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The following is an excerpt from the book A Theology of Peace by Matthew Elton, copyright 2009 Matthew Elton.

Continued from: A Theology of Peace: Introduction

The Kingdom of God

Moses once wrote in Exodus 21:23-25, “the punishment must match the injury: a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise.” This teaching was the cornerstone of the Jewish conception of justice. The Jews followed this teaching diligently, repaying evil with the exact same quantity of evil. For thousands of years, revenge served as justice, but when the Messiah came, he called people to a higher standard. His first recorded teaching – the Sermon on the Mount – was so radical that it sparked not just a revolutionary change in Judaism, but a movement that would eventually become known as a whole new religion. Those who rejected Jesus viewed him as a madman, or as a teacher of strange ideas that conflicted with the traditional laws of Moses. Those who followed Jesus viewed him as the Messiah prophesied to rule the world and establish perfect peace and justice on Earth. Yet if Jesus is this Messiah, how then could he teach his disciples to repay evil with good? What kind of justice is this?

The key to answering this question is to understand the Jewish concept of the Kingdom of God – the central message of Christ’s ministry. Beginning all the way in the third chapter of Genesis – when evil entered the world through the sins of Adam and Eve – God promised that a descendant of Eve would one day crush the devil and therefore vanquish all evil from the world and restore the Earth to paradise. The many Old Testament prophecies regarding the Messiah are too numerous for this book to examine them in detail, but as history progressed God made promises to His chosen people that from them a king would be born who would rule the world forever. His kingdom would have no end, and under his rule the Earth would at last experience peace.

Through the prophet Nathan, God revealed to King David that one of his descendants would be this Chosen One of Israel who would establish God’s Kingdom on Earth:

“‘For when you die and join your ancestors, I will raise up one of your descendants, one of your sons, and I will make his kingdom strong.  He is the one who will build a house—a temple—for me. And I will secure his throne forever.  I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my favor from him as I took it from the one who ruled before you.  I will confirm him as king over my house and my kingdom for all time, and his throne will be secure forever.’”

--1 Chronicles 17:11-14

King David himself was a sort of “prototype” for this coming Messiah, for under King David’s rule Israel enjoyed a golden age of peace and prosperity that had never been experienced before or since. Yet King David’s rule was only a mere shadow of the glory and the peace that the Kingdom of God will have when it is established on Earth by God’s chosen Messiah:

In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all—the most important place on earth.  It will be raised above the other hills,
and people from all over the world will stream there to worship.  People from many nations will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob’s God.  There he will teach us his ways,  and we will walk in his paths.”  For the Lord’s teaching will go out from Zion;
his word will go out from Jerusalem.  The Lord will mediate between nations
and will settle international disputes.  They will hammer their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore.

--Isaiah 2:2-4

This concept of a future time when the whole Earth would be at peace was the hope which the Jews lived for. But after the death of King David, things started to go downhill for Israel. All of the other Israelite kings were wicked – worshipping idols and oppressing the weak. By the time King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon conquered Israel and enslaved the Israelites in Babylon, the Davidic golden age of Israel was almost forgotten.

It was during this time that God sent prophets including Ezekiel and Jeremiah to remind His people not to lose sight of their hope. King David was not the Messiah, nor was his rule the Kingdom of God. The peace and prosperity which Israel experienced under King David was a mere taste of the true Kingdom of God that was yet to be established by one of King David’s descendants – the Messiah still yet to be born.

Daniel – one of the exilic prophets – was brought before King Nebuchadnezzar to interpret a dream the king had had. Daniel told of a succession of ages during which the nations of the Earth would struggle against each other for power, but ultimately they would all come into submission to God’s Kingdom – a Kingdom that will rule the whole world forever.

“During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness, and it will stand forever.”

--Daniel 2:44

This was not the only time that Daniel prophesied regarding the coming Kingdom of God. He later foretold the coming of the Messiah who will rule the Kingdom of God forever:

As my vision continued that night, I saw someone like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient One and was led into his presence.  He was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him. His rule is eternal—it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed.

