Third Series – Sermon Thirty
Original by George MacDonald
Paraphrase by Dale R. Howie
In “Kingship,” MacDonald uses contrast to make his point. Here, the kingdom life from sermon one of the first series, “The Child in the Mist,” is finally summarized. The childlikeness that we share with the Father and the Son reaching its full expression in Goodness! The complete Goodness of God’s other-centered and self-giving truth and Life. This Goodness is found and expressed in the Life of Jesus! This Goodness is contrasted with the selfishness of fallen and broken humanity. This brokenness is expressed as self-centered and self-seeking darkness and slavery found in this world.
The counterintuitive nature of the Lord’s kingdom is expressed clearly in the servant versus the sovereign nature of His kingdom. It reaches its full expression as the body of Christ in which Jesus is the head, heart, and soul of it! This kingdom is a community that is in peace and harmony.
Truth is Divine. The witness of the truth is Jesus. The kingdom of truth is in the hearts of men. The joy of men is in the true God. The thoughts of God are the truth of everything. All well-being lies in a genuine relationship with God. The person who responds with their whole being is of the truth.
NOTE: For those of you who like the feel of paper, or just want to read this in a more traditional form CLICK HERE for PDF in new tab . BOLD TEXT are significant quotes for which I have placed the originals as Cliffnotes at the end.
Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this purpose I have been born, and for this I have come into the world: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.”
Kingship
Pilate asks Jesus if he is a king. The question comes because, in verse thirty-six, Jesus states,”My kingdom is not of this world.”. He now tells Pilate that He is a king, but a different kind over a very different kingdom.
However, titles and power are uninteresting to Him. They are His if He wants them. He could have called on His disciples and twelve legions of angels to help Him and driven the Romans into the same abyss they had driven their conquests. How easy it would have been to conquer the world starting with Rome and reigned as the just monarch Israel dreamed of Him being. He could have ruled the world from Jerusalem, not merely dispensing justice but compelling conformity.
He does not, however, care for government. No such kingdom would serve the Father’s purposes or satisfy His own soul. The perfect empire to the Son of God was to teach each human being to love his neighbor and be good like His Father! Being love’s ambassador to just one heart, for its joy, and the Father’s gift of beauty is the expression of true kingship! Jesus would rather wash the feet of His weary brothers than be the sole perfect monarch who ever ruled the world. It was empire, sovereign rule, that He rejected when He ordered Satan behind Him like a dog to His heel. Government, I repeat, was to Him nothing and unhelpful.
So, what is the nature of the kingdom over which the Lord desires to reign? I answer, a kingdom of servant kings and no other. A kingdom where all are kings like Him. There and only there does He care to reign in His Father’s name. As no good human king would desire to rule over cannibals, savages, or animal races, so Jesus has no desire to govern over savage peoples and nations. A good king reigns over good and noble people and nations like His own.
Jesus is no king in virtue of any conquest, inheritance, or election, but by the essence of His essential being. Consequently, He cares for no citizens that are not as Himself. His citizens must be like Him, kings in their character, nature, and essence. In order to understand His answer to Pilate, we must know in what His kingship exists, what constitutes divine kingship, and His claim to it.
Jesus’ Kingdom is where no one seeks to be above another. Ambition is as mere dirt in His Kingdom. I am the king because it is my eternal destiny, my purpose to establish a kingdom of Truth. Everyone who loves Truth hears my voice, is of my heart, and becomes one of my citizens.
Like most Christians today, Pilate’s response requested a definition of truth, an intellectual explanation of what the word “truth” means, instead of seeking to do what is true. However, whether from confidence in the uselessness of the question or from intending to resume the conversation after he had freed the Lord, he instantly goes out and tells the people he finds no fault in Him. Whatever we think of his actions here he is far less worthy of blame than we” Christians” who, instead of purposing to be pure “even as He is pure,” that is of being our brothers and sisters’ keepers, we would rather “serve Him” by going to church or chapel perhaps to condemn the opinions of their neighbors of whom they disagree or to teach things they do not do themselves. We would be better to serve God truthfully in our businesses, banks, or employment.
Pilate and these others are not asking the right question which is, “How am I to be a genuine person? How am I to become divinely human?” Jesus is king because of the trueness of His thoughts, imaginations, will, life, and actions. True first to His Father in that He was altogether His. True to Himself in that He forgets Himself entirely, and true to us because He will endure anything from and for us. True in ceasing to declare Himself the Son, messenger, and likeness of the Divine. We will kill Him for this, but that does not matter, for the truth is as He says!
