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APPENDIX
TO PART II
NOTE A
The
Kingdom of Heaven, or of God.
There
is no phrase of more frequent occurrence in the New Testament than ‘the kingdom
of heaven,’ or ‘the kingdom of God.’ We meet with it everywhere---in the
beginning, the middle, and the end of the Book. It is the first thing in
Matthew, the last in Revelation. The Gospel itself is called ‘the gospel of the
kingdom;’ the disciples are the ‘heirs of the kingdom;’ the great object of
hope and expectation is ‘the coming of the kingdom.’ It is from this that
Christ Himself derives His title of ‘King.’ The kingdom of God, then, is the
very kernel of the New Testament.
But
while thus pervading in the New Testament, the idea of the kingdom of God is
not peculiar to it; it belongs no less to the Old. We find traces of it in all
the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi; it is the theme of some of the loftiest
psalms of David; it underlies the annals of ancient Israel; its roots run back
to the earliest period of Jewish national existence; it is, in fact the raison
d’etre of that people; for, to embody and develop this conception of the
kingdom of God, Israel was constituted and kept in being as a distinct
nationality.
Going
back to the primordial germ of the Jewish people we find the earliest
intimation of the purpose of God to ‘form a people for himself’ in the original
promise made to their great progenitor, Abraham: ‘I will make of thee a great
nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a
blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth
thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed’ (Gen. xii. 2, 3).
This promise was soon after solemnly renewed in the covenant made by God
with Abraham: ‘In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying,
Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great
river, the river Euphrates’ (Gen. xv. 18). This covenant relation between God
and the seed of Abraham is renewed and more fully developed in the declaration
subsequently made to Abraham: ‘I will establish my covenant between me and
thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting
covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give
unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger,
all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God’
(Gen. xvii. 7, 8). As a token and seal of this covenant the rite of
circumcision was imposed upon Abraham and his posterity, by which every male of
that race was marked and signed as a subject of the God of Abraham (Gen. xvii.
9-14).
More
than four centuries after this adoption of the children of Abraham as the
covenant people of God, we find them in a state of vassalage in Egypt, groaning
under the cruel bondage to which they were subjected. We are told that God
‘heard their groaning, and remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac,
and with Jacob.’ He raised up a champion in the person of Moses, and instructed
him to say to the children of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out
from under the burdens of the Egyptians; . . . and I will take you to me for a
people, and I will be to you a God,’ etc. (Exod. vi. 6, 7). After the
miraculous redemption from Egypt, the covenant relation between Jehovah and the
children of Israel was publicly and solemnly ratified at Mount Sinai. We read
that ‘in the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of
the land of Egypt, . . . Israel camped before the mount. And Moses went up unto
God, and the Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou
say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: Ye have seen what I
did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you
unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my
covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for
all the earth is mine, and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an
holy nation’ (Exod. xix. 3-6).
It
is at this period that we may regard the Theocratic kingdom as formally
inaugurated. A horde of liberated slaves were constituted a nation; they
received a divine law for their government, and the complete frame of their
civil and ecclesiastical polity was organised and constructed by divine
authority. Every step of the process by which a childless old man grew into a
nation reveals a divine purpose and a divine plan. Never was any nationality so
formed; none ever existed for such a purpose; none ever bore such a
relationship to God; none ever possessed such a miraculous history; none was
ever exalted to such glorious privilege; none ever fell by such a tremendous
doom.
There
can be no doubt that the nation of Israel was designated to be the depositary
and conservator of the knowledge of the living and true God in the earth. For
this purpose the nation was constituted, and brought into a unique relation to
the Most High, such as not other people ever sustained. To secure this purpose
the Lord Himself became their King, and they became His subjects; while all the
institutions and laws which were imposed upon them had reference to God, not
only as the Creator of all things, but as the Sovereign of the nation. To
express and carry out this idea of the kingship of God over Israel is the
manifest object of the ceremonial apparatus of worship set up in the
wilderness: ‘Jehovah caused a royal tent to be erected in the centre of the
encampment (where the pavilions of all kings and chiefs were usually erected),
and to be fitted up with all the splendour of royalty, as a moveable palace. It
was divided into three apartments, in the innermost of which was the royal
throne, supported by golden cherubs; and the footstool of the throne, a gilded
ark containing the tables of the law, the Magna Charta of church and state. In
the anteroom a gilded table was spread with bread and wine, as the royal table;
and precious incense was burned. The exterior room or court might be considered
the royal culinary apartment, and there music was performed, like the music at
the festive tables of Eastern monarchs. God made choice of the Levites for His
courtiers, state officers, and palace guards; and of Aaron for the chief
officer of the court and first minister of state. For the maintenance of these
officers He assigned one of the tithes which the Hebrews were to pay as rent
for the use of the land. Finally, He required all the Hebrew males of a
suitable age to repair to His palace every year, on the three great annual
festivals, with presents, to render homage to their King; and as these days of
renewing their homage were to be celebrated with festivity and joy, the second
tithe was expended in providing the entertainments necessary for those
occasions. In short, every religious duty was made a matter of political
obligation; and all the civil regulations, even the most minute, were so
founded upon the relation of the people to God, and so interwoven with their
religious duties, that the Hebrew could not separate his God and his King, and
in every law was reminded equally of both. Consequently the nation, so long as
it had a national existence, could not entirely lose the knowledge, or
discontinue the worship, of the true God.’
