Crown of Thorns

Connecting Kingdom and Cross

Tim Chester

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781781916179

One

Two Gospels
and Two Missions?

There are two gospels within evangelical churches today. One gospel focuses on the kingdom of God – the good news that Christ has come to inaugurate God’s reign and thereby put the world right. The other focuses on the cross – the good news that Christ died in our place so that all who trust in him might be forgiven.

Sometimes they present themselves as complementary accounts which reflect different aspects of the breadth of the biblical narrative. Sometimes they confront one another as competing versions of the true gospel. Some people hold one and not the other. Some try to balance both. Many acknowledge varying degrees of validity in the position of the other, but in practice emphasize one over the other.

My aim in this book is both to unite and divide. I want to unite those who are committed to the one gospel. I have tried to show that advocates of a kingdom-centred gospel and of a cross-centred gospel in fact have much in common.

But I also want to divide. I want to delineate the point where a different emphasis is in fact no gospel. There are ways of articulating the gospel that are wrong. And some of those ways omit elements which are so crucial that we are left with no gospel at all.

The gospel of the cross

In 1 Corinthians 2:1-2 Paul says: ‘When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.’ The gospel, it seems, that Paul preached was the good news of Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Later in the same letter to the Corinthians, Paul defines the gospel. He describes it as the gospel which the Corinthian church has received, on which its members have taken their stand and by which they are saved. This is what is of first importance (15:1-3). This is how he defines this gospel of first importance:

That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born (1 Cor. 15:3-8).

The gospel according to this summary consists of the events of the cross and resurrection. The death of Jesus is confirmed by his burial, and his resurrection is confirmed by his many post-resurrection appearances. But this gospel is also event-plus-interpretation and the interpretation is that Christ died ‘for our sins according to the Scriptures’.

Paul makes a similar statement in Romans 4:25: ‘[Jesus our Lord] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.’ Here we again meet the phrase ‘for our sins’. We see again the centrality of the cross and resurrection. Through the cross and resurrection we have been justified. Paul goes on: ‘Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

This declaration brings to a climax the arguments in Romans 1–4. Paul has shown that all humanity has sinned and is now under judgment, Gentile and Jew alike (Romans 1:18–3:20). But God declares us righteous through faith in the redeeming work of Christ (3:21-24). In the Old Testament, God’s righteous acts were his saving acts by which he vindicated his people in the face of their enemies. But our real enemy is God himself (Romans 5:10). God, however, has now vindicated us before God. In the face of the accusations that God himself makes against us, God declares us not guilty.

But God not only justifies us, he justifies himself. He justifies his actions in declaring us to be in the right when we are clearly in the wrong. God must declare us right and still act rightly. And that is why Jesus was crucified. God presented Jesus as a sacrifice ‘to demonstrate his justice’ (3:25-26). God demonstrates that he was just when he overlooked sin in the past (25b) and he demonstrates that he is just now when he justifies sinners in the present (26a). He did this through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ: ‘God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood’ (25a). When someone offered a sacrifice they symbolically transferred their sins onto the animal. Then what happened to the animal happened to their sins. The animal was a substitute for them. But when Jesus died on the cross it was not merely a symbol. Jesus took our sins on himself (Romans 8:1-4). Our sins were transferred on to him and so he died our death, taking our punishment.

The word translated ‘sacrifice of atonement’ is ‘propitiation’ which means ‘turning aside wrath’. God’s wrath in all its terrible destructive force is hurtling towards us like an on-coming train. On the cross Jesus interposed himself. He stood in the way of God’s wrath. He took the full force of God’s judgment against sin. He absorbed the power of hell. So now nothing of God’s wrath gets through to us. In that act God justifies us, for our punishment is paid in full. And in that act God justifies himself, for there is punishment – the crime is not overlooked.

If God had simply declared us righteous, it would all be a legal fiction. It would be a case of ‘Let’s pretend’. ‘Let’s pretend people are right when really they are wrong.’ We would be left with good reasons to suppose our salvation was a fiction, that we were not truly forgiven and not truly accepted by God. The verdict would be overturned on appeal. Because justice had not been done, the case would still be open. The threat of judgment would remain. But when God declares us right, even though we are wrong, he still acts rightly. Through the cross, we can be confident that we are right before him.