Jesus is the King because it’s His destiny to bear witness to the Truth! What Truth, you ask? The Truth that makes up the fulness of relationships throughout the universe. The principle Truth is that His Father is Good! That He is perfectly, beautifully, and eternally Good! And that the Kingdom’s crown and joy is to desire and live in the eternal Father’s Will and Life!
So, Jesus, with this Truth, reveals and delivers the death blow to the lie and power of hell. For hell’s principle lie is, “I am my own.” I am the ruler of my own kingdom. I am the center from which my thoughts proceed and the object and end of those thoughts. Because I am the alpha and omega of the life of which my thoughts return.
My glory is that I am the center of everything, and my ambition is to gather the good opinions of men to myself. My pleasure is what delights me. My kingdom is made up of those who acknowledge my greatness. My judgment is the way things are. My right is what I desire. The more it is all about me, the greater I am, and the less I acknowledge an obligation and debt to others. The more I reject the fact that I did not make myself, and the more self-sufficient I feel, the greater I am. I will be free to do what I want from whatever motive I want. Or simply said, to do what I want, for any reason, at any time is to be free and alive!
The principles of hell and the world are the same. Whether asserted or defended by us, they do not matter as long as the Lord addresses them, addresses them as lies. It is as if He said, “I ought to know what I’m saying, for I have been from eternity the Son of Him from Whom you come. The one you call Father, but of whom you will not embrace as Father. I know what He thinks and who He is, and I declare that my perfect freedom and pure individuality rests in that I have no other will than His! My will is submitted to His, for His will is right, for my Father is Righteousness itself.”
His being is love, fairness, and devotion, and He will have us like Him. We will be the children of this love, fairness, and devotion to Him and everyone. I became human to be an eyewitness to this truth, the visible personification of it, the very likeness and manifestation of God who is the truth! My very being is His witness. Everything in me witnesses of Him. He is the truth, and I am the truth. Kill me if you will, but while I live, I will declare that what I am, He is!
If I said I did not know My Father, I would be a liar. I fear nothing you can do to me. Will the king who comes to declare the truth turn His back for fear of men? My Father is just like me; I know it, and I say it. You do not like hearing it because you are not like Him. You measure by the visible show of things; therefore, you say I lie! But I would lie if I said He was like anything you could imagine, for you like performance, power, and the praise of men. I do not, and God is like me!
I came into the world to reveal the Father. I am a king because He sent me to testify of His truth, and I do. Kill me, and I will rise again. You can kill me, but death cannot hold me. Death is as a servant to me. You, however, are death’s slaves because you will not be true and let the truth set you free. Bound and in your hands, I am as free as God, for God is my Father. I know I will suffer, suffer in death, but if you knew my Father, you would know I am ready, as you would be too. God is my strength, and He is greater than I.
Remember, readers and friends, I said, “It is as if He said? I am daring to express but a shadow of the Lord’s testimony, a shadow cast by His deeds and words! If I am wrong, He will forgive me. I do not fear Him. I fear only that I would fail to see and write the truth and myself be a castaway. That is that I would be found to be no king but a talker. No disciple of Jesus, ready to follow Him into death, but an arguer of the truth, a hater of the lies men say of Him and be myself a truth-speaking liar, not a doer of the word.
Truth is Divine. The witness of the truth is Jesus. The kingdom of truth is in the hearts of men. The joy of men is in the true God. The thoughts of God are the truth of everything. All well-being lies in a genuine relationship with God. The person who responds with their whole being is of the truth.
The one who knows these things only by mental assent and does not order his life, actions, judgments, and love by them is the worst liar. They lie with their whole being and cast disdain upon that which their tongue confesses.
Is every Christian expected to testify? Anyone unwilling to witness to the truth is not in the kingdom of heaven. One who believes must testify. Anyone who sees the truth must live it. Live it where we live, work, and play as Jesus lived it! I do not say we are all called to dispute and defend the truth with logic and arguments, but we are all called to display on whose side we claim.
But when I say truth, I do not mean opinion. Treating opinion as if it is truth is to grievously wrong the Truth. The one who loves the truth tries to live it and will know when to speak or be silent. We are not bound to say all we think, but we are bound to witness the truth with our actions.
The girl who before her mocking friends declared, “I believe in Jesus” bore witness to the truth and her Master. King David also did, when he said, “Unfailing love, O Lord, is yours. Surely you repay all people according to what they have done.”
All our talk of Jesus as king, He would reject. Jesus uses our language but means something so completely different that we fail to comprehend it! He is and forever will be our older brother, and our ideas of government will not create His family of children and cannot cause us to love and serve one another.
