Christian Kingdom Quotations

Christian Kingdom Quotations

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Hugh Halter

“Jesus is not saying, ‘Make sure you pray a prayer of repentance, start going to church, and wait for Me to come back.’ He is saying, ‘You can live a radically different life because there’s a new world order that just broke in, so stop walking in the direction you’re going, turn 180 degrees, and walk toward Me and life in the kingdom of God.’” [Hugh Halter, Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth, 2014, David C. Cook, p. 53]

John Tyson

John Tyson of DISCIPLESHIP: “Discipleship, then, is not an issue of transferring world view, or getting ideas about the Bible from one person’s head to another. Discipleship is about transferring authority, so the lordship of Jesus and the creation of Kingdom culture become the norm on our planet.  [36:44; “National Leadership Conference 2014 Session 4: Jon Tyson,” Mar 20, 2014, 57:07 – FCCLA (Family, Career and Community Leaders of America), San Antonio, Jul. 6-10, 2014]

1:05:09 “That means you are willing to make a conscious calculated kingdom bet with the agency and capital of your life to advance to cause of our people in our church this year.” [“A Creative Minority: Covenant,” Jon Tyson - Church of the City New York, Youtube, sermon begins @46:07, Jan 10, 2021]

Dallas Willard

“Discipleship is learning how to live in heaven before you die.” [Dallas Willard, source?]

“Jesus’ Gospel: ‘Re-think how you’re living your life in light of your opportunity to live in God’s Kingdom today and forever by putting your confidence in him.’” [Bill Gaultiere, “Dallas Willard’s Definitions,” Soul Shepherding, undated]

“The Kingdom of God is God reigning. It is present wherever what God wants done is done. It is the range of God’s effective will. God’s reign is all around you and is from “everlasting to everlasting” — it is the natural home of the soul. Matthew uses the term the Kingdom of the Heavens to emphasize that the Kingdom of God is not far off and way later but is immediately and directly accessible to us through Jesus Christ. (Note that “heavens” is plural because the Bible presents levels to the heavens.)” [Bill Gaultiere, “Dallas Willard’s Definitions,” Soul Shepherding, undated]

“As far as the con­tent of what I try to present is con­cerned it focus­es on the gospel of the king­dom of God and becom­ing a dis­ci­ple of Jesus in the king­dom of God. So, it does­n’t mere­ly have an empha­sis on the for­give­ness of sins and assur­ance of heav­en as you are apt to find in most evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles. I think that is vital but it is not the whole sto­ry. The issue is whole life, oth­er issues are sub­or­di­nate to that. After all Jesus said, ​“I came that you might have life to the full,” which is more than life beyond death.” [Dallas Willard, “Interview: Fol­low­ing Jesus and Liv­ing in the Kingdom,” Renovare, Apr. 2002]

“As regards the king­dom of God? The­olo­gians such as Ladd say that the king­dom is both present and absent, but this basi­cal­ly means we focus on the absent! But I didn’t come to under­stand the king­dom through the­olo­gians. I came to the under­stand­ing when I was a young Bap­tist Min­is­ter. I noticed that I spent a lot of my time try­ing to get peo­ple to come and hear me, and oth­er min­is­ters did the same. But when I looked at Jesus his prob­lem was get­ting away from peo­ple! So, I said there has to be some­thing dif­fer­ent here. So I found what every schol­ar will tell you, that Jesus’ mes­sage was the king­dom of God. He pro­claimed it, he man­i­fest­ed it and he taught it. When he sent out his dis­ci­ples, he didn’t send them out to teach (that’s the hard part), but to pro­claim and man­i­fest (the easy part!) It was very powerful.” [Dallas Willard, “Interview: Fol­low­ing Jesus and Liv­ing in the Kingdom,” Renovare, Apr. 2002]

“Within his overarching dominion God has created us and has given each of us, like him, a range of will – beginning from our minds and bodies and extending outward, ultimately to a point not wholly predetermined but open to the measure of our faith. His intent is for us to learn to mesh our kingdom with the kingdoms of others. Love of neighbor, rightly understood, will make this happen. But we can only love adequately by taking as our primary aim the integration of our rule with God’s. That is why love of neighbor is the second, not the first, commandment and why we are told to seek first the kingdom, or rule, of God.” [Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p. 26]

