The “Kingdom of Heaven” or “Kingdom of God” is mentioned directly 125 times in the New Testament. That’s a lot, in case you were wondering. Consider a word as ubiquitous in our Baptist theology as salvation only occurs about 150 times (as a noun or its verbal cousin). Yet in many ways, our essential and beloved doctrine of salvation will likely be misunderstood, both in its implications for a person’s present and for their future, if the theology of the Kingdom is not taught.
So why is an understanding of the Kingdom so important, what does the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) tell us about Scripture’s teaching on the Kingdom. And how is this vital doctrine in Article 9 connected to Article 10 on Last Things?
First, only Kings have Kingdoms. And we’re not used to kings. Sure, we’re familiar with the toothless monarchy of modern Britain, but it is all pomp and no power. Real kings, biblical kings, don’t have limits on their power. They don’t have checks and balances. They have absolute rule within their kingdom.
Our Baptist congregational polity and our American democratic individualism can cause us problems in truly understanding what it means to be a subject of a king, because we don’t get a vote with a king. I’m not the captain of my own fate with a king. In his kingdom, he has absolute sovereignty.
Abraham Kuyper wrote, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” That includes the universe, and that includes you, believer. Article 10 affirms this picture of God’s Kingdom authority.
By using the terms “general sovereignty over the universe” and “particular kingship over men,” our faith statement affirms that nothing happens within the universe without God’s broad permission, yet it is through the lives of those who have “willfully acknowledge(d) Him as King” that the Kingdom is presently manifest.
It is here, it seems, that the importance of understanding the doctrine of the Kingdom connects to the individual. When a person acknowledges Jesus as Lord, they willingly bow to his crown, relinquishing insistence that they are a king unto themselves. That person accepts the truth of Jesus’ rule over all, and particularly over their life. They step into his Kingdom, joining the millions of others over the ages who have trusted in God’s promised Messiah.
Our statement of faith refers to this as “the realm of salvation.” This Kingdom is what a person is “saved to.” Now, together with other subjects of the benevolent King Jesus, believers seek to do his will in his way, in service of the expansion of his Kingdom, one heart at a time, encompassing people of every nation, tribe, and tongue.
The Kingdom that is invisible, whose citizens are made through faith, will one day be made sight. It is no less real because it does not presently have borders on a map. It was inaugurated at Jesus’ first coming, and is growing at present, awaiting the day of its consummation. Seeing this reality come to pass should be the desire of every believer, inhabiting their prayers and energizing their activities.
That brings us to Article 10 on Last Things.
The BF&M conveys a generous eschatology, saying that God will bring the world to its appropriate end “in his own time and in his own way.” It takes no position on tribulations or weeks or millenniums. No speculation on the identities of Gog, Magog, or the antichrist. It just conveys a clear conviction that Jesus will return visibly, that the dead will be raised, that all people will be judged, and that both heaven and hell are real eternal destinations reserved respectively for the righteous and unrighteous.
So this brings us back to the Kingdom, because the return of the King is what will trigger all these last events. And it is the consummation, or completion, of that same Kingdom that will set up thrones to judge the living and the dead. It is the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, in all its Revelation 20 and 21 glory, that is both our eternal salvation and the deliverer of the judgment from which we are eternally saved, God’s wrath. Two sides of the same coin.
How will the redeemed in Christ be saved? How will every tear be wiped away and death be no more? How will those who oppose God and Christ be judged? The Kingdom is the answer, both now and forever.