He has all authority as the sovereign King, but He chooses not to use it or relate to His creation that way.
His kingdom is filled with citizens who are servant kings like Him. In His kingdom, there is no need for ambition. For the least are and will always remain the least and the servants of all.
Jesus is King because He is Good, other-centered, and self-giving, like His Father!
We, in contrast, are all about us, self-centered and self-seeking. And there can be no Light, Life, Truth, or Freedom in this hell of a kingdom!
The nature of Jesus’ Kingdom is not of this world. It is not like anything we have seen or imagined except in Jesus Himself, for He values what we do not!
Truth is Divine. . . But when I say truth, I do not mean opinion. To treat opinion as if it is truth is to grievously wrong the truth. The one who loves the truth tries to live it and will know when to speak or be silent. We are not bound to say all we think, but we are bound to witness the truth with our actions.
Kingdom? – Introductory blog
NO GOVERNMENT
He did not care for government. No such kingdom would serve the ends of his father in heaven, or comfort his own soul. What was perfect empire to the Son of God, while he might teach one human being to love his neighbour, and be good like his father! To be love-helper to one heart, for its joy, and the glory of his father, was the beginning of true kingship!
THE KINGDOM
Jesus is a king in virtue of no conquest, inheritance, or election, but in right of essential being; and he cares for no subjects but such as are his subjects in the same right. His subjects must be of his own kind, in their very nature and essence kings. To understand his answer to Pilate, see wherein consists his kingship; what it is that makes him a king; what manifestation of his essential being gives him a claim to be king.
The Lord’s is a kingdom in which no man seeks to be above another: ambition is of the dirt of this world’s kingdoms. He says, ‘I am a king, for I was born for the purpose, I came into the world with the object of bearing witness to the truth. Everyone that is of my kind, that is of the truth, hears my voice. He is a king like me, and makes one of my subjects.’
The Lord is a king because his life, the life of his thoughts, of his imagination, of his will, of every smallest action, is true—true first to God in that he is altogether his, true to himself in that he forgets himself altogether, and true to his fellows in that he will endure anything they do to him, nor cease declaring himself the son and messenger and likeness of God. They will kill him, but it matters not: the truth is as he says!
JESUS IS KING
Jesus is a king because his business is to bear witness to the truth. What truth? All truth; all verity of relation throughout the universe—first of all, that his father is good, perfectly good; and that the crown and joy of life is to desire and do the will of the eternal source of will, and of all life.
He deals thus the death-blow to the power of hell. For the one principle of hell is—’I am my own. I am my own king and my own subject. I am the centre from which go out my thoughts; I am the object and end of my thoughts; back upon me as the alpha and omega of life, my thoughts return. My own glory is, and ought to be, my chief care; my ambition, to gather the regards of men to the one centre, myself. My pleasure is my pleasure. My kingdom is—as many as I can bring to acknowledge my greatness over them. My judgment is the faultless rule of things. My right is—what I desire. The more I am all in all to myself, the greater I am. The less I acknowledge debt or obligation to another; the more I close my eyes to the fact that I did not make myself; the more self-sufficing I feel or imagine myself—the greater I am. I will be free with the freedom that consists in doing whatever I am inclined to do, from whatever quarter may come the inclination. To do my own will so long as I feel anything to be my will, is to be free, is to live.
NATURE OF THE KINGDOM
His very being is love and equity and self-devotion, and he will have his children such as himself—creatures of love, of fairness, of self-devotion to him and their fellows. I was born to bear witness to the truth—in my own person to be the truth visible—the very likeness and manifestation of the God who is true. My very being is his witness. Every fact of me witnesses him. He is the truth, and I am the truth. Kill me, but while I live I say, Such as I am he is.
I came into the world to show him. I am a king because he sent me to bear witness to his truth, and I bear it. Kill me, and I will rise again. You can kill me, but you cannot hold me dead. Death is my servant; you are the slaves of Death because you will not be true, and let the truth make you free.
KINGDOM OF TRUTH
The truth is God; the witness to the truth is Jesus. The kingdom of the truth is the hearts of men. The bliss of men is the true God. The thought of God is the truth of everything. All well-being lies in true relation to God. The man who responds to this with his whole being, is of the truth.
But when I say truth, I do not mean opinion: to treat opinion as if that were truth, is grievously to wrong the truth. The soul that loves the truth and tries to be true, will know when to speak and when to be silent; but the true man will never look as if he did not care. We are not bound to say all we think, but we are bound not even to look what we do not think.