KINGDOM BIBLE STUDIES 

"Teaching the things concerning the kingdom of God..."

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Part 33

THE PRINCIPLES OF THE KINGDOM

(continued) 

            Matthew 5:9 gives us the seventh principle of the Kingdom of God.  “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the sons of God.”  It is interesting to note that seven is the number of spiritual perfection.  Peace is the hallmark of the glorious reign of the Kingdom of God in the heavenlies and in the earthlies.  The seventh day is the sabbath, and the sabbath pictures the rest or peace of God.  This principle speaks, therefore, of the realm of KINGDOM PEACE.  The peacemakers are called the sons of God; the activity of the peacemakers springs from their sonship to God.  Peacemaking is an important characteristic in the lives of God’s sons, as it sets them apart for manifestation of the nature of God in the earth. 

            Jesus Christ, the firstborn Son of God, is the Prince of Peace. Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, resides within His elect, the body of Christ.  Can we not see by this that with Christ in our lives God has given us the role of peacemakers in this world?  Has it occurred to you what it is a peacemaker does?  A peacemaker is expected to MAKE PEACE!  If you fulfill what Jesus said about peacemakers, you will be blessed indeed.  You will be called the sons of God!  The nature of your Father will be recognized in your life, and acknowledged.  In order to be a peacemaker you must become involved in legitimate conflicts.  In this world, if you truly want to be blessed in the Kingdom dimension of the term, you have to encounter crises and conflicts and get involved in them so that you can change the conflict into a peaceful situation.  You can do it even now, for the spirit of sonship is already within you!  If you are not willing to become a peacemaker in the nitty-gritty of everyday life, don’t think that in some future blaze of glory you will suddenly become qualified to be a peacemaker on behalf of nations and principalities and powers.  Many have no desire to become involved in conflict and problems.  We would just as soon stay at home, laid back in our Lazy Boy recliner, with a glass of iced tea, watching our favorite television program, and say, “Thank you, Lord, for that wonderful word you gave me, that you will make a son of God and a peacemaker out of me.  I feel so peaceful here!  May everyone know this deep peace that I have come into.”

            Comfort does not make peace.  The peace that we experience in the absence of conflict is not Kingdom peace.  Anybody can have peace when all is going well and there are no cross-currents, opposition, trouble, or conflict.  Learn this and you will know a great truth: Peace is more than the absence of war.  The peace of God is unaffected by any external conditions.  If your peace flees in the face of trouble and calamity, what you have is not peace — it is merely the calm between storms.  Because you are not being blessed by being a peacemaker, but are satisfied with a sense of comfort which you perceive to be peace, you speak peace but are totally uninvolved in those situations which prove peace and demand a peacemaker.  You don’t want to be disturbed.  You have no desire to be challenged.  You feel inadequate to attempt anything so demanding.  You say, “I can’t do it!”  No, you can’t.  No one can!  But there is One in the midst of us, in our very midst — within — who has already been conditioned to rise to the occasion and accomplish the task.  It is Christ who is our life.  The Christ within is the Prince of Peace!  You must step forth in your weakness, for His strength is made perfect in weakness; that is, His ability is perfectly and wholly revealed out of your human inability.  Christ will arise in you and minister out of you, and display His power and victory through you.  Oh, yes!  You will be blessed as a peacemaker and all men will rise up and call you the son of God!

            While writing on this blessed subject of the principles of the Kingdom of God I have quoted the inspiring words of brother Paul Mueller on numerous occasions.  I cannot do better than quote him again at this point.  “Christ also is The Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6).  According to Strong’s concordance, a prince is a head person of any rank or class.  Therefore, Christ is the Prince or the Head of a class who are all sons of God.  Everyone of them are peacemakers.  Like their Head or Prince, each one in that chosen body has a peaceful nature.  And each of them is called to bring the whole universe into a peaceful state.  Divine peace, order and harmony are attributes now lacking in the world.  Man, through all his own carnal, limited efforts, could never bring true peace, order and harmony to the world.  But what man can never do, our God is doing by the power of the fullness of Christ and His kingdom.  There is no doubt whatsoever that true and lasting peace shall prevail in all the earth and in the whole universe, for ‘the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this’ (Isa. 9:7).

            “The Hebrew word ‘shalom’ is the word that is translated peace when the prophet says that Christ is the Prince of Peace.  But the Hebrew word means much more than the English word, ‘peace,’ would imply.  The word ‘shalom’ also means to be safe, well and happy.  It means that every person who comes into the kingdom or dominion of Christ will also be healthy and prosperous, and will live on this earth in peace (Lk. 2:14).  By the anointed power and divine leadership of the sons of God, who will be moving in the Spirit and functioning at their Father’s direction in this world, every person of every nation shall enjoy the many blessings implied in the word shalom.  The sons of God are peacemakers, just like their Prince or Head, for they bring everything around them into a peaceful state.  In Father’s time, He shall raise us up to proclaim peace to all.  Yea, our message shall be more than peace, for we shall decree ‘SHALOM’ and all that it means to all mankind.  And if this sounds like too much of a task for us to envision, much less fulfill, we should remember that ‘the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.’  That which is impossible with man is always possible with God!

