Price of the Kingdom
The New Testament of the Bible is situated in the Roman Empire. A person could receive Roman citizenship in three ways. The first method is being born in the right place, like Paul. The second method is to serve twenty-five years as a soldier in the army, and the third method is by paying a lot of money (Acts 22:28). The price to become a citizen of the Roman Empire was very high, and most Israelites couldn’t afford it. This civil right was there only for a few. Before we study what the Kingdom of God is, in this chapter, we'll look at how much this Kingdom costs. Like Roman citizenship, did we have to do things to get into this Kingdom, and did anyone have to pay anything to establish it?
God's Love for Us
In chapter 1, we learned that Adam and Eve sinned, and as a result, man came under the curse, and man was unable to have a living relationship with God. If God had decided to show no mercy to man and cast him off forever, then there was no turning back, and man remained under the curse. Man made a mistake, and God doesn't owe it to us to show mercy and grace. Yet there is a reason why God decided to intervene. Not because man was so good and God owed us things but because God is good and loves people. God loves everyone, and God's love was there before you knew God.
We love Him because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
God desires to show mercy and restore the relationship with man out of love for us. God goes very far in His love for us. No matter what we do on earth, God's love remains, and God continues to love us. God longs for people to choose Him and to enter into a relationship with Him. God will do anything for that.
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
No man or creature can stand between the love of God and you. However, it is possible to put asunder between the love of human beings. Unfortunately, because of gossip, envy, jealousy, or anger, people value each other less and consequently love each other less. Other people can spread gossip that becomes believable, so the love between people chills. With God, this isn't possible. No one can cause God's love for you to fade away. Everyone who has come to faith loves God because God loved them first. God created us to have a relationship with Him, and after Adam and Eve sinned, God was very eager to restore the relationship with man so that every person could walk with Him.
The Problem
Assuming God loves us, why did Adam and Eve have to leave the garden? Why couldn't God ignore this event? This is because, besides being a loving God, God is also a just God. God can't help but be a just God; it is His most profound being. People often twist justice and overlook things. If a friend steals a loaf of bread from the baker, it feels wrong to snitch on your friend while the baker is left with the damage. Maybe you think: oh well, it's just a two-dollar loaf of bread. The baker will survive. God doesn't think like that. God sees that there has been injustice and that the baker has suffered unjust damage. In addition, God regards every sin we do as a sin against Him. Because of the wrong things we do on earth, we become increasingly profoundly indebted to God. God wants justification for these deeds so that He will judge righteously. This also applied to Adam and Eve, and God couldn't ignore this. Adam and Eve had acted wrongly, and as a result, justice had to be done, and they were put out of the garden and out of the presence of God.
He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He. (Deuteronomy 32:4)
People now face a big problem. We all made mistakes and sinned, and at the same time, God can't ignore sin. God loves us but can't go against His righteousness.
After the summer vacation ended when I went to the fourth grade of high school, I first came to the math teacher's class. The teacher introduced himself and told me he wanted everyone to pass math. He said he would try to explain and help us get good grades. Then he said, "I want everyone to pass and get good grades. Yet, I have no problem giving an F if someone fails the test. I favor all of you, but I have no trouble passing an F as a grade.' This is also how we can see the righteousness of God. God wants a living relationship with everyone and loves everyone, yet God remains righteous and gives the judgment that someone deserves. The difficulty is that everyone deserves the judgment, and no one can live with God.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (…). (Romans 3:23)
Solution
Despite God's righteousness, He still loved people. From the beginning, God had thought of a plan by which He could be both just and merciful so He could be in His right and still walk with man. Out of love for us, He devised a plan to restore everything singlehandedly. God knew that man couldn't do this, as our propensity to do bad things continued. Therefore, He knew that the solution had to come from Him. God knew there was one way to save man from the curse. There was one way to ransom man from all the guilt he did. There was one way to restore man as God intended. God Himself had to take action.
