Tag Archive for: Isaiah

What is so sacred about sex? – Part 2

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This continues from part 1…..

In part one of this article, we discussed the sexual mood of our present culture and whether or not as human beings, we are the owners of our own bodies and minds. We ended on the note that if it is the case that we have been made or created by someone else for his own purposes, then surely we would have a lot more obligations than we would have if we only belonged to ourselves. But we also noted that, this is a big “IF” because some people do not believe (or at least they live as if they don’t believe) that there is any Being higher than ourselves, to whom we must be responsible. Is it reasonable to believe that an actual Being exists who is responsible for our existence and to whom we might be accountable to, regarding our sexual lives? If there is the possibility for such a Being to exist, why would he be interested in what we do with our bodies sexually?

For starters, let us be brutally honest with ourselves: everything in this world – from ourselves to the flowers to the stars to sea to animals etc – points to the fact that some sort of careful designing has gone into the creation of our world and of ourselves, doesn’t it? We often take it for granted that this physical world of ours is structured the way it is. But mathematically speaking, the probability of this world happening by a mindless random or unordered process is incredibly small. According to Astrophysicist Hugh Ross’ conservative calculation, the chance of a planet like ours existing in the universe is about 1 in a trillion billion billion (i.e. 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in 10 raised to the power 30).

 Scientists are discovering that had even a single feature of our universe been just a little bit different, the stars, galaxies and human life would not exist. Let us briefly look at a few amazing scientific discoveries before we go on. The distance from the earth to the sun is just right. Why? Even a small change of around 2% and all life would cease. If the earth was too near the sun, water would evaporate. If it was too far from the sun, its coldness level would not support life. In fact, even the rotation speed of the earth is just right; if it was too slow, the temperature differences between day and night would be too extreme, and if it was too fast the wind speeds would be catastrophic. Furthermore, if the ratio of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces had differed by about one part in ten thousand billion billion billion billion (i.e. 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000), then stars such as the Sun, which are capable of supporting life, could not exist. Do you see any picture emerging?

The delicate balance of the elements in our universe, to use the illustration of the theoretical physicist Paul Davies, is like the accuracy level that a marksman needs in order to hit a coin twenty billion light years away on the other side of the observable universe. [A light year is the speed travelled by light in one year. And light, by the way, has the fastest travelling speed in our universe]. In fact it has been noted by some researchers that the earth is placed precisely in a part of the universe that is congenial to scientific studies in cosmology, galactic astronomy, stellar astrophysics and geophysics. That is, if our earth had been positioned in a part of the universe with too much starlight, we could not have been able to see into deep space. There are more than 3000 galaxies in the observable universe, each containing millions to trillions of stars – many being bigger than the earth.

Further, Oxford mathematician John Lennox in his book, ‘God’s undertaker: has Science buried God?’, notes that the distinguished mathematician and astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, admitted that his atheism was shaken profoundly when he discovered the degree of fine-tuning needed between the nuclear ground state energy levels in order for carbon to be formed either by a combination of three helium nuclei, or by a combination of nuclei of helium and beryllium. (And for the record, life cannot exist on earth without an abundant supply of carbon). Sir Hoyle’s discovery, according to Lennox, led him to remark that, “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology,” and that “there are no blind forces in nature worth talking about.” Interesting isn’t it? And let us not forget the issue of the human DNA – the molecule containing coded instructions for the cells in the body. A group of scientists have recently estimated that the adult body contains about 37.2 trillion cells, each containing DNA. Each person’s complete DNA is unique; the exception being identical twins. The instructions are in what is called Genetic language and they are detailed, complex and specific. These instructions include for example, which cells should grow and when, which cells should die and when, which cells should make hair and what colour it should be.  If all this sounds too technical, then let me make it simple: the scientific discoveries are pointing in the direction where it is highly unlikely that an intelligent Being did not plan and execute the creation of this whole skilfully crafted universe, including human beings like us.

What is my point with all this information? It is this: if conditions in this universe, and the nature of our human bodies, are the way they are – so delicately precision-tuned – and if human beings like us posses the kind of intelligence we posses, even to study them, then it is very reasonable to (and unreasonable not to) suppose that a more intelligent Being, (1) is out there, (2) is the cause of our beings and (3) is interested in our lives. Now if we relate this thought to Mr. Lewis’ thoughts about moral duties (discussed in part one of this article), we can say with a fair degree of confidence that the whole of mankind must have a Landlord. Our bodies, strictly speaking, are not ours. Our Landlord is this Intelligent Being who created this world and everything in it. Religious folks simply call him, God. Since this God is the cause of our intricately designed bodies and existence, it is not mind-boggling that any “Dos and Don’ts” on how we use our bodies should come from him.