            “To become peacemakers, we must have the peace of God inworked within us.  The anointed prophet said, ‘Lord, you will ordain peace (God’s favor and blessings, temporal and spiritual) for us, for you have also wrought in us and for us all our works’ (Isa. 26:12, Amp.).  In order for us to have peace and be peacemakers, the Lord must establish His peace within us.  And it should give us great peace just to know that He is doing it!  All the work necessary to make us what we must be in His kingdom is the Lord’s work.  He has wrought all our works in us and for us.  All the work necessary to make us Melchizedek kings and priests unto God is the Lord’s work.  And He is doing it within us for His glory”   — end quote.

            The word that Jesus used for “peace” reached to the very heart of what He meant when He spoke of the “peacemakers” who are the sons of God.  This important term involves harmony not merely with man, but especially harmony with God.  Let us remember that in all of Jesus’ teaching, the paramount issue was man’s relationship with God.  Man’s relationship with his fellow man always took a secondary place.  He said that we must love God first, and then love our neighbor as ourself.  We can only manifest to men what we have first of all experienced and appropriated in our relationship with the Father.  Every teaching of Jesus was God-centered first.  It cannot be otherwise!  And thus it is in relationship to peacemaking — we, and all creation, must first be brought into harmony with our heavenly Father before peace can reign between men and nations on the earth.

            The word peace is used approximately 90 times in the New Testament, and in the vast majority of cases it is used in reference to harmony with God.  It has become clear to me that this principle of the Kingdom is related primarily to harmony with God.  “Blessed are the peacemakers” — those who have within themselves entered into peace with God, and have launched upon a mission to bring all men into that same harmony with God.  When men can be brought into harmony with the Father, concern about their relationship with one another becomes unnecessary, for the peace of God out of the heavenly realm flows into them and through them, bringing peace on earth, goodwill to men!

            Yes, our Lord Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace.  He came to bring peace.  Peace is alien to earth.  When sin entered, peace fled.  The moment that sin entered man removed himself from harmony with God, and peace fled.  Adam and Eve themselves were at strife with God and each other, so that their firstborn son had the spirit of the devil and was a murderer from the beginning.  He slew his own brother.  The second Man, the last Adam, was the Lord from heaven.  When He was once rejected, in the days of His flesh, His disciples, with indignation, besought Him to command fire to come down from heaven and destroy those wicked people.  His answer comes down to us through the ages: “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.  For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Lk. 9:55-56).  The firstborn son of Adam was a murderer, but the firstborn Son of God was a Saviour.  One was the peacebreaker shedding his brother’s blood, the other was the peacemaker shedding His own blood that He might make peace with God.  Yet the Christ had power to destroy men’s lives, if He had the will.  When He stood there with the cross in full view, He said to His persecutors that it was in His power to call twelve legions of angels.  If that heavenly host which hovered about that Son could have once made itself manifest, oh, how they would have swept that doomed city, that accursed conclave of false priests, and those wretched, blind and filthy-minded heathen soldiers!  How the breath of those heavenly angels could have swept the life out of them and swept them down into hell and the grave.  But that is not God’s way in redemption.  That is not the mission of the Son of God nor of the sons of God.

            “For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by Him and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.  And, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to RECONCILE ALL THINGS UNTO HIMSELF, by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.  And you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled” (Col. 1:16-17,20-21).  “And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to US the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given unto US the word of reconciliation.  Now then we are ambassadors for Christ (the representatives of His Kingdom), as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (II Cor. 5:18-20).

            Here we see the great truth that reconciliation is first and foremost unto God.  And it is utterly impossible for any man or any creature on earth or in heaven to exclude himself from this most precious provision — the reconciliation of all unto God.  Before the reader can shut himself, or any other man or being out from the application of this grace, he must prove that he does not belong to earth, for all things in earth are reconciled; he must prove that he does not belong to heaven, for all things in the heavens are reconciled; he must prove that he does not belong to the “all things” that are created, because all created things are reconciled; and since he has no identification with any of the all things created, the all things in earth, and the all things in heaven, therefore he is excluded from being reconciled!  This he cannot do.  Every foot of this earth and every man upon this earth belongs to Christ, for the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof: the world, and they that dwell therein.  On that wonderful day when God created “all things” in earth and in heaven He also said, “Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness.”  God made every man and Christ tasted death for every man, and therefore every foot of the earth and every man on the earth belongs to Christ my Lord, first by right of creation, and second by right of redemption.

