The Kingdom of God is Near

Acts of compassion are God’s ordained way of giving the world a palpable taste of his Kingdom reign to come. We see throughout the Gospel accounts that Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom always ushers in a physical manifestation of God’s good reign. Luke Chapter 8 says that ‘Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God’. Jesus not only proclaims it, he also brings in the physical reality of the kingdom. Jesus himself reveals his earthly minstry purpose and strategy from the very beginning as he reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in a Nazarene synagogue:

“‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor'”.

And that is exactly what Jesus sets out to do. Luke then records the healing of a demon possessed man in Capernaum (Luke 4:35). Immediately leaving a synagogue Jesus heals Simon’s mother (4:35) and even as the sun was setting that day, ‘all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them’(4:40). In Chapter 6 Jesus is again teaching in the synagogue and heals a man’s withered hand. In the same chapter we are told how ‘people come from all over to hear him [teaching] and to be healed’. Jesus’ proclamation of the Gospel is accompanied by a physical illustration of it. It is the rhythm of God’s compassionate grace: truth followed by healing.

Jesus is the Good news and his very presence is the manifestation of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is not a building or an earthly palace. It resides in the hearts of men and women, where God has removed the heart of stone replacing it with a heart of flesh: God’s own heart. Therefore, where ever God’s people are so is his kingdom and the goodness that it is. We, the Church, are God’s ordained means of giving the world a glimpse of the Kingdom and the God who rules over it.

When God’s people are near so should his Kingdom be. When we clean the bed of an HIV/AIDS patient or when we provide the one meal an orphan child may have today- these are the heavenly glimpses of the kingdom to come. When we alleviate physical suffering for the sick or provide a wheel chair for the lame or purchase a child sex worker out of a brothel, we are making tangible the Good News of the Kingdom. By God’s grace, we all get to see (often times just a glimpse) what life, the new heaven, and the new earth will be like when the old is gone and new has come. These graceful glimpses of what perfection will be give us hope. A hope in what we long to attain but do not have. A hope not in what we see but what we do not see. The hope of being forever perfected in the presence of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. May we be the manifestation of God’s kingdom and may our acts of compassion point others to the only hope: the hope which is Jesus Christ.
Photo by Paul Myhill