 

A Curious Worldview

 In his speech to the members of the city council of Athens, Paul the apostle of Christ tried to give them a new view of God, saying, “God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands.” (Acts 17:24 GNB) In a city so used to building alters and shrines for every imaginable god, this news was however unimaginable. But to the people in the city of Corinth (a city well-known for its immorality), who became believers in Jesus Christ, Paul wrote them a letter in which he explained to them the sacredness of their bodies: “…the body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord, and the Lord provides for the body. God raised the Lord [i.e. Jesus] from death and will also raise us by his power. … Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.” (1 Cor. 6: 13,14, 19,20 GNB). Dr Ravi Zacharias, a Christian philosopher, appropriately explains that, “the Christian walks with God, not to God. We no longer go to the temple to worship. Rather we go with our temples to worship.” The body of a believer in Christ, rather than a church building, is the holy dwelling place of God and must be treated as “holy grounds.” Thus what this person wears, or touches, or says, or looks at or reads or listens to must uphold God’s holiness.

So much for the Christian “bodies”! What bearing does this worldview have on those who do not subscribe to it? The non-Christian is a prospective temple of God. God wants to live in this person. The Christian explanation for human existence in general is that God made us and not only that, but also that he made us all for himself (Col. 1:16) and he made us in such a way that only in union with him can our greatest good be had (John 10:10). Sin does not allow this to happen. But God became man in Jesus Christ, lived uprightly among us, identified with our human weaknesses, paid for our sins in his death and rose up and wants to live in us to empower us to live as we ought to. Like C. S. Lewis once observed, God invented us in a certain sense like how a man invents an engine. And when a car is made to run of gasoline, it would not run properly on anything else. In this same sense God made the “human machine,” as Lewis puts it, to run on himself.

The fuel we need in order to function the way he designed us is God himself and the food we need to keep our souls spiritually alive is God himself. We cannot expect to function properly on our own terms. Sexual fulfillment (a major hunger of our generation) with its proper joy, peace and security does not come through the pulling down of God’s boundaries. Without God at the centre of a sexual relationship, our much desired real and secure intimacy which we often believe can be found in sexual intercourse will prove elusive. Any person, Christian or not, who tries to outsmart God on this front will soon find that the last laugh is always God’s, not ours; restlessness, emptiness, meaninglessness, broken trust, guilt and shame will ultimately come resting at our door steps. There is definitely pleasure in sin but it is fleeting. Kenyan Christian Apologist, John Njoroge, insightfully says that, “Trying to meet our real needs without God is like trying to satisfy our thirst with salty water: the more we drink, the thirstier we become.  This is a sure path to various sorts of addictions.”

Even in our limited wisdom, we realize that playing our cherished game of football without any rules does not make it really enjoyable. So we have created rules, in all their imperfections. Even with the rules in place, some people hurt others and get hurt themselves; they offend and get offended during the course of the game. Can you imagine the unbridled chaos that would exist if there were no clear rules? In the same way, we are living in an increasing sexually chaotic culture today because we are desperately throwing off God’s moral restraints: husbands and wives are sleeping with people other than their spouses, young unmarried boys and girls are “training” themselves in the act of sex yet ironically the idea of marriage is appearing uncomfortable to them because of its widely acknowledged moral limitations. God has provided a framework within which sex can be properly enjoyed physically, emotionally and spiritually, and it is not outside marriage.

 In God’s scheme of things, according to Christian teachings, you do not need to be experienced in sex before marriage. This is because you have the whole of your married life to get to know your spouse’s body (God’s gift to you) as your bodies lock and your spirits mesh in sexual intercourse before God. With each encounter you get to know the body of your spouse even better to the glory of God. And here is the rich wisdom of the Christian faith (which may seem foolish on the face of it): Any person who genuinely relies on Jesus Christ before his marriage and also during his marriage will be given the grace and spiritual strength to stay the course of marriage should he find out that he has ended up with a sexually defective spouse. Tough to take in, I know, but I cannot make this truth any more appealing than it sounds right now in a time like ours. Marriage is not a selfish enterprise, where if you are not having a sexually exciting life everything else must come crushing down for everyone in it. Rather it is essentially a self-giving worship of God as you commit yourself exclusively to that one person, to love, to cherish and to seek the good of this person always.