Whom (Jesus) God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed. (Romans 3:25)
Man deserves punishment and the wrath of God. Yet, God has made a decision. God appointed Jesus Christ as the means of reconciliation (restoration) of man's relationship with God. When a person believes in the Lord Jesus, that person no longer has to fear the righteousness and wrath of God but has been made righteous by the Lord Jesus. God overlooks the sins we have committed while He remains righteous. Someone has been punished for sin, thereby erasing the guilt. Who is the Lord Jesus? And why is He appointed as the means of reconciliation?
Jesus: the Price of the Kingdom
The Lord Jesus paid the price of the Kingdom through His reconciliation. Everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus may come and work in this Kingdom. In this section, we look at who the Lord Jesus is and what He did to reconcile us to God the Father.
The New Testament tells us about the Lord Jesus. It begins with the four gospels, which contain the stories and sermons of the Lord Jesus, and ends with the various letters of the apostles who saw Jesus. Before the Lord Jesus came to earth, He was God. Jesus was the One who formed us from the dust of the earth and breathed life into us (1 John 1:1-3 and Colossians 1:15-16). Jesus was not God alone because, in addition to Him, there are two other personalities: God the Father and the Holy Spirit. These three personalities make up one God: the Trinity. God decided to restore the relationship with man, which cost Him a high price. One of the Trinity, Jesus, decided to go to earth to live as a human being.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:5-7, NAS)
The Lord Jesus had come to earth, and we read about how this happened in the book of Luke, where a woman who was still a virgin, Mary, received a special message from an angel.
Then the angel said to her: Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His Kingdom there will be no end. (Luke 1:30-33)
Jesus came out of a woman's womb. The Holy Spirit provided for the conception of Mary (the creative work of God brought about this), and then Jesus went through the same life as a normal human being. He grew in the womb, was born (Luke 2:6-7), and grew up as an infant, toddler, child, teenager, and young adult until He became an adult with a job (Mark 6:3). The Lord Jesus knows precisely what human life is like and what temptations and concerns a person experiences. Only the Lord Jesus did something that all other people couldn't do, namely, not to sin. While the Lord Jesus walked around on earth, He didn't do anything wrong (Hebrews 4:15). He was tempted on earth but didn't comply. The Lord Jesus decided not to sin and obeyed God the Father. Around the age of thirty, Jesus began proclaiming God's Kingdom, calling people to repent and saying that the Kingdom of heaven had come near (Matthew 4:17). As He did this for three years, one miracle after another happened: people got healed and set free and unique events happened.
But it didn't stop at this point. Jesus is also the Son of God, and He came to earth to proclaim that only through Him are people reconciled to God the Father. In one of His sermons, He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through Me" (John 14:6). Since all man is evil, no one can reach God in heaven by his own power, and therefore the Lord Jesus is our only way to get to God. The path to God has been cleared through Jesus, and there is only one way to get there: Jesus Christ.
God the Father and Jesus Christ paid a high price for that path. This couldn't be accomplished unless Jesus lived an earthly life in which He didn't sin and then was crucified on the cross. The cross was one of the most horrifying instruments of torture used in the Roman Empire for notorious criminals.
