On this bright and sunny birthday morning I finished reading The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person. It was recommended to me by Jason Philbrick when I told him this summer that I'd been obsessed lately with the Kingdom of God.
Apparently the author, E. Stanley Jones, had someone tell him once that he seemed to be obsessed with the Kingdom of God. Jones writes that he then thought, “Would God that I were, for it would be a magnificent obsession. Jesus was obsessed with it, and to be obsessed with his obsession is to be on safe and universal ground. But I'm also obsessed with the person of Jesus, Jesus Christ.” This year I read through the Bible chronologically again and I drew a box around every time the Kingdom of God was mentioned and starred every time the Good News was mentioned, trying to grasp the full picture of it all. Reading Jones' book this past month has helped me to put some things together.
He emphasizes that the Kingdom of God and the parousia (the Second Coming) are not joined in Scripture. “The Kingdom was a vital and decisive issue now, while the Coming was delayed. This is seen from the fact that after the resurrection [Jesus] talked to the disciples about one thing for forty days. He talked to them of the Kingdom of God in the same terms as when he went about preaching the gospel of the Kingdom as a burning issue – now.”
The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person was one of his last books – he was 87 when he wrote it. Here's the last paragraph: an great way to start my 42nd year of life and the new year 2012:
So that would mean that if we are to think and act as though the Kingdom were already here, if we have said personally that Jesus is Lord and have made a personal surrender to him with all we know and all we don't know, I belong to the Unchanging Person, and therefore we belong to the Unshakable Kingdom. Then I prayerfully consider how I can apply the Kingdom spirit and principles to all my relationships as far as it depends on me, to my personal thought, life, actions, and habits, to my family life, to my professional or business relationships, to my class and race relationships, to my recreational relationships, to my church relationships. I can't change everybody but I can change me and my relationships as far as they depend on me. In each of these I can say: As far as I am concerned the Kingdom is already here. In the light of its being already here, how do I think and act? I am certain of one thing about that kingdom, that the Kingdom is the kingdom of love. So I will begin to love, if not by my love, then with his love – for everybody, everywhere, I am a disciple to the kingdom of God, under its tutelage and control and unfolding sovereignty. I may make blunders and fall, but if I fall I will fall on my knees, and if I stumble I will stumble into his arms. I have a destiny – I am a seed of the new order – “the good seed means the sons of the kingdom” (Matt. 13:38 RSV). I am sown in this particular place to be the interpretation and meaning and message of the new order. I know the seed and the soil are affinities, so that all the resources of the Kingdom are at my disposal. So “in Him who strengthens me, I am able for anything.” (Phil. 4:11 Moffatt). I have a total Gospel, for man's total need, for the total world. I ought to be happy – I am!