 The Christian scriptures teach that all who trust in God will not be disappointed, ultimately. But break God’s precepts on sex (or on any other issue of life) and you can be sure that you will not only separate yourself from God and into a dark loneliness of the soul but you will also hurt yourself and others. Let us be clear: the idea that God is an unloving and unfeeling Judge up there who is simply watching down to see who has gone even slightly wrong so that he may swiftly punish him, is wrong. God wants to reconcile us back to himself. This is the Christian message to the world. God’s precepts in the Bible are intended to facilitate our happiness and not to stifle it. A parent sternly warns her child to steer clear of fire not because she wants to make the child miserable but because she wants to prevent the child from getting hurt or even dying. How can a child enjoy life when he is hurt or dead? If we separate ourselves spiritually from God (a spiritual death), through sin, how can we expect to receive God’s best? God knows the limits within which our best can be had. Stolen waters are not as sweet as we want to believe. Many people may look happy on the outside but on the inside they may be empty, restless, bitter and troubled because they have violated God in this area of sex.

Conclusion

We were made for God and if we spend ourselves in illegitimate pleasures, we will only come away broken and impoverished in our souls (and perhaps with physical scars too). No one enriches his soul by being sexually immoral. Rather we bankrupt ourselves spiritually; we feel the emptiness, restlessness of the soul, the guilt and shame of sin because we have divorced ourselves from God, who is our ultimate good. A more serious side to sexual immorality is that in the end, we must give account of our lives to the God. Some people realize this quicker than others but the important thing is that we are willing to take the necessary steps back to God through the path he has provided – faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. And to be clear, faith in Jesus Christ is not mere intellectual belief in Jesus as Lord but includes a willful commitment to live the whole of one’s life in reverence of him and his teachings. Christ offers forgiveness and rebirth even to the one who has wrecked himself or herself sexually yet is willing to repent. Are you a mess, sexually? Jesus gives hope and strength to those seeking to please God in their sexual lives.

Is it really seven to one?

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You know, I had decided to sit my somewhere and think about myself (that’s “Ghanaianese”for minding one’s business) over the recent brouhaha generated by Duncan Williams’ preaching on marriage and women until I read someone justifying his use of Isaiah 4 in his preaching. Then I lost my cool, realizing how Ghanaian Christian leaders need to pay better attention to equipping the saints with the right tools of discernment when it comes to the use of the bible so we don’t waste our energy fighting straw men but focus on Jesus and his kingdom.

BIBLE INTERPRETATION METHODS

Contrary to what most Christians think, especially those of the Protestant lineage, that only 2 things are essential to our understanding of the bible 1) an the ability to read it in plain English and 2) the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Bible is a document that can yield multiple interpretations even with these tools in hand because we all come to it with our own filters, intentional or acquired. It is important then for us to realize that one’s interpretative methods colour how one receives and interprets scripture, and the situation above is a clear case of an acquired interpretive problem of “symbolizing” real historical events in the Old Testament so they can be applied at will elsewhere.

Howard Snyder, Professor of History and Theology of Missions, in his book “Salvation Means Creation Healed”, paints the picture of how Bible study in the Middle Ages adopted an attitude towards the Old Testament that has stuck with popular Christianity till date, despite modern scholarship seriously debunking this attitude. It was basically the tendency to read the Old Testament as symbols and mysteries of a “spiritual” reality. Hear him:

“The fundamental mistake here was to see the Old testament as allegory rather than real salvation history – an error still found in popular Christianity today. The Hebrew Scriptures became the mystical typological background of the gospel, not the necessary historical context within which the gospel can  only properly be understood. Allegorizing the Bible is, above all, a way to get around the embarrassing materiality, physicality, passions, and historicity of the Old Testament… The earthiness of the Old Testament is an embarassment to Neo-Platonic thought”. (Howard Snyder, Salvation Means Creation Healed, pp 22)

It is this approach to the text which allows a picture painted of events that were about to happen (and did happen) in the immediate history of the prophet Isaiah to be taken as “symbol” of how the “end times” in which we supposedly are today would be, even though all the historical evidence points to its fulfillment thousands of years ago. So let’s look at the original passage from which the seven to 1 ratio may have come from, namely Isaiah 4.