This courtroom, of course, is not simply a metaphor. A day is coming when that court will be convened. On the final day of judgment humanity will stand in the dock. God will wrap up history and call us all to account. He will present his case and pass judgment. Justification is a word about the future, about that future. Justification is a promise, an eschatological word. It is the assurance that when the courtroom drama reaches its climax with you standing in the dock before the Judge of all the world and your verdict is declared, you will, if you have put your faith in Christ, hear the words, ‘Not guilty’.

This is the word of promise that comes in the gospel. The gospel is the promise of acquittal and the invitation to believe. This in essence is the gospel of the cross.

The gospel of the kingdom

Jesus began his ministry by declaring: ‘The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1:14-15). Jesus proclaims good news and the good news is that the kingdom of God is near.

Matthew uses the phrase ‘the gospel’ or ‘good news of the kingdom’ three times in his Gospel:

• Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people (Matt. 4:23).
• Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness (Matt. 9:35).
• And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come (Matt. 24:14).

Luke also refers to the gospel of the kingdom of God three times in his Gospel plus one further occurrence in Acts:

• But [Jesus] said, ‘I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent’ (Luke 4:43).
• After this, Jesus travelled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him (Luke 8:1).
• The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it (Luke 16:16).
• But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptised, both men and women (Acts 8:12).

The gospel that Jesus proclaimed was the gospel of the kingdom.

A focus on the kingdom of God is in part the result of a developing understanding of the kingdom of God in New Testament theology over the past 150 years. The nineteenth-century German theologian, Albrecht Ritschl, conceived of the kingdom of God in ethical terms. The kingdom of God, he believed, was an ethical programme centred on love. Some took Ritschl’s understanding and applied it in individualistic terms, locating the kingdom of God in a person’s heart as a call to live in the light of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity. Others applied it in a corporate way as a social programme. This movement became known as the social gospel and was particularly associated with the American pastor Walter Rauschenbusch. The agenda of this gospel of the kingdom was to transform the social order around the themes of love and solidarity. Arguably it was an attempt to rework the kingdom of God in the image of Enlightenment values. It was strongest at the end of the nineteenth century when hopes for progress were high. The kingdom of God became a religious way of talking about the advance of Western civilisation. All of this was shattered by the horrors of the First World War. After that it became harder to conceive of the kingdom of God as gradually developing within human history.

In 1892 Johannes Weiss (who was the son-in-law of Ritschl) published Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Weiss rejected Ritschl’s understanding. He emphasized the future apocalyptic character of the kingdom of God. The kingdom that Jesus preached, he argued, would involve a sudden work of God overturning the present order. Weiss’ work sparked a storm within New Testament scholarship and ignited a huge amount of interest in the kingdom of God which rumbled on throughout the twentieth century. Weiss’ ideas were picked up by Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer saw the kingdom of God in terms of what he called ‘consistent eschatology’ or ‘thorough-going eschatology’. In other words, far from seeing the kingdom as a gradually developing phenomenon within history, Jesus conceived of it as a decisive future divine intervention. Schweitzer thought Jesus expected the kingdom to come in the mission of the twelve described in Mark 6:7-13. Jesus sent them out not expecting to see them again. When he was proved mistaken, Jesus decided to stake all, forcing God’s hand by precipitating his own death.

The British scholar C. H. Dodd reacted against Schweitzer, taking a completely opposite position. In his 1935 book The Parables of the Kingdom he spoke of ‘realized eschatology’. He argued that the miracles of Jesus were presented as the evidence that the kingdom of God had already come with the arrival of Jesus. Since this coming clearly did not involve the end of history, the kingdom of God became in Dodd’s thought an a-historical reality. History becomes the vehicle for the eternal. In a similar way, the German liberal scholar Rudolf Bultmann ‘de-mythologized’ the kingdom of God. Bultmann believed we should not take the biblical accounts of miracles literally. Instead, he saw them as pictures of transcendent truths. We should take them seriously, he argued, but for Bultmann this involved seeing beyond the myth of the miraculous to the truth the miracles encapsulated. We need to ‘de-mythologize’ them. In this vein Bultmann believed that the kingdom of God comes in moments of existential crisis in which eternity intersects with time as the word of God is proclaimed. He makes the kingdom of God a reality which transcends history.

