Mark 1:14-15

THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM

‘Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.’

Mark 1:14

The belief in the coming of some anointed one, to be at once king and prophet, was universal even in the darkest days of Jewish history, however unworthy may have been the conception of his mission and office. And now at a time of deep depression, and in a generation which was destined to see the destruction of Jerusalem, the sacred capital of the nation and the centre of all its religions associations, Jesus begins in the distant provincial towns of Galilee to declare openly that the foreordained season has arrived, and that the Kingdom of God has actually come nigh.

I. Is the ideal fulfilled?—But can we now, after the lapse of nineteen centuries from the first Advent of Jesus Christ, say that the grand ideal which the scriptures of the New Testament set before us has been realised? What is the visible manifestation of the triumph of the Kingdom? Where is its unity, its universality, its sanctity? Alas! we must confess that there is a wide divergence between the actual and the ideal. Spiritual kingdoms, which own a far different king than Christ, still sway whole peoples and languages. The Kingdom, so far as it is manifested in the Church, is divided against itself. Eastern, Roman, Anglican Christianity, and vast organisations of religious communities external to all these, divide Christendom. The sole kingship of Christ in His Church has not been duly recognised; in days of degeneracy the Church has forgotten that she is not of this world, though her mission is in the world, that the weapons of her warfare are not carnal, and has failed to act upon the precepts of her Founder; her rulers have too frequently sought for themselves worldly influence or wealth, instead of pursuing disinterestedly the moral and spiritual improvement of those committed to their charge. The immorality of the unregenerate world has found its way into what purports to be the kingdom of righteousness. If we are terribly disappointed at the sad contrast between what is and what might have been, we may find some consolation in the reflection that Jesus Himself never gave men reason to expect the speedy and unopposed triumph of His Kingdom. Nay, He even condemned as premature the attempt to separate utterly the evil and the good. Men are apt to hurry on events; God’s purposes move slowly through the ages.

II. Unattached Christians.—It may, however, be wise for us to reflect that if it was the declared purpose of Jesus Christ to establish a kingdom, of which His Church was to be in the world the chief organ of manifestation, it ought not to be a matter of indifference to any whether they associate themselves in fellowship with that Church, and endeavour to promote its high and noble ends. It is a spurious liberality, professing to be wiser than Christ Himself, which holds itself aloof from communion with the great spiritual society, and leads men with some affectation of personal superiority to boast of being Christians unattached. If such a profession of Christianity claims to be in accordance with precedents of the New Testament, we repudiate that claim as unsustained by facts. Christ taught a doctrine which we believe on His authority, but He also founded a kingdom which, though in its full completion it is yet invisible, He led us to believe would be visible in a society of men, who were to form the body of which He would ever remain the Head. Is it not melancholy that, in our own time and country, multitudes of those who profess and call themselves Christians separate themselves so far from their fellow-Christians that they never join with them in such high acts of devotion as Holy Communion; that intelligent and educated men and women will allow attendance at some highly ornate musical service on a Sunday afternoon to be almost their sole outward profession of Christianity; that they will adopt language which implies that they are patrons and friends from without of the Church, rather than members of that great society by whose laws they ought to govern their conduct, and whose mission in the world ought to be shared by themselves?

III. The Kingdom in political and social life.—If the Kingdom of God is to vindicate its claim to universality and ultimate triumph, it must aim more earnestly than as yet it has ever done at the permeation of all political and social life with Christian principles of action. We all admit that in the conduct of individual life nothing is more fatal to the true realisation of religion than the divorce between religion and morality: but it is no less disastrous to banish religion from the social life of politics and commerce. The eternal principles of righteousness and unselfishness, which are the distinguishing marks of the Kingdom of God, must govern the relations of nation towards nation, and of governing powers towards all the various classes in each separate political community. The Church, if it is to be the true representative of the Kingdom, must bear witness against tyranny and oppression, and an aggressive policy of natural aggrandisement. In commercial life the Church must not, through cowardice or through adulation of wealth and power, forbear to proclaim that the law of Christ demands that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us. Inculcating love, sympathy, goodness, gentleness, she must endeavour to evoke a true sense of brotherhood in Christ. The Kingdom of God will never reign widely if it should appear that the Church is always on the side of the rich and the strong and the noble. Is it too much to hope that it may be reserved for the Church of Christ, working from within, to solve the social problem?

Rev. Professor Ince.

Illustration

‘ “As a king,” wrote Bishop Westcott, “Christ received His earliest homage in the manger at Bethlehem. As a king He died ‘reigning from the cross.’ The message which His herald was commissioned to proclaim, the message with which He Himself opened His ministry, was the advent of the Kingdom. After His resurrection He spoke with His disciples the things pertaining the Kingdom of God. And they in turn carried the glad tidings wherever they went beyond the borders of Judæa. It was of a kingdom St. Philip spoke at Samaria: of a kingdom St. Paul spoke at Antioch, Thessalonica, Ephesus. And the last historic glimpse which we have of the apostolic working, shows us the same “prisoner of the Lord” preaching the Kingdom of God in his captivity at Rome. In every part of the New Testament, in every region of early Christian labour, the teaching is the same. The object of redemption is set before us not simply as the deliverance of individual souls, but as the establishment of a Divine society: the saving not only of man, but of the world: the hallowing of life, and not, characteristically, the preparation for leaving it.” ’