ISAIAH 4

Verse 1 reads as follows

“In that day seven women will take hold of one man and say, “We will eat our own food and provide our own clothes; only let us be called by your name. Take away our disgrace!” (Is 4:1 NIV)

It is this passage that is used by Duncan Williams to say that “It’s a privilege in the time we live in when it’s seven [women] to one man”. Let us find out both biblically and logically if we are indeed in such times.

BETTER ATTENTION TO THE TEXT

One of the important principles of bible study is not to read one verse alone as a means of making an argument. Second is to realize that the verse and chapter divisions in the bible are artificial and not inspired by God. With those 2 caveats in mind, it is very easy to step back into chapter 3 and realize what Isaiah had been talking about all along – that Jerusalem will be destroyed for its disobedience to Yahweh.

“See now, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, is about to take from Jerusalem and Judah both supply and support: all supplies of food and all supplies of water,” (Is 3:1 NIV).

The direness of the situation will be such that a person who can afford a cloak is considered better off than others and therefore worthy of taking up leadership.

“A man will seize one of his brothers in his father’s house, and say, ‘You have a cloak, you be our leader; take charge of this heap of ruins!’”(Is 3:6 NIV)

Now the real key to all this is situated here

“Your men will fall by the sword, your warriors in battle” (Is 3:25 NIV)

Isaiah chapter 3 and 4 clearly describe the effects that war creates in any environment, and is exactly what happened during the days of Isaiah. Previously the northern kingdom of Israel had been besieged and exiled by the Assyrian army, now the southern kingdom of Judah was going to face (and did face) being besieged by the Babylonian army in both 598 BC and final destruction in 588 BC. The same things happened again after Jesus predicted the Jewish wars of AD 67-70, leading to the last and final destruction of the Jerusalem temple to date.

CONSEQUENCES OF WAR

Because in most ancient societies, only men went to war, the logical consequence is that the number of men will be reduced as compared to the number of women. The longer the war, the worse this effect is. And in ancient societies where women’s rights were restricted and in which women could only function properly by being under the “name” of a man (either their father or their husband), it was only logical that one man may take on oversight responsibility for more than one woman by marrying them. This is actually one of the main reasons why polygamy was not spoken against but rather regulated by the Torah (and is neither explicitly condemned by the New Testament).

So when Isaiah says that “In that day seven women will take hold of one man …” he isn’t saying anything that takes rocket science to figure out. He’s simply stating what always happens in war and is about to happen to Judah for it’s unfaithfulness to Yahweh.

This state of shortage of men after war is not new in history, but is a recorded observation even in modern history. Following World War II German women’s attitudes towards sex changed due to the shortage of “marriagable”men. Having lost their husbands and other eligible men to war and finding themselves unable to find suitable long term partners, it is reported that they resorted to having sex outside of wedlock in order to be able to also enjoy sexual satisfaction even if they were not married. In the state of Bavaria alone (whose capital is Munich, Adolf Hitler’s former “headquarters”), the ratio fell to 6 men to 10 women, causing a change from 10% of children born out of wedlock to 22% at the end of the war.

THE INTERPRETIVE MISTAKE

The interpretive mistake by Duncan Williams however is to read Isaiah as if he had nothing to say to his immediate culture and therefore everything he said needed to be “spiritualized”to meet the concerns of people who will come 3000 years after him. This is typically achieved by reading everything “Israel” and “Jerusalem” and “Judah” to mean the modern church, and “end times”, “last days” etc in typically a pre-tribulational rapture framework.

Unfortunately for this interpretive method, scholarship and study of both Old and New Testament history shows that biblical prophecy was largely meant to be a commentary on what Yahweh thinks of the state of faithfulness of his people in the time it was delivered, and to summon them back to faithfulness if they have departed from it, or receive Yahweh’s wrath. It may contain some elements that will be fulfilled in the future beyond the prophet’s generation or two, but no right thinking Jew would call Isaiah a prophet and preserve his words for us today if he had nothing to say to his immediate generations. Modern Christians must realize therefore that allegorizing without first historicizing is simply a recipe for error and this Medieval era interpretive tradition needs to be used with a pinch of salt.

In a sermon that I listened to a few days ago, Bruxy Cavey teaching pastor of an Anabaptist church (TheMeetingHouse) quoted another person (whose name has disappeared in my foggy brain somewhere) as follows.

“There are 2 kinds of Christians. NOT those who are influenced by tradition and those who are not, BUT those who are aware of this influence and those who are not”.

