Jesus Cropped from the Picture

The Kingdom of God

In the absence of an overriding coherent center, Christians in a self-oriented environment are likely to craft their own version of coherence by making “my personal relationship” the circle that encompasses the questions and issues of life . The problem is “my personal relationship” is too small to make sense of all the great mysteries of existence (see Figure 8).

Figure 8: Coherence Through “My Personal Relationship”

However, the Kingdom of God ( God’s progressive expansion of God’s life-giving rule over creation, until all things are under his perfect ruling authority) is an idea large enough to provide reasonable coherence to all the elements of life. Therefore, the Kingdom of God is the key to understanding the whole of Scripture, and the lens through which all of life can be understood (see Figure 9).

Figure 9: Kingdom of God Coherence

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