            Far too many Christians testify like this: “Thank God I’m saved, sanctified, and baptized in heaven’s sweet Holy Ghost — but it’s too bad for the rest of you people.  Thank God He laid His hand on me, so I believed and am on my way to heaven — but it is going to be hell for the rest of you.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus, and take me out of this sin-cursed world, and let it go to the devil.”  Few people, even if they had the authority, would condemn anyone, even their worst enemy, to a burning, scorching, tormenting, eternal hell.  Yet they expect God to do it!  Some, as we have spoken of the good consolation and everlasting hope we have for all men, have said, wistfully, “I wish it were true.”  But sadly they confessed that their own sense of hope and mercy obviously exceeded that of God’s.  Other folk would never be satisfied for God to judge the world in a way that would bring the world back to Himself.  Their attitude is, if men have spurned God’s love, if they have lived in sin, if they have done wickedly, if they have drawn their last breath blaspheming His name, or even if they have carelessly neglected so great a salvation, then let them burn in hell — they deserve it!  And these so-called followers of the Lamb of God who died to take away the SIN OF THE WORLD would personally join in shoveling the coal and seeing to it that they get everything they deserve — and perhaps a little bit more!  I have no hesitation whatever in saying that people who hold that attitude are not Christians at all.  They are devils.

            Reconciliation brings harmony and peace.  “And having made peace by the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself.”  “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.”  The distinguishing characteristic of a son of God is that he is a peacemaker above all things.  How are we to be peacemakers?  We are peacemakers, first of all, by being at peace with God.  We cannot make peace; we cannot assist in ministering God’s peace, unless we are ourselves at peace.  If I am to be an ambassador for the Kingdom of God, which is the Kingdom of Peace, I must surely be at peace with God.  I must not be striving with God about anything, or harboring any accusation against God’s purpose, or resisting in any way God’s will in my life.  If the ministry of reconciliation (peacemaking) is my ministry, then I must possess the peace of God that passes all understanding.  Many Christians are not at peace.  They ought to be but they are not.  They talk about being justified by faith and having peace with God, but they have no such thing.  Every time God sends something into their life that is hard and seems adverse, they immediately cry out, “God, why did you allow this to happen to me!”  Some are at controversy with God because they are not obedient.  All within has not been stilled, reconciled, made peaceful.  All within has not been subdued.  You may be God’s child and yet be at controversy with your Father.  Some who now read these lines are children of God but you are at controversy with the Holy Spirit of Truth over the message of the reconciliation of all men to God!  My message to you today is: BE YE RECONCILED TO GOD.  Accept God’s beautiful plan and stop fighting against His Omnipotent Love, His Measureless Grace, and His Infinite Mercy; and He will receive you, and be a Father unto you, and you will be His son, a fit instrument to bear the word of His reconciliation to all the ends of Creation.  How blessed you will be!  “Blessed are the peacemakers...”

            The Lord is trusting His sons with the job of seeing to it that the lost men and women of the world and out of all ages know that God has reconciled them unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.  The Christians in the church systems today cannot fulfill this awesome task, because they are still imputing men’s sins unto them.  When they say, “You are headed straight for eternal hell,” they are imputing men’s sins unto them.  When they shun men because of their evil or wickedness, they are imputing men’s sins unto them.  When they say a person who died without Christ is eternally doomed, they are imputing men’s sins unto them.  Every time we think judgmental thoughts against people for their sins and errors, we impute their sins unto them.  The sons of God are not sent to threaten men with damnation if they do not receive Jesus — there are plenty of God’s immature, mis-guided, deceived, naive little children who are doing that!  The sons are sent with the message that all men and the whole world are reconciled to God on God’s part, and to convince them, not that they are going to hell, but that they should be reconciled to God within themselves.  The church world has a ministry of threatening men and coercing them by fear of hell-fire; the sons of God are the sons of peace and love and mercy who speak the word of reconciliation into men’s lives by the Spirit.

            Now, as representatives, as ambassadors of Jesus Christ and His eternal Kingdom, you and I are to minister this reconciliation to the world.  The debt of sin has been paid in full.  The books are balanced so far as God is concerned.  Divine righteousness is theirs also, when they will finally lay down their rebellion and surrender, believing God’s word of love, and accepting the life He offers them in exchange for their death.  As Ray Prinzing once said, “Not charging them with guilt, to heap upon them loads of condemnation, but simply giving them the GOOD WORD, namely, that God loves them, forgives them, and is ready to receive them back to Himself.   All is well, come home — forsake your wayward course, the Father waits to receive you.  No word of condemnation, not imputing a list of sins against you, but a word of hope, of grace, of love.”  And the sons will never give up, for God’s heart of infinite love will never give up.  He will seek the sheep as far as they have strayed, and carry them home.  Jesus did the work, and now God is making His appeal through us.  God shall make a full and lasting peace with the world through His sons, His peacemakers.  Blessed are those through whom God brings the world to peace with Himself!  That is the ultimate of the ministry of the sons of God.  The ministry of Jesus is a pattern picture of the ministry of the sons.  Amazing grace!  Stupendous and glorious plan!  What a ministry!

