3 min 53 sec: app reading time
February 28, 2025
What Was Jesus' Message? (Part 2)
Dear Friend:
In my last "Chats," I shared with you half of Jesus's most essential message: "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand."
I explained that the word "repent" has been mistranslated. The more appropriate translation would be "Wake up, and change your way as a result of it." Repentance displays connotations of penitence and punishment driven by fear. "Wake up" is a better translation since I believe "love" is embedded in the fabric of the human DNA and simply needs to be unburied and awakened from under the rubble of religious constructs and fear tactics that wire human behavior.
Why Kingdom?
At first, I assumed the "Kingdom" was just a fancier way of saying "heaven" or the "power of God" in their midst, as Jesus was the liberator of their Roman Empire, which was the Kingdom they faced day in and day out. I think Jesus was subverting using "kingdom" in figurative language to help them think of the opposite. Let's face it: His use of the word "Kingdom" created great confusion because all they could conceive in their minds was "power."
In the Greek Kingdom, "basilea" or the feminine "βασιλεία" implies the same as the Hebrew "מַמְלָכָה" or Malchut. In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, it means the rule, power, and the realm over which a King has dominion. All of them are unfortunately connected to "power." Yet, a careful study of what Jesus meant by "Kingdom" is far from power.
Jesus used the word "Kingdom," subverting (I want to use the word sabotage) the culturally and psychologically wired meaning of the word to shock people into a "new vision."
Like I change "repent" to "wake up," I will change "kingdom" intentionally.
He revealed in no uncertain terms, though he did not explicitly state it, that what they had been wired to believe as "power" was NOT power at all!
This was radical indeed.
It was like a guy telling you he has 1 million dollars in his savings account to impress you and say, "Well... that's nothing... You will be rich when..."
For years, as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian Pastor, I interpreted these words to mean some kind of divine afterlife, a destination for people who had prayed the proper prayers and avoided enough sin. A "divine power" counterpart to the "secular power" as I was wired to interpret power.
God's Kingdom was a "mega" revelation that could forever change their perspective of power. I saw God's Kingdom as a competitive power. Jesus turned the meaning into a non-competitive power! In Jesus' meaning of "kingdom," there is no "Great Controversy," as I learned early on in my religious culture.
So, "repent," confess, follow Jesus, and keep the commandments were the usual routine to walk into a future Kingdom! The Kingdom of God meant, in the end, God's power to save me from the power of sin in my life if I repented enough for being such a miserable sinner.
But that’s not what Jesus said at all.
Instead, he said:
“The Kingdom of God is at hand.” (Meaning God's relational presence now)
“The Kingdom of God is among you.” (Meaning God's relational presence in human body as Jesus)
“The Kingdom of God has come near.” (Meaning God's relational presence is next to you now and forever)
He wasn’t describing a far-off paradise, a place, or even God's power!
I need you to catch my shift from "power" to "God's relational presence" so that I can understand what "Kingdom" means in Jesus' mindset.
"Wake up to God's relational presence" is a better translation!
He wasn’t talking about something that would happen "someday"—he was talking about something already breaking into their midst right there and then.
And catch this: He wasn't referring to the power of God either, as is often portrayed in Christian messages. In other words, "the power of the Roman kingdom versus the power of God's kingdom." That wasn't it.
When I caught this after leaving religion, it fascinated me!
And such insight raised a question I had never really considered.
If "kingdom" was the thing Jesus cared about most, then why had I spent my whole life thinking Christianity was about the "power" of God?
When one's mindset shifts from "power" to "God's relational presence in inner consciousness," power, as we understand it, becomes dust in the air. When "power" evaporates, one is left with something much more significant: influence, legacy, relational presence, and love. Some of the most influential words and acts have been performed by the least powerful people in history. For all people knew, 2,000 years ago, Jesus' pilgrimage-loving people ended up in a fiasco. Yet, 2,000 later, his message reminds us that God is with us now! I don't follow Jesus. I follow the message he proclaimed. I know God is next to me now!
Try to dismiss the "Great Controversy" motif, typically a Seventh-day Adventist theological construct, from "power" against "power" to "love" versus "unlove" and catch how the so-called "great controversy" becomes smoke.
"Kingdom" is the relational presence of love within your consciousness that changes your perspective on the external world. It changes your disposition and attitude. It changes you from within, producing good fruit or natural behavior driven by love. (Galatians 5:13-23 and 1 Corinthians 13 ). There is no "power" against the "presence of relational love" except "power enmascared" it as such. There is nothing behind the mask! Empty noise, as Paul well states in the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 13.
"Wake up" (translated as repent) to "God's presence" (translated as kingdom) in your life as LOVE now; let it fill your consciousness and change you from within!
With you on your journey,
Pastor Harold