The Lord Jesus knew in advance what awaited Him. After He celebrated Passover with His disciples, He went to Gethsemane to pray to God. While praying, Jesus was anxious and preferred to "let the cup pass by. Luke records that He was sweating blood because of fear and agony (Luke 22:44). He also prayed to God, "Father, if You will, take this cup away from Me; but let not My will, but Yours be done" (Luke 22:42). Then He was arrested, and His followers fled from Him. He was alone in His most difficult time and was led to Pilate, where He was falsely accused. While Jesus hadn't done anything wrong, He was sentenced to flogging and death on the cross. Roman soldiers executed the flogging, and they are known for brutality. The Roman flogging was extra painful, and their whip was designed to pull a lot of skin from the victim. There were stretch marks all over Jesus' body, and He had bled heavily. Jesus no longer looked like a human being (Isaiah 52:14). Without medical help, these floggings could turn deadly within a few days. After He was flogged, Jesus had to carry His cross to a hill outside Jerusalem. On His back, full of stretch marks and blood, the crossbar of the cross was placed, and He walked to the hill of Calvary. He was so beaten up that He couldn't carry the cross by His strength, at which point Simon of Cyrene took over the cross and followed Jesus to Calvary (Luke 23:26). Devastated and with broken skin, Jesus was nailed to the cross, after which the cross was hoisted upright. Jesus, the Son of God, hung on a cross outside Jerusalem. The Roman statesman Cicero described crucifixion as "the most cruel and repulsive capital punishment I know. Because Jesus' arms were spread out and He didn't have proper support for His feet, He hung bent over on the cross, unable to breathe. With every gasp of air, He had to raise His body, which caused tremendous pain to all His muscles and joints. Finally, the Lord Jesus was so tired that He couldn't continue doing that, so He probably suffocated. And then to realize that at any moment, the Lord Jesus could have called twelve legions of angels to save Him from the cross (Matthew 26:53), but He decided to avoid doing so out of love for us so that He could restore our relationship with man.
It wasn't cheap for God to redeem us. He sent His only Son into the world to break the power of sin and bear sin for our place. Because of this, no person has to be lost, and everyone may return to God by believing in the Lord Jesus. Everyone can be restored.
After the Lord Jesus died on the cross, he was laid in a tomb, and a large stone was rolled in front of the entrance (Matthew 27:60). The tomb was sealed, and guards kept watch so that no one could steal the body. Jesus lived His life on earth from the manger to the grave and, therefore, experienced everything a human can experience without sinning.
Because the Lord Jesus never sinned, death couldn't take hold of Him. Death is the wages of sin (Romans 6:23), and since Jesus never sinned, death couldn't take hold of Him. This allowed the Lord Jesus to rise from the dead with the power of God's Spirit! Then Jesus showed Himself to several people, including Mary, the disciples, and the two disciples traveling to the village of Emmaus, and they saw that He was alive. After this, the Lord Jesus ascended into the clouds and took His seat at the right hand of God the Father, where He still resides to this day.
Through the love of Jesus, the way to God the Father is free, and man can be restored from all that was taken away by the Fall. Man can return from curse to blessing. The following Bible texts show that Jesus and God did this out of love for us and that God was not obliged to intervene.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
This is My (Jesus) commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. (John 15:12-14)
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. (1 John 3:1)
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
Our Price for the Kingdom
Faith and Obedience
The price of the Kingdom of God is very expensive, and Lord Jesus paid it. How can a person be transferred into the Kingdom of God? Do we have to do something about that, or does everyone automatically enter the Kingdom?
God has invited everyone to come into the Kingdom. God wants no one to be lost but for everyone to be converted and come into the Kingdom. (2 Peter 3:9).
The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John; since that time the gospel of the Kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. (Luke 16:16, NAS)
Imagine this: two close friends want to bless you with a beautiful trip of thirty days on a luxury cruise ship. They paid for everything and handed you the tickets with additional travel money, allowing you to do everything and eat out every day. This trip was costly but has already been paid for. It costs you nothing to get on board. You only have to do three things to join: accept the tickets, pack suitcases, and get to the ship on time. Your friends have already taken care of the rest.
The above analogy is akin to the Kingdom of God. The Lord Jesus paid the price on the cross of Calvary. He makes sure that everyone can enter the Kingdom. All you have to do is believe that the Lord Jesus paid the price for you and keep His commandments.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:30-31)
When a person loves God and fellow man, that person understands what it takes to enter the Kingdom of God.
Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? (James 2:5)
In this chapter and throughout the book, I do not want to give minimal terms for being saved or getting into the Kingdom. I place this in God's hands. Knowing that only faith in the Lord Jesus can ensure we enter and walk in the Kingdom is essential. Paul calls this "the law of faith." It doesn’t come by our works but by the grace of Christ.
