The Church and the Kingdom

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his
servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending
his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and
to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is he
who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who
hear, and who keep what is written therein; for the time is near.
John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to
come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from
Jesus Christ his faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler
of kings on earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and
made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and
dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with the clouds,
and every eye will see him, everyone who pierced him; and all tribes of
the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was
and who is to come, the Almighty. I, John, your brother, who share with
you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance,
was on the island of Patmos on account of the word of God and the
testimony of Jesus. Revelation 1:1-9
In chapter three we touched upon the difference between the Church and
the Kingdom. In order to understand the place of the Church in the end-
time this distinction must be clarified; that is difficult to do, since no New
Testament passage speaks directly to the subject. The early Christians
knew what the Kingdom was and what the Church was; it did not occur to
them to confuse the two. SO we must rely on inferences in order to grasp
the distinction.

Why is this necessary? Why not skip the subject entirely? Because in
modern church practice there are two tendencies: one is to restrict the
Kingdom to the Church-to evangelicalize the Kingdom, as it were-and the
other is to universalize the Church; the first tends to make the Kingdom
into the Church, and the second tries to make the Church into the
Kingdom.1 Both are corruptions of New Testament teaching. If we yield to
either one, this chapter on the Church will become a repetition of the
chapter on the Kingdom, rather than a discussion of the Church in the
end-time.

The introduction to the book of Revelation gives us insight into the

distinction of Church and Kingdom, though that is not the primary reason
for the passage. Rather, it was written, as was the whole book, to show
the servants of Jesus Christ "what must soon take place" and to
encourage them thereby when they were faced with persecution or the

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threat of it. For these Christians to whom the book was addressed-the
seven churches in the province of Asia-did not have the benefit of our
hindsight. They had no sense of history; indeed, the Christians of that
generation did not believe they needed any, since Jesus was coming
soon. But time was moving on. Some sixty years had passed since the
resurrection of Jesus, and he had not returned. Almost all those who
knew him face to face had died. The Church had become almost entirely
second- and third-generation Christians. Should they still wait for the
coming of the Lord? Were the promises still valid, since the Lord had not
returned?

Then to the troubled churches of Asia came an authoritative yes. "The

revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants
what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel
to his servant John." The message of Revelation was not a call for them
to cool their expectations and redirect their energies to more realizable
goals on this world's terms; rather, it was a renewal of the same
promises, and stated even more uncompromisingly than they were at
first. "The lord is coming soon!" The message to each generation of the
Church is the same: Expect him!

What does this have to do with the Church and the Kingdom? The
Christians knew that they were the Church, and they knew what their
responsibilities were as the Church. They believed also that, as the
Church, they were the inheritors of the Kingdom that would appear with
Jesus. The Church was not the Kingdom, but at the return of Christ they
were to share his reign with them. Remember the words of chapter three
as applied to the Jews of that century would apply also to the Christians:
"The Kingdom for them was not a place at all…but the reign of God
himself, through his Messiah, over his chosen nation." In that reign the
Church hoped to share, in fulfillment of the promise of Jesus: "Fear not,
little flock, for it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom"
(Luke 12:32). It is reasonable to say that most Christians then, as now,
put more stock in the appearance of the Kingdom than in its reality.

To the Church John made two statements about the Kingdom. The first is
ambiguous because the Greek text has more than one reading,2 but it is
clear enough. "To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his
blood and has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him
be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen."

He has made us a kingdom. But he has not made us the whole Kingdom.
He has made us a kingdom of priests. You may recall from chapter three
that the servants of the household had responsibilities in the kin's
household during his absence. Here the same principle is applied to the
Church; its responsibilities are defined s those of priesthood.

2
This is no mere quibble. If the kingdom of priests were equated with the
Kingdom of God, we would be saying that God is concerned only with
priests and with mankind only as they are priests. (this is what I meant
about the evangelicalizing of the Kingdom.) But God is not so narrow; he
is concerned with carrots and waterfalls, kangaroos and watermelons,
circuses and hamburger stands; they are all in his Kingdom.

But we are a kingdom of priests. Nowhere is the "priesthood of all

believers" more apparent than in John's definition of the Church. We have
a specific role to play in the world. If we do not arrogantly assume that
we are the sole representatives of God in the world, we can fill our role
effectively.

