Jesus on Living in the Kingdom

Jesus is often quoted as having said : " the Kingdom of Heaven is within you." However, a more accurately translation would seem to be " the kingdom is between you". Now, this is a much more dynamic and challenging concept. It relates the reality of God's people living in the kingdom in this world, not to the more restrictive sense of depending solely on an individual, but makes it firmly a community reality. It involves more than one single individual as the translation" within you" would imply.

Living In The Kingdom And Faith.

Nonetheless, the reality of living in the Kingdom must start with the individual, for if the Kingdom is to exist between members of God's community, the Church, there needs to be more than one person involved. But how do we live in the Kingdom?

Living in the Kingdom is essentially a matter of living in faith. What does living in faith mean? If we recall Hebrew' s 11.1 and take that as our working definition, it means depending totally on God for all our needs, as far as we can achieve that at any given time. This highlights the fact that trust is the root of faith. We need to to a position where we can trust God for everything.

We also need to fully understand what this means first of all. " Living in the Kingdom" is perhaps, in a sense, a rather old-fashioned phrase. If we lived in, say, the Middle Ages we would know it well enough. A great part of our lives, what we could do and not do, would have been determined by the rules and laws introduced by whatever king we happened to live under. Living in one kingdom rather than another could have been quite different. Thus " living in the Kingdom" means that we give full allegiance to our King, Jesus Christ. Our lives are not our own and that they belong to him in an even greater degree than they would have belonged to to any medieval king.

Progress By Degrees

To effectively give our lives to Jesus as our King is not something which we shall be able to achieve overnight. But we can come to achieve it in large degree if we keep it as a fundamental and overriding principle in our lives, working at it not merely week by week but day by day and even hour by hour. Certainly there will be many times when we fail and fall. We apologise, get up, and continue towards our objective -- and it is one we can achieve with the Spirit's help. AUTHOR: Anthony Keith Whitehead

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Over twentyfive years in Christian healing, teaching, writing ministries. Wide range of secular employments before being called by the Lord into full time independent ministry in 1987. With his wife Iris he has ministered both in the UK and USA. Has written many articles and several books on healing, meditation, empowerment, salvation and various aspects of spirituality. Formal qualifications include: B.A., M.Phil., Cambridge University Certificate in Religious Studies, Post Grad Cert in Education.