The Kingdom of God is a sometimes confusing, complicated reality that the modern Christian community struggles to teach and embrace, yet it is central to our journey to becoming more like Jesus. Perhaps it might make more sense if, instead of diving in and out of parts of the Bible like we normally do, we take a look at its Grand Narrative – the overall cosmic tale it weaves from Genesis through Revelation.
So let's take a look at the Bible's "bookends" to see what we might learn about what God is doing in the universe and how the Kingdom (and our own stories) fit into it.
TRANSCRIPTION
The Neverending Story
While I was in college, working on what would end up being a somewhat worthless degree in classical piano, I spent my summers as a counselor at a Christian campsite near Ligonier, Pennsylvania, called Pine Springs.ย For ten weeks each summer, I served and led groups of boys ages 6 to 18 in a variety of activities: swimming, hiking, arts and crafts, sports, and various Bible studies. They were exhilarating and exhausting summers, though sleeping in cabins, tents, and out under the stars for thirty weeks pretty much beat any love of camping out of my soul.ย Since then, Iโve done my best to avoid it whenever possible. Perhaps it makes me a bad dad, but I took my older son camping once, and my younger sonโฆ wellโฆ never.
Seems to me that God has blessed modern society with air conditioning, microwaves, and restaurants for a reason.ย Setting up a tent, hunting for and cooking my own food, and sleeping on tree roots isnโt a vacation โ itโs a return to a lifestyle that God graciously allowed me to avoid by forming me in the suburbs in the 20th century.ย Why in the world would I want to go backward?ย Sitting by the beach sipping a cool drink while being served lunch by a waiter in sandals is a vacation.ย Swatting mosquitoes and wondering if the local bear finds my scent attractive is not a vacation.
Anyhow, one of the requisite parts of being a camp counselor is a week of staff training before any kids arrive.ย So, for three summers, the college men and women who made up the counseling staff spent a week together supposedly preparing for a summer of ministry. The first summer, Jessica, my future wife, was among the female counselors, so you can imagine how much spiritual preparation actually took place that year. Two years later, I would ask her to be my wife in that very campsite.
For some reason, camp directors adopt various forms of military bootcamp rituals as part of this supposed team-building program, assuming that life-threatening horrors such as navigating elevated ropes courses, climbing impossibly sheer walls, and working together to pitch our bodies through holes in cabled spider webs build trust, respect, and mutual cooperation among young adults.
The worst of these was a torturous exercise some two-bit life coach came up with at some point calledโฆ the trust fall.
If you donโt know what that is, youโre better off because that means you havenโt experienced it.ย The group forms two lines standing at the foot of a high tree stump or ladder.ย The two lines face each other and hold their hands out in straight lines, forming a sort of net that is meant to catchโฆa really gullible person.ย The victim of the trust fall stands on the stump or ladder, faces away from the human net below, and intentionally falls backward from their perch into the non-interlocking arms of the group.
Judging by its name, the trust fall is intended to teach us to rely on each other by putting our lives into the literal hands of perfect strangers.
After surviving three summers in the woods, I thought I had experienced my last trust fall. But several years later, I was at some church retreat for young adults and, sure enough, an eager young pastor decided that he was going to help us grow spiritually by having each of us fall over backward into the arms of the group below, all of whom, we were assured, were paying close attention.
I got up on the ladder, dutifully crossed my arms, fell over backwardโฆand promptly found myself on the floor surrounded by concerned faces, some of whom didnโt properly use their arms to form the net that was supposed to catch me.
As I lay there on my backside, pain shooting down my legs, I concluded that trust falls were no longer in my future. Iโd just have to find other ways to learn to rely on people.
Trust But Verify.
The way I felt that day is the way Iโve felt at other times when diving into the Kingdom. Some of the things I was taught or unconsciously absorbed through my early Christian instruction just didnโt provide me a complete or even accurate picture of what was going on. I had trusted various pastors, teachers, and books, but they had, in this case, metaphorically let me down.
