In His resurrection and before His ascension, the Lord Jesus as the resurrected One must have helped the disciples to have a proper realisation concerning the kingdom of God.
In the Gospels the Lord Jesus Himself has announced the gospel of the kingdom, and now in His resurrection He must have expounded more on the matter of the kingdom of God for His disciples to be clear and realise they are part of the propagation of Christ as life on earth.
The kingdom of God is Christ as the seed of life sown in the heart of the ones who believe into Him, developing into a realm over which God can rule as His kingdom in His divine life.
The way one enters into the kingdom of God is not by mentally agreeing or understanding what the kingdom is but by regeneration, by being born again.
When one believes into the Lord Jesus, he is born anew, born of the water and the Spirit, and he enters into the kingdom of God, which is the realm of the divine life.
The development of the kingdom of God is the believers’ growth in the divine life; when the believers cooperate with the Lord daily to enjoy Him, pray over His word, and allow the Lord to grow and expand in their mind, emotion, and will, the kingdom of God develops within the believers.
This is on the personal side. On the corporate side, the kingdom of God is the church life today, in which the faithful believers live; the kingdom is the building up of the believers in Christ who have Christ as the seed of life growing in them and developing into a realm for God to rule in the divine life.
The development of the kingdom of God will be a reward to be inherited by the overcoming saints in the millennium, when they will rule and reign with Christ in His kingdom for one thousand years.
Eventually, the kingdom of God will consummate in the holy city, the New Jerusalem, as the eternal kingdom of God, an eternal realm of the eternal blessing of God’s eternal life.
All the redeemed, regenerated, and transformed believers will be part of the New Jerusalem, where all of God’s redeemed will enjoy God and His blessings with His life in the new heaven and new earth for eternity.
Such a kingdom that the New Testament speaks of is not something material or physical but spiritual, Christ Himself as life entering into man to develop in man and build man up in spirit for the kingdom of God.
Christ wants to obtain such a kingdom, and He Himself is this kingdom – the kingdom of God is the spreading of Christ, the enlargement of Christ in humanity.
The Lord Jesus as the One in Resurrection helped the Disciples to have a Realisation of the Kingdom of God
In Acts 1:3 we are told that the Lord Jesus, after His resurrection and before His public ascension to the Father, spent forty days with His disciples, appearing to them again and again and teaching them the things concerning the kingdom of God.
The period of forty days in the Bible is a period of trials and testing (see Deut. 9:9, 18; 1 Kings 19:8).
The Lord Jesus Himself was led into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted and tested by the devil, and He fasted for forty days and forty nights (Matt. 4:1-2), and the children of Israel were tested and educated by God in the wilderness for forty years.
The Lord Jesus as the One in resurrection appeared and disappeared before His disciples for a period of forty days to test them and train them.
On the one hand He trained them to live in and with His invisible presence, for now He is not merely among them but in them as the Spirit, whom they have received by His breathing into them in John 20:22. On the other hand, the Lord spoke to His disciples the things concerning the kingdom of God.
We are not told what are the things concerning the kingdom of God that the Lord spoke to His disciples, but from other portions of the word we can see that He repeated what He already taught them in the Gospels.
It’s not likely that during the forty days after His resurrection the Lord gave His disciples something new about the kingdom, for if this were the case, some other writings or speaking must have recorded it.
When He was on earth in His earthly ministry, the Lord spoke extensively concerning the kingdom of God, but the disciples were not able to understand Him because they were not regenerated, not born of God.
As John 3:5 says, to see the kingdom of God you need to be born anew, born of water and the Spirit. When the disciples received the Holy Spirit, they were born in the kingdom of God, and now they had the Lord Jesus as the life-giving Spirit with their spirit.
Now they had the capacity to understand and realise the kingdom of God, for the Spirit within them was guiding them into all the reality of God’s kingdom.
In Acts 1, therefore, the disciples were very different from before the Lord was crucified; now they had the life-giving Spirit as the reality of Christ living within them, and they were able to understand the Lord’s speaking concerning the kingdom of God.
The reason the unbelievers do not understand the kingdom of God is because they do not have the life of God; once someone hears the gospel and receives the Lord as his Savior and life, he receives the life-giving Spirit in his spirit, and he now has the capacity to realise the things concerning the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not physical, material, or outward; it is a spiritual kingdom, and we can touch it and enter into it by means of our spirit.
