Olevianus: The Kingdom And Its Benefits

Since, then, you say that the additional name “Christ” or “Anointed” implies that He came with the command of the Father to establish a royal priesthood, explain first what the kingdom of Christ is. A. A kingdom is a kind of rule . . . Continue reading →

Whose Kingdom, Which King, And Why Do The Nations Rage?

The first time I remember reading Psalm 2 it was in my hometown newspaper, now known as the Lincoln Journal Star. If memory serves, it appeared every week, probably in the Sunday edition, which, as every paper carrier knows, is the largest . . . Continue reading →

As It Was In The Days Of Noah (28): 2 Peter 1:3–11 (part 4)

The Christian life is not the instrument of salvation. To attempt to make it so is a self-defeating move, since none of us, in this life, shall attain perfect sanctification. Thus, all of us fall short of the mark. This is undeniably true. In that case, we are left to going back to the dog’s breakfast of the late-medieval doctrine of congruent merit, the doctrine rejected by the entire Reformation, that God imputes perfection to our imperfect efforts unto justification and salvation. Continue reading →

Berkhof On The Kingdom Of God

The Kingdom of God is primarily an eschatological concept. The fundamental idea of the Kingdom in Scripture is not that of a restored theocratic kingdom of God in Christ—which is essentially a kingdom of Israel—, as the Premillenarians claim; neither is it . . . Continue reading →

Heidelberg 123: The Second Petition—Your Kingdom Come (1)

What this all means is that how one understands the kingdom is very closely related to one’s eschatology. This is the often unspoken assumption behind the too-often heated debate over the kingdom in confessional Reformed circles. Most everyone in the contemporary intra-Reformed agrees that Christ is reigning now, that he is sovereign now, but the disagreement comes over the implications of that reign. We all agree that the kingdom has been inaugurated and that it has earthly manifestations but where we disagree is where to look for those manifestations. Since the late 19th century, those who have been influenced by what has come to be called “neo-Calvinism” (neo is Greek for new) have sometimes argued that Christ’s reign is such that the kingdom is manifested in everything than any Christian does for the sake of Christ. This is a more expansive way of speaking of the implications of the kingdom of God than was traditionally used. Those who take the narrower view, tend to associate the manifestation of the kingdom of God on the earth with the visible institutional church. Continue reading →

Heidelberg 85: Church Discipline Is The Second Key Of The Kingdom

In our late-modern (liquid), nominalist, it is widely regarded that truth claims and official acts are nothing but the exercise of power for personal gain. In other words, we live in a time of great suspicion. Whereas the dominant question of the . . . Continue reading →

Heidelberg 83: Christ Gave The Keys To The Church

This imagery is a challenge to our late-modern assumptions. We might assume that, of course, God must be happy to have us, that the kingdom of God must be inclusive. Such an assumption, however pervasive it has become in the modern age, is foreign to Scripture. In Scriptural teaching we are by nature rebels, at odds with God and excluded from his kingdom. Apart from Christ our righteous substitute and our king, we have no status before God except as condemned before the king. Therefore we very much need the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven to be opened for us. Continue reading →

The Gospel Is Not Social

Between Monasticism And Transformation

Like Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) before him, Rauschenbusch’s Pietism had not equipped him to address the challenges before him. Like Schleiermacher, Rauschenbusch turned to the liberals for answers. He synthesized his Pietist theology with Albrecht Ritschl’s theology of the Kingdom of God. The Social Gospel movement wanted to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. Their optimistic eschatology (doctrine of last things) told them that they could do it. They were inspired by the Modern idea of the universal brotherhood of humanity and the universal fatherhood of God. As many others before them had done the Social Gospel movement harassed the Christian faith to their social agenda. Continue reading →

Waters: What Is And Is Not Kingdom Work

One further problem with this approach is that virtually any activity can become “kingdom work.” McKnight commends a Chicago, Ill. congregation that opened and operated a laundromat, “health facilities,” a gym, and a “pizza joint” for the wider community. He sees these . . . Continue reading →

Heidelberg 51: The Glory Of A King Distant And Near

Difficult as it may be for those who live within “the Beltway” (as if there is only one city in the world with a beltway) to imagine, many Americans have never visited the American capitol. For many Americans the capitol is distant . . . Continue reading →