The Jewish people lived with this hope that one day all peoples on earth would be blessed through Abraham. This was such a powerfully motivating promise and it was at the foundation of the Old Testament era. Take a moment to imagine the whole world living in the full and true blessing of God…
Doesn’t that sound amazing and exciting?
We need this promise at the forefront of our hearts and minds.
Yet, there’s a particular way in which this came to pass in the New Testament. Jesus was born through the virgin Mary to bring about this promise to Abraham. When Jesus started preaching, he proclaimed the “good news of God” and explained, “The kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:14-15, italics added).
Through the Son of God, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, the kingdom of God was now at hand. The blessing for the whole world God promised to Abraham was now available through the person of Jesus. We can sometimes lose things in translation with the words, “blessing,” “kingdom,” and “heaven,” but these words were pointing people to the same thing… The reality of God’s presence right here and right now, available to be experienced for everyday people like you and I.
N.T. Wright unpacked this idea of heaven incredibly well in his fantastic book Surprised by Hope. He wrote, “God’s kingdom’ in the preaching of Jesus refers not to postmortem destiny, not to our escape from this world into another one, but to God’s sovereign rule coming ‘on earth as it is in heaven’” (Wright, Surprised by Hope, 18). There’s a reason Jesus told his disciples to pray on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). This was the promise of his heavenly Father to one of his earthly fathers (Abraham). It was so that all the nations would be blessed.
Unfortunately, the word “blessed” has lost a lot of its original meaning and power. We need to recover the essence of what God meant when he said the whole world would be blessed. For Jesus, this meant the kingdom of heaven invading the earth! This was a big deal.
In his first message in the gospel of Luke, Jesus read Isaiah 61 to the people of his hometown. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). Jesus brought the kingdom of heaven to earth and that’s what his purpose was all about.
The “year of the Lord’s favor” Jesus announced, “seems to describe the Old Testament concept of the year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:9-15 and following). In the year of Jubilee slaves were set free, debts canceled, and things set to a new start” (Guzik, Bible Commentary, Luke 4). Jesus was inaugurating a whole new way of life from heaven. He was the Promised One that would come through Abraham’s family line (see the genealogy in Matthew 1:1-16) to bring about blessing to the whole world. This kingdom of Jesus is still being revealed all around the world to this very day…and we get to play a part in it!
Christ In You
Here’s some wonderful things to consider from the writings of C.S. Lewis, which will lead to a deeper revelation of what this “blessing” is all about…
Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has — by what I call “good infection.” Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”
C.S.Lewis (Mere Christianity)
The new world is coming forth by Christ revealing himself in people and transforming them to be just like him. He came to share his very life with us! As the apostle Peter wrote, “He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). We are participating in the divine nature!
Jesus said something amazing in his John 17 prayer: “I have given them the glory that you gave me that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:22). As Lewis went on to state, “He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has.” Jesus has shared his glory with us!
Making this message known, received, and experienced in the day to day was the apostle Paul’s goal in ministry. He wanted Christ to be revealed in every person. First, he explained that this was the mystery hidden for generations. He wrote, “The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people” (Colossians 1:26). What was the hidden mystery that Paul spoke of?
“The glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The mystery that God revealed in Christ is that Christ is in us, sharing his life and power in every way. The new heaven and new earth (the new world) is about people discovering the power of Christ in them, and having their lives transformed and healed from the inside out.
Paul’s goal was to make this reality of “Christ in you” known to every person in the world. He wrote, “Christ is our message! We preach to awaken hearts and bring every person into the full understanding of truth. It has become my inspiration and passion in ministry to labor with a tireless intensity, with his power flowing through me, to present to every believer the revelation of being his perfect one in Jesus Christ” (Colossians 1:28-29 TPT).
This is the mystery of the gospel and we need to become well acquainted with it. Like Paul, may it be our passion to awaken people’s hearts to Christ within them, so that they’d become like Christ in every way…his life and character formed in their hearts. And learning to live it out in their lives. May we labor to present people perfect, complete, and mature in Christ. This is how we participate in ushering in the new world of Jesus.
“How can one who exists temporarily in ‘the present evil age’ nevertheless enjoy deliverance from it and live here and now the life of the age to come? By the aid of the indwelling Spirit, who not only makes effective in the believer the saving benefits of Christ’s passion but also secures to him in advance the blessings of the age to come.”
F.F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 198
The Spirit of Christ is in us and we can, in the here and now, enjoy deliverance from the present evil age, and thus taste the benefits of Christ’s passion and the age to come. The new world is crashing into the present through people who are waking up to Christ within them.