The distiveness of kingdom living...

I've recently been doing some studying and preaching on the Kingdom of God and specifically on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. So, given my current busyness, I will shamelessly copy and paste some of my recent writing concerning some key characteristics of Kingdom living as drawn from Matthew 5-7.

The first characteristic of Kingdom living I will include here is its distinctiveness. The word distinct simply means that something is different in nature or quality and because of this is clear to the senses, unmistakable, or obvious. Jesus is clear on this point of the kingdom when He tells His followers that they are like a city on a hill which cannot be hidden. It doesn’t get much more distinct than that. Those who live a kingdom life are simply out there (in the sense that they are there for the world to see).

But being distinct in a generic sense is not any more commendable than blending in. It is not itself a virtue. There are plenty of people in the world who are different to cultural norms in one way or another and could therefore be described as distinct, but that does not even remotely guarantee that they are living Kingdom lives. In fact, often times, just the opposite is true.

Within the kingdom of God, however, distinctness comes due specifically to the fact that your life is in step with God’s life and is therefore out of step with the patterns of the world. We are distinct because we are submitted to the rule of Jesus when the dominant spirit of this age is not. It is important here to note that it is not that we are abnormal while the rest of the world goes on doing all of the normal things and living life in the normal way. In fact it is just the opposite. This universe was originally designed to flow with the life of God. It is, therefore, those who are actually living out this original design that are the normal ones. It is those who rebel against the very thing they were made for that are abnormal. To say it another way, though we may be flowing against the grain of a fallen world system that is in rebellion against God, we are actually flowing with the even greater current of the good and awesome rule of our Creator (which, by the way, will long out last this evil age).

With this in mind, I can also ask the intriguing question, should a local church be visible or invisible? I think most of us would immediately say visible, and rightly so. But in what way should this be? Often it has been thought that a large building with a flashy sign will do the trick. Or perhaps extensive programs, large events, and loud music will do. Maybe even a touch of advertising will make the church visible. Though all of these things have a visibility factor to them (and are in themselves mostly reasonable options to explore), I do not believe they are what Jesus has in mind when He compares His disciples to a city set on a hill. Rather, it is the kingdom life that makes them distinct; lives that are lived in submission to His rule and that reflect his righteousness and glory. According to the Sermon, kingdom distinctiveness is tied to things like loving your enemies, rejoicing in persecution, not harboring anger, keeping your thought life sexually pure, keeping your word, giving with right motives, not hording earthly possessions…and so on. In a world that more often than not operates in the opposite of these values, kingdom people are different because they live these things out of heart obedience to Jesus.

Lastly, this distinctive lifestyle, Jesus says, will illicit at least two types of responses (often from the same person I would add): giving glory to the Father and persecution. Either people will find their hearts respond with wonder and awe and a tendency toward worship of God or people will turn on you with any and every manner of evil…or both. Either way, Jesus encourages us to keep on going. And in the case of persecution, we are even told that we are blessed and that we should rejoice in the knowledge that we are obtaining an eternal reward.