Just like the kind folks who dropped me during the trust fall, these teachers didnโt mean it, they werenโt attempting to harm me โ they most likely didnโt know themselves. We live in an age of the Forgotten Kingdom.
But not having a full context for the Kingdom has, at times, left me without a net. And Iโve been led in some wrong directions and taken some hard falls. Perhaps this has never happened to you, but the lack of a comprehensive view of the Kingdom has skewed my ideas about the Gospel and some of my ideas about spiritual formation and discipleship in general.
Eventually, I became so frustrated by what I realized was being omitted or improperly assumed about the Kingdom that I took Ronald Reaganโs advice, โTrust but verify.โ
Letโs Get Caught Up
Weโre apprenticing with Jesus for the purpose of becoming more like Him.ย Weโre on a lifelong journey of spiritual formation, or character formation.ย This is not simply knowing more about Jesus; itโs becoming more like Him.
At Soil and Roots, we call this โdeep discipleship,โ or the later stages of our spiritual journey.ย Itโs the process of exploring the hidden ideas that shape who we are, recognizing that these often sit beneath our beliefs and doctrinal statements.ย The unconscious ideas impact all four of our relationships: with God, others, ourselves, and creation and culture.
However, weโre born into an era that faces three immediate, primary problems.
Weโre in a Discipleship Dilemma. To become more like Jesus, we need to know Him really well and ourselves really well.ย Yet most of us have little opportunity or even permission in the current Christian ethos to discover our own stories, and how the relationships and experiences that formed us impact our journey to become like Jesus going forward.
We also live in a Formation Gap. Human beings are best formed to become like someone else in environments that embrace five key elements: time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction.ย These five elements are rarely found together or in any substantial quantity, given the confusion in church institutions and the pace and drive of modern life.
And to become more like Jesus, we need to embrace how He loves people, how He relates to them, what He taught, and what He did.ย However, we also need to embrace His mission and His purpose.ย And His mission is the Kingdom of Light.
He told us thatโs what we are to seek first, itโs the first thing we should pray for, and it is how John the Baptist announced Jesusโ arrival.ย The Kingdom is presented in the Old Testament and affirmed and explored in the New.ย Itโs the primary theme of Jesusโ ministry.ย Luke opens the book of Acts with Jesus teaching about the Kingdom, and he closes Acts with Paul sitting in Romeโฆ teaching the things of the Kingdom.
Our era has largely forgotten the Kingdom, and yet itโs Christianity 101. Itโs central to becoming a deep disciple, yet many of us have vague, obscure, or few ideas about what the Kingdom of God means.
Weโre here to help cure this primary problem, and weโre going to spend the entire season discovering, exploring, debating, and wrestling with the Kingdom of Light.
Weโre taking our time. As with anything at Soil and Roots, we throw out various ideas, concepts, potential insights, and ideas for you to consider. Our hope is youโre taking these ideas and further exploring them on your own or, better yet, with family, friends, or your Greenhouse. Less monologue, more dialogue.
So, this is not a teaching podcast per se. You have access to much better teachers and instructional materials. This is a place to explore how our unconscious ideas impact how we operate in reality and our journey into deep discipleship together. And so, we continue to explore the extraordinarily powerful and important ideas of the Kingdom together.
Weโve proposed that the Kingdom is a cosmic Secret Invasion, and weโve laid out seven of its basic characteristics, though weโve conceded that at least four of them arenโt universally accepted or perhaps even considered. The four that sometimes get us into trouble are:
4. The Kingdom is cosmic in its scope.
5. The Kingdom is both spiritual and physical.
6. The Kingdom is already here, but not yet.
7. The Kingdom of Light is greater than the Kingdom of Darkness.
Already, weโre sensing that the Kingdom has far more to do with reality than simply my โpersonal relationship with Jesus.โย The Kingdom isnโt the church, though thatโs what many assume.ย ChatGPT gave us a simple definition of the Kingdom, and even that came across as individualistic โ as if the Kingdom is all about me and my relationship with God.