Such
was the government instituted by Jehovah among the children of Israel---a true
Theocracy; the only real Theocracy that ever existed upon earth. Its intense
and exclusive national character deserves particular notice. It was the
distinctive privilege of the children of Abraham, and of them alone: ‘The Lord
thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people
that are upon the face of the earth’ (Deut. vii. 6). ‘You only have I known of
all the families of the earth’ (Amos iii. 2). ‘He hath not dealt so with any
nation’ (Ps. cxlvii. 20). The Most High was the Lord of the whole earth, but He
was the King of Israel in an altogether peculiar sense. He was their covenanted
Ruler; they were His covenanted people. They came under the most sacred and
solemn obligations to be loyal subjects to their invisible Sovereign, to
worship Him alone, and to be faithful to His law (Deut. xxvi. 16-18). As the
reward of obedience they had the promise of unbounded prosperity and national
greatness; they were to be ‘high above all nations in praise and in name and in
honour’ (Deut. xxvi. 19); while, on the other hand, the penalties of disloyalty
and unfaithfulness were correspondingly dreadful; the curse of the broken
covenant would overtake them in a signal and terrible retribution, to which
there should be no parallel in the history of mankind, past or to come. (Deut.
xxviii.)
It
is only reasonable to presume that this marvellous experiment of a Theocratic
government must have had for its object something worthy of its divine author.
That object was moral, rather than material; the glory of God and the good of
men, rather than the political or temporal advancement of a tribe or nation. It
was no doubt, in the first place, an expedient to keep alive the knowledge and
worship of the One true God in the earth, which otherwise might have been
wholly lost; and, secondly, notwithstanding its intense and exclusive spirit of
nationalism, the Theocratic system carried in its bosom the germ of a universal
religion, and thus was a great and important stage in the education of the
human race.
It
is instructive to trace the growth and progressive development of the
Theocratic idea in the history of the Jewish people, and to observe how, as it
loses its political significance, it becomes more and more moral and spiritual
in its character.
The
people on whom this unequalled privilege was conferred showed themselves
unworthy of it. Their fickleness and faithlessness neutralised at every step
the favour of their invisible Sovereign. Their demand for a king, ‘that they
might be like all the nations,’ was a virtual rejection of their heavenly
Ruler. (1 Sam. viii. 7, 19, 20.) Nevertheless their request was granted,
provision for such a contingency having been made in the original framing of
the Theocracy. The human king was regarding as the viceroy of the divine King,
and thus he became a type of the real, though unseen, Sovereign to whom he, as
well as the nation, owed allegiance.
It
is at this point that we note the appearance of a new phase in the Theocratic
system. If we regard David as the author of the second Psalm, it was as early
as his time that a prophetic announcement was made concerning a King, the
Lord’s Anointed, the Son of God, against whom the kings of the earth were to
set themselves and the rulers to take counsel together, but to whom the Most
High was to give the heathen for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the
earth for His possession. From this period the mediatorial character of
the Theocracy begins to be more clearly indicated:---there is a distinction
made between the Lord and His Anointed, between the Father and the Son. We meet
with the titles Messiah, Son of God, Son of David, King of Zion, given to One
to whom the kingdom belongs, and who is destined to triumph and to reign. The
psalms called Messianic, especially the 72nd and 110th, are sufficient to prove
that in the time of David there were clear prophetic announcements of a coming
King, whose rule was to be beneficent and glorious; in whom all nations were to
be blessed; who was to unite in Himself the twofold offices of Priest and King;
who is declared to be David’s Lord; and is represented as sitting at the right
hand of God ‘until his enemies be made his footstool.’
Henceforth
through all the prophecies of the Old Testament we find the character and
person of the Theocratic King more and more fully delineated, though in the
description are blended together diverse and apparently inconsistent elements.