Alan Hirsch

“Reggie McNeal wisely suggests that we need a kingdom-shaped view of the church, not a church-shaped view of the kingdom.  In other words, as God’s people we must always assess ourselves in the light of God’s active rule in the world and not the other way around.   … Why all this church-kingdom stuff?  Well, because if we are to be effective agents of God’s kingdom in this world, we need to be freed to see his kingdom express itself everywhere and anyplace—as indeed it does.  God turns up in places where we might least expect to see him, but we need the eyes to see what he is doing if we are going to join him in the redemption of the world.  A complete association of the kingdom with the church looks up God’s activity and links it exclusively to organized church activities like Sunday school, communal worship services, and the like.  And as wonderful and necessary as these are to Christian community, the diminished view of the kingdom that results from this will never get us beyond the four walls of the church so that we might fulfill our mission of discipling the nations.” [Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford. Right Here, Right Now: Everyday Mission for Everyday People. Baker Books, 2011]

The fact is that if Jesus's future kingdom is secure, those who trust in its coming will enact it now. [Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch (2011). The Faith of Leap: Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure & Courage, p.181, Baker Books]

“Worship that is in some way divorced from mission is counterfeit worship” [Alan Hirsch]

Alan Hirsch – Jesus talked about the kingdom of God as being like yeast that leavens a whole lump without our direct influence. He talked about it being like a field where the farmer plants and waters, and it grows all by itself. In other words, the kingdom works covertly to undermine the way things are now and to initiate God’s rule in its place. Scholars call this aspect of Jesus’ teaching of the kingdom “the now and the not-yet.” Some people see it and respond. Others cannot see it at all. One day God will concentrate it all to a point and close the deal once and for all. But we can be sure the kingdom is here right now . . . active in the entire world, but especially through his people. [Alan Hirsch, Undercover Subversives (Framework for Missional Christianity, Part Ten), Saturate, Oct. 5, 2020]

N. T. Wright

“The central message of all four canonical Gospels is that the Creator God, Israel’s God, is at last reclaiming the whole world as his own, in and through Jesus of Nazareth. That, to offer a riskily broad generalization, is the message of the kingdom of God, which is Jesus’ answer to the question, ‘What would it look like if God were running this show?’” [N.T. Wright, “Kingdom come: The public meaning of the Gospels,” The Christian Century, Nov. 2007]

George Eldon Ladd

“Love is that gift of the spirit, above all others, which will characterize our perfected fellowship in the age to come. This love we now enjoy, and the church on earth will be a colony of heaven, enjoying in advance the life of the age to come.” [p. 74, George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1959]

Bill Hull

“In short, the kingdom gospel calls us to discipleship. Being a disciple of Jesus, learning from him and submitting to his leading and his teaching, is the norm rather than the exception or the option. It calls us to become apprentices of Christ and learn from him how to live our life as though he were living it.” [Bill Hull, “The Kingdom Gospel,” The Bonhoeffer Project, Jan. 18, 2017]

“The good news of the kingdom is that eternal life begins now—the moment you repent, believe the good news of Christ, receive the Holy Spirit, and start following him.[3] Those elements go together. God never intended them to be separated out (as if that were possible). The kingdom is holistic: you enter a new realm where “all things are become new.” [4] When you start following Jesus, you prove that you believe what he says. This is quite different from what is commonly taught as the gospel—that if you believe the right religious facts, you’re saved, and following Jesus is just an option. What we must teach, however, is that Jesus started with the call to follow him; his disciples, then, started believing in him and grew spiritually in stages. We defy any experienced follower of Jesus who says that growing through a gradual process is not an accurate description of their life in Christ. Life in Christ doesn’t begin with instant maturity and immediate understanding.” [Bill Hull and Ben Sobel, The Discipleship Gospel Primer. HIM Publications, 2018]

Tom A. Jones & Steve D. Brown

(6. The Kingdom is a life to be lived.) – The gospel of the Kingdom does not call us to “get saved so we can go to heaven when we die.” This is an almost ubiquitous idea in the evangelical world, but one that is fundamentally selfish. The good news of the Kingdom, instead, calls us to be reborn to a new humanity, and to live out this new humanity in this world now. So instead of talking mostly about how we want to go to heaven when we die, we ought to be focusing on how to live heaven before we die. Looking ahead to our final destination in the new heavens and the new earth is entirely biblical and right, but only those who want to live out heaven’s values now are preparing themselves to be heaven’s person then. In a recent poll 80 percent of Americans said they believe they are going to heaven when they die. But how many of those want to live by heaven’s values right now? Nor many, said Jesus, warning there would be some startling surprises come Judgment Day (Mat 7:21-23) [Tom A. Jones & Steve D. Brown,” The Kingdom of God: Volume One – The Future Breaks In, (6. The Kingdom is a life to be lived), DPI Books, Spring Hill, Tn., 2010]

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