Thank You Lord Jesus for giving us a capacity to understand the kingdom of God as the realm of the divine life where God rules and reigns. Thank You Lord for coming as the Spirit into our spirit to not only impart the divine life into us but also to give us the ability to realise the things concerning the kingdom of God. Hallelujah, all believers in Christ are the reproduction of Christ as life, the spreading of Christ, and there’s a realm growing and developing in them and among them in which God can rule and reign in His kingdom!
The Kingdom of God is the Propagation of Christ as Life to form a Realm for God to Rule
When we are regenerated, we enter into the realm of the kingdom of God; just as by our birth of our human parents we enter into the realm of the human life, so through our rebirth in spirit we enter into the kingdom of God.
The disciples were not able to fully understand the things concerning the kingdom of God when the Lord Jesus spoke them while He was on earth before His death and resurrection, but after they were regenerated, they had the ability to realise the kingdom of God.
The disciples must have begun to see that the kingdom of God is the spreading of Christ as life in the believers, that is, the propagation of Christ as life in His believers to form a realm in which God rules in His divine life (see John 3:3, 5).
They must have certainly understood that they are now part of the propagation of Christ as life, the spreading of Christ as life on earth, and thereby they are part of the kingdom of God; therefore, what they preached and taught was the kingdom of God (see Acts 1:8-9; 8:12; 20:25; 28:23, 31).
For example, when the Lord Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God in Mark. 4:26-29, He spoke of a man (the Lord Jesus as the Sower) who cast seed (the Lord Jesus as the seed of the kingdom) on earth (us as the soil, the ground for the seed to grow), and the earth bore fruit by itself.
The kingdom of God is not something outward like an organisation with people’s efforts and abilities, but a matter of life, the life of God, which sprouts, grows, bears fruit, matures, and produces a harvest.
In reality, the kingdom of God is a matter of Christ as the seed of life sown into us and growing in us unto maturity. The kingdom’s reality is Christ’s expansion, His enlargement, His growth within us.
We have been made the kingdom of God; Christ released us from our sins by His blood, and He made us a kingdom to God (Rev. 1:5-6).
We as believers in Christ were not only redeemed by the blood of Christ and born of God into His kingdom, but we have been made a kingdom for God’s economy – we are the church, the kingdom of God today (Matt. 16:18-19).
The apostle John, even though he was exiled on an island, was in the kingdom of God (Rev. 1:9), and all the redeemed and reborn believers are part of the kingdom of God today, the church (Rom. 14:17).
A very real evidence of Christ being reproduced in us, His believers, to make us part of His kingdom is Stephen, the first martyr.
He was giving his testimony to the Jewish people, but they could not resist his words; his face was shining, and even as he was being stoned to death, he saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing….Stephen on earth was looking at Jesus the Son of Man in the heavens standing, and Jesus was standing in heavens looking at His reproduction on earth.
Stephen didn’t pray for vengeance for what they are doing to him, but that God would not hold this sin against them, just as the Lord prayed when he was on the cross.
He is not an exception but a typical believer living in the development of the kingdom of God personally and corporately.
Lord Jesus, show us that the kingdom of God is the propagation of Christ as life in His believers to form a realm in which God can rule and reign in His divine life. Give us the spiritual understanding, Lord, to see what the kingdom of God is, how we can live in God’s kingdom, and how the kingdom can develop within us and among us. Thank You Lord for making us a kingdom to our God and Father, and for bringing us into the church life, the reality of the kingdom of God today. Hallelujah, we are now God’s kingdom because we’re the expansion of Christ, His enlargement!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by James Lee for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 250 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Propagating the Resurrected, Ascended, and All-inclusive Christ as the Development of the Kingdom of God (2018 fall ITERO), week 8, The Development of the Kingdom of God.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Lord Jesus, how blest to be those / Who bring in Thy kingdom to earth, / Affording Thee rule over all / And showing to all Thy great worth! (Hymns #1303)
# And He made us a kingdom, / Priests to His God and Father, / To Him be the glory and might / Forever and ever. Amen. (Scripture song)
# God’s children, we’re born to be kings with His Son, / And we need to be trained that we may overcome / And to know how to rule in His kingdom as kings, / That His kingship thru us be expressed o’er all things. (Hymns #947)
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