--Daniel 7:13-14

God eventually brought His people out of exile in Babylon. They returned to Palestine where they reestablished the kingdom of Israel. But in the centuries that followed, various kingdoms of the Earth fought for control of Palestine. Eventually it became the Roman province of Judea. When Jesus was born, the Roman Empire had already been controlling Judea for about sixty years. The Romans hated the Jews, and the Jews hated the Romans. The Romans enslaved many of the Jews, forcing them to carry military supplies for them. In Sepphoris (just two miles from the town of Nazareth where Jesus grew up) the Romans murdered thousands of Jews in one of the worst genocides in Roman history.

The Jews looked forward to the coming of the Messiah who would liberate them from Roman rule, crush the Roman Empire, and establish his everlasting rule over the entire world. But many Jews had given up hope that God would save them from Roman persecution. A growing new sect of Jews called zealots even took to fighting the Romans themselves, tired of waiting for the Messiah to come and liberate Israel from foreign occupation.

Then a new hope dawned when the angel Gabriel spoke these words to a virgin named Mary: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus.  He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David.  And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”

--Luke 1:31-33

These words declared that the son born to the virgin Mary would be the Chosen One of God who would be the Eternal King of God’s Kingdom, fulfilling millennium-old prophecies regarding the coming of the Messiah.

Jesus – a Jew – grew up in a cruel world of persecution under the Romans, yet his mother Mary and her fiancé Joseph believed the angel Gabriel’s words to mean that Jesus would somehow be the one would conquer the Roman Empire and liberate Israel, establishing Israel as God’s Kingdom forever. For thirty years, nothing happened. Then Jesus began his earthly ministry by going to John the Baptist for baptism. John was a well-known religious leader, but he predicted the coming of one greater than he was. This one who was to come would be the Messiah, God’s Anointed:

John answered their questions by saying, “I baptize you with water; but someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to be his slave and untie the straps of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.” 

--Luke 3:16-17

The coming Messiah would judge the world – dividing the righteous and the unrighteous in the way a farmer divides the wheat from the chaff. John strongly believed that when the Messiah came, he would judge the entire world and bring down the evil power of the Roman Empire. The Messiah would forcefully bring all nations to their knees – bringing them under submission to the authority of the Kingdom of God, and destroying all evil powers forever.

Jesus agreed. Otherwise, he would not have accepted John’s baptism. Jesus did not change John’s message about the coming Kingdom of God. In fact, the Matthew uses the exact same phrase to summarize the messages of John and Jesus:

In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”

--Matthew 3:2

From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”

--Matthew 4:17

Jesus Christ is the Messiah whose coming was prepared for by all of the great prophets including John the Baptist. This Messiah is destined to bring eternal peace to the whole world when he rules righteously over the Kingdom of God on Earth as king of kings and Lord of lords. Yet Jesus knew from the prophecies of the Old Testament that he would first have to be crucified as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind. By the shedding of his blood, he would take the punishment that the rest of mankind deserved upon himself, so that the rest of mankind would be saved from that punishment.

Jesus willingly chose to die for our sins. Although he had thousands of angels at his command who could have taken him down from the cross at any time if he only gave them the order, he chose instead to suffer in our place, so that the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled.

Since Jesus knew ahead of time that he would have to be crucified before being glorified as king of kings and lord of lords, it must have been a great temptation to Jesus when the devil offered him dominion over the whole Earth for free, with no suffering required. The only catch was that Jesus would have to bow down to the devil.

“I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them,” the devil said, “because they are mine to give to anyone I please.  I will give it all to you if you will worship me.”

--Luke 4:6-7

These words of Satan are eerily similar to the prophecy of Daniel regarding a vision in which of the future in which:

He [the Messiah] was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him. His rule is eternal—it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed.

