The Kingdom of God and the Church


No where within the pages of the Bible is the Kingdom of God and the church identical. Only the Roman Catholic Church considers itself and the Kingdom identical. You do not read or hear it said, “Repent for the Church is at hand.”
You do read and hear, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”  Matt. 3:2 Sadly in today’s world the emphasis is largely on the organized church and not the Kingdom of God.

But I want to emphasize that the church is important, for it is the fellowship of the redeemed and those being-redeemed. It is a building comprised of those who meet for public worship with the goal (hopefully) of propagating the Gospel of the Kingdom. With all its faults and failures it is still the greatest institution for serving on the face of the earth. Its critics are many but it has no rivals in the work of human redemption. There is not a corner of the world where the church has gone that is hasn’t brought with it schools, orphanages, hospitals, churches, leper asylums, food kitchens, laborers of all kinds, etc to meet the needs of the people, both spiritual and physical, everything to lift the body, soul and mind of all races. No other institution can compare to it or has done anything like it.

But it is not the Kingdom of God, no one can be saved by it. The church is the subject of redemption and if so how can it dispense it? If the church itself needs saving, how can it give salvation? “Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior.” Ephesians 5:23. The Kingdom of God is absolute; the church is relative or dependant. The Kingdom of God commands; the church obeys. When anything relative tries to make itself absolute, there is idolatry. The church loses its life in the life of God’s Kingdom and then finds itself again. Men build the church but cannot build the Kingdom – they “receive the Kingdom.” The Kingdom of God is built from the foundation of the world, built into the structure of our Reality – it is Reality. When Christ returns for His Bride, the True Church, all denominational tags will fall off and be discarded for they are of no interest to Him. We belong to the Body fo Christ, the invisible Church, which is the one true Church.

So consequently the issue boils down to this, are people following the organized church or are they following the Lord Jesus Christ, do they belong to this group, that group, or the other group? The church is not the issue, Christ is, do we belong to Him or the church? We are not and never will be saved by belonging to a church no matter what they claim; we are saved by belonging to Christ and His Kingdom. In today’s society the modern ecumenical emphasis would seem to make Christ and the church co-redeemers, this is false for there is one and only one Redeemer – Christ Jesus our Lord.

My Affirmation: I do not belong to the church, I belong to the Kingdom of God, for the Kingdom is God’s final order and has the final word.

These are my thoughts influenced by thoughts from the Word Became Flesh by E. Stanley Jones
Joe Pottle