The Kingdom of God.
“The kingdom of God is within/among you.” IS - present tense. This is in line with Jesus’ teaching: “you know him [the Spirit] because he is among you and will be in you”. Along the same lines, the kingdom does not come visibly. This corresponds to the saying of Jesus: “the world does not know [the Spirit]”. When the Holy Spirit visits a meeting of believers, the kingdom is among them. When the Holy Spirit visits a believer and then becomes a welling up within them on an ongoing basis, the kingdom is within them. As Jesus told the woman at the Samarian well of Jacob, the Holy Spirit would be as water welling up within believers. It had not yet happened when he said it, but it happens now. It is manifested in blessed, visited meetings right now, on an ongoing basis for some, but even in social media we exchange interactions blessed with it. The Holy Spirit brings the things of the fountain of water on God’s throne of David and gives it to us. The Jerusalem site is not our home any more. This Spirit is our home, his throne of David. Only rebirth allows someone to see this kingdom of God. You need birth from the Spirit to experience the Spirit. Otherwise it can sometimes be near to you even if it is not in you. To those who heard the gospel preached in Jesus’ name the kingdom was near, even if they did not accept it. To those who heard and accepted teachings of Jesus the kingdom was within them because those words are words of spirit and of life. To those who on Pentecost heard the tongues in their own languages, the kingdom was near. To those speaking the tongues it was among them, within them.
The Lord over the judicial acts of God in the world and among the people of this kingdom is human. He knows the rights and wrongs, the complexities of human predicaments behind the causes of such punishments from God, so he can represent us as he presides over it all, present in the heavens as the heavens pour down floods. He is present in the realms of heaven as heavenly angels are appointed to distribute plagues and punishments with authority God gives them to do so. He presides over it all with mercy and yet his clothes are drenched in the red fluid of the winepress of God’s sovereign wrath. This Lord of justice is Jesus Christ. The same risen lord seen on the shore as his apostles finished a night of vainly fishing and who told them to put down their nets on the other side of their boats. “It is the lord”, they said when they caught a huge catch of fish on obeying him. They knew Jesus is this lord. Some today see him coming in heaven’s clouds, no longer standing on a sea shore. He shows us it is indeed him who is the lord and he is the same Jesus now as he was back then, shortly after rising from the dead. He teaches the same lessons and shows the same righteousness and faith. The kingdom is near. It is already among those who minister to each other by the Holy Spirit, learning from the Lord Jesus this way; Jesus who in turn learns from God.
