The Big Questions About Salvation and Faith預覽

What is the Kingdom of God?

I'm a dual citizen. I have both Australian citizenship and Spanish citizenship. (Triple if you count the Kingdom of God.)

In Spain, they have compulsory national military service when you turn 18. I grew up in Australia, and years ago, when I turned 18, I went to my local doctor here and got a medical certificate to exempt me from military service based on my one kidney and my dodgy left eye. That may make me a poor Spaniard. Regardless of that, I am more Aussie than anything else in most ways.

As followers of Jesus, we always have a kind of dual citizenship. We have our national citizenship here on earth, but our highest level of citizenship is in heaven, in the Kingdom of God.

Christians believe there is a spiritual realm to existence as real as the physical realm with which we interact through our physical senses. The Kingdom of God means the rule of God over all who accept his love. It's a place of acceptance, love, and deliverance from evil. So, where is this Kingdom of God?

The Kingdom of God is both a spiritual reality and a physical reality simultaneously. You can't see it or touch it with your physical senses, but in the future, we know it will be a physical reality here, too.

For now, however, we discern it spiritually. This means it's in you and all around you. You are literally in the Kingdom of God, wherever you are when you believe in Jesus Christ. That's the only way to enter the Kingdom of God: to accept and believe in Jesus. When you do that, your past is now clean, which the Bible calls being "born again," and you enter the Kingdom of God.

Just because God's Kingdom is spiritual doesn't mean it has nothing to do with this world and how we should live. Jesus calls us to live according to the values of his kingdom, which are very different from the values of this world. Jesus demonstrated them in his life: compassion, humility, and love.

The Gospel is the announcement that God's Kingdom is here, and anyone can enter it because of Jesus' victory at the cross. When you have entered it, you can say that you're a citizen of heaven, and that's the best thing in the world to be able to say!

– Eliezer Gonzalez