The Kingdom of God, Mentor Guide, MG02

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T H E K I N G D O M O F G O D

Jesus Christ. As the creator and sovereign God of the universe, now in Jesus of Nazareth he is reasserting openly his rule over all nations (cf. Deut. 7.6). The divine warfare of God in the Old Testament was demonstrated through the Holy war that he initiated through his people against his enemies. As such, spiritual warfare and the “violence” associated with it is definitely a work through which the Divine Warrior executes his will and enforces his high purposes in the universe. Of course, in the current age this is a kind of violence against the principalities and powers which defy his will and animate the affairs of those who do not know him (e.g., Eph. 2.2; Col. 3.5). Nevertheless, the story of the Kingdom is the story of God doing violence against those forces and powers which defy his good will and legitimate right to rule as Lord and King over all. As mentioned before, the heart of this lesson is the formative role that God has given to the Church in giving witness to and evidence of his rule in the earth. The contacts below seek to define precisely the relationship between the Church and commitment to Jesus in the students’ minds. It is quite common in our day for people to claim a deep intimacy with Jesus while, at the same time, holding the Church as a kind of appendage of little importance. As a matter of fact, many who profess an intimate walk with Christ attribute that walk to the distance they have to the Church. The Church is viewed, if not as an enemy, at the very least as the key impediment to the growth and depth of Christian discipleship. Ironically, many para-church and other Christian organizations give the sense that they are the nexus of the Kingdom, and that the local church is destined to play second fiddle in the band of God. This lesson is calling this kind of thinking into question. Even more strongly, it is calling such thinking false, and perhaps, depending on its level of mistaken understanding, even heretical. The aim here is to have the students reflect together on the relationship, in their own personal and corporate frameworks, between their allegiance to the Church as they profess intimacy with and commitment to Christ. The lesson will argue that you cannot have the one without the other. To urbanize the thought of a fine churchman of the fourth century, the Latin Father Cyprian, “If the Church ain’t yo mama, then God ain’t yo daddy!”

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