Wheat and Tares

Ron McKenzie uses his experience growing up on a farm to explain the parable of the wheat and tares. He contends that in relation to the wheat, the tares are few in number. Some teachings hold to equal amounts of each, as if evil were as prevalent in the established kingdom as good. Unfortunately, there are some churches where the pastors are so zealous about keeping tares from being sown and so zealous about uprooting the tares when they think they see tares, that enormous amounts of wheat are uprooted in the process.

Authority In The Kingdom

Ron McKenzie at Blessed Economist is currently writing a series of posts (starting with his July 9 post) about how authority is dealt with in the kingdom of God. Since Ron usually strings a bunch of posts along on the same topic, I'll link to his whole month of July here. His point is that authority is diffused and not concentrated in one individual or group. When a Christian holds authority, he will teach others how to use that authority and give it to them. Kind of a "hot potato" authority.

For a while now I've held to the ideas of decentralized authority in the church, in the civil realm and in other realms. But I hadn't thought of it in the way Ron puts it. Authority is transferred, and frequently. Jesus received authority from His Father, and immediately transferred it to His disciples and sent them out. He also gives us authority to build the kingdom, and when we're done, He'll return to claim His kingdom. He'll turn it over to the Father, Who will in return give it back to the Son.

God and His People: Limiting the Use of Biblical Metaphors

The bible uses quite a number of metaphors to describe the relationship between God (and/or Christ) and His people. This is because the relationship is complex. Many metaphors are used, as analogies, simply because this relationship can't be described in its fullness. Every analogy fails at some point, so each metaphor has its limitations.

So when we restrict the number of metaphors used in describing this relationship, we do violence to this relationship. Off the top of my head, here are some metaphors describing our relationship to God:

God is our God, we are His people. God is a Father, we are His children. Christ is the vine, we are the branches. God/Christ is the Lord/King, we are His subjects. Jesus is the Master, we are His disciples. Jesus is Master, we are servants. Christ is the head, the church is the body, with individuals being members of the body. Christ is the bridegroom, the church is the bride. Christ is the heir, we are co-heirs. We are brethren, Christ is our elder brother. Christ is the temple, we are the stones. We are the temple, the apostles are the foundation, and Christ is the cornerstone. Christ is the shepherd, we are the sheep (individuality) and Christ is the shepherd, we are the flock (community).

Some, like the high-church types, limit our relationship to maybe a few of these metaphors. Others, to quote a pastor friend of mine, "like Rome, almost drop the metaphor completely and assume a genuine ontological reality - the most obvious example is what they do with the 'body of Christ.' It's a metaphor, not an ontological statement about the extension of Jesus' incarnation!" Much of what goes on in Protestant theology, as well, limits our existence to the confines of the church, and its few metaphors, when the greater applications of metaphors suggest that the kingdom, and our relationship to God in it, is far greater than the church.

How Did The Devil Get Control Of The Earth? (Part 2)

And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, "I will give you all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours." And Jesus answered and said to him, "It is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God and serve Him only.'" Luke 4:5-8 NASB

Read Part 1 here.

My answer to my question in Part 1 is that the devil gained control of the earth through Adam's disobedience in the garden. God gave Adam and Eve control of the earth. Authority was delegated to them. God was still ultimately in control, but authority over the land, the animals and plants were given to them. The animals also had authority over the plants as food. It could be argued that within the marriage, there was a kind of authority structure between husband and wife, too.

Satan was left out of this chain of command, left out of the picture altogether, and was envious. The chain of authority went like this: God, then man (and Adam then Eve within the marriage), then animals, then plants including the forbidden fruit. Satan wanted to be God. So to get to be God, he turned the authority tree upside down. He presented the fruit to the woman. But to keep the authority relationships in order, he had to enter the scheme as an animal; he chose the serpent. So he used the fruit, as a serpent, to deceive the woman, who deceived the man, and both of them took Satan at his word, replacing God's word. Satan tricked them into listening to him now instead of God.

Since God delegated authority to Adam and Eve, Satan by tricking them gained that authority he wanted by having them substitute him for God. An analogy would be if a father entrusted the family inheritance, a coin collection let's say, to his son to pass on to future generations. The son had legitimate control over the inheritance. But, neglecting his father's will, he sold the coin collection to the pawn shop to use the money for his own, new ideas. The pawn shop, even though it now had control over something that was never intended to be theirs, now had some form of legitimate claim over the coins. The father, seeing the stupidity of his son, went to the pawn shop to buy back the coin collection. Buying back is known as redemption. Not at a cheap price, either.

That's how I think Satan gained control of the earth, and he offered it to Christ - if He would but worship him - as the final action of gaining authority over all, as God. More later.

How Did The Devil Get Control of The Earth?

And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, "I will give you all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours." And Jesus answered and said to him, "It is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God and serve Him only.'" Luke 4:5-8 NASB

Several things are striking in this passage about the temptation of Jesus. The devil claimed control over all the kingdoms of the earth. Additionally, Jesus neither corrected him nor rebuked him for this statement. He did, however, correct and rebuke for the idea that He should worship the devil. The devil said that domain over the kingdoms had "been handed over" to him.

Question: who handed the domain over to him and how did it happen? I'm thinking about this and I think I have an answer. It is certain to impact my view of kingdom history, and I think it sheds some light on other very important theological questions that have direct bearing on us Christians living today and how we should view our lives. Lord willing, I'll be writing about this soon.

Seek Ye First The Kingdom of God

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. Matthew 6:33.

All these things shall be added to us? What things?

Do not be anxious then, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "With what shall we clothe ourselves?" For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Matthew 6:31-32.

Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms... Mark 10:29-30

Why would God add these things to us?

Then God said, "Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Genesis 1:26

Because He wants us to rule over the earth and its things. But in seeking His kingdom, we need righteousness. Man's rule over the earth in righteousness is God's kingdom.

Kingdom vs. Church

Jesus spoke a great deal about the kingdom, but very little about the church. We have reversed this. At what cost?

Power to the People

In response to my last post on the kindgom vs. the church, Vache Folle comments that the idea of the kingdom is revolutionary:

It seems to me that pastors, theologians and seminaries have vested interests in the church from which they derive sustenance and authority, whereas the idea of the kingdom undermines authority and is revolutionary.

The idea of the kingdom gives maximum freedom to individuals. It was for freedom, after all, that Christ set us free. We have the freedom to use our own gifts to the benefit of others, without permission from any clergy or self appointed overlord. We have the freedom of association, freedom to marry or make ourselves eunuchs, to have children, to read God's word, to interpret it for ourselves, to put it into action. We have a relationship to God that on one level is nobody else's business. Our marching orders come from Christ and are not mediated through human agents. If we acted on the authority already delegated us in Christ and didn't abdicate that authority to ecclesiocrats, they would disappear from the landscape.

Many, oh so many, Christians talk much about Christian liberty. If they only knew.