Kingdom of Heaven Stuff
“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” - Mark 1:15
In a way, these were Jesus’ first recorded words in all of Scripture. The Gospel of Mark, widely accepted to be the oldest Gospel—and often believed to have been a source material for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke—jumps into the ministry of Jesus fairly quickly. After fourteen short verses introducing John the Baptist, describing the baptism of Jesus, and His temptation in the desert, “The time has come,” the Christ’s first written words in the history of the cosmos proclaim, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Some renditions interchange “believe the good news” with “believe in the gospel.” That’s all "gospel" means, by the way—the good news. When we read about the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of John, that should simply translate as the Good News of Matthew and the Good News of John. Growing up, I used to watch an old-west Christian cowboy show for children called Gospel Bill (you read that correctly). I might as well have told my mom to “Turn on Good News Bill!”
So, what does Christ mean when He teaches us to repent and believe in the gospel? What were His disciples preaching when they were sent out to spread the gospel? They wouldn’t have had the Bible quite yet—not for a few hundred years, anyway. They were at least fifty years away from Paul inking his first epistle to the Christian community in Thessalonica. So, what was this good news Jesus kicked off His entire earthly ministry proclaiming?
Well, He says it: “The kingdom of God has come near.” That’s the good news... Indeed, that’s the great news... In fact, over the course of all four Gospels, Jesus is recorded around eighty or ninety times preaching, “The kingdom of God has come near,” or “The kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” or “The kingdom of Heaven is here.” Luke even records my personal favorite: “The kingdom of God is in the midst of you (or 'within you')."
That, my friends, is the good news. That, my friends, is the gospel: The Kingdom of God is here.
I find this beautiful because we tend to dissociate this good news with a later time. We tend to press pause on the joy that awaits us one day when we pass through those cloud-perched, pearly gates burned into our psyche in Sunday School class. We tend to think the bliss and wholeness that comes from a genuine relationship with the Divine is waiting just on the other side—that the light switch of despair and sorrow will be instantly flipped over to joy and rapture. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Yes, Jesus told the criminal on the cross that he would be with Him that day in paradise, some alluring destination on the other side of eternity. Yes, Jesus teaches about a day when He’ll establish His earthly kingdom. This is indeed how John wraps up the entirety of canonized Scripture. But what is the good news? What is the gospel?
The gospel is that the Kingdom of God is here and now.
We don’t have to wait. We don’t have to twiddle our thumbs and await the completeness and harmony for which our souls thirst every moment of their existence. We can journey after it now. We don’t have to participate in this world of negativity. We don’t have to join in its misery and warfare. We don’t have to participate in a cut-throat world of earn and spend, where the non-eternal is worth our stress and rage, where a random set of digital numbers informs us of our value. We’re released from it all, if we so desire.
We have access to a kingdom where the weak are strong, where the poor are rich, and where the meek inherit the earth. When someone slaps us in the face, we’re free from the burden of retaliation. We’re free to turn to them our other cheek and remind them they have one more side to go. We’re free to lay down our swords—not later, but this very day. This is certainly good news because, man, do our swords ever grow heavy after a while. Let us follow the commands of the Teacher and at last drop them. Let us go outside and breathe in the Kingdom of God, which the Prince of Peace constantly reminds us is both around us and within us. That was literally His first recorded message to us all—it’s all good news out there!
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “People do not seem to realize that their opinion of this world is also a confession of their character.”
I pray we all strive for a Christ-like character, one which observes and accepts the beauty of the Kingdom of God we’re gifted with every waking moment. Don’t believe the lies. It’s much more beautiful out there than we’re led to believe. There’s much more kindness than hatred. Much more giving than greed. Much more hope than despair. The Kingdom of Heaven stuff is all around us, and I pray we all take time to see it and access it, whatever that looks like for the individual reader.
While I doubt our journeys of chasing the Divine will find their fulfillment on this side of eternity (though I’m prepared to be wrong), we can go further and further into the mountains of God today, as C.S. Lewis would say. Of course, there’s wonder and adventure on the other side, but there’s an awful lot of wonder and adventure on this side too. The Kingdom of God is here. The Kingdom of God is within. Let our hearts be warmed. Let our faces grow bright. Let us posture our hearts toward joy and contentment, peace and beauty. Indeed, the Kingdom of God is made of such things, and indeed, the Kingdom of God has come near.