Weโve played around with a few definitions. Dr. Treat said the Kingdom is โGodโs reign through Godโs people over Godโs place.โ I threw another idea out there, โThe unstoppable reconciliation of all things through the transformation of dark ideas to light.โ
And weโve wrestled with this concept of โinherent goodness.โ All that God creates is good in its essence. Creation is distorted by sin, though itโs redeemed, reconciled, and restored through the work of King Jesus. X-axis and Y-axis.
This takes a while to wrap our minds around because so many of us have unconsciously assumed the idea that creation is inherently bad or evil, or that itโs entirely corrupted and beyond redemption.ย Weโll be looking at this more as we head into various views of the end times, but if we embrace the idea that creation is now inherently bad and beyond repair, it has an enormous impact on our ideas about the Kingdom and, thus, on our own discipleship and how we operate in the world.
Evil cannot originate. Evil canโt create. It can only distort and destroy whatโs already there. And whatโs originally there is good. The Ideas of the Kingdom of Light are the deeper magic.
The Reign of God
The good news is that if weโre feeling like this Kingdom thing is a lot to take in, weโre not alone.
George Eldon Ladd was a prominent 20th-century New Testament scholar who studied at Gordon Divinity School and Harvard and then taught at Fuller Seminary for many years. He focused much of his work on the Kingdom of God.
Ladd described the Kingdom this way,
โThe Gospel must not only offer a personal salvation in the future life to those who believe; it must also transform all of the relationships of life here and now and thus cause the Kingdom of God to prevail in all the world. The Gospel of redeeming grace has the power to save the social, economic, and political orders as well as the souls of individual believers. The Kingdom of God is like a bit of leaven placed in a bowl of dough which slowly but steadily permeates the dough until the entire lump is leavened. So is the Kingdom of God to transform the world by slow and gradual permeation.โ[1]
We see hints at some of the Kingdom characteristics weโve explored so far in his quote. The Kingdom is far more than our personal salvation. It can be transformative in the various mountains of culture. Itโs the reconciliation of all things. Itโs growing, though sometimes itโs really hard to see.
And itโs complicated. Ladd writes,
โThe very complexity of the Biblical teaching about the Kingdom of God is one of the reasons why such diverse interpretations have arisen in the history of theology. Isolated verses can be quoted for most of the interpretations which can be found in our theological literature. The Kingdom is a present reality (Matt 12:28), and yet it is a future blessing (I Cor 15:50). It is an inner spiritual redemptive blessing (Rom 14:27) which can be experienced only by way of a new birth (Jn 3:3), and yet it will have to do with the government of the nations of the world (Rev 11:15). The Kingdom is a realm in which men enter now (Matt 21:31), and yet it is a realm into which they will enter tomorrow (Matt 8:11). It is at the same time a gift of God which will be bestowed by God in the future (Luke 12:32) and yet which must be received in the present (Mark 10:15). Obviously no such simple explanation can do justice to such a rich but diverse variety of teaching.โ[2]
Ladd believed the key to understanding the Kingdom was embracing the Biblical notion of the word โkingdom.โ In our Soil and Roots lingo, we might ask, โWhat are our unconscious assumptions or ideas about the word ‘kingdom?โ Do we picture a castle, a piece of land, a throne of some sort?
Ladd came to the same conclusion as Jeremy Treat did, in that the biblical idea of a โkingdomโ refers primarily to Godโs โreign.โ
โGodโs kingdomโฆis His universal rule, His sovereignty over all the earthโฆGodโs Kingdom is His power.โ[3]
So, when we pray the Lordโs prayer, weโre praying that the entire earth comes under the rule and the reign of God.ย Obviously, Jesus viewed the earth as somewhere where Godโs Kingdom had not yet fully come, nor was His will always done, and we should pray for both of those conditions to be reversed.ย It seems that Jesus thought this Great Reversal was what we should be asking for first when we pause to pray.
Perhaps this isnโt as much about us โgetting into heavenโ as it is praying that heaven continues to come to earth.
The Kingdom is a really, really big deal.
