substance what they had heard from His lips ; and that therefore, their great theme, as was His, would be the gospel of the kingdom. If the apostles believed, as they did, that Jesus was a prophet sent from God, that He was the promised Messiah, that He was God manifested in the flesh, that He was the world's Saviour, and the impersonation of divine wisdom and goodness, — if they believed all this, — then we should say that most surely they would keep very close to the line of their Lord's teaching, especially as to the gospel of the kingdom, which was His central and constant subject of discourse. We should expect them to present to others what He Himself had taught.

To put this thought in a still stronger light, let us glance a moment at some corresponding cases. The Buddhists received their religious teachings, many centuries ago, from Buddha whom they reverenced as an inspired teacher ; and from that day Buddish priests have been proclaiming, as they naturally should, the central doctrines that Buddha taught. Mohammedans, from the first, have closely adhered to the teachings of their great prophet. The Lutherans hold and teach the central doctrines of Luther; and the Calvinists, of Calvin; the Armenians adhere to their Dutch oracle, Armenius ; and the "Wesleyans, to Wesley ; and so on to the end of the chapter. All this is perfectly natural, and an opposite course would have been unnatural and disappointing.

Applying the same principle to the apostles and their relation to our Lord's teaching, how much more strongly should we anticipate that His great central theme of discourse would be theirs also, and that it would be presented by them after His own way of teaching it. We could not look for less, and yet our anticipations are not realized. They do not preach the kingdom.

At this point two singular facts, not easily explained, have to be met. The first is that the word

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kingdom is dropped almost entirely from their writings. Only about four times in the Acts of the Apostles and in all the Epistles, — together more than twice the length of the Synoptic Gospels, — does the word kingdom appear ; and in all but one of these instances it has no reference to Christ's conception of the kingdom as something to be established on earth, but exclusively to the soul's condition in heaven after the earthly life is ended. In 1 Cor. 14 : 17, it is said that " the kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." Here in a general way, the word expressed in part Christ's conception of the universal kingdom, but still it is mixed up and put in contrast with the Old Testament idea of the kingdom which was largely one of form and outward service.

The second strange fact to be accounted for is that the apostles and their successors not only practically discarded the word kingdom from their vocabulary, but they substituted a newly coined word, at that time of very indefinite and undefined meaning, in its place. That word is translated Church, a term that appears nearly a hundred times, in their writings, to one of the kingdom.

Now be it observed that this word Church is wholly foreign to the Old Testament, not so much as once appearing there. I know that modern writers talk about the Jewish and Hebrew Church and try to read its meaning into the Jewish and Hebrew institutions ; but those institutions were kingly in their constitution, and were wholly different in their nature from the later idea of the Church.

Then again, let it be considered that in the four gospels the word Church occurs but twice, and both instances are in the gospel of Matthew alone ; and that in both cases the word is used in such an indefinite sense as to make its meaning very uncertain. Clearly it has no such meaning there as the word Church, a century later came to signify. In Matthew 16 : 18, where Christ says to Peter, — •" On this rock will I build My Church," His meaning both as to rock and Church is, and always has been in dispute. Christ's meaning here of the word Church was as different from the later Roman Catholic conception as day is from night. In the other passage, Matthew 18 : 17, where Jesus says, " tell it to the Church," the question naturally arises as in the other case, — "What definitely does the word Church here signify ? It is a new word of which we have no knowledge until we find it here.

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"Whence came it ? From what is it derived, and what, here, is its real meaning ? If, as some suppose, the idea of the Church is suggested by the Jewish Synagogue, why then was not that the proper name for it ? Doubtless there was something of likeness between the synagogue and the Church, or what was called the Church, at the beginning ; and yet they were different even then. Others, and rightly, as I believe, derive the term Church from the Greek word, ekklesia. But the classical and proper signification of ekklesia is an assembly or congregation. It may be an assembly called out for any purpose, political, military, or religious. The word does not imply a permanent organization ; it is simply a collection of people gathered for some common purpose. This is something very different from the modern or ancient idea of the Church. It is indeed probable that the early Christian Churches were little if anything more than regular gatherings of the people for worship. If they had any organization it was of the simplest kind. They had no creed or constitution. They were simply an ecclesia, a congregation of Christian people ; and to my mind, the word Church throughout the ISTew Testament might better have been translated Congregation, as, in some translations it has been. Such a rendering would express the primitive idea more accurately than the word Church has done. At most, what was called the Church was a very simple thing to which, in time, an entirely new meaning was attached, and a meaning that the word kingdom could never have suggested, a meaning that the primitive disciples never dreamed of, even as a future possibility.

But this subject of the substitution of Church for kingdom, and what came of it, will be more fully considered in the next chapter on the good and evil that have resulted from the substitution.

We are now arrived at a question of exceeding interest and one that calls for careful thought. Did the apostles deliberately and intentionally substitute the term Church for kingdom, giving to the new word a different and narrower meaning than Christ's term conveyed ? and, if they did this how came they to do it ? They certainly knew that Christ's preaching was mainly of the kingdom. They did not think themselves wiser than their Lord, nor did they mean to be disloyal to Him, or to reject or undervalue anything that He had spoken.

As suggestive of the right answer to our ques-

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tion a few words of generalization may be useful. Every great teacher and leader of men is in advance of his own age. There are millions of people who seem content to trudge along in the exact tracks which their fathers trod. They have no idea of progress and no belief that anything better than they now have is possible. Such people are found in all the avocations of life ; among farmers, mechanics, tradesmen and, to some extent, in the professions. There are clergymen who never go beyond their people; traditions and creeds limit them. They preach familiar platitudes. Like a door on its hinges they come and go, but make no progress. The kaleidoscope, with its bits of colored glass turned this way and that, gives many combinations of form and color, but the same bits of glass are in them all. This is a representative instrument. Such people of every class are useful members of society, and the world could not get on without them; but they are followers after, and not leaders of men.