final paper for Who is Jesus?

27 sep 2018

Summary of “Enacting the kingdom of God”, chapter 4.

Regarding to the chapter, God’s rule is arriving. In the modern period, Jesus has often been seen as a teacher of ethics or a social reformer. These views are not completely mistaken. They focus in too modern and humanistic a way on how people should live, and What mattered to him, first and foremost, was the God of Israel, God’s love for his people and his world, and what God was doing for his people and his world. the term is dynamic and refers primarily to the activity of God. But, in Jesus’ usage, ‘the kingdom of God’ is also something one can ‘enter, and in this case, it designates the sphere of God’s rule, which in English we would call his ‘kingdom’ or ‘realm' So we need to bear in mind both dimensions — active rule and territorial kingdom - if we are to do justice to Jesus’ usage. The people of Israel therefore looked for a time when God’s rule would be universally acknowledged and would prevail over all evil. Jesus’ taught his disciples to pray for this:

May your name be sanctified,

may your kingdom come,

may your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

The meaning is that in heaven, where the angels worship God and carry out his will, God’s kingdom already exists in its perfection, but this is not yet true on earth.

Enacting the kingdom at table. In one of his deft, short parables, Seuss compared those who resisted his message to uncooperative and peevish children:

They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another,

'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;

we sang a dirge, and you did not weep’.

The kingdom belongs to the poor

When Jesus passed through Jericho on the way to Jerusalem, on his last visit to the city, a blind beggar at the back of the crowds that thronged the route managed to get Jesus’ attention. His blindness healed, he eagerly joined the followers of Jesus.

Renewing the people of God

One of the most important of Jesus’ symbolic acts was his selection of twelve e of his disciples les for a special vocation.

The kingdom of God in the Gospel of John

One of the many differences between the Gospel of Sohn and the other three Gospels is that, whereas in the other Gospels the phrase ‘the kingdom of God’ (or ‘the kingdom of heaven’) is frequently on Jesus’ lips, in John it occurs only twice.