Theologian N.T. Wright agrees.ย His concern is that weโve missed the central premise, the key narrative of the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
โWhat I miss, right across the Western tradition, at least the way it has come through to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is the devastating and challenging message I find in the four gospels: God really has become king โ in and through Jesus! A new state of affairs has been brought into existence. A door has been opened that no one can shut. Jesus is now the worldโs rightful Lord, and all other lords are to fall at his feet.โ
He goes on:
โThis is an eschatological message, not in the trivial sense that it heralds the โend of the worldโ (whatever that might mean), but in the sense that it is about something that was supposed to happen when Israelโs hopes were fulfilled; and Israelโs hopes were not for the demise of the space-time universe, but for the earth to be full of Godโs gloryโฆBut if this is so โ if God has become king of the world, through Jesus โ then nobody can stay indifferent. This is the point that the four gospels are making, but that the creeds appear completely to ignore and that the Reformers and subsequent โevangelicalโ movements have likewise normally ignored in their eagerness for โthe gospelโ of personal salvation. The church has gone on reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but without any clue from those great creedal and Reformed traditions as to what they are actually saying.โ[4]
Ouch.
The Meta Narrative
It was comments like Laddโs and Wrightโs that brought me back to my painful โtrust fallโ experience.
I learned the Lordโs Prayer when I was probably six years old, though I donโt recall anyone ever teaching me that โThy Kingdom come, Thy Will be doneโ meant I should be asking God to bring the entire earth under His reign, including everything.
I uttered that petition hundreds of times before ever realizing what it actually meant.
Another โtrust fallโ moment occurred when I began to wonder how this whole โKingdom thingโ fits into the grand narrative of the Bible. How does the already by not yet Kingdom play into the cosmic story the Bible is telling?
I donโt know about you, but the overwhelming majority of my Christian experience has treated the Bible like a disjointed instruction manual, bits and pieces of instruction and application, that didnโt really paint the picture of the story in totality.
Early in our marriage, Jess and I attended Bible studies on marriage, often studying Ephesians.ย Weโve taught and attended classes and small groups focused on various topics, from the basics of the Christian faith (most of which made no mention of the Kingdom) to how to deal with anger to studying the end times to picking apart certain books of the Bible for deeper understanding.ย Appropriately, many of the studies focused on Jesus as my Savior, sin, redemption, and the idea that heaven would one day be my home.
As far as I assumed, the โgrand narrativeโ was me-centric. I follow Jesus, I live a good life, and then I die and go to some sort of bliss called โheavenโ that I really didnโt comprehend, but that I was supposed to be really excited about.
Several years ago, I realized I had no recollection of being taught the big story of the Bible.ย I had been very positively exposed to all sorts of sermons, studies, and courses about certain topics, but I had very little understanding of the Bible as a narrative about physical and spiritual history from its inception to its conclusion, and even then, I realized that the โconclusionโ was just the beginning.
I had heard sermon after sermon, study after study about Jesus as my Savior, and as someone I should try to emulate, at least as it concerned being nice to people and not stealing their stuff, but I had very little conception of Him as King, and the Bible as a sweeping epic that involved far more than my personal relationship with Jesus.
Perhaps the Bible wasnโt as much about me as it was about what God is doing in the cosmos, in which Iโm invited to play a part.
We should work to regain the romance, majesty, and comprehensive story of the Bible, rather than only dig into specific parts when we need them.
The Beginning and the End
I remember being eight or nine years old, lying on the living room floor and playing with toys in our small suburban house in Erie, Pennsylvania. I looked up at my mother, who was sitting in her favorite chair just getting started on a new book.ย A few minutes later, I looked back up and realized she was now reading the end of the book!ย Either she was an expert speed reader, or something was amiss.ย When I questioned her why she was breaking the unspoken rule of reading the conclusion before the middle, she replied without even looking up, โBecause I want to know how the story ends.โ And that was that.
Perhaps we might get a sense of the Bible’s never-ending story and how the Kingdom fits into it by taking my momโs approach and exploring its beginning and end.
