The Good News of the Kingdom

I just read through Matthew and came across a phrase that kind of struck out for me. Matthew 3.23 says, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news (or gospel) of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” The phrase that struck me was “good news of the kingdom” or “gospel of the kingdom.”

Here’s what I thought. What is the gospel? For must of us evangelicals it is the “salvation plan.” It’s “Jesus dies on the cross for my sin.” But here Jesus says the good news of the kingdom. Here Jesus is proclaiming the gospel before the cross, before the atonement, before the resurrection. And I don’t think it’s his way of looking forward to it (although, there is something of that sense there).

What if our view of the good news is only part of the good news? What if we’re missing a piece—a big piece—of what Jesus came for… to bring? What if there’s more?

We’ve got the “saved from” part right. We are saved from sin. We are saved from being slaves to sin. We are saved from self-idolatry. We are saved from a myriad of evils and iniquities that pollute our humanness. But we miss the “saved for” part. We are saved for the kingdom. I think that’s what Jesus meant when he “proclaimed the good news of the kingdom.”

The Christ event is about the kingdom of God being brought into our world. It’s about heaven and earth being knitted together. It’s about God’s future coming into our present. It’s about God turning the tables of evil. It’s about God turning an upside-down world right-side up. That’s why the proclamation of the good news of the kingdom is followed by curing every disease and every sickness. Sickness and disease is what comes from an upside-down world.

We are saved from sin. But even more important and more to the point, we are saved for the kingdom. Our task is to implement the future Jesus inaugurated by his life, death and resurrection. The good news of the kingdom is that it is here, waiting for the followers of Jesus to implement.