THE PERSECUTED

            The final principle in this preamble to the Constitution of the Kingdom is the eighth.  “Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mat. 5:10).  Sometimes we take a mistaken attitude toward the “blessedness” that comes from fulfilling these principles of the Kingdom of God.  We are so prone to view blessedness in terms of the great ministry of the sons of God, forgetting that Jesus also suffered and it is those who suffer with Him that shall also reign with Him.  Sometimes we think, “Blessed are you when you can heal all the sick that come to you for help.  Blessed are you when you can cast out all the devils that you encounter, without failure.  Blessed are you when you can reveal the secrets of men’s hearts and prophesy mysteries unto them.  Blessed are you when you can perform mighty signs, wonders, and miracles before the multitudes.  Blessed are you when you can gainsay all the critics and stop every mouth and humble all the wisdom of the world by your words of authority and power.  Blessed are you when you can win millions of souls and sweep nations into the Kingdom of God.”    That is not what Jesus indicated in His teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.  He did not promise that the Kingdom belonged to those who could heal the sick, cast out devils, perform miracles, and raise the dead.  He said, “Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven!”

            Jesus did not evaluate things the way we evaluate them.  We measure success and blessedness by the effectiveness of our ministry.  We use the world’s system in determining “blessedness.”  Jesus used the divine instrument of measure — divine evaluation of what constitutes blessedness.  Blessedness, He asserts in this case, is experienced by those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them!  This persecution of which Jesus speaks is not the religious persecution that we have seen throughout the age.  He is not saying that everyone who has been persecuted for their faith is in possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.  He does not even mean that everyone who is persecuted because of Jesus is blessed!  There is virtue in some kinds of persecution and there is reproach in other kinds of persecution.  This principle of the Kingdom is very specific about the type of the persecution.  “Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake...”  Not all persecution, even when it involves one’s walk with the Lord, is for righteousness’ sake, and only that which is for righteousness’ sake reflects possession of the Kingdom.

            Righteousness means “right-ness”.  To be persecuted for righteousness’ sake is to be persecuted for that which is right.  But even then it doesn’t involve just any kind of right-ness!  A person may be persecuted because they are politically right, that is, on the right side of some political issue, but that certainly would not qualify them as a possessor of the Kingdom of Heaven!  The person might not even be a child of God!  There are a thousand disputes every day between the people of God, disputes between husband and wife, disputes between neighbors, disputes between brethren in a fellowship, disputes between preachers, disputes over doctrine, disputes about the will of God, disputes over what is ethical for a believer to do or not do; and someone may be right and another wrong in each of these disputes.  But if being right brings persecution, that doesn’t necessarily make that one a possessor of the Kingdom of Heaven.  To be right means to walk in the nature of God, to think with the mind of Christ, and fulfill the will of God.  Only as we are led by the Spirit are we truly right or righteous in Kingdom terms.  These are the principles of sonship, and only as they are related to sonship to God are they related to the Kingdom of God.  This is the righteousness of sons, and “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”  Kingdom righteousness means living the Kingdom Life.  When we are persecuted for sonship righteousness we share in the sufferings of Christ.  And all who are persecuted for this kind of righteousness possess the Kingdom of Heaven!

            People, including professed Christians, are persecuted for various reasons.  Sometimes the cause of persecution is ignorance.  But Jesus does not promise, “Blessed are they that are persecuted for ignorance,” any more than, “Blessed are they that are persecuted for wrong doing.”  I have met a great number of people through the years who are filled with self pity because they are being persecuted for their Christian walk, when the fact is  they are being persecuted for saying or doing unwise, ignorant, outlandish, ridiculous,  bizarre or stupid things in the name of the Lord.  They have supposed that they were doing righteously and being led by the Spirit, but they were misguided or deceived and made a display of themselves to the public through ignorance.  They have suffered tremendous persecution because of it, and don’t realize that they were acting out of the carnal mind and have therefore been persecuted for foolishness’ sake.  It is obvious that if we are ignorantly performing foolish things that are bringing undue persecution, we experience no blessedness in it!  The blessedness that Jesus promised is not in manifestations of spiritual immaturity and ignorance, or in demonstrations of the flesh by those who think God is speaking out of every rock and tree and happening, and speak in riddles and do weird things, or in displays of excessive emotional feelings in the soulish realm of their nature.  Persecution for the righteousness of the Kingdom is on a plane higher than all this!

            The reward for sonship persecution is — BLESSEDNESS!  “Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”  But what is this blessedness?  Ah, the blessedness is just this: “for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”  The blessedness is in obtaining the blessings, the provisions, the benefits, and the privileges of the Kingdom of Heaven.  All that the Kingdom involves — its gifts,  its joy, its peace, its wisdom, its powers, its glories, its manifestation are included in this blessedness.  For these who walk after the Spirit and do all the will of the Father in spite of the adversity it brings — every element of the Kingdom is theirs!  What a promise!  What a principle!