If we break the unwritten rules of reading an entire book from start to finish and just sit in Genesis 1-3 and Revelation 21 and 22 for a while, we begin to notice how much the end of this cosmic story looks like and builds on the beginning.ย Thereโs an extraordinary amount of continuity here that weโre going to keep missing if we just dart in and out of books and passages without understanding the grand narrative.
In Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth. Godโs place and our place. And, for a while, those two places overlapped. Eden is where heaven and earth met, where God walked with Adam and Eve. He dwelt with them. And God set up an authority structure โ Adam and Eve were to rule the earth.
It appears God created a vast array of spiritual beings in the unseen realm, and that realm also has some sort of authority structure. If we were raised in Christian environments, we tend to assume that the spiritual realm consists only of God and His angels, and Satan and his demons.ย However, more recent theological studies and some ancient commentaries suggest the spiritual realm is far more complex than that.[5]
In our case, we were created to reign over the earthly realm (thereโs that word again). God seems very happy to share His authority and His rule with His created beings.
However, mankind rebelled and decided we could be gods, determining good and evil for ourselves, and apparently there was some sort of rebellion in the unseen realm at some point. So, Adam and Eve were cast out of the place where Heaven and Earth meet, though God immediately told them He would make things right again in the future.
Letโs be careful not to miss this theme of heaven and earth joined together because it weaves its way throughout the Bible. In the Old Testament, the Jewish Tabernacle and Temple were places where God once again dwelt with His people (where heaven and earth meet), and thereโs a reason both structures were filled with Garden of Eden imagery. They were pointing back to Godโs original plan โ for Him to dwell with His people.
Israel was charged with being Godโs representatives on earth for the benefit of the nations โ to return us to what God originally intended. To be with Him in a place where heaven and earth are rejoined.
And guess what? Garden of Eden imagery abounds at the end of Revelation. Paradise Lost. Paradise Restored.
God created the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1.ย God provides a new heaven and a new earth in Revelation 21.ย In Genesis, God creates the sun and the moon. In Revelation, John explicitly states that we no longer need the sun or the moon.ย There are two very important trees in Eden, and we find one of them remains in the new heaven and the new earth.ย Thankfully, that second tree is no longer to be found.
There is a river flowing out of Eden; thereโs a river flowing from Godโs throne in Revelation.
The Garden of Eden features some precious stones; there are more of them in the new heaven and new earth. The Garden of Eden was susceptible to liars, but John specifically tells us no such thing exists on the new earth. Adam and Eve are given animal skins to cover themselves in the Garden after they sin. On the new earth, we are given fine white linen.[6]
John goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure we get the point โ the end of the story is the restoration, the resurrection, and the redemption of the beginning.ย Only the end is even better than the beginning.
Most importantly, God will once again be with His people, dwelling with them in a โcity garden.โ The picture at the end of Revelation is the New Eden, heaven and earth once again rejoined (this time permanently). The physical and spiritual realms will apparently be the same realm, and mankind will actually reign over both realms.[7] Thereโs that word โreignโ yet again.
As we explore the Kingdom, itโs vital for us to understand the comprehensive story: God created two realms and gave them both authority to reign and rule with Him. Both rebelled, but one day, all will be made right.ย We will dwell with God as He originally intended, we will reign with Him as He originally intended, and His Garden of Eden plan will turn out the way He intended.
Eden to New Eden.ย Garden to a much bigger Garden.ย God will rescue the earth and everyone who enters His Kingdom.ย And He is making all things new, forever dwelling with His people, as they rule and reign the new heavens and earth with Him.
Cosmic Restoration
We may have unconscious assumptions about all of this we should explore. Randy Alcorn wrote, โPeter preached that Christ โmust remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.โ (Acts 3:21) It is God restoring mankind to what we once were, what He designed us to be โ fully embodied, righteous beings. And restoring the entire physical universe to what it once was.โ[8]
Steve Lawson commented, โWhatever sin has touched, God will redeem and cleanse. If redemption does not go as far as the curse of sin, then God has failed. Whatever the extent of the consequences of sin, so must the extent of redemption be.โ[9]
We sing this every year at Christmas when we belt out โJoy to the Worldโ:
โNo more let sin and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found.โ
Alcorn and Lawson make a similar point โ we tend to view Jesusโ redemption solely in terms of our personal salvation, but that is a diminished idea of the Gospel of the Kingdom. โFor God so loved the world.โ Itโs a cosmic redemption.
