2.05. Kingdom Living
Chapter Five:
Kingdom Living The Sermon on the Mount By now, it should not be surprising that there are many views on the proper interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. If the kingdom is solely future in orientation, then the logical conclusion is that the Sermon is not intended for believers of any age other than the millennial period.110 Quite understandably, most dispensationalists recoil from such a view, holding instead that the “full, non-fudging, unadjusted fulfillment” is for the millennial age, but that the Sermon is “applicable and profitable” to believers in the church age.111 How this can be true without adopting a non-literal hermeneutic of the Sermon is unclear. The better view, it seems to me, is that the Sermon on the Mount describes the righteous character of a kingdom citizen—one who is living in the kingdom as it exists in its mystery phase here and now (cf. Matthew 5:20). France called the Sermon a “manifesto setting out the nature of life in the kingdom of heaven.”112 Lloyd-Jones calls it “a perfect picture of the life of the kingdom of God.”113 In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus went to great pains to emphasize the spiritual elements of the kingdom. As Carson has observed, the “unifying theme of the sermon is the kingdom of heaven.” For example, the theme of the kingdom envelopes the Beatitudes. The first Beatitude is “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3), while the last is “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). This suggests to Carson that the intervening Beatitudes are kingdom blessings as well.114 The theme of kingdom is also at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer (“Thy kingdom come”) (Matthew 6:9). Carson has stated that to pray this petition is “simultaneously to ask that God’s saving, royal rule be extended now as people bow in submission to him and already taste the eschatological blessing of salvation and to cry for the consummation of the kingdom.”115 The kingdom “is breaking in under Christ’s ministry, but it is not consummated till the end of the age.” We should therefore pray “for its extension as well as for its unqualified manifestation.”116 The theme of kingdom is similarly prominent in terms of a kingdom citizen’s perspective (“seek first His kingdom and His righteousness”) (Matthew 6:33). Carson puts it well: “To seek first the kingdom . . . is to desire above all to enter into, submit to, and participate in spreading the news of the saving reign of God, the messianic kingdom already inaugurated by Jesus, and to live so as to store up treasures in heaven in the prospect of the kingdom’s consummation.117
Finally, at the close of the Sermon on the Mount, the theme of kingdom is closely aligned with salvation (Matthew 7:13-14). Jesus alone decrees who will enter into the kingdom (Matthew 7:21-23). Hence, Carson notes that the Sermon on the Mount equates entering the kingdom with entering life.118 Jesus’s Later Teaching on Kingdom Living At the close of his earthly ministry, Jesus came back to the topic of kingdom living. In Matthew 18:1-4, Jesus instructed his chosen disciples on humility: “[U]nless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (See also Matthew 19:14). He taught that a kingdom citizen must continuously and repeatedly forgive others (Matthew 18:21-35).
Matthew 19:23-26 also points out the spiritual predominance of Jesus’s kingdom teachings. Jesus told his disciples that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples understood by this time that the kingdom involved more than a mere political reign. As Glasscock observed: “Their question, ‘Who then can be saved?’ revealed the connection in their mind between entering the kingdom of heaven (v. 23) with being saved (v. 25).”119