The Kingdom and the Church: A Zondervan Digital Short

By Michael Horton

Michael Horton writes, “Some Christians so stress the ‘kingdom living’ of individual believers in the world that the church and its partial manifestation of the kingdom of God through the means of grace become subordinate. Others confuse the church with that kingdom in its fully realized form.” In his development and delineation of a theology of both the kingdom and the church, Horton seeks to show that they are interrelated but not identical. Along the way he explores the difference between the cultural mandate and the Great Commission, biblical images of the church, the ecclesiologies of various Christian traditions, and the integral connection between eschatology, ecclesiology, and kingdom. Derived from Michael Horton’s recently released The Christian Faith, already one of the most significant systematic theologies of the past 50 years, this digital short tackles one of today’s theological hot topics with insight and charity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Apr 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9780310496298

Michael Horton

Michael Horton (PhD) is Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary in California. Author of many books, including The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way, he also hosts the White Horse Inn radio program. He lives with his wife, Lisa, and four children in Escondido, California.  

Book preview

CONTENTS

Cover

The Kingdom and the Church

Copyright

The Kingdom and the Church

Often, especially in evangelical circles, thinking about salvation is unrelated to thinking about the church, but this is a serious distortion of the biblical understanding of both topics. On the other hand, there is a danger at the opposite extreme of confusing the church with God as the agent of redemption. As with so many other topics, distinction without division is the watchword: refusing to confuse or to separate the doctrines of salvation and the church.

The same is true concerning the relationship of the kingdom of God to the church. Some Christians so stress the kingdom living of individual believers in the world that the church and its partial manifestation of the kingdom of God through the means of grace become subordinate. Others confuse the church with that kingdom in its fully realized form. Alfred Loisy, a modernist Roman Catholic, quipped, Jesus foretold the kingdom, and it was the Church that came.¹ At first, the apocalyptic concept of a kingdom — especially the type of kingdom that Jesus announced—seems quite different from a historical institution extending through all times and places. Admittedly, Jesus does not often employ the noun church (ekklêsia) but refers repeatedly to the kingdom (basileia). Nevertheless, he promised, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Mt 16:15 – 18). The important question is not how many times the word ekklesia is used, but whether Jesus Christ, by his words and deeds, was in fact building his church. It is clear enough from the narrative plot of the Gospels that Jesus is redefining the qâhâl (assembly) of Israel. Insiders become outsiders and outsiders become insiders. Not only does Jesus describe this; by his teaching and signs he is actually bringing this reversal about in his ministry. He gathers the nucleus of the new Israel (the prophesied remnant) and promises to gather other sheep from another fold into one flock under himself as one Shepherd (Jn 10 as the fulfillment of Eze 34).

To understand the distinctiveness of the kingdom in its present phase and its relation to the church, we should first recognize the differences between the cultural mandate and the Great Commission.

I. THE CULTURAL MANDATE AND THE GREAT COMMISSION

All human beings, even as fallen, remain God’s image-bearers — with the original commission to rule, guard, and keep, and to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, extending God’s reign with Eden as the capital (Ge 1:26 – 28; cf. 2:15). Often referred to as the cultural mandate, this original vocation given to humanity remains the source of that indefatigable impulse to build cities and civilizations, farms and vineyards, houses and empires. Every person, believer and unbeliever alike, receives a distinct vocation for his or her calling in the world, and the Spirit equips each person for these distinct callings in common grace. However, God’s Word in the cultural mandate is law: the command to subdue, rule, fill, and expand.

Only after the fall in the garden is the gospel announced, creating a new community within the human race that will be given an additional mandate: the Great Commission. They will subdue, rule, fill, and expand, but not by creating just governments and empires of cultural advancement — for this is now common rather than holy labor—but by Word and sacrament. Instead of dominating and subduing by sword, this community will fill the earth with God’s glory by announcing the fulfillment of God’s promise and his gathering of the remnant from all the nations to Zion.

With the Sinai covenant, however, God establishes a new theocratic kingdom, reuniting the cultural and cultic mandates. As God’s new Adam, Israel is to drive the serpent from the garden, rule and subdue the nations occupying God’s land, and establish righteousness in all the earth. Nevertheless, like Adam they transgressed the covenant (Hos 6:7). And yet Yahweh reissues the promise after Israel’s fall: he will descend to judge and deliver. The theocracy will be dismantled (signaled by the Spirit’s evacuation from the temple, rendering it common rather than holy), and the land will be ruled by foreign oppressors, but Yahweh will again hear and answer the cries of his exiled people and send his Messiah.

In this phase of the kingdom, with the King himself present in the flesh on the earth in humiliation and forgiveness rather than power and glory, the cult and culture once again become distinct activities. The kingdoms of this age, like Rome, pursue their common vocations, and now believers are commanded by Jesus, Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s (Mt 22:21). Even oppressive rulers are God’s ministers in the cultural sphere of our common curse and common grace as we live alongside unbelievers; we must honor and submit to these governors (Ro 13:1 — 7; 1Pe 2:13 — 17). Believers pursue their common vocations alongside unbelievers in the world with distinction in service and godliness.

At the same time, believers also pursue the aims of the Great Commission that Jesus gave to his disciples rather than to the world at large. Like Joseph and Daniel, who held positions of secular leadership during periods of exile, some believers may become rulers of state and leaders in many other cultural labors. Nevertheless, like Joseph and Daniel, they are not to confuse their cultural mandate (which they share with unbelievers) and their evangelical mandate to spread God’s kingdom. While refusing to accommodate their faith and practice to the idolatry of the nations they serve, such leaders also do not seek to advance and expand God’s kingdom by means of the powers that they are given as secular rulers. Christ’s followers will not imitate the Gentile rulers, who lord it over their people,