CHAPTER 16
N. T. Wright
N. T. Wright, a former bishop of Durham in the Church of England, is senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford. For 30 years he taught New Testament studies at Cambridge, McGill, Oxford, and St Andrews Universities. He has written many books, including Simply Christian, Surprised by hope, The New Testament and the people of God, and Jesus and the Victory of God.
Sometimes, we hear the phrase “building the kingdom.” This phrase can sound like God’s kingdom can be built through human efforts. However, such an idea can be confusing. Two key concepts can help us gain a clearer understanding of the way God works with humans to bring His kingdom.
First, the most important truth to understand about God’s kingdom is that God builds God’s kingdom. However, He has so ordered the world that God’s own work takes place through human beings. Indeed, this idea is critical to the notion that humans are created in God’s image. His plan is to allow His loving presence to be seen in the world through human beings. He has invited us to participate as stewards of His creation. Through the work of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, God the Father equips humans as co-laborers in building His kingdom. However, God is the author, builder, and designer of His kingdom. Our participation in building for the kingdom is His desire and done at His invitation. To whatever extent we co-labor with Him, the work is done through His initiation, empowering, and enabling Spirit.
Second, it is important to understand that there is a difference between God’s final kingdom and our present-day anticipation of it. There is a final coming together of heaven and earth. At that time, God alone will sum up all things in Christ. Only God can make the new heavens and the new earth. It would be folly to think we could initiate or assist in that great work on our own. However, this does not mean that there is nothing we can do in the present. If we follow Jesus and are indwelt, energized, and directed by the Spirit, we can build for the kingdom.
Our Present Labors Are Not in Vain
A verse that can help us understand this dynamic is 1 Corinthians 15:58:
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (ESV)
This verse comes at the end of Paul’s long exposition of the resurrection. Often, Christians are lured into thinking that because God has promised us something great and good in the future, then the present is not very important. After all, God is going to give us a glorious future. So let’s not worry too much about the here and now. Paul totally disagrees with such thinking. He says that what you do in the present matters because of the new creation in which your body will be renewed. Paul says that we are already living some of our future life. This is a mystery because we still sin, get sick, and die. The point is this: God’s new kingdom has broken into our present time and circumstances. Therefore, our work for God’s kingdom will last into God’s future. Exactly how this happens is a mystery, just as indeed Paul declares the resurrection of the body to be a mystery (1 Cor 15:51). Paul means that what you do in the present, in building for God’s kingdom, will last into God’s future. Our activities are not simply ways of making the present life a bit more bearable until the day when we leave it all behind and go to heaven. Indeed, the New Testament isn’t particularly interested in “going to heaven.” From Jesus onwards, the emphasis is on God becoming king on earth as in heaven. The different activities carried out by God’s people, directed and energized by God’s Spirit, are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom. You are accomplishing something that will become in due course a part of God’s new world. What you do in the Lord is “not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58).
The most important truth to understand about God’s kingdom is that God builds God’s kingdom.
Two Extremes
We can be easily moved in two directions. First, we can conclude that our main Christian task is to build the kingdom on earth through social, political, and cultural activism. Such an approach has traditionally been called the social gospel, and it has failed to bring about the kingdom of God over the past many years in which it has been tried. The world is still broken, lacking justice, and conflict ridden in both private and public spheres.
Some who have moved to this first extreme used the term “kingdom of God” to authenticate their own programs of moral, social, or political improvement. Many who go this route treat the Gospels as if they were nothing more than stories about Jesus helping people as best He could, with the unfortunate result of His untimely death.
Having rejected the one extreme, however, it would be wise to avoid the other extreme of doing nothing while waiting for the Lord to return to put everything right. Such a view says that we need to get on with the real business of the gospel, which is getting people saved for the future world.
If we pray, as He taught us, for God’s kingdom to come on earth as in heaven, there is no way we can rest content with major injustice in the world. However, we must recognize that the final putting to rights of everything does indeed wait for the second coming of Christ. Imagining that we can build the kingdom by our own efforts exposes the arrogance of triumphalism. This is why we need to act responsibly in this present day while also working in the hope that there will be a great divine act of new creation at the end of the age.
When we bring together what should never have been separated—the kingdom-inaugurating public work of Jesus and His redemptive death and resurrection—we find that the Gospels tell a wonderful story. That story is neither some exciting social work done by a leader who came to an unhappy conclusion nor is it a story of an atoning death with a long introduction. The stories contained in the Gospels are much better than either of these lesser views. The Gospels tell the story of God’s kingdom being launched on earth as in heaven. His kingdom brings a new state of affairs in which the power of evil has been defeated, the new creation has been launched, and Jesus’s followers have been commissioned to work together with God.
If we pray, as He taught us, for God’s kingdom to come on earth as in heaven, there is no way we can rest content with major injustice in the world.
Engaging in this work demands that people be rescued from the evil powers that have enslaved the world. Therefore, atonement, redemption, and salvation are necessary and critical components and must happen for people to be set free. Those who are set free can become rescuers of others.
Those who become part of His kingdom purpose must follow in the way of the cross. By joining with Jesus in His saving death and resurrection, they work fruitfully for His kingdom. 