            Well has George Hawtin written: “I would to God that all God’s elect might see that everything everywhere is working tirelessly and endlessly to produce sonship in those who are the called according to His purpose.  Everywhere!  Everything!  Temptations, tears, heartaches, unfaithful friends and brethren, loss of property, loss of business, perils, hateful neighbors, fiery furnaces, dens of lions, rugged crosses, and isles of exile!  All things!  All things!  All things, too numerous to mention, are working for the good of God’s elect, and are adding, though unseen now, an exceeding and eternal weight of glory to us.”

            We who have endured our share of the persecutions of Christ shall be abundantly blessed of the Lord to receive our inheritance in the Kingdom of God.  “If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.”  As we look beyond the present, with its trials and persecutions, we will see the glory of the fullness of the Kingdom of God that is yet before us.  The darkness of this present world, with its evil, ignorance, beastliness and violence, is rapidly fleeting.  The new morning, with the fullness of the Light and Glory of God and His Kingdom spread upon the face of all nations, shall soon dawn over the whole earth.  While we wait for the glory that shall be revealed we may “rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

            Paul Mueller bears wonderful witness to this same blessed truth in the following testimony.  “To be persecuted for righteousness’ sake gives one the right and privilege to inherit the kingdom of God.  Persecution marks all the saints of God, from the Old Testament sages and prophets, including the prophets and apostles of the early church, to the sons of God of this present hour.  Every one of us, from Abraham to the fullness of Christ, has endured the necessary persecutions for the sake of Christ and His kingdom.  We may not have known it in the beginning of our appointed time of trials, but with every trial we endured, we were gaining a royal entrance into the fullness of the kingdom of God.

            “Those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, shall inherit the kingdom.  Jesus clearly qualified the type of persecution that would gain us an inheritance into the kingdom of God, when He said, ‘for righteousness’ sake,’ and ‘for my sake.’  To be persecuted for any other reason, including for our own disobedience or for breaking the law, does not count in the kingdom.  Let me give you an example.  Years ago I served as an assistant minister in a large church here in Portland.  One of my duties was to minister to the sick in hospitals and homes, and to visit the needy, some of them in prisons.  I enjoyed a rich and rewarding ministry and learned much from those experiences.  One day, I visited a man from the church who was in a local prison.  After praying with him and encouraging him in the Lord, I left the area of the prison where he was.  Before I got very far from him, he began to wail and mourn as if he was dying.  All the other prisoners could hear him.  When I went back to ask why he was mourning so, he shouted that he was crying and mourning because he was being persecuted for righteousness’ sake.  But I knew he was in prison because he failed to pay his first wife’s alimony, which he was ordered by the court to pay.  His moaning and groaning did not stop even when I reminded him of the reason he was in prison.  I met this same man some years later, and he informed me that he was ‘holding the universe in balance!’  To be persecuted for righteousness’ sake will give us an inheritance in the kingdom.  But to be persecuted for our own lawlessness and disobedience will only bring more of the corrective judgments of the Lord into our lives.  And of course, as the elect of the Lord, you already knew this!

            “Jesus was persecuted by the world because He was of another Spirit, even the Spirit of His Father.  He was not of this world, and neither are we!  The world hated Him, and we can expect to be treated as He was.  The servant is not greater than his lord.  Our Lord was persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and we shall be also.  They treat us the way they do for His name’s sake, for they do not know our Father, who sent us on this mission for the kingdom of God. 

            “Being persecuted for His name’s sake brings rewards undreamed of.  Persecution for righteousness’ sake identifies us with Christ.  The sufferings of Christ that we have gone through made us one with Him and linked us with Him in Father’s eternal purposes.  And now we are one with Christ — united and identified with Him in the eternal purposes of His kingdom.  Because of our union and identification with Christ, the world shall surely hear us when we speak forth His anointed word.  Jesus said, ‘The servant is not greater than his lord.  If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also’ (Jn. 15:20).  Think of that!  Just as people of the world kept the sayings of Jesus, so also shall they keep our sayings.  They will respect the word we speak!  The persecutions and trials that we endured have removed from us all personal, egotistical and exalted ideas and carnal desires.  We are being set free of old Adam that we might fully glorify the Lord.  When the Lord has finished His work in us, He shall say of us as He did of His first Son, ‘This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him’ (Mat. 17:5).  The authority and power of God’s word spoken by one of Father’s anointed sons may be beyond the scope of our present understanding, but God shall bring it to pass.  If the world kept the sayings of Jesus Christ, the first manifested Son, they will keep our sayings also, for we are also sons of God and members of the same purified and anointed Christ body”   — end quote. 