This interpretative tradition of reading the Old Testament in only symbolic terms is so 10th century, so let’s move on already.

Rest assured that in the time we live in, there really ISN’T any such ratio of seven women to one man, so let’s have a more constructive discussion about marriage, gender and so on without resorting to these means.

The Two Kingdoms

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I’m sure to most Christians, this title will evoke thoughts of the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of darkness. Well, you have every right to. However, my thoughts today are not focused on a comparison of those two, much us they do exist in the Christian conversation. Today, my focus is on the kingdom coming and the kingdom come, because in as much as we do mention the coming kingdom in our discourse, there seems very little mention of the kingdom come, and it’s effects on our lives, attitudes and actions.

The Gospels do make use of the phrase “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Heaven” very often (in fact over 50 times), but have we ever stopped to ask what exactly it is, and what it meant to those in Jesus Christ’s day? Today you hardly hear a message from the pulpit about this kingdom, yet the Gospels are full of Jesus saying “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. Secondly, Jesus does inform us that his kingdom is not only a far away reality, but one in which we now live in as a result of his coming onto the earth – “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you”.Luke 17:20-21 (KJV). I prefer “among you” rather, but then I digress.

One of the clear statements about the kingdom come (not the future “kingdom coming”) is recorded in Luke 4:16. After Jesus has been presented with a scroll of Isaiah the prophet in a Nazarene synagogue, he proceeds to read from what we now know as Isaiah 61.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19 NIV).

He then proceeds to say that this prophecy is fulfilled in him. Isaiah 61 has always been considered a Messianic prophecy, speaking of what the Messiah will do when he establishes his kingdom. Therefore once Jesus read that and says that “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”, he was without doubt stating the claim that he was the Messiah, though he didn’t say it directly. And if that was so, then the kingdom of the Messiah prophesied by the prophets was not just a future realization, but a real thing now. No wonder the people were amazed – because the hope of their fathers is about to be fulfilled in their age.

And trust me, the people were truly waiting for a Messiah, for most of them were quite despondent. They had just returned some centuries back from exile, and weren’t being ruled again by the house of David any more, but by all kinds of other leaders – from the Hasmonean dynasty (from the Judas Maccabeus lineage) to the Herodian one (King Herod, Herod Agrippa etc), both of which were at least Jewish; to being directly ruled by Roman appointees like Pontius Pilate. Their High Priest was no longer from the family of Zadok in the tribe of Levi as was always the case historically, but now could be any person who could pay the highest bribe to the current political leader.

And their Roman rulers were exacting quite a heavy toll on them. Apart from having to pay their normal temple tax i.e. tithe (which in those days was more than the 10% we have come to accept today, but rather closer to 23%), they were now also supposed to pay tax to the Romans (hence tax collectors like Zaccheus and Levi). And the religious fundamentalists, referred to as the Zealots, who felt that it was unlawful for God’s people to be ruled by Gentiles, and for them to be paying taxes to them and the like, were continuously formenting trouble by violently attacking Roman installations and symbols of Roman rule, as well as anyone of the leaders of the Jews who they felt were predisposed to Roman manipulation. Barrabas who was exchanged for Jesus Christ is a typical example.

This and a whole lot more meant that a lot of people were looking forward to someone who could come and break the chains of bondage that Rome had put on them, and set them free. They were looking for a political solution, and really looked to the old days of the David and Solomon etc. as the golden days. In this light then, indeed they could not have understood Jesus in any other way.

And yet the most striking part about Jesus claiming of Isaiah 61 is his stopping short of the rest of the v 2, specifically “and the day of vengeance of our God”. To most people, without an exacting of “the vengeance of our God”, there was no way the current political situation of slavery to Rome will change. But Jesus didn’t go in that direction, for he came this time to achieve something, and that must be achieved in this dispensation. He never said the day of vengeance of God will not come, but rather that he had come not to exact judgement, but to extend mercy. This is exactly what the beginning of Isaiah 61 dealt with, but since they were more interested in a political solution involving the removal of Roman rule, the Jews rejected him and crucified him.

But I will not dwell on their rejection, neither will I dwell on the kingdom that is to come in which the vengeance will be exacted, but I will dwell on the Kingdom Come, the Kingdom Now. For it is entirely possible (as is evident throughout history to date in all nations) for a people to live in sovereignty, but still be plagued with the effects of sin. The question then is what is the nature of the Kingdom Now? Who is a part of the Kingdom Now and what effect should it have on it’s participants?

