The Kingdom of God – Repentance

In the Bible, the English word “repent” is the translation of a Greek word “metanoia” which basically mean “change your mind” or “think differently.”

If you have a strong opinion on something, but later you get new information and you change your mind…that is repentance. That is what the word means. To change your mind so that you think differently than you did before.

In my previous post, I shared something that originally upset my theology, and then eventually caused me to repent. It was something Jesus said that I had never really noticed. He said that his purpose for coming to earth was to preach the kingdom of God (Luke 4:43). That came as a surprise to me when I realized the ramifications of that statement.

You see, for my entire life up that point, I never realized that his main purpose on earth was to preach the kingdom of God. I had always thought that the main reason he came to earth was to die for our sins.

I think I always assumed that his main mission was the cross was because that was what was presented more than any other topic whenever I went to church. His death on the cross was the subject of most of the sermons I heard. It was the theme of most of the hymns and songs. It was the thing we were taught to speak about whenever we had an opportunity to share our faith.

And just to be totally clear…Jesus did die for our sins, and then he rose from the dead. Salvation comes by grace through faith in him as our savior. He is King of kings, and Lord of lords, the lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. Without his death, burial, and resurrection, we would be without hope. Every single human needs to be made aware of this truth.

All that being said, it came as a big surprise to me when I found out after so many years that Jesus’s main purpose on earth was not to die, but to preach the kingdom. That was a a big shock. It was also a call to change my mind…a call to repentance.

Paradigm Shift – A New Filter

Every now and then, I come across huge, life-changing truth. It causes me to study the scriptures and reevaluate all of my assumptions about God, mankind, and reality. This was and is one of those truths for me.

When I began really studying the kingdom of God, I started to see that kingdom all over the four Gospels. When you read the different things Jesus is teaching and sharing, it becomes very obvious that the kingdom of God is his central message. He talks about it more than anything else. Of everything he ever talked about, it seems like that was the one thing he wanted people to know.

That means that if you do not understand the kingdom of God, then you are very likely to misinterpret a lot of what Jesus was talking about.

Here is an example of that. When I used to believe that Jesus’s main purpose on earth was to die for our sins, I interpreted everything I read through that filter. That filter caused me to approach every parable as if it were a story about salvation with all kinds of symbolism relating to that topic. But Jesus was not always talking about getting saved. In fact, as hard as this is to believe, salvation through faith was not the thing he spoke about the most. He was usually talking the kingdom of God…what it looks like, how it functions, how it grows, and so on.

As I continued my study, I began to realize that the kingdom of God is not what I thought it was. Like many people, I thought that the kingdom of God was a place that Christians go when they die.

I continued to dig into the parables about the kingdom with a fresh perspective, and I found out that I was mistaken about that. Jesus was not teaching what I thought he was teaching.

Consider this statement Jesus made that I am sure you are very familiar with. It is part of what many people call “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:10

Jesus instructed his followers to pray that the kingdom would come on the earth. What kingdom? The kingdom of God. Where does Jesus want that kingdom to exist? On the earth.

I always thought our prayer and our goal and our main focus was to get people to go to heaven when they die, and everything else was secondary.

While it is true that God wants everyone to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9), Jesus wants us to pray for the kingdom of God to come to earth. He wants the kingdom of God here where we live now. That was a priority for him.

I had to come to grips with the fact that even though I had been a Christian for decades, I had no idea what the kingdom of even God was. And this process is a part of repentance…dealing with the ramifications of a previous belief that was not entirely based on truth.

Questions started popping up that I was embarrassed to admit I did not know the answer to.

• What is the Kingdom of God?
• Where is it located?
• Is it coming in the future? Is it here now? Or something else?
• What does it mean to be a citizen of this kingdom?
• Is that the same thing as getting saved?
• What, if anything, am I supposed to do about all this?

If Jesus was teaching and preaching the kingdom of God as his main topic, and I had been studying my Bible and going to church all these years, why didn’t I know the answer to any of these questions? How in the world had I missed something so important?

In my next few posts, I will be sharing what I learned as I studied and looked for answers to these questions. I can tell you that the kingdom of God is much greater than I ever imagined, and this understanding has changed my outlook on the future, my understanding of God’s character, and the lens through which I look at the world around me.