THE PRINCIPLES OF THE KINGDOM

            In addition to the eight beatitudes we have considered over the past months, there are almost three whole chapters and one hundred and seven verses in this Constitution of the Kingdom of God.  Wonderful and significant principles of sonship are here set forth in simplicity and power.  The sons of God that Christ describes in this Kingdom Manifesto are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  They embody the spirit and the life of every law that Jesus Himself fulfilled, or brought to its true intent and spiritual reality, out of the old letter of the law of Moses.  These sons are devoid of anger and strife in all of their human relationships, using no contemptuous words and seeking peace and harmony with all men.  They are without lustful thinking and are victorious over the deceitful wickedness of their own hearts.  They are content in their family relationships, truthful in speech and motive, longsuffering, merciful, and without retaliation toward their enemies or any who would mis-use and abuse them or violate their rights.  They are generous and give joyfully and sacrificially, go the second mile, turn the other cheek, giving to those who ask, loving their enemies, praying for those who persecute.  They do nothing for pretentious show, recognition, or vain glory.  They forgive everyone their trespasses.  They seek eternal, heavenly and spiritual realities above earthly possessions, prosperity and wealth.  They are not anxious about what tomorrow may or may not bring, but trust explicitly and commit all things into Father’s loving hands.  They do not condemn or judge others, they pray in faith and receive every blessing with gratitude and thanksgiving.  They treat others with the same concern and respect they wish to be shown to themselves.  They live wholly to the will of the Father and seek only His Kingdom and His righteousness.  THEY STRIVE TO BE PERFECT AS THEIR FATHER IN HEAVEN IS PERFECT.  What an order!  What a challenge upon God’s firstfruits!

            All these are the marks of sonship.  All these are the principles of the Kingdom of God.  All these comprise the Constitution of the Kingdom of God!  We can readily see, therefore, that any behavior that falls short of this Constitution, or that is contrary to this Constitution — is UNCONSTITUTIONAL!  In the Kingdom of God it is unconstitutional to be angry at your brother without a cause.  It is unconstitutional to see your brother have a need and shut up your bowels of compassion against him. It is unconstitutional to refuse to forgive any man, to fail to be merciful, to retaliate for a wrong done you, to judge and condemn others.  It is unconstitutional to pray or fast to be seen of men, or to do any act of righteousness for show or recognition.  It is unconstitutional to walk in any spirit, attitude, expression or action other than the righteousness, peace, and joy of the Kingdom!  These are the character traits that qualify  one to be given authority and dominion in the Kingdom!  No greater hope was ever set before the ransomed of the Lord than the hope of being members of His body of sons to reign with Him in the regeneration.  Every man that has this hope in him purifies himself even as He is pure.  Let us therefore lay aside every weight.  Let us seek to be rid of self and self-will and self-glory.  Let us waste the mind and motions of Adam in our flesh and put on the mind and the nature of our glorious Father in heaven.

            In reading the Sermon on the Mount we must learn to distinguish between the letter of the command and the spirit of truth that it expresses.  For even of Christ’s own words it is true — the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.  I do not mean that we are to so “spiritualize” these laws of the Kingdom as to make them of none effect.  I do not mean that we are to so etherealize our Lord’s commands as to get rid of the obvious, practical applications.  What I mean is, we must make allowance, for instance, for Jesus’ methods of teaching.  The Eastern mind loved the parabolic and proverbial form of speech.  He was fond of stating his truth in bold, picturesque, illustrative and metaphorical ways.  Our Lord was typically Eastern in this respect.  He opened His mouth in parables, and without a parable spake He not unto them.  In this sermon His teaching is again and again in proverbial form.  Only by that wisdom that comes down from above are the sons of God able to separate the spiritual principle from the literary form in which it is expressed.  Jesus was not giving us maxims to which we are to give slavish obedience, but sets forth principles that we must apply and walk out under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  He did not come to give a second and more minute external law, but to create a disposition, a spirit, a new attitude and state of being which should be the law of nature within ourselves. 

            Let me illustrate what I mean by taking just a few precepts out of the Sermon on the Mount for our reverent consideration.  Take first that staggering precept about “turning the other cheek.”  “Whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”  Now what kind of a spineless individual would do a thing like that!  I think many of us would be like the little boy in the Sunday School class.  His teacher had been teaching the class some of the teachings of Jesus, and she said to Johnny, “Johnny, what would you do if Tommy slapped you on the right cheek?”  “Teacher,” said Johnny, “I would turn the other cheek.”  Then after pausing and thinking for a moment he added, “But, boy, if he hit that one, I would beat the daylights out of him!”  We have our rights, you know, and we are pretty good at sticking up for our rights.  If we think the mechanic has cheated us on the repairs on our car, we would like to tell him so.  If we haven’t had the service we think we should have had, we are tempted to raise our voice and give them a piece of our mind.  We at least reduce the amount of our tip or leave no tip at all!  That is natural.  But sons of God are not natural!  We are ordained to be spiritual.  And spiritual is not some religious exercise or worshipful appearance, it is simply expressing the nature of the Spirit.  It is just as “spiritual” to keep our cool under pressure as it is to sing in the Spirit or prophesy — yea, even more so!

