Where exactly do we get the idea that we should be building God’s kingdom? We may witness to it, testify to it, plant signs of it or work or build for (the word for introduces a big difference, as Tom Wright points out) it, etc. But it’s God’s kingdom, and consequently God is the one who is “building” it. As in “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” (It’s a spiritual tonic to say those lines of the prayer with the emphasis just so). The best explanation for this mistaken Christian speech that I can come up with is that we’ve heard it said so often that we unthinkingly repeat it. [...]Reid goes on to note that acts of Christian service should be understood as "signs and anticipations" of God's Kingdom--important actions, but they do not themselves constitute the Kingdom, which is God's alone to bring about.If the kingdom is the dynamic reign of God, how can we as humans “build” it? Actually, it should come as a relief to realize that you and I aren’t in the business of building God’s kingdom. Almost, well, like good news!
My first reaction was that Reid was being nitpicky, but if you think about it, it's a pretty important distinction: is it our job to bring about God's Kingdom? Does that distinction change the way we go about doing acts of Christian service (and does it change the type of service we should focus on)?
(Besides, his post--like any blog post worth reading--uses the word "pelagianism." Here's Wikipedia's definition for those of us who are a bit rusty on our church history.)
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Comments (17)
The essence of discipleship is not a warm glowing feeling of comfort and protection offered by Our Lord but rather an innate feeling of discomfiture. We are challenged by Christ, both in our private lives and as a member of a wider community of faith. Christ stands before us and questions us and our response to those challenges is how the Kingdom of God grows, is constructed or evolves. As a child I was given a delightful book entitled, 'Builders and Destroyers'. In truth there was not much focus on destruction; rather it was a history of the early years of the church and how people such as Paul, Patrick, Augustine, Boniface and Martin answered Christs challenges in their lives. These were great men who by their faith-led activity built, brick by brick, the lower courses of the wall of this Christ ordained project. We, inheritors of this legacy, continue this work. Our attempts, compared to the above, may well be frankly pathetic, but we surely are co-builders with Christ. We follow His plans and His measurements; we deviate from them at our peril, but with each generation this work continues. To say that we are not builders denigrates the work, sacrifices and contributions, not only of these saints but of ourselves since any response to Christs challenges in our lives becomes worthless. Don't serve on a soup kitchen, don't help in shelters and for goodness sake don't think to take aid to disaster areas for, by the above formula, you are simply not qualified!
Man is perfect, God does not punish evil, Christs death is not for our salvation, Jesus is not God, and I guess, you dont have a yearly subscription to 'Christian Orthodoxy'.
Note: I'm relatively new and had never seen this post before.
As you can see, some of these comments are six months old, while the post itself is years old. So while the discussion is very much open, people may not be as apt to keep up with it, especially if e-mail addresses have changed and notifications of new comments are not being received. All that said, if you have a response to give to Guest, please share. You never know when someone might read it, and who that might be.
Thanks,
Josh Larsen
TC editor