The overarching focus of the first four books of the New Testament, what are referred to as the Gospels, is the person and work of God the Son, Jesus Christ, who came into this world as the promised Messiah, the one who will save repentant men and women from the eternal consequences of their sin, of their opposition to God’s purposes for and rule over their lives (1 Timothy 1:15).
However, He is also the promised King (Daniel 7:13-14), who in His first coming came to call these same men and women into His eternal kingdom, and who will one day return to this world to put down all opposition to God’s rule over His creation (Psalm 2:7-12), restore that creation to the beauty and perfection in which God created it, and establish a Kingdom of perfect justice and righteousness (2 Peter 3:13) , a glorious world which will never again be violated or visited by sin and death, a world that will endure forever under Christ’s gracious and just reign, where His subjects will know only fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).
The idea or concept of a king or a kingdom is unfamiliar, strange, even abhorrent to our modern society that sees democracy, the so called rule of the people, by the people and for the people as Abraham Lincoln described it, as the superior form of government, with a president, legislature and judiciary sharing power (in truth we are a constitutional republic). There are also in other nations parliamentary forms of government which have a president or prime minister as their leader and a body of legislators.
Kings and kingdoms are associated more with ancient history as well as Biblical history. In modern times we have a few smaller nations that have leaders that are referred to as kings. Great Britain, also known as the United Kingdom, is self-described as a constitutional monarchy, with a king or queen, who in reality have little ruling authority.
The term Kingdom (lit. the King’s Dominion) represents the realm or territory that is dominated, controlled, under the absolute authority of a single sovereign ruler, whose will and purposes are law.
A true king is a man in a position of absolute authority, a monarch or sovereign who sets the rules, conditions and laws by which his subjects will live in his kingdom, as well as the sanctions or penalties to be imposed on those who reject and rebel against the laws of the kingdom and the purposes of the king. A true king is accountable to no one and has the right to do as he pleases and act as he chooses. His will and purposes supersede all others. Nothing significant/important is to occur in his Kingdom without his knowledge or permission.
Now you may say this just sounds like a cruel dictator or despot such as we have in many of the non-democratic nations of the world today such as China or North Korea, and I would acknowledge that to a degree kings are dictators. However, unlike dictators who historically have seized power they had no right to, and governed out of a lust for that power and for their own personal prosperity, a true king was/is responsible for the peace, prosperity, safety and well-being of his subjects, while his subjects are responsible to obey the king – acknowledging his right to rule and trusting him for their ultimate good. It is certain that history, both that of the world and of Israel, is full of examples of kings who failed to live up to their kingly responsibilities, to the ruin of their subjects. And that is because they would not subject themselves to the King who gave them life (Acts 17:24-25) and their position of authority (Daniel 4:17), namely God.
Now the Bible reveals that God, the eternal God who spoke into existence the universe and all that is in it, graciously creating men and women in His image and likeness so that we could share in His glorious existence and enjoy His abundant goodness, is the true and only King. The extent of His dominion, as well as His divine nature and character are described for us most succinctly in Psalm 145.
And it is mankind’s rejection of God as King, our opposition to His sovereign rule over our lives (Psalm 2:1-3), that has brought this world into the disordered and dangerous conditions it is in today, and mankind under God’s just judgment and wrath (Romans 1:18). It is this opposition that Jesus, in the first sermon of His earthly ministry (Mark 1:14-15), calls us to repent of and to submit to Jesus’ kind and loving rule as our King (Psalm 5:2), so that we may not be treated as rebels, guilty of cosmic treason against the King of the universe, confined forever to Hell when we die, but be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven as His beloved children at our death (Matthew 19:14).
More on our great King and His wonderous Kingdom in my next post.
Grace and Peace ×