Jerry C. Brewer
An eternal entity, the kingdom of God has a nature that transcends things temporal. Its laws, ideals, subjects, and mission are not earthly, but heavenly. Jesus made that pronouncement at his trial before Pilate. “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence” (John 18:36). In The Sermon On The Mount and The Civil State, Foy E. Wallace, Jr. says Jesus’ statement was one of contrast between an earthly kingdom and a heavenly one.
The church is a spiritual order which is not subject to alteration, a kingdom which cannot be moved, and the faith which cannot be changed… The sphere of the kingdom of Christ is the domain of the truth. The sphere of the earthly kingdom is the civil and social order….So that the statement of Jesus Christ to Governor Pilate in the words, ‘my kingdom is not of this world,’ was declarative only of the contrast in the nature of the imperial kingdom which Pilate represented and the spiritual kingdom which Christ had come to establish. The one was of that world—Jesus said ‘this world,’ the world of Caesar, of Pilate, the Roman world—the other was not to be of it, not a revolution in the Roman empire out of which a kingdom like it would emerge, but a kingdom of another kind and another realm, of heaven and from heaven (pp. 149-151).
Jesus contrasted his kingdom with that of the kingdoms of men. Theirs wax old and pass away. Witness the empires of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia and Rome. But the kingdom of God is universal in scope and eternal in nature, (Psa. 145:13; Isaiah 9:6-7). Having an eternal nature, the kingdom’s mission is different from the kingdoms of men. It is neither social, political nor racial. Social engineering is not the province of the kingdom of God. Jesus didn’t give his life for racially balanced congressional districts. He didn’t die to provide every adult a minimum wage, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps, the right to vote, Medicare, social security, job security, affirmative action, human rights or free eyeglasses.
Those issues have been appropriated by the religious world—including “mainline churches of Christ” with their “ministries”—in the same fashion that the Medieval church ruled in the affairs of kings. Contemporary religions have abandoned any pretense of the divine mission of the church and today usurp those prerogatives rightly belonging to the civil government.
The “Social Gospel” focuses on the temporal things of life while omitting the weightier matters of the terms of pardon, eternal salvation, right moral living, and the worship of God in spirit and in truth. The Social Gospel is concerned with social security than eternal security and social welfare than spiritual warfare. Their humanistic priorities are gerrymandering congressional districts rather than taking the soul saving gospel to a lost world, and psychoanalysis instead of soul-searching sermons. Its adherents have exchanged the Bread of life for temporal loaves and fishes, the Water of Life for broken cisterns of humanistic philosophy and eternal glory for thirty pieces of silver, paid at minimum wage. Its agenda is social and civil from top to bottom and its structure rests on the shifting sands of social mores rather than the Rock of salvation.
There is a parallel usurpation of authority in the religious and civil realms between the Medieval church which controlled kings who ruled by “divine right” and the Protestant usurpation of authority in the American Republic. While Catholicism used rulers to impose its will on the masses, Protestantism has adopted the humanistic philosophy of the social engineers of the civil government to such a degree that the distinction between sociology and religion is nonexistent.
Protestants are in the forefront of political movements that rightly belong to the government, in many cases working hand in hand with government agencies to promote their Social Gospel. The ancient doctrines of the Virgin Birth of Christ, the inspiration of the Bible and the existence and deity of One God are looked upon by most Protestant churches as relics of an ignorant and uninformed past. The inspiration of the scriptures was officially rejected by the Presbyterians in 1967 when they resolved that the scriptures “are not the inerrant utterance of God to man” and that conclusion is a nigh universal belief in modern Protestantism.
But the kingdom of God—the church which Christ established on the day of Pentecost in Acts two—is an eternal entity containing all of the world’s redeemed. It is that which Christ saves and for which He will return at the last day (Eph. 5:23-27). It is His instrument upon the earth to carry the soul saving Gospel to the world’s lost (Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15-16). Its destiny is not a better life here—though life here is made better by it—but glory with the Father in eternity. To be in Christ is to be in His church, or kingdom, and to enjoy the blessings of salvation from past sins and in remaining faithful to Him to have the hope of eternal life to come (Rev. 2:10).
The modern denominational industry disparages the church which Jesus purchased with His own precious blood (Acts 20:28) and for which He will return (Eph. 5:23-27). Most modern religionists say the church is unimportant. How can one say that about the greatest institution upon earth for which Jesus died? They will tell their hearers that salvation comes without being in Christ’s church. In other words, one is told to “get saved”—a process they usually define that is contrary to New Testament teaching—and then to “join the church of your choice,” as though Jesus had neither church nor choice.
Paul wrote that,
[God] hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all …he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence (Eph. 1:22-23; Col. 1:18).
The church is defined above as the body of Christ over which He is the head and that body is, “the fulness of of him that filleth all in all.” It is impossible to be “in Christ” without being in His body, and since He is the head of the body, one who is not in the body is not connected to its head. The church, or kingdom, is where God has located salvation and unless one is in the church, he is lost.
The idea that one is first saved by some mystical or mystified, unintelligible or intangible process, and afterwards ‘joins some church,’ is a common religious delusion. Yet there is no truth more plainly emphasized in the Bible than the fact that the process of being saved is the process of entering the church (Acts 2:47). First, it is affirmed in Acts 4:12 that salvation is in Christ. Then, to have salvation, one must get into Christ. But Paul, by analogy, in Ephesians 5:30, teaches that as husband and wife are one, so Christ and the church are one. ‘I speak concerning Christ and the church,’ he said. Christ and the church being one, how can one be in Christ and out of the church? Second, Paul makes the fact that Christ is ‘the Saviour of the body’ (Eph. 5:23) the ground of his exhortation to the Ephesians concerning the church as the bride of Christ (verse 25). He washed it and sanctified it; cleansed it and saved it; purchased it with His blood and redeemed it; reconciles us to God in it and adds all the saved to it. Therefore, out of the church there is no cleansing, no blood, no redemption, no reconciliation to God, no salvation. Third, the relation between Christ and the church is the same as that which exists between God and Christ. Christ is the ‘fulness’ of God (Col. 1:9), and the church is the ‘fulness’ of Christ (Eph. 1:23). Therefore, no man can come to Christ and ignore the church for the same reason that no man can come to God and ignore Christ (Foy E. Wallace, Jr., “Christ And The Church,” The Present Truth, Foy E. Wallace, Jr. Publications, Ft. Worth, 1977, pp. 26-27).
The mantra of denominations is that, “The church doesn’t save” and is therefore unnecessary to salvation. In one sense they are right. Christ is the Saviour, but they refuse to understand that it is the church which constitutes the saved. “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body” (Eph. 5:23). The church is that which Christ saves and one cannot be saved outside of it. One may as well argue that Noah could have been saved outside the ark as to say one can be saved outside of the church. It is true that Christ does not save in denominations, but to be saved one must be in His church. In no place does the Bible teach that salvation comes first, then at some later time one “joins” a church. Look again at the church as described in Acts two. When the three thousand obeyed the gospel by repenting and being baptized into Jesus Christ, He added them to His church. That which saves one—obedience to the gospel—is also that which places one in Christ, or in His church. (Acts 2:41-47).
We learn from the New Testament that in order to have the blessings of salvation in Christ, we must believe in him (John 8:24), repent of our sins (Luke 13:3; Acts 2:38), confess our faith in Him (Acts 10:32-33; Rom. 10:10; Acts 8:37), and be baptized into Him for the remission of sins (Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38) where His blood cleanses us from all past sins. Having done that, one is then in Christ and, consequently, in His church which is the kingdom of God.
