Kingdom Come

As Grace has posted a quote from Baxter Kruger:

"As the light of Jesus shines into our darkness, we will not be yearning to escape the ordinary, we will be stunned and full of wonder at the ordinary presence of the blessed Trinity in our humanity.

Heaven is not a bodiless state in an invisible place. Heaven is the life of the Father, Son and Spirit coming to full and abiding expression in our human existence, and the earth and the cosmos are filled with the life and love and fellowship of the blessed Trinity.

Meantime we grieve over the self-centeredness, over the lust and greed, the social and racial, environmental and political and religious injustices that run wild around us, wreaking such havoc in our lives.

And we fast and pray for the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to us in our darkness.

We pray for people to be given eyes to see and that the way things are in Jesus Christ would indeed emerge more and more in our human existence." (Grace has added the emphasis)

I would like to discuss the details of what this means, how we bring it about, or more precisely, how God brings it about through us. Is this simply an expression of love? What is it that God wants us to do to see the Truth? Is there something we can do? Isn't it all Him?

If we look at the teachings of Y'eshua in Mark 12:29-31

"Jesus answered, "The greatest [commandment] is, 'Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. The second is like this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

and then at Micah 6:8

"הגיד לך אדם מה־טוב ומה־יהוה דורש ממך כי אם־עשות משפט ואהבת חסד והצנע לכת עם־אלהיך׃ ף"

"He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does Yahweh require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

We can see that yes, we must love and that love must be in action. Yes, we must pray that God's love reign in us, and that His Spirit reveal to us the Truth so that we may love as He loves, not as we would ourselves (thereby setting up a false and certainly wrong foundation and basis, a flawed rule by which to love by). It is by Christ that God has revealed Himself, God's expression of Himself, that is why John can use the phrase "logos," God's Word. But what does that mean to let Christ emerge in us? By faith certainly, by grace, most assuredly, but also, is it not, as James says, by action? Love without action is merely poetry. Words without deeds are not hollow, they are lies.

Suppose I told my wife I loved her but never showed her, never gave of myself for her. She wouldn't think me a good husband at all. (I'd never get to be her husband without showing her real love, would I?) The word husband means to manage or steward, which is an action verb, and so, my friends, as we often hear evangelical Christians say, so is love.

"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..." Love indeed requires action. So I plead that we, as believers must become doers. The scripture says that God saves us by grace through faith in Christ but does not preclude that we must not adhere to the Torah, the instruction of God, to do what God commands of us. Look back at Micah 6:8 again. What often becomes a point of contention though is when we put our faith in Torah (Law, Instruction) to save us; thereby we have made a false god. Our faith must be in God alone.

So only in Christ and His action, His love, do we now know, as Paul says, how important the Law really is! And Christ tells us that those who would follow Him must abide in Him and "do the will of My Father in Heaven." Christ is adamant about action, not merely words. He is not talking about the rituals we do, but the faith we have and thereby display in actions of love.

He was not crucified for merely what He said, but for what He did. He did not tell us love without giving the example of what that means. He healed on the Sabbath, He cured the blind, set free the captive, declared the year of Jubilee. He did not simply speak to the poor and downtrodden, He became one of them. He became one of us. He humbled Himself before us*.

It is my suggestion, we must become humble as Christ became humble. We must pray, and the more we pray, the more we see His love, the more we see His love the more we thank, the more we thank, the more we hope, the more we hope the more we love, the more we love the more we give, the more we act. True love is truly humble and when we are humble, then we will stop thinking about who is in the kingdom of God and who is not. We will treat and love and accept our flawed and perhaps, until now, unloved neighbors as God has loved us. His will done on earth as it is in heaven. His kingdom come.