More than a few of Jesus’ teaching and His parables describe the “Kingdom of God1