Wright explained, โThe great second โ and third-century teachers insistedโฆthat Godโs rescue of the created order itself, rather than the rescue of saved souls from the created order, was central. That was part of the essentially Jewish faith, rooted in the Jewish scriptures, that early Christians firmly maintained.โ[10]
Weโve touched on this before. God has placed us into four relationships: with God, others, ourselves, and creation and culture. All four are corrupted by sin. All four are being redeemed.
The Principle of Continuity
In his book on heaven, Alcorn introduces the โPrinciple of Continuity.โ Many of us tend to think of heaven as a disconnected reality, a place that bears no resemblance or real relationship with the earth now. There is an existence called โheavenโ now, where those in Christ are with Him when we die. But that isnโt our final destination.
It’s the new heaven and new earth explored in Revelation. Itโs the eternal state when this age is over, and the new age has come. Itโs heaven and earth permanently joined; the way God originally intended. Itโs the New Eden.
One of the reasons modern Christianity struggles with this concept is the assumption that the current earth will be annihilated in some way. After all, Jesus says the โheavens and earth will pass away.โ Revelation 21 says the old earth will โpass away.โ
But does โpassing awayโ mean utter destruction or annihilation?
Alcorn asks, โSo, will the earth we know come to an end? Yes. To a final end? No. Revelation 21:1 says the old Earth will pass away. But when people pass away, they do not cease to exist. As we will be raised to be new people, so the earth will be raised to be a New Earth.โ
Paul wrote the Corinthians, โTherefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.โ[11] When we turn to Christ, we โdieโ to self. Parts of us โpass away.โ But we arenโt annihilated. We donโt cease to exist.
In other words, our final state will be the very same us, but made new. New, resurrected bodies. And we will live on this very earth, only made new. The old, distorted, harmful, evil parts will be put to death, and only new life will exist on the new earth.
This is the Principle of Continuity. Godโs original plan for this earth will not be thwarted. He will dwell with His people, and we will reign with Him on this very good earth. Paradise Lost, yet Paradise Restored.
This may be really hard for us to wrap our minds around. Countless evangelistic programs, movies, sermons, and classes have taught us that our final destination is floating in the air with Jesus while the earth burns into oblivion.
John Piper wrote, โChristianity is not a platonic religion that regards material things as mere shadows of reality, which will be sloughed off as soon as possible. Not the mere immortality of the soul, but rather the resurrection of the body and the renewal of all creation is the hope of the Christian faith.โ[12]
Anthony Hoekema notes, โThe kingdom of Godโฆdoes not mean merely the salvation of certain individuals nor even the salvation of a chosen group of people. It means nothing less than the complete renewal of the entire cosmos, culminating in the new heaven and the new earth.โ[13]
Alcorn goes on to paint a picture of the new heaven and earth that may be foreign to some of us: exploring, building, ruling, painting, reuniting, sports, arts, music, jobs, landscapes, coffee shops, theater, entertainment, and on and on.ย Perhaps the new earth is everything good we love about this earth, but infinitely better and with none of the junk. Everything good is maintained and amplified, and everything distorted and demeaned is forever burned away.ย He wonders if the places we love, the art weโve created, and the experiences we’ve always wanted to have will all be there.
Depending on our current unconscious ideas about heaven, this sort of exploration may be uncomfortable for us, yet this is the picture Scripture paints. People in Christ and this earth share the same trajectory โ resurrection, redemption, reconciliation, and renewal. Eden to Eden. The Principle of Continuity.
The Chiasmus
Weโre going to get even weirder here.ย In modern Western literature or movies, the climax of the story is always at the very end.ย Perhaps in high school English, you learned that the modern story has five parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.ย Whether itโs a book, an action flick, or a theater production, we are very used to experiencing the climax of the story right before the story ends (unless itโs something like Les Misรฉrables).
