GOD’S WORD FOR JANUARY 28 ~ ~ Romans 12:2 ~ ~ “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
Speaking of the New Testament of the Bible, Dr. Michael Youssef is addressing the tensions of the Kingdom in his book, “How to Read the Bible”
THE TENSION OF THE KINGDOM
The Church’s tension is that it is IN the world but not OF the world. The more seriously the Church takes its task, the more deeply estranged it becomes from this modern age. The bolder the Church’s witness for Christ, the more it will be hated and persecuted. Like the persecuted first-century church, we are called upon to live in this tension – and to even provoke it through our witness for Jesus.
We are also in a tension between the Kingdom of God as an accomplished, present reality and its future victory. We know that Jesus has already won the victory on the cross – yet we still expectantly await a final victory that we cannot see.
The early Church understood itself to be the successor of Israel, the true remnant and people of the New Covenant. The early Christians saw their mission as a servant mission of proclaiming the Kingdom and extending the Covenant to the world. They saw themselves as the people of the Messiah living in the Last Days.
We are the same Church, and we have the same Gospel. Our task is unchanged and our message has not lost its urgency. And we must live in a state of tension between the victory Jesus won on the cross and the victory that is still deferred.
Around the world, the invisible Church of Jesus Christ is quietly engaged in ministry, evangelism, and worship in house churches and secret cell meetings, hiding from the searching eyes of Communist regimes, Islamic regimes, and even hostile neighbors. Tension is inescapable. It is a tension between two worlds: the Kingdom of God victorious and the Church of Jesus Christ, hated and hunted and persecuted.
What will the Kingdom of God be tomorrow? What is the future of the Church?
The true Church is the invisible Church, consisting of everyone whose name is written in the Book of Life (see Revelation 20:12 and 21:27). It is greater than local church bodies and denominations, just as the true Israel of God’s purpose was greater than the Israelite nation.
The true Church resides in every individual church, yet surpasses all of them. No one church may claim to be the “true Church” because that would be the sin of self-deification. The true church cuts across the membership rolls of individual churches and reaches out to embrace repentant sinners. The true Church transcends time and space.
In the true Church – the true Kingdom of God – we will one day sit down with Father Abraham, the great apostles, and all the saved believers from every nation and race. The church is the community of people who have responded in faith to the summons of the Kingdom of God.
The church is the new Israel, the new people of God. And it has been called to action!
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1 Corinthians 4:20
For the kingdom of God is not in words, but in power.
James 2:5
Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters: did God not choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?
James 1:27
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
James 1:27
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
Matthew 7:21
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.