Photo Credit: Onironauta… via Compfight cc
In the days when He walked among us, it only took Jesus Christ two words to open the Kingdom of God to anyone with ears to hear. These two words continue to resound from His throne to us today, and we do well to pay attention.
It never ceases to amaze me how the King could take such simple things from everyday life and use them to profoundly illustrate the Kingdom of God. But that is the true essence of a parable. It takes something ordinary and throws it alongside a spiritual truth in order to make it come alive in the minds of those who have ears to hear. In this post we will look at a picture the King took from the kitchens of the day to help us understand how the Kingdom progresses.
In his book The End of Religion, Bruxy Cavey writes,
“I once say someone holding a sign that said, ‘Repent for the end is near!’ He got it wrong. Jesus didn’t say the end was near. He said that the kingdom of God was near. If I repent because the end is near, then I’m just apologizing for my past in time to die and go to heaven. But if I repent because the kingdom, the Way, the rule of God is near, then I am actively deciding to change my egocentric approach to life and joining in partnership with God to help bring about his way of love in this world. I repent, not because the end is near, but because the beginning is here, and I want to be a part of it.
“Christ’s message of the kingdom and our response of repentance was not just a command to regret your past, but an invitation to help bring about a new future.” [1]
It would be hard to say it any better than that. Bruxy effectively outlines the type of repentance that causes us to live in the Reign.
M
[1] Bruxy Cavey, The End of Religion, (Colorado Springs, NavPress, 2007), 129 – 130