Sometimes the coming King and His kingdom are depicted in the most attractive
and glowing colours,---‘a Rod is to spring from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch
to grow out of his roots,’ and under the conduct of this scion of the house of
David all evil is to disappear and all goodness to triumph. The wolf is to
dwell with the lamb and the leopard to lie down with the kid: ‘They shall not
hurt nor destroy in all God’s holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea’ (Isa. xi. 1-9). The
loftiest names of honour and dignity are ascribed to the coming Prince; He is
the ‘Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince
of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there is to be no end.’
He is to sit upon the throne of David, and to govern his kingdom with judgment
and with justice for ever (Isa. ix. 6, 7).
But
side by side with these brilliant prospects lie dark and gloomy scenes of
sorrow and suffering, of judgment and wrath. The coming King is spoken of as a
‘root out of a dry ground;’ as ‘despised and rejected;’ as ‘a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief;’ as ‘wounded for our transgressions and bruised for
our iniquities;’ ‘brought like a lamb to the slaughter;’ ‘dumb like a sheep in
the hand of the shearers;’ ‘cut off out of the land of the living’ (Isa.
liii.). He is described as coming to Jerusalem ‘lowly’ and riding upon an ass,
and upon a colt the foal of an ass’ (Zech. ix. 9); Messiah is to be cut off,
but not for Himself (Dan. ix. 26); and among the latest prophetic utterances
are some of the most ominous and sombre of all. The Lord, the Messenger of the
covenant, the expected King, is to come: ‘But who may abide the day of his
coming? That day shall burn as a furnace; it is the great and dreadful day of
the Lord’ (Mal. iii. 1, 2; iv. 1, 5).
This
seeming paradox is explained in the New Testament. There actually was this
twofold aspect of the King and the kingdom: ‘The King of glory’ was also ‘the
Man of sorrows;’ ‘the acceptable year of the Lord’ was also ‘the day of
vengeance of our God.’
Ancient
prophecy had given abundant reason for the expectation that the invisible
Theocratic King would one day be revealed, and would dwell with men upon the
earth; that He would come, in the interests of the Theocracy, to set up His
kingdom in the nation, and to rally His people around His throne. The opening
chapters of St. Luke’s gospel indicate the views entertained by pious
Israelites respecting the coming kingdom of the Messiah. It was understood by
them to have a special relation to Israel. ‘He shall be great,’ said the angel
of the annunciation, ‘and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord
God shall give unto him the house of his father David; and he shall reign over
the house of Jacob for ever.’ ‘Rabbi!’ exclaimed the guileless Nathanael, as
the God suddenly flashed upon him through the disguise of the young Galilean
peasant, ‘thou are the Son of God, thou are the King of Israel!’ (John i. 44)
It is no less certain that His coming was then believed to be near, and it was
eagerly expected by such holy men as Simeon, who ‘waited for the consolation of
Israel,’ and to whom it had been revealed that he should not ‘see death before
he had seen the Lord’s anointed’ (Luke ii. 25, 26). There was indeed a
wide-spread belief, not only in Judea, but throughout the Roman Empire, that a
great prince or monarch was about to appear in the earth, who was to inaugurate
a new epoch. Of this expectation we have evidence in the Annals of Tacitus and
the Pollio of Virgil. Doubtless the cherished hope of Israel had diffused
itself, in a more or less vague and distorted form, throughout the neighbouring
lands.
But
when, in the fulness of time, the Theocratic King appeared in the midst of the
covenant nation, it was not in the form which they had expected and desired. He
did not fulfil their hopes of political power and national pre-eminence. The
kingdom of God which He proclaimed was something very different from that of
which they had dreamed. Righteousness and truth, purity and goodness, were only
empty names to men who coveted the honours and pleasures of this world.
Nevertheless, though rejected by the nation at large, the Theocratic King did
not fail to announce His presence and His claims. He was preceded by a herald,
the predicted Elias, John the Baptist, whom the people were constrained to
acknowledge as a true prophet of God. The second Elijah announced the kingdom
of God as at hand, and called upon the nation to repent and receive their King.
