Behold Your King
“The Christ Pantocrator” of the Deesis mosaic (13th-century) in Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, Turkey) (source)
Jesus is king, and he invites us to live in his kingdom. We can acknowledge him as king or reject him. We can accept his invitation to inhabit this new reality, or we can remain in our sin and give our allegiance to other masters. Yet he is king nonetheless. His kingdom is like no other, and the citizens of this kingdom live in ways that confound the judgments of this world.
The Strange Christian Life
A profound description of life in this kingdom comes to us from the second century, or perhaps the early third. The letter we call The Epistle to Diognetus was composed by an anonymous writer and is listed among the works of the Apostolic Fathers. It is an apologetic work, describing the distinctiveness and reasonableness of Christian faith, along with the “confessedly strange character" of the Christian life:
They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if sojourners in them; they share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country. They marry as all men, they bear children, but they do not expose their offspring. They offer free hospitality, but guard their purity. Their lot is cast “in the flesh,” but they do not live “after the flesh.” They pass their time upon the earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven. They obey the appointed laws, and they surpass the laws in their own lives. They love all men and are persecuted by all men. They are unknown and they are condemned. They are put to death and they gain life. They are dishonoured and are glorified in their dishonour, they are spoken evil of and are justified. “They are abused and give blessing,” they are insulted and render honour. When they do good they are buffeted as evil-doers, when they are buffeted they rejoice as men who receive life. They are warred upon by the Jews as foreigners and persecuted by the Greeks, and those who hate them cannot state the cause of their enmity (5.1, 4-17, trans. Kirsopp Lake, LCL 25).
Why would anyone live like this? How could anyone live like this? The answer to both the “why” and the “how” is that God sent the very one by whom the heavens and earth were created in order to establish the truth in our hearts (7.3). God sent him, moreover, “in gentleness and meekness, as a king sending a son, he sent him as King, he sent him as God, he sent him as Man to men, he was saving and persuading when he sent him, not compelling, for compulsion is not an attribute of God” (7.4). As the writer suggests earlier in the work, we become like what we worship (2.5). The work of God in the character of those who worship him is a miracle (7.9).
The Kingdom of God
I presume that Jesus knew what he was talking about when he spoke of the “kingdom of God.” Apparently many today disagree, opting instead for the neologism “kin-dom.” Baptized Christians are indeed brothers and sisters in Christ, adopted into the household of God the Father by the work of the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit. To speak of the church as “kin” is accurate so far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough. The earliest Christian confession was “Jesus is Lord.” Those temporally closest to Jesus understood their proper relationship to him. In the fever-dream of postmodernity we imagine that we can flatten all relationships, that we can finally be rid of all the “structures of power” that have characterized human relationships from the beginning. Yet we cannot dethrone Jesus. We can only acknowledge or reject his kingship. And as the writer of the Epistle of Diognetus reminds us, “compulsion is not an attribute of God.” No one has to live in God’s kingdom, and many choose not to do so.
The irony is that an acknowledgement of the lordship of Christ begins to set all of our other relationships in order. We become like what we worship. The lordship of Christ is not characterized by compulsion, oppression, or exploitation. The kingship of God is unlike all other kingship, because it is the only kingship not marred by sin. Perhaps this is why God did not wish for Israel to have a human king. God says to Samuel, “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Sam 8:7). The kingdom of God reflects the values of God, and God’s ways are not human ways, nor are God’s thoughts human thoughts (Isa 55:8).
To see this we need only open our Bibles. Consider Mary’s words about her son, and what God has done through his incarnation:
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior….He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:47, 51-53).
There can be no “business as usual” in God’s kingdom. Our normal ways of structuring relationships, rooted in sins such as pride and greed, shatter beneath the weight of the child that was conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb. The infanticidal madness of Herod, born of a desire to protect his own kingdom at all costs, contrasts sharply with the kingdom birthed into the world through Christ. In God’s kingdom, things are different. Our normal patterns of thought, distorted by the great power of sin, buck at the dissonance between our kingdoms and God’s kingdom. It is necessary for God to renew our minds so that we can begin to think and live as people under the Lordship of Christ.
Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God, related mainly in parables, upends our expectations and brings us to a point of decision. Will we live in the reality he describes? He offers us an image of a landowner who pays some of his workers far more than they deserve. He shows us a father who is extravagantly loving, despite one son who squanders his family’s property, and another who is smug and self-righteous. He tells us about the rich man and poor Lazarus--God’s judgement on one who will not help, and God’s mercy on one who receives no help. He compares the kingdom to a bit of yeast that a woman mixes into flour, and which leavens the whole loaf. He teaches us about a mustard seed that gives rise to a weed that will grow up into a large shrub, and invites us to consider what it might mean to think of God’s kingdom in that way. He tells us the story of a Samaritan who was more compassionate than the righteous of Israel, and invites us to think in new ways about who our neighbors may be. God’s work in the world does indeed constitute a kingdom, but it is a kingdom with a perfect and sinless king, and thus it seems strange to us. We have adopted values marred by sin, but in God’s kingdom sin has no dominion. As Jesus tells Pilate in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not from this world.”
The writer of the Epistle to Diognetus understood this. He understood that, while Christians have to live within the structures and systems of this world, we also stand at a distance from them. We can never be fully at home within them because we belong to a different kingdom, an unseen kingdom with an unseen king. “They pass their time upon the earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven.”
Christ the King
In John’s Revelation, he first describes Jesus as “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and ruler of the kings of the earth.” He is the one “who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father.” To this Jesus, says John, “be glory and dominion, forever and ever. Amen” (1:5-6). There have, of course, always been pretenders to the eternal kingship that belongs to Christ. In John’s own day the Roman Empire and its Emperors exercised worldly sovereignty through brute force, though John prophesies the destruction of this and all other worldly powers. In the new heaven and new earth, “Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (21:3-4).
As Richard Bauckham argues in The Theology of the Book of Revelation, the central symbol of Revelation is the throne, and the central question Revelation answers is, “Who is really Lord of this world?” The God who came to us in Jesus Christ is Lord of all, and all other aspirants to kingship are pretenders. Jesus is, in fact, King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev 17:14; 19:16). Yes, worldly kings have temporal power, and we have to live with that. Yet they can never have our ultimate allegiance. Christians have one Lord, and he was clear that no one can serve two masters.
It is a question we must ask in every generation: Who is really Lord of this world? Our answer to this question will be borne out in the way we live. How do we live in relation to our neighbors? Do we love our enemies? How do we spend our time and money? Do we avail ourselves of the means of grace? Do we resist the sinfulness of this world, the brokenness of the relationships between different tribes, tongues, nations, and races? Do we follow Christ when it is difficult, when it does not make sense, and when we will face ridicule? Do we, in the words of the Epistle to Diognetus, dwell in our own fatherlands, but as if sojourners in them? Do we share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as strangers?
Who is really Lord of this world?
The Western world is not becoming friendlier to Christians, especially Christians of a traditional sort. Conservative Roman Catholics, Protestants, and the Orthodox are seen increasingly as out-of-step, obstructionist, and mired in antiquated, sometimes oppressive, beliefs. We need more than a “kin-dom.” We must recognize who is really Lord of this world, give honor and glory as befits him, and order our lives in keeping with the will of our king.
David F. Watson is Lead Editor of Firebrand. He serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.