One of the cardinal requirements of the OT which unfortunately most Israelites were reluctant to apply for very obvious reasons was the Jubilee. Every 7 years, Israelites were to leave the land fallow for it to regenerate. After 7 cycles of such 7 years i.e. 49 years, the 50th year should be declared a year of liberty, a Jubilee (Lev 25). No farming was to be done, every Jew sold into slavery was to be freed and all land sold to another person as a result of poverty and need was to be returned. This was to afford the people a chance to start again, and in that vain was truly called a year of liberty. See Unger’s Bible Dictionary on Jubilee:

“It would seem that there must have been a perfect remission of all debts in the year of Jubilee from the fact that all persons who were in bondage for debt, as well as all landed property of debtors, were freely returned. Thus the Jubilee year become one of freedom and grace for all suffering, bringing not only redemption to the captive and deliverance from want to the poor, but also release to the congregation of the Lord form the sore labour of the earth, and representing the time of refreshing (Ac 3:19) which the Lord provides for his people. For in this year every kind of oppression was to cease and every member of the covenant people find his Redeemer in the Lord, who brings him back to his possession and family.” (Festivals, Jubilee, pp 352, Unger’s Bible Dictionary)

It is evident from the above that the prophet Isaiah had the restoration of the Jubilee in mind in the 61st chapter of his prophecies, and Jesus wouldn’t have disappointed in re-quoting him. Evidence of the fact that Jesus had the same thing in mind is expounded in the Lord’s prayer, which when properly interpreted, should read:

“Remit us our debts, as we ourselves have also remitted them to our debtors”(Matt 6:12)

and not the “spiritualized” version that we were taught in Sunday school referring to “sins” instead.

“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”

Note that all of these requirements of the Jubilee were not to be implemented by God, but by the people themselves. God wasn’t going to work a miracle to set the enslaved Israelite free or get back the poor man’s land for him. The requirement was enshrined in the law that they obey. Therefore the poor, the captive and the heartbroken would receive their release based on the willingness of their fellow brethren to adhere to this set down law.

It is noted by OT and NT historians alike that this was one of the most difficult practices for the people of Israel, especially for the well-to-do. In fact, many people just ignored it, and some tried to create loop holes in the law to escape canceling debts owed or releasing land back to their owners. We could go into how they achieved these except that time and space will not allow us to. But the point is moot that such observance was very minimal as the years went by. No wonder then that people (including the prophet Isaiah himself) expected that in that Messianic kingdom, this Messiah will enforce the observance of these laws, bringing freedom to the poor, captive and destitute.

I posit and believe you will agree with me the notion that the Kingdom Now is experienced in the body of Christ – his church. The question that lies before us then is that if we do claim to be living in the Kingdom Come, whiles we wait for the Kingdom Coming, how far have we gone in our practice of the Kingdom Come’s requirements?

For it is within the church that the poor are able to live out the good news – where they are counted worthy of participation in the riches of the kingdom which the king has placed at the disposal of the rich amongst them. It is within the church that the broken hearted receive strength endued from the Son to know that they are also loved and cherished no matter where they have been and what they’ve done before coming to him. And I’m not talking about the individual feeling that Jesus loves them alone, but also that they are in a community of people who love them as much as Christ does. It is within the church that captives and prisoners are integrated into a community of brethren who open their doors and their lives to them, instead of treating them like castaways. It is within the church that the healing power of Jesus Christ is experienced, when all hope is lost. It is within the church that the class barriers and elitism is broken, not built up and entrenched.

And then to my favourite part of Christ’s radical declaration: It is in the church that the year of the Lord’s favour can be truly experienced. I know what some of my friends think with any whiff of reference to “the Lord’s favour”, but it is very evident here that the year of the Lord’s favour is not about the individualistic name-it-claim-it that we are used to. In fact, it is quite socially radical than our own myopic personal circumstances lead us to dwell upon.

Maybe it’s time we begin to think of how Jesus intends we fulfil his kingdom that is amongst us. Maybe it’s time we put our money where our mouths are and create systems that liberate, not enslave men and women who belong to Christ. Just like the Jubilee, God is not going to do a miracle to have his kingdom established amongst us. We have to accept the guidance of his word and Spirit, as it leads us into self-sacrifice and servanthood for the advancement of each other in fulfilling the purpose that Christ himself has already said – “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”. It requires a change in our attitudes, priorities, desires and wishes. So, any pundits for the Kingdom Come?