--Daniel 7:14

Jesus knew that, as the chosen Messiah of God, his destiny was to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth. As the current ruler of the world, the devil offered Jesus a way to establish his rule as king of kings without having to fulfill the prophecies of his crucifixion. Jesus did not challenge the fact that the devil is the current ruler of this world and that he has the power to hand his rule over to someone else if he so chooses. John 12:31 calls the devil “the ruler of this world.” 2 Corinthians 4:4 calls him “the god of his world.” 1 John 5:19 warns us that “the world around us is under the control of the evil one.” Revelation 12:9 tells us that the devil is “deceiving the whole world.” Clearly the devil – pulling the strings of the governments of this world – is behind the chaos we see in international politics today.

Although the devil offered Christ a way to become the king of kings faster and without crucifixion, Jesus resisted the devil, refusing to disobey his Father and sin against God by worshipping Satan. Quoting the Old Testament, Jesus responded by saying, “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” Trusting that God’s Plan would eventually bring the Kingdom of God to fulfillment on Earth, Jesus resisted the devil’s offer of dominion over the world.

Because of this, the world has suffered through roughly two thousand years of war since Jesus spoke those words to the devil – “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” Although the last two thousand years of history would have been much, much better for everyone if Jesus had been ruling the world as king of kings, Jesus refused to adhere to an “ends justify the means” moral philosophy. Rather, he trusted in God’s timing for the fulfillment of divine prophecy.

In the wilderness, Jesus was tempted by the devil three times. Three times he resisted. Finally he emerged from the wilderness and traveled to Nazareth, where he taught one of his first recorded sermons. Entering the temple, he opened the scroll of Isaiah to this verse:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

--Luke 4:18-19

Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, and proclaimed, “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” This Scripture from the scroll of Isaiah served as the backbone of Christ’s message. Jesus had read the first two verses of Isaiah 61. The previous chapter of Isaiah tells of the coming Kingdom of God – of the righteous inheriting the Earth and of the world experiencing eternal peace and a permanent end to war. Jesus was anointed by not just to heal the blind and set captives free, but to bring the Good News of the coming restoration of the world! Jesus did not come into the world to work miracles, but to herald the coming Kingdom of God. The many miracles he performed only serve to prove to the world that he was the Messiah destined to make the Kingdom of God a reality on Earth. Jesus taught the same Kingdom message that John the Baptist taught. When the disciples of John the Baptist wondered if Jesus was perhaps the Messiah whom John had foretold, Jesus affirmed that he was, using the miracles he worked as evidence:

The disciples of John the Baptist told John about everything Jesus was doing. So John called for two of his disciples, and he sent them to the Lord to ask him, “Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?”  John’s two disciples found Jesus and said to him, “John the Baptist sent us to ask, ‘Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?’”  At that very time, Jesus cured many people of their diseases, illnesses, and evil spirits, and he restored sight to many who were blind.  Then he told John’s disciples, “Go back to John and tell him what you have seen and heard—the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.  And tell him, ‘God blesses those who do not turn away because of me.”

--Luke 7:18-23

Christ’s response not only echoes Isaiah 61 (the text he read aloud at the temple) but also another important prophecy about the Kingdom of God, from the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah:

Say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies.  He is coming to save you.”  And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind
and unplug the ears of the deaf.  The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will sing for joy!  Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the wasteland.

--Isaiah 25:4-6

This was the hope that the Jews had looked forward to in eager expectation for thousands of years. They longed for the coming of the Messiah who would judge the world in God’s perfect, holy righteousness, and establish world peace in an everlasting, perfect Kingdom of God. The prophecies foretold that the coming of the Messiah would mark the beginning of an eternal Messianic Age in which the blind, deaf, and lame would be healed, the world would be restored to paradise, and war would never again be waged. When asked by the disciples of John the Baptist if he was the Messiah, he told them to simply look at the miraculous works he was performing. The blind were being healed, the deaf were hearing, and the lame were walking. These were more than just miracles. These were signs that “the year of the LORD’s favor” had come, and the Kingdom of God was at hand. Evil would soon be defeated forever.