We are the priests. We are not the politicians, not the generals. We have
no power of our own and no right to seek power. We have authority-the
authority to serve in the name of Jesus, the authority to witness, the
authority to proclaim good news. And the authority to die for his sake.
That is all. To be sure, Christians have from time to time throughout
history forgotten their priesthood and their powerlessness and have taken
up arms in the name of Christ. They have believed that God gave them
that authority. But he didn't. Whether or not as citizens in this world they
had the obligation to fight in this or that war is a separate ethical
problem; but it is certain that they did not have the right to fight and to
conquer in the name of Jesus Christ. Christians are priests, not soldiers.

John reminds the Church of its privilege and responsibility when he calls
it a kingdom of priests. One cannot be too specific about who is in this
group and who is not; there is an enormous difference between a person
who is a servant of Christ in this world and one who is a servant of the
world.

The kingdom of priests, the Church is certainly part of the Kingdom of

God; God reigns in the Church. One might even say that the mission of
the Kingdom is committed to the Church in the present age; the Church
is the body of people who apprehend the reality of the Kingdom now. But
that by no means restricts the Kingdom to the Church nor extends the
Church to the limits of the Kingdom.

The clue to this understanding is in the second reference to the Kingdom

in the passage: "I, John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the
tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance." Conservative
scholarship, following tradition, says that this John is the last of the
apostle, the brother of James, the son of Zebedee-one of the "sons of
thunder," as Jesus called them. The book itself does not assert this, and
John was a common enough name for there to be more than one of them
among the early Christians. But let us suppose the scholars are right. If
so, the message came to the churches of Asia from an almost legendary

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figure, a man about who stories were told continually in the Church (the
same stories which now comprise our gospels). He was a man greatly
venerated, the Church's last fleshly link with Jesus himself. Yet this man
of great authority addresses the Church, not as its master, but as a
brother, as a sharer in its destiny. He shared tribulation with them; he
shared endurance with them; and he shared the Kingdom with them.

What a bold and brave thing to say! He was a prisoner on the island of
Patmos, put there because of his preaching the Word of God and his
testimony for Jesus; certainly in that situation he shared tribulation, and
if he had the grace for it, he shared the patient endurance, too. But in the
midst of it he shared the Kingdom: the Kingdom as a present reality
because Christ has already won the Kingdom. He wants the Church to
know that the victory is theirs, and they share the Kingdom now.

Can those outside of the Church share the Kingdom now? The promise is
not given to the world, for the world depends on appearances rather than
on Faith. The Church alone celebrates the Kingdom in the present age,
the Church alone knows as a certainty that God reigns! In the fulfillment
of the Kingdom all will know this; but our knowledge today gives us hope
for the future and opportunity for the present.

So the Church is an integral part of the Kingdom. It is difficult from a

New Testament point of view to separate the Church from the Kingdom
since it is the Church that shares the kingdom at the present time. For
this reason I am not an enthusiast for the interpretation-relatively new in
the history of biblical studies, less than a hundred years old-that declares
the Church to be a "parenthesis," an interruption in the plan of God which
he has allowed to take up the period of time between the first rejection of
the Kingdom by Israel and its ultimate acceptance by Israel. It is as much
a mistake to limit the Kingdom to Israel as it is to limit it to the Church.
The Church was certainly more significant than that to John as he boldly
declared them a kingdom of priests and sharers in the Kingdom even as
they share in tribulation.

The distinction between Church and Kingdom implies the following: 1)

The Church is God's instrument to share the Gospel of the Kingdom with
the world. 2) The Church is a functioning, integral part of the Kingdom of
God. 3) The Church ought not assume too much for itself. There is more
to do in the world than be religious; on the other hand, the Church must
not forsake its identity as the priest of God. 4) The Church shares both
the present reality of the Kingdom and the future appearance of the
Kingdom.

The Church offers more than itself. WE offer the Kingdom as good news
to anyone who will receive it.

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1
Obviously this idea needs analysis; it could easily form the basis for an
article or even a book on the doctrine of the Church. But since such an
elaboration would be irrelevant in this book, you can take it or leave it-at
least for the time being.

2
English translators have taken their choice here among the variant
readings in the Greek text. RSV and NAS follow Nestle's text literally:
kingdom. Phillips, Williams, and TEV follow the same reading but take a
chance at John's intention: "kingdom of priests (my preference). NEB
follows a variant reading, translating "royal house" (a different word in
Greek from "kingdom". KJV follows yet another alternate, "kings and
priests." But no reading of the text limits the Kingdom to the Church.
Theology has no problem with distinguishing Kingdom from Church, but
hymnology, liturgics, and homiletics-not to say the day-to-day operation
of the Church-are not always so careful. For example:
I love thy kingdom, Lord, The house of thine abode; The Church our blest
Redeemer saved With his own precious blood (The Covenant Hymnal,
#477).