Yeshua in Context >> Aims of Yeshua , Besorah/Gospel/Good News , Kingdom Future , Kingdom Present >> The Kingdom Has Reached You

The Kingdom Has Reached You

October 5th, 2010 | Add a Comment

Luke 10:9 is variously translated "the kingdom of God has come upon you" or "has come near to you." Luke Timothy Johnson ( The Gospel of Luke , Liturgical Press: 1991) renders it "has reached you."

Yeshua indicated that in some ways the kingdom of God arrived with him and in others that there would be a delay. Luke 10:9 is one of the "now" aspects of the kingdom of God in the "now and not yet" duality. How does Luke 10:9 inform us of one of the senses in which the kingdom had already reached Yeshua's generation? What does it tell us about the kingdom in our day and in the future?

The story in Luke 10 is about Yeshua sending out seventy to proclaim and heal and exorcise demons. Luke Johnson comments, "The preaching of the kingdom of God is signaled by the power to heal." In other words, an aspect of the kingdom of God was with Yeshua wherever he went (healing and liberating the possessed). And Yeshua sent that same kingdom power with the seventy.

The kingdom of God (God's rule on earth) partially exists now, but will be fully realized in the future when human kingdoms are gone and God's rule is unopposed. Many times "kingdom of God" simply stands for "the age to come." And in the age to come, sickness and disability and demonic possession will all be done away with.

It was in the healing work of Yeshua and his followers that the kingdom reached his generation. The beatitudes clue us in to other aspects of the kingdom which can be brought into the here and now: comfort, peace, righteousness, lifting up the poor in spirit, etc.

Whether we can, in our modern context, go out with the same power as the seventy or not (some think we can, others do not), we can cause the kingdom to reach our generation much as they did, by bringing aspects of the age to come into the present wherever we are.