Announcing the Kingdom by Arthur F. Glasser Charles E. Van Engen Dean S. Gilliland & Shawn B. Redford

Author:Arthur F. Glasser, Charles E. Van Engen, Dean S. Gilliland & Shawn B. Redford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Baker Academic & Brazos Press
Published: 2003-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

12

Jesus’ Ministry Demonstrates

the Kingdom

Introduction

The ministry of Jesus is a vivid demonstration of the dynamic character of the Kingdom of God. In this chapter we will examine his ministry in detail, as it sets the parameters and possibilities of the post-Pentecost mission of the church among the nations. Jesus’ Kingdom ministry is to be continued and extended as the church moves out in mission to the nations. Throughout the long history of the Christian movement, however, the utilization of Christ’s ministry model has often been forgotten. The result has been a static church, concerned only with its own internal life and institutional maintenance. This inevitably happens when Christians lose sight of their calling to “seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:33) and let themselves become preoccupied with material things: food, shelter, clothing (6:19–34). To make Jesus’ model of Kingdom ministry the object of one’s reflection and action means focusing on God’s concern for God’s world and the physical, social, and spiritual needs of others. Only by pursuing a Kingdom ministry can one keep “churchly” activities in rightful subordination to the will of God. Whenever the church has seen itself as truly the body of Christ and has deliberately sought to exemplify all that this means, it has “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). The difference between these two perspectives is described by Howard A. Snyder.

The church gets in trouble whenever it thinks it is in the church business rather than the Kingdom business. In the church business, people are concerned with church activities, religious behavior and spiritual things. In the Kingdom business, people are concerned with Kingdom activities, all human behavior and everything God has made, visible and invisible. Kingdom people see human affairs as saturated with spiritual meaning and Kingdom significance. Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy and truth. Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world. . . . If the church has one great need, it is this: To be set free for the Kingdom of God, to be liberated from itself as it has become in order to be itself as God intends. The church must be freed to participate fully in the economy of God. (1983: 11)

There is something strikingly familiar about the church after Pentecost. The church’s loving, self-forgetful, outgoing concern for individuals displayed in the desire to proclaim the gospel is reminiscent of Jesus’ unique ministry. No previous era in the long unfolding of salvation history demonstrated a concept of ministry that even began to resemble this. As Walter C. Mavis observes, Jesus’ personal ministry provided a “unique model of service, motivated by a new impulse, that of serving others, which represented an emergent idea in the field of religious ministration” (1947: 357).

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