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. (Romans 3:28)
Simultaneously, a logical consequence of our faith in Jesus should be that we love those around us, love God, and do what God asks of us. We obey His commandments out of our love for God, not out of obligation or because we are slaves, but because God has touched our hearts, and we no longer desire sin.
He who says: I know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked. (1 John 2:4-6)
It is supposed to be an automatic process that a child of God progressively becomes more like Jesus. If we grow more like Jesus, we no longer have to keep the law and commandments of Moses out of obligation. It is an automatic principle. The more we become like Jesus, the more we automatically keep the laws and commandments. The more the Holy Spirit guides us, the more sacred we live. We can compare this to learning English. Through our parent(s), in elementary and high school, we learn to speak English. It starts with sounds, then we form words, and then we form sentences and stories. If I want to tell a story, I no longer have to think about how to pronounce the 'a' again. I know it. When I say "apple," I automatically know what sounds to produce. I no longer have to think about using my tongue and mouth. I have learned it and can apply it automatically. We automatically keep the law if we are like the Lord Jesus and listen to the Holy Spirit. We do not have to think about what is and is not allowed; we just do the right thing. We have learned it from the Holy Spirit, and sin is no longer a joyful or enjoyable experience for us. We are dead to sin and have been made righteous by the Lord Jesus. We will come back to this later in the book. The text below clearly shows that if we emulate and conform to Jesus, we keep all the law's commandments instinctively.
Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-20)
To Be Born Again
Faith is the primary condition for entering the Kingdom of God. Yet there are more instructions in the Bible for getting into the Kingdom and functioning better in that Kingdom.
Jesus answered and said to him: Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. (...) Jesus answered: Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. (John 3:3-5)
Jesus says that a person must be born again to see and enter the Kingdom of God. A synonym for this is rebirth. Being born again sounds strange because being born happens once, doesn't it? The one who conversed with Jesus had no understanding of this either. Yet, this is an essential condition for entering the Kingdom.
It is important to remember that a human consists of three parts: the body, the soul, and the spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). The physical body is our appearance on earth and allows us to move and be visible to people. The body is temporary, and after several years, it returns to the earth and becomes dust again. In the body, we find the soul and spirit. After God made Adam, there was a corpse on the earth. Then, God breathed His breath of life into Adam so that Adam could live.
(…) and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
Then Adam was alive and able to move his body and could think of things. God breathed a spirit into Adam, and Adam was given a soul. The soul is the human side of our lives. It contains our thoughts, characters, personalities, emotions, and will. Our environment shapes the soul. If a person is often bullied in childhood, this can harm his soul. The mind forms our spiritual personality. Our spirit allows us to connect with God and the spiritual world and walk in the Holy Spirit's gifts and fruits.
In Chapter 1, we learn that Adam died because of the Fall. His body didn't die immediately, but his spirit did. This doesn't imply that Adam no longer had a spirit. It means that Adam's spirit was no longer functional in the realm of the spirit. His connection and union with God were gone, and as a result, Adam's spirit was dead. Just as television cannot do anything if it is not plugged in, the same way Adam's spirit could no longer do anything.
When a person is born, he is a living being. He can breathe, eat, drink, cry and move. However, he is still incomplete. The spirit remains inactivated; the connection with the Heavenly Father is missing. This spirit and the connection with God come alive while being born again. This means that he lives eternally spiritually and spends eternity with God. Those who aren't born again do live eternally but don't spend eternity with God; instead, they live forever separated from God. Peter explains the essential conditions for being born again.
Then Peter said to them: Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38)
Peter lists three things to be born again. The first step is repentance. A Christian changes his thoughts and actions and starts serving the living God. The second step is baptism. In heaven, some have not been baptized (Luke 23:43). Yet adult water baptism is an essential part of being born again. The third step is the filling or baptism with the Holy Spirit. These parts need to be powerfully used in the Kingdom of God. The Lord Jesus also mentioned the last two steps to enter the Kingdom.
Jesus answered: Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:5)
The water refers to the baptism in water, and the Spirit refers to the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Even though this is a beautiful topic, this book doesn't elaborate on it. We move on to the following conditions.
Righteousness
It is essential to fulfill God's will to enter the Kingdom of God. We split this condition in two. First, we look at what we should and shouldn’t do. All these Bible texts speak of the Kingdom of God and were spoken by Jesus and Paul.
Not everyone who says to Me: Lord, Lord, shall enter the Kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. (Matthew 7:21)
Those who practice the Father's will shall enter the Kingdom. Some people pretend to be Christian. For appearances' sake, they address the Lord Jesus as Lord, but actually, they are false Christians and false prophets. Only those who love God and do what He says are the true children of God and may enter the future Kingdom.
But Jesus said: Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the Kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 19:14)
Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it. (Mark 10:15)
Jesus says we must become like children. The world is about becoming mature and independent. You did well if you could pay for everything and didn't need anyone to care for you. Jesus says that it is precisely children who receive the Kingdom. In a proper family situation, children depend on their parents and must trust that their parents will take good care of them. Children trust their parents will protect them even if they find themselves in new situations. Nothing is more admirable than to be in the trusted hands of mom or dad. Another characteristic of children is that they ask their parents for objects. "I would like a PlayStation for my birthday," or "Can I have a horse for Christmas? " Some questions are unrealistic. The parents can't afford it or know it's not suitable for the child. Still, we can and should learn a lot from children because they are closer to the Kingdom of God than the average adult. For example, children believe everything their parents say, and if a parent has ever made a promise, the child always reminds his parents of it. These are traits that adults may learn in their dealings with God. We may always remind God of His promises to us, trust Him in everything, and believe everything the Bible says.
Now, we will look at the things we shouldn't do. The Holy Spirit helps us resist the temptations of sin and the devil, and Jesus has made us righteous by His blood. Nevertheless, we need to demonstrate our righteousness through our actions and practices. The following Bible text is about the future Kingdom.
(…) the Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. (Matthew 13:41-43)
Those who act unrighteous will be gathered at the end of time and cast into the furnace of fire. Those who act righteous will shine like the sun in the future Kingdom. It is important to be righteous.
No, you yourselves do wrong and cheat, and you do these things to your brethren! Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the Kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:8-10)
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21)
In the two texts cited above, Paul listed several people and sins that won't enter the future Kingdom. It is essential to add that Paul wrote this to believers, not non-believers. Later in this book, we will return to righteousness and how to act.
And another also said: Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house. But Jesus said to him: No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God. (Luke 9:61-62) (See also Luke 14:33.)
Somebody wanted to become a follower of the Lord Jesus but requested to say goodbye to his housemates. Becoming a follower of Jesus doesn't mean that you can't have contact with people who don't believe in Jesus. On the contrary, having good contact with your family members and friends is vital, provided they don't belittle you and negatively influence you. For example, think of friends who constantly offer you drugs. Putting his hand on the plow is a metaphor that means someone is at work in the Kingdom of God. Just as a farmer plow and must look forward with concentration to make straight lines, a follower of Jesus must also look forward and focus on the Lord Jesus. The farmer doesn't look backward because then his lines will run crooked. Nor can a follower of Jesus look backward because it can cause him to become spiritually crooked and lose faith. When we think of things behind us, we can also think of the sins we used to do, such as theft, fornication, lying, cheating, cursing, or temper tantrums. A follower must always look ahead and keep his eyes fixed on Jesus. Otherwise, according to Lord Jesus, he is unfit for the Kingdom.
(…) but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:14)
Summary
In this chapter, we learned that God still loves man. Even though man has sinned against God, God's love remains. The problem is that God cannot overlook sins, so man must still be punished. God knew that man would be lost forever if He didn't intervene. That is why the Lord Jesus, part of the Trinity, decided to come to earth to die for humanity. This makes it possible again to walk with God and be restored as human beings. The Lord Jesus paid our "ticket," and we can enter the Kingdom through faith and obedience. We receive a good heart that no longer desires sin because we love Jesus, and the Holy Spirit dwells in us. Because of this, we have been made righteous by Jesus and live a righteous life on earth.