When Jesus cast a demon out of a demon possessed man during a sermon in Capernaum, this too served as a Kingdom-heralding event. The demon understood that Jesus was the Messiah, and that the prophecies speak of the Messiah establishing the Kingdom of God on Earth and utterly destroying the devil forever. Knowing that the ushering in of the Messianic Age would mean the destruction of all the evil in the universe, the demon cried out to Jesus, saying:

“Go away! Why are you interfering with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One sent from God!”

--Luke 4:34

Later, Jesus cast demons out of many demon possessed individuals:

Many were possessed by demons; and the demons came out at his command, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But because they knew he was the Messiah, he rebuked them and refused to let them speak.

--Luke 4:41

Although today we think of the Messiah as the one who died on the cross to take the punishment we deserved for our sins upon himself, first century Jews were expecting a Messiah who would rule the entire world as the King of kings, bringing about the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God by executing God’s judgment on the nations of the world, and establishing everlasting world peace. Although Jesus told his disciples that he was going to die, the Bible tells us that they did not understand. They were expecting Jesus the Messiah to begin his rule as King as soon as he reaches Jerusalem, which is why Jesus was greeted by cheering crowds as he entered the city, and why Peter asked, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” As the Messiah, Jesus was expected to liberate Israel from oppressive Roman rule and make Israel into a kingdom that all other kingdoms would serve. The demons knew that Jesus was the Messiah, and they viewed Christ’s exorcism as a sign of the Kingdom that was coming.

The casting out of demons indicated that Jesus truly was the Messiah who was destined to be the King of kings. Jesus amazed crowds of people when he healed a mute and blind man who was possessed by a demon. The miracle was so obvious that the Pharisees could not deny that it had occurred. However, they denied that the miracle proved that Jesus was the Messiah. “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of demons,” the said. Jesus defended himself against this false charge with these words:

And if Satan is casting out Satan, he is divided and fighting against himself. His own kingdom will not survive.  And if I am empowered by Satan, what about your own exorcists? They cast out demons, too, so they will condemn you for what you have said.  But if I am casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has arrived among you.  For who is powerful enough to enter the house of a strong man like Satan and plunder his goods? Only someone even stronger—someone who could tie him up and then plunder his house.

--Matthew 12:26-29

For Jesus, power over demons was a sign of the Kingdom of God. Jesus had overpowered “the strong man” (Satan) and was now going to “plunder” him by setting free those who were being held captive by demon spirits. According to Jesus, this exorcism was a sign that “the Kingdom of God has arrived among you.” Christ’s entire ministry centered around the Kingdom of God:

Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness.

--Matthew 4:23

Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness.

--Matthew 9:35

But he replied, “I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other towns, too, because that is why I was sent.”

--Luke 4:43

The Kingdom of God is also known as “The Kingdom of Heaven”.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I’ll say it again—it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!

--Matthew 19:23-24

Jesus often spoke about the Kingdom in parables:

Here is another story Jesus told: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field.

--Matthew 13:24

Here is another illustration Jesus used: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed planted in a field.

--Matthew 13:31

Jesus also used this illustration: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”

--Matthew 13:33

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.

--Matthew 13:44

Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls.

--Matthew 13:45

Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a fishing net that was thrown into the water and caught fish of every kind.

--Matthew 13:47

Then he added, “Every teacher of religious law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a homeowner who brings from his storeroom new gems of truth as well as old.”

--Matthew 13:52

For the Kingdom of Heaven is like the landowner who went out early one morning to hire workers for his vineyard.

--Matthew 20:1

In preparation for the establishment of the eternal Kingdom of God upon Earth, Jesus chose twelve Apostles – one to rule over each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus preached the Kingdom of God in incredible counter-cultural ways – reaching out to the poor, the blind, the oppressed, the lepers, the Samaritans, the prostitutes, and the tax collectors. While making it clear that the sinful must repent, Jesus also preached a new message of love and peace to all mankind – even the lowliest of sinners. His first recorded sermon is called the Sermon on the Mount.

Continued in: A Theology of Peace Part Three: The Sermon on the Mount