Next, His own miraculous works, unexampled even in the history of the chosen
people for number and splendour, gave conclusive evidence of His divine
mission; added to which the transcendent excellence of His doctrine, and the
unsullied purity of His life, silenced, if they did not shame, the enmity of
the ungodly. For more than three years this appeal to the heart and conscience
of the nation was incessantly presented in every variety of method, but without
success; until at length the chief men in the Jewish church and state, bitterly
hostile to His pretensions, impeached Him before the Roman governor on the
charge of making Himself a King. By their persistent and malignant clamour they
procured His condemnation. He was delivered up to be crucified, and the title
upon His cross bore this inscription,---
This
tragic event marks the final breach between the covenant nation and the
Theocratic King. The covenant had often been broken before, but now it was
publicly repudiated and torn in pieces. It might have been thought that the
Theocracy would now be at an end; and virtually it was; but its formal
dissolution was suspended for a brief space, in order that the twofold
consummation of the kingdom, involving the salvation of the faithful and the
destruction of the unbelieving, might be brought about at the appointed time.
This twofold aspect of the Theocratic kingdom is visible in every part of its
history. It was at once a success and a failure---a victory and a defeat; it
brought salvation to some and destruction to others. This twofold character had
been distinctly set forth in ancient prophecy, as in the remarkable oracle of
Isaiah xlix. The Messiah complains, ‘I have laboured in vain, and spent my
strength for nought and in vain,’ etc. The divine answer is, ‘Thus saith the
Lord, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the
Lord, and my God shall be my strength. And He said, It is a light thing that
thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore
the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles,
that thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of the earth.’ To take only one
other example: we find in the Book of Malachi this twofold aspect of the coming
kingdom, for while ‘the day that cometh’ is to ‘burn as a furnace,’ and to ‘consume
the wicked as stubble,’ ‘unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of
righteousness arise with healing in his wings’ (Mal. iv. 1, 2).
Notwithstanding, therefore, the rejection of the King, and the forfeiture of
the kingdom by the mass of the people, there was yet to be a glorious
consummation of the Theocracy, bringing honour and happiness to all who owned
the authority of the Messiah and proved dutiful and loyal to their King.
Have
we any data by which to ascertain the period of this consummation? At what time
may the kingdom be said to have fully come? Not at the incarnation, for
the proclamation of Jesus ever was, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand.’ Not
at the crucifixion, for the petition of the dying thief was, ‘Lord,
remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom.’ Not at the resurrection, for
after the Lord had risen the disciples were looking for the restoration of the
kingdom to Israel. Not at the ascension, nor on the day of Pentecost,
for long after these events we are told, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that
Christ, ‘after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sate down on the
right hand of God: from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made
his footstool’ (Heb. x. 12, 13). The consummation of the kingdom, therefore, is
not coincident with the ascension, nor with the day of Pentecost. It is true
that the Theocratic King was seated on the throne, ‘on the right hand of the
Majesty on high,’ but He had not yet ‘taken his great power.’ His enemies were
not yet put down, and the full development and consummation of His kingdom
could not be said to have arrived until by a solemn and public judicial act the
Messiah had vindicated the laws of His kingdom and crushed beneath His feet His
apostate and rebellious subjects. There
is one point of time constantly indicated in the New Testament as the
consummation of the kingdom of God. Our Lord declared that there were some
among His disciples who should live to see Him coming in His kingdom.
This coming of the King is of course synonymous with the coming of the kingdom,
and limits the occurrence of the event to the then existing generation. That is
to say, the consummation of the kingdom synchronises with the judgment of
Israel and the destruction of Jerusalem, all being parts of one great
catastrophe. It was at that period that the Son of man was to come in the glory
of His Father, and to sit upon the throne of His glory; to render a reward to
His servants and retribution to His enemies (Matt. xxv. 31). We find these
events uniformly associated together in the New Testament,---the coming of the
King, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of the righteous and the
wicked, the consummation of the kingdom, the end of the age. Thus St. Paul, in
2 Tim. iv. 5, says, ‘I charge thee therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus
Christ, who is about to judge the living and the dead at his appearing and His
kingdom.’ The coming, the judgment, the kingdom, are all
coincident and contemporaneous, and not only so, but also nigh at hand; for
the apostle says, ‘Who is about to judge; . . . who shall soon judge’ [mellontoz krinein].