In many movies today, there is virtually no falling action or denouement. The battle ends, the guy gets the girl, the father gets his family back, and thatโs the end.
Ancient literature didnโt always work this way. Oftentimes, the main point, the main thought, or the climax of the story is actually in the middle.ย The Bible often uses a literary device called a chiasmus, which works very differently from the modern story.
An opening point is made, letโs call that A. Then another point, letโs call that B. Then comes the primary point or climax, letโs call that C, and then comes another B, and then another A. The beginning and the end (what we just called โAโ) are normally similar points, as are the points we just called โB.โ
If you look at Psalm 139, for instance, the first and last passages are essentially the same prayer.ย Thatโs usually a good sign that the psalm is written in a chiastic structure.ย Psalm 139 is, and the primary point is in the center of the Psalm โ Davidโs exclamation of Godโs creative, intimate, tender creation of humans.
So, where the modern story looks like a gradually increasing slope until the very end, with maybe a little drop-off, the chiastic looks like a bell curve, with the main point in the middle.ย Chiastic devices are very common in ancient literature and are found throughout the Bible.
In the grand sweeping, cosmic story of the Bible, whatโs the peak? Whatโs the climax of the story? Does it work like modern literature, where the primary point is at the very end, or is the main point of the story more toward the middle?
If the Bible really is a cosmic narrative telling the story of Garden to Garden, Eden to Eden, and not a disjointed, disconnected group of moral sayings and a list of obligations, where might we find the peak of Godโs story?
If we view the Kingdom as a Great Reversal, or the beginning of the reconciliation of all things, or the inception of Godโs reign through Godโs people over Godโs place, perhaps the primary point, the climax of the story, is somewhat to the right of the middle of the book.
Adam brought death. Jesus brings life.ย Moses parted the Red Sea. Jesus walked on water. Moses hung a serpent on a branch to heal the disease. Jesus hung on a tree to heal the world.ย Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale and still came out sullen and angry.ย Jesus spent three days in the grave and came out having killed death.
The Israelites wandered for forty years and fell into temptation. Jesus fasted for forty days and conquered temptation. Israel rejected God and asked for a human, fallen king. God, in Christ, became the King of Kings.
Solomon failed to keep a unified people. Jesus formed a multi-ethnic, global, unending community.ย The Tabernacle and two Temples were destroyed. Jesus became the everlasting temple.[14]
In His mercy, God divided humankind into various nations and languages at Babel. Through and in Jesus, Babel was reversed on the day of Pentecost.
It would appear the climax of the story may have already passed. Perhaps we shouldnโt look so much to the future for what might happen, but look backward to what already happened.
Though letโs be honest, weโre living in the preface of a much larger story โ a story so bright, so grand, so marvelous we only catch glimpses and hints at it every now and then, and even then only if weโre really paying attention.
As C.S. Lewis wrote at the end of the story of four children in the magical land of Narnia,
โAnd for us, this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.โ[15]
[1] Ladd, G.E. (1959). The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God, (p. 16). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[2] Ladd (1959). The Gospel of the Kingdom (p. 18). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[3] Ladd (1959). The Gospel of the Kingdom (p. 20). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[4] Wright, N.T. (2012). How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Four Gospels, (pp 37-38). HarperOne.
[5] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-divine-council
[6] https://www.dashhouse.com/bookends-gods-story-genesis-1-3-revelation-19-22/
[7] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/saints-judge-angels/
[8] Alcorn, R. (2004). Heaven, (p. 90). Tyndale Momentum.
[9] Alcorn, R. (2004). Heaven, (p. 91). Tyndale Momentum.
[10] Wright, N.T. (2012). How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, (p. 17). HarperOne.
[11] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (2 Co 5:17). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[12] Alcorn, R. (2004). Heaven, (p. 114). Tyndale Momentum.
[13] Alcorn, R. (2004). Heaven, (p. 125). Tyndale Momentum.
[14] https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/temple-of-jesus-body
[15] Lewis, C.S. (1984). The Last Battle, (pp 210-211). HarperTrophy.
