Thursday, January 31, 2013

“Kingdom”: perhaps the flabbiest term being used by Christians today (McKnight)

This is one of the best posts on kingdom theology I have ever read.  Below are some selected quotes intended to tempt you to read the whole thing (it’s brief so don’t worry).  From Scot McKnight, Steve Jobs’ Legacy: Kingdom Work?:

My beef today is that too many today have abstracted the ethical ideals from Jesus’ kingdom vision, all but cut Jesus out of the picture, and then called anything that is just, peace, good and loving the “kingdom.” The result is this equation: kingdom means goodness, goodness means kingdom. Regardless of who does it. My contention would be that kingdom goodness is done by kingdom people who live under King Jesus…

Yes, feeding the poor is good and it is God’s will for this world, whoever does it. But “kingdom” refers to that special society that does good under Jesus, that society that is buried in his death and raised in his resurrection and lives that Story out in our world today. It makes no sense to me to take this word of Jesus that he used to refer to what God was doing in and through him at that crucial new juncture in time and history and use it for something else…

Read the whole thing.

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