image by Bel Ragay from Unsplash In my Search the Scriptures study on Luke, there was one question in particular that caught my attention. For Luke 17: 20-37, it asked me to examine what were a) the similarities and b) the differences between the Kingdom of heaven, and the second coming of Jesus. I had never thought of these two things in relation to each other before, so it took me a while to consider this. Let's be honest. These are concepts that are familiar to us, but which we seldom see as directly connected to the everyday Christian life--to our life right now. At least, that was how I thought of them. The second coming is a concrete, specific event, a turning point between the season of mercy and the season of judgment (v 26-30) The second coming as Jesus described it was a definitive point in time where God's people would be taken and separated from those who were not. And God's people would not all be in the same place, in a single community or group--out of two doing the same task/in the same place, only one would be taken (v 34-36) Instead, v 31-33 was the reminder of what would matter in that day--whether we had lived our lives according to God's priorities or our own. In contrast, the kingdom of heaven is the abstract, ongoing, intangible life/growth in the souls of believers around the world through the power of the gospel (v 21) As Jesus explained, the kingdom of heaven was not a place, but rather where our hearts were before God. This was in direct contrast to what the Jews had understood (and hoped it to be) at the time. They had envisioned a kingdom of heaven defined by the very concrete boundaries of culture, location, and nation, and which would be established through a tangible event, the rebellion. There was a very specific identity for God's people, an identity based on external factors. Both the kingdom of heaven and the second coming as described by Jesus in this passage emphasized the individual soul's relationship with God as demonstrated through a heart of obedience, rather than externalities. Do I look forward to the second coming with a confidence and hope that rests in the person of Christ as my Saviour? Or do I place my hope in the affiliation, the lifestyle, the church, or the works which I subscribe to? What are we doing to further the kingdom of heaven right now? Rather than seeing it as some comfortably symbolic concept in the distant future which has no direct personal connection to ourselves. In our context, this would be the spreading of the gospel and the ongoing ministry of the church in cultivating those in their congregations, but also the everyday impact of the Word in our lives and how it changes our hearts. We are living out the kingdom of heaven, right now, in our spiritual growth (or the lack thereof) and our obedience each day.
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