            Although there are times for literally turning the other cheek, Jesus was speaking of a spiritual reality that transcends the physical act.  He did not give a literal obedience to the precept Himself!  When He was smitten on the face in the High Priest’s hall, He did not turn the other cheek, He gently but firmly rebuked the smiter for his injustice and violence.  And besides, a literal obedience would sometimes defeat the very object at which Christ was aiming.  To do this literally to an angry man would in some instances so infuriate him that it would bring even harsher recriminations against you.  The “letter” in this case “killeth.”  We must get at the “spirit” of the command, and the spirit is just this: that we must meet rage and violence not with rage and violence, but with meekness, compassion, and forgiveness.  Retaliation and revenge are the practice of the world — forgiveness even until seventy times seven is the practice of the sons of God.

            Ah, these things are against human nature.  It is impossible for the natural man to do these things!  Oh, we might try, but trying isn’t good enough in the Kingdom.  Even if we did walk out these things, just because Jesus said we should, it would still be a forced action out of a sense of duty, and not because we felt like doing them.  Though outwardly we may obey, inwardly we would rebel against them.  Unless our obedience emanates from our nature, it isn’t Kingdom obedience!  Isn’t that why Jesus said, “Except your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of God.”  If we do these things because our nature desires to do them, then we have experienced the power and the glory of the Kingdom of God!

            Take the next precept which says, “Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”  As it stands it sounds almost like an order to indulge in indiscriminate charity.  Now indiscriminate charity when it is indulged in is not a blessing to men, but a curse.  If you give to every one who would bum off of you, you turn people into economic leeches.  It is a direct encouragement of sloth and irresponsibility.  It disintegrates the character; it degrades more than it helps and delivers.  The apostle Paul tells us that if a man will not work, neither shall he eat.  The spirit of what Jesus is telling us is that we must have the spirit of self-sacrificing generosity!  As a son of God I cannot turn a deaf ear to any cry of need.  It does not follow that we shall give money to every beggar who stops us on the street, or to every supposedly homeless person holding a sign at the intersection.  By so doing we may be only confirming in idleness men who ought to be compelled to work, or giving another bottle of liquid damnation to a man already drinking himself to death.  We simply impoverish ourselves to injure others.  That is not what Christ meant! 

            We do not give even to every brother in Christ  who asks our help.  Solicitations arrive in the mail almost daily to help this person and that, to support this ministry and the other, to give to this and that cause.  If we gave to everyone that asks what an array of worldly methods and spurious ministries and deceitful causes we would be supporting!  Sons of God are led by the Spirit even in their giving.  How much better to seek the Lord about what we should give, and to whom, and receive His guidance by the Spirit, than merely to dole out money to every one who presents a need!  Where we know need to be urgent and real, our help will always be forthcoming, even if it is an unspeakable sacrifice.  A loving heart and a ready hand, guided by the Holy Spirit of wisdom and understanding, are the marks of the son of God.  And sometimes we give even when no one has said anything about a need, simply because the Spirit of the Lord speaks to us to give.  HE knows every need, and just how He will meet the need.  We become His channels of blessing.  This is the way of the Kingdom!

            Now let us look at another principle.  “And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.  And if any man shall compel you to go a mile, go with him two.”  Of this principle George Wylie wrote, “This is a reference to a custom in the East, and which we saw in Liberia while there.  You see, the soldiers and government officials didn’t ride around in cars and trucks like they do today.  They were on foot, or else carried in a conveyance that was carried on the shoulders  of four men.  When they needed someone to carry their load, or carry them about their business, they would just say to someone nearby, ‘Hey you, come and carry my load.’  And they dare not refuse.  In Liberia, when a soldier, or a government official was on the road, and by road I mean a little foot-path through the jungles, each village was supposed to provide them with porters to carry them to the next town, and that is as far as the law required them to go.  Then that village was supposed to provide carriers to take them to the next village.  It was the Town Chief’s duty to find these porters, and sometimes when the men of the village heard that the District Commissioner was coming their way, they would head for the bush, and the poor chief had a time finding the men to be carriers.  Nobody wanted to be forced into this kind of labor.  They had other things to do, things they wanted to do for themselves, so they would try to get out of this duty if they could.

            “The custom in Palestine and the law of the Romans was very, very similar to this.  The law required a man under these conditions to go one mile, but he was not compelled to go any farther; he could stop there and drop his load and let someone else take it from there.  But Jesus said, ‘If he compels you to go a mile, don’t stop there, go with him another mile.’  In other words, do more than is expected of you, more than it is your duty to do, more than the law requires of you!  You see, the sons of God are to be a whole lot different than the ordinary run of people.  Jesus gave us a little parable in Luke 17:7-10.  I am just beginning to understand what He meant by this parable.  ‘Will any man of you, who has a servant plowing or tending sheep, say to him when he is come in from the field, Come at once and take your place at the table?  Will he not instead tell him, Get my supper ready, and gird yourself and serve me till I eat and drink; then afterward you yourself  shall eat and drink?  Is he grateful and does he praise the servant because he did what he was obligated and ordered to do?  Even so on your part, when you have done everything that was assigned and commanded you, say, We are unworthy servants — possessing no merit, for we have not gone beyond our obligation; we have merely done what was our duty to do.’ 