More recently the consensus of New Testament scholarship has positioned itself between Schweitzer and Dodd, led by scholars such as W. G. Kümmel in his 1961 book, Promise and Fulfilment. The kingdom is recognised as being both present and future. It has come and is coming. It was inaugurated at the first coming of Jesus, but awaits its consummation when he returns. This position is often called ‘inaugurated eschatology’. This is the position advocated by the evangelical scholar, George Eldon Ladd, and it is primarily following the lead of Ladd that evangelicals have joined the consensus of ‘inaugurated eschatology’. Ladd’s book, Jesus and the Kingdom (later republished as The Presence of the Future, 1974) has been particularly influential.

Interweaving with this debate about the timing of the kingdom has been a debate about its nature. The term ‘kingdom’ can be misleading as it implies in English a domain or realm over which a king rules. But the Greek word (basileia) can also mean the act of reigning. It could be translated ‘rule’, ‘reign’, ‘government’ or ‘sovereignty’.

There is an important sense in which God currently rules over this world because he is sovereign. But Jesus speaks of the coming of God’s kingdom. The term ‘the coming of God’s kingdom’ therefore clearly means more than simply God’s sovereign or providential rule. The kingship of God is disputed. At the Fall, humanity rejected God’s rule. The kingdom of God is the reassertion of that rule.

But is that rule the realm over which God reigns or the act of reigning? If the kingdom is simply the realm over which God rules, then it must either be future or transcendent or individualistic since the world is clearly not currently the realm over which God rules in an undisputed way. If, however, the kingdom refers to the actions of God, then it becomes possible to speak of that activity within history. The kingdom can be seen as the dynamic activity of God in history.

As a result scholars tend to emphasize that the kingdom of God is the active reign of God. But we should not entirely discount the idea of realm. Jesus speaks of people ‘entering’ the kingdom and you cannot ‘enter’ an activity. So the kingdom of God is both the act of God reigning and the people over whom he thereby reigns.

The gospel of the kingdom which Jesus proclaimed is the good news that God’s reign was coming. And God’s reign means justice, peace and restoration. Jesus not only preached this message, he also embodied it in his life and ministry. His miracles are pictures of God’s saving reign. And his welcome of the marginalized embodied the forgiveness of the kingdom.

The gospel of the kingdom also comes with a call to repentance. It is a call to turn from the violence and greed of this world and embrace the bounty and grace of God’s kingdom. The gospel of the kingdom thereby creates the community of the kingdom. The community of Jesus becomes the place on earth in which the kingdom is taking shape. It becomes the place in which the future can be seen.

So the gospel of the kingdom is a message of future liberation. But the new regime has begun among Christ’s community of the broken. The Christian community is both a sign and a promise of God’s coming liberation. We are the presence of God’s liberating kingdom in a broken world.

For now, we go on living under the old regimes of this world. But a new regime has begun. A revolution has taken place. The old ways of oppression are coming to an end. A new community with a new government has begun. It operates secretly in the midst of this world. It is a community that offers peace and justice. This is the good news of the kingdom.

I trust that I have presented these two gospels – the gospel of the cross and the gospel of the kingdom – in ways that I hope their advocates would recognize. I trust, too, that we can see that both have some prima facie biblical warrant. This is not a case of a straight black-and-white choice. Do we, then, need to balance an emphasis on the cross and an emphasis on the kingdom? My argument will be that it is not a case of needing to balance these two themes so much as to connect them. We need a co-ordinated gospel in which the cross is central to the gospel of the kingdom and the kingdom is central to the gospel of the cross.

This discussion matters because these competing emphases create contrasting approaches to discipleship and mission.

Two gospels and two missions?

‘Kingdom people’, ‘kingdom ministry’, ‘kingdom ethics’, ‘kingdom hopes’, ‘kingdom vision’, ...