The Church Must Return To The Kingdom

As promised, I am proud to present our first official guest blog entry. The author today is a personal friend of mine and has one of the keenest theological minds of anyone in my acquaintance. I hope that you will enjoy his scholarship. By the way, be sure to leave comments if you enjoy this post and maybe we can have him write again.

Thanks,
Mike

The Church as we know it has forgotten, and in many cases forsaken, the concept of Kingdom, more specifically, the Kingdom of God. That indictment, at first, comes across pretty harsh. Allow me to explain. First of all, the Church is not totally to blame. In our modern times, we have very few examples of Kingdoms to draw from in order to understand what the principles of a Kingdom entail. So, to our modern, Western churches, the concept of Kingdom has become too foreign for congregations to relate to. Therefore, many pastors, preachers and lay ministers just avoid the subject altogether or give it cursory, even gratuitous mention. But, does God find this acceptable? Absolutely not!

The Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven is mentioned or used for guidance over 75 times in the gospels alone. It is probably the topic of which Jesus spoke of the most. How ironic that the topic that is most important to Jesus has become of so little importance to His Church. Too many churches and their congregations are running around practicing a religion and have no clue that there is a Kingdom. Jesus did not come to establish a religion. He came to establish a Kingdom. Jesus is not a Democrat or a Republican. He is a Monarch, a King, and a Lord that has a Domain and Dominion over that Domain. Our churches need to understand what those words mean and how those meanings should impact our lives.

The followers and listeners of Jesus understood this very well. They had been under the Kingdom of Rome for quite some time. So, when Jesus spoke of His Kingdom, they understood what He meant. To follow Jesus as our King means you submit to His Kingdom and all that entails. To call Him Lord means that He owns everything and He has an obligation to care for the needs of those who submit to His Lordship. Further, the Word of The King, the Bible, is His final and only word or His Constitution that the citizens of His domain must follow, without question.

Here is where the harshness of my indictment starts to make sense. Our Western churches operate more like Democracies rather than part of a Kingdom. To illustrate this, the King has condemned homosexuality without question, and He has done so in both the Old and New Testaments. And yet, there are some denominations and churches that proceed to ordain homosexual bishops by conveniently reinterpreting or even amending scripture. Now, these denominations and churches are very good at practicing a religion. But, they have ignored and forsaken the Kingdom. The Word of the King is not up for discussion, debate, reinterpretation or amendment. His Word is final and His citizens are to follow it without question. Jesus said to seek first His Kingdom. The Church needs to get busy in taking Him seriously…as their King!

About the Author - Tim Albury is Chief Financial Officer for a pharmaceutical company in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. In addition to having a head for numbers, he is a gifted teacher, theologian, and curriculum writer. One of his more recent missives is entitled Hidden Treasure: A Study On The Family and can be purchased here.