The Gospel of Jesus Christ or the Gospel of The Kingdom?

The other day I was reading Exodus Chapter 20 and I was going through the twelve commandments and something occurred to me. It struck me that each law was not so much in respect of the whole nation but in respect of each individual in the nation. Going through the verses in the chapter, it occurred to me that the “Thou” that began each verse at the beginning of each commandment was in really in respect of the whole nation but in respect of each person reading or hearing the words. God gave Moses the law in the Old Testament but he promised in the book of Jeremiah that the days would come when the laws would no longer be written on tablets of stone but on the tablets of our hearts. He also promised that God would give us hearts of flesh instead of hearts of stone.

That was Jesus agenda when he came. Jesus did not come to give us a religion but he came to offer each and every one of us a personal relationship with God. Jesus spoke out against religion. According to him, people set up religion to stop people from getting to know God and they didn’t get to know God themselves. However when Jesus talked about that new personal relationship with God, nowhere in the Scriptures did he refer to the new relationship as the “Gospel of Salvation”, “Gospel of Jesus Christ” or Christianity. When Peter or Paul referred to the new relationship, they also never referred to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They all talked about the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven which as Christ had taught was in our hearts.

We seem to have a fixation with getting people saved and getting them to on the road to Heaven. But Paul taught that as a result of us getting saved, our spirits are seated with Christ in heavenly places. If God wanted all just be in Heaven, then he would have translated all of us like Enoch. The fact is that as Christ said, we are in this world but not of this world. The question then is, if we are not of this world, then of which world are we? We are definitely not of Heaven because only spirits live in Heaven. The fact is that we are citizens of the place which Jesus talked about which starts in our hearts the moment we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. The Kingdom of Heaven is not a geographical place so to speak like Heaven or Earth but a place in our hearts where God dwells. We carry God in our hearts from the moment we were born of the spirit. While the liberals in America argue for the separation of Church and State, God doesn’t want us to do so. Peter says we are a royal priesthood. God wants us to carry the Kingdom of Heaven wherever we go and to establish outposts of Heaven as ambassadors.

While Jesus came to bring us the message of the Kingdom of Heaven, he himself said he wasn’t the be all and end all of the message. Jesus described himself as the door, the way into the Kingdom. We need to press past the “Gospel of Jesus” and walk into the kingdom. Jesus is our perfect example. He reached out to the all those who needed him and brought the kingdom to them in the form of healing, joy, peace, salvation, food. He exerted the power of Heaven on the Earth and created heaven on earth. He brought about the Kingdom of Heaven. He fed thousands, calmed the seas, walked on water, raised the dead. He was able to that because he had a deep and personal relationship with the Father. That’s what we have been called to do. To have a deep and personal relationship with the Father and by that relationship cause Heaven to exert on Earth and to bring others into the Kingdom. That is our mission. Not to have religion.       


JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO, a thriller about persecution of Christians. DECEPTIO is published by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers. The book is available here
http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-194087/Deceptio.aspx. He is also the author of LOST, BUT FOUND available here http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