It
is perfectly clear, then, according to the New Testament, that the
consummation, or winding up, of the Theocratic kingdom took place at the period
of the destruction of Jerusalem and the judgment of Israel. The Theocracy had
served its purpose; the experiment had been tried whether or not the covenant
nation would prove loyal to their King. It had failed; Israel had rejected her
King; and it only remained that the penalties of the violated covenant should
be enforced. We see the result in the ruin of the temple, the destruction of
the city, the effacement of the nation, and the abrogation of the law of Moses,
accompanied with scenes of horror and suffering without a parallel in the
history of the world. That great catastrophe, therefore, marks the conclusion
of the Theocratic kingdom. It had been from the beginning of a strictly
national character---it was the divine Kingship over Israel. It necessarily
terminated, therefore, with the termination of the national existence of
Israel, when the outward and visible symbols of the divine Presence and
Sovereignty passed away; when the house of God, the city of God, and the people
of God were effaced from existence by one desolating and final catastrophe. This
enables us to understand the language of St. Paul when, speaking of the coming
of Christ, he represents that event as marking ‘the end’ [to teloz = h sunteleia tou aiwnoz], ‘when he shall deliver up the
kingdom to God, even the Father’ (1 Cor. xv. 24). This has caused much
perplexity to many theologians and commentators, who have seemed to regard it
as derogatory to the divinity of the Son of God that He should resign His
mediatorial functions and His kingly character, and sink, as it were, into the
position of a private person, becoming a subject instead of a sovereign. But
the embarrassment has arisen from overlooking the nature of the kingdom which
the Son had administered, and which He at length surrenders. It was the Messianic
kingdom: the kingdom over Israel: that peculiar and unique government
exercised over the covenant nation, and administered by the mediatorship of the
Son of God for so many ages. That relation was now dissolved, for the nation
had been judged, the temple destroyed, and all the symbols of the divine
Sovereignty removed. Why should the Theocratic kingdom be continued any longer?
There was nothing to administer. There was no longer a covenant nation, the
covenant was broken, and Israel had ceased to exist as a distinct nationality.
What more natural and proper, therefore, than at such a juncture for the
Mediator to resign His mediatorial functions, and to deliver up the insignia of
government into the hands from which He received them? Ages before that period
the Father had invested the Son with the viceregal functions of the Theocracy.
It had been proclaimed, ‘I have set my King upon my holy hill of Zion: I will
declare the decree; the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have
I begotten thee’ (Ps. ii. 6, 7). The purposes for which the Son had assumed the
administration of the Theocratic government had been effected. The covenant was
dissolved, its violation avenged, the enemies of Christ and of God were
destroyed; the true and faithful servants were rewarded, and the Theocracy came
to an end. This was surely the fitting moment for the Mediator to resign His
charge into the hands of the Father, that is to say, ‘to deliver up the
kingdom.’
But
there is in all this nothing derogatory to the dignity of the Son. On the contrary,
‘He is the Mediator of a better covenant.’ The termination of the Theocratic
kingdom was the inauguration of a new order, on a wider scale, and of a more
enduring nature. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews: ‘the
throne of the Son of God is for ever and ever’ (Heb. i. 8). The priesthood of
the Son of God ‘abideth continually’ (chap. viii. 3); Christ ‘hath now obtained
a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better
covenant’ (chap. viii. 6). The Theocracy, as we have seen, was limited,
exclusive, and national; yet it bore within it the germ of a universal
religion. What Israel lost was gained by the world. Whilst the Theocracy
subsisted there was a favoured nation, and the Gentiles, that is to say all the
world minus the Jews, were outside the kingdom, holding a position of
inferiority, and, like dogs, permitted as a matter of grace to eat the crumbs
that fell from the master’s table. The first coming of Christ did not wholly do
away with this state of things; even the Gospel of the grace of God flowed at
first in the old narrow channel. St. Paul recognises the fact that ‘Jesus
Christ was a minister of the circumcision,’ and our Lord Himself declared, ‘I
am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ For years after the
apostles had received their commission they did not understand it was sending
them to the Gentiles; nor did they at first regard heathen converts as
admissible into the church, except as Jewish proselytes. It is true that after
the conversion of Cornelius the centurion the apostles became convinced of the
larger limits of the Gospel, and St. Paul everywhere proclaimed the breaking
down of the barriers between the Jew and the Gentile; but it is easy to see
that so long as the Theocratic nation existed, and the temple, with its
priesthood and sacrifices and ritual, remained, and the Mosaic law continued,
or seemed to continue, in force, the distinction between Jew and Gentile could
not be obliterated. But the barrier was effectually broken down when law,
temple, city, and nation were swept away together, and the Theocracy was
visibly brought to a final consummation.
That
event was, so to speak, the formal and public declaration that God was no
longer the God of the Jews only, but that He was now the common Father of all
men; that there was no longer a favoured nation and a peculiar people, but that
the grace of God ‘which bringeth salvation to all men was now made
manifest’ (Titus ii. 11); that the local and limited had expanded into the ecumenical
and universal, and that in Christ Jesus ‘all are one’ (Gal. iii. 29). This is
what St. Paul declares to be the meaning of the surrender of the kingdom by the
Son of God into the hands of the Father: thenceforth the exclusive relations of
God to a single nation ceases, and He becomes the common Father of the whole
human family,---
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