            “We think we have done pretty good when we have done some of the things commanded us, let alone all things.  If we only do the things required of us, and that which is our duty to do, we are still unprofitable servants.  If we are to be the sons of God, we have to go way beyond what is required of us, if we are to be profitable unto God.  He that does only what is required is a servant, not a son.  He has no initiative of his own, he is not a ruler in the kingdom, he has no authority to act unilaterally, he merely obeys orders and does what is required.  What this really means is, that what we do is not really that important, and doesn’t count for that much.  What really matters is what we are, who we are becoming, not what we do by commandment.  When the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount gets down into our deepest heart as the law of being, then the Kingdom of God operates within us in the realm of sonship”   — end quote.

            Take one more example.  “Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon the earth.”  It reads like a prohibition of thrift and provision for the future.  Taken literally, it would seem to forbid the farmer to store his harvest in the autumn for the coming winter; it would seem to put the seal of its approval on those who squander their money as soon as they get it, who spend up to their means and perhaps beyond it; it would seem to say that one should not make any provision for a rainy day, one should not pay into Social Security or any  pension fund, one should not invest in properties, stocks, bonds, or make any provision for security or retirement.  But that is not what Jesus meant!  What Jesus is saying in the Spirit is that our hearts should be entirely emancipated from the love of wealth — that our care should be not so much about our balances at the bank as about our standing  in the heavenlies.  We are understanding by the carnal mind if we read this as if Jesus were encouraging irresponsibility; what He is bidding us do is to put first things first, to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and trust Him for everything else.

            We cannot cease striving to lay up treasures on earth until we come to the point of absolute trust in our heavenly Father.  He will provide!  If He does not provide by natural means He will provide by supernatural means.  Testimonies to God’s unfailing faithfulness could be written by millions of saints throughout the ages.  In our own family we have seen the car battery charged by the power of God when the ignition key had been left on overnight and the battery was absolutely dead.  There was need to be in a meeting that Sunday morning and with prayer the impulse came to go out and try it one more time.  The car started immediately and the battery was better than before!  Lorain and I drove many miles through the Ozark mountains in the late night darkness and early morning with no gas in the tank, only praying that God would get us to our destination, as there were no gas stations open in that wilderness at that hour of the night.  We have had so many miraculous provisions that to us it is no longer a question of whether the Lord will provide — merely when and how!  This is merely a small sampling of life in the Kingdom of God as a son of God!

            No  one has more clearly and eloquently articulated the power and glory of this blessed dimension of Kingdom reality than George Hawtin when he wrote: “We can see and point out some very important examples of Christ’s heavenly citizenship which show us as nothing else can that all the time of His earthly ministry He lived and moved on the plane of a son of God.  He lived in a higher realm.  He lived in the realm He preached about, even the realm of the kingdom of God.  And I would like you to see that in every respect and in every phase of His life He proved Himself to be living in the realm of the kingdom and totally independent of every part of this world’s system.  Let us notice first that He was completely independent of that one thing to which we are always in bondage — money, the currency of this world system.  I often wondered why it was that though Jesus knew that Judas was a thief, yet He allowed him to carry the money bag and though He knew Judas was stealing the money, He said nothing about it.  Now I know it is wrong to steal, but the point we should see is that in the realm where Jesus actually lived He did not need money and did not care whether there was any money in the bag or not.  He was no more in need of money than a robin, an eagle, or an angel.  He lived in a realm where God was all in all and everything belonged to Him.  It was a realm higher than the realm of men.  Judas by his thefts was trying to lay by in store for this realm, but Jesus was not living in this realm nor for it, but independent of it and far above it in the realm of the kingdom”   — end quote.

            We have only superficially touched this realm of the Kingdom of Heaven.  We have but tasted the powers of the age to come.  I cannot be too emphatic in saying that the full glory of the realm of the Kingdom of Heaven cannot ever be compared to the purely “in part” measure which we have experienced during this church age.  None can deny that this age has been very limited and lacking in the glory, government, and power of God and filled with human ways and human ideas and human methods and promotions.  When Jesus was here in the flesh He neither lived nor moved in the in-part measure of this passing age, but He walked and ministered and manifested out of the unlimited and boundless plane  of a manifested son of God.

            And so I might go on illustrating — but enough has already been said.  The first thing to be done is to disentangle Christ’s spiritual meaning from the form of its verbal expression.  The difficulties about the practicability of the Sermon on the Mount arise from a carnal and too literalistic interpretation of its principles.  These principles are not exact rules — they embody divine nature.  It is the spiritual principle we must get at — and blessed is the man or woman who does!  These words are the mere husk, the eternal truth they contain is the kernel.  The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life!

            To be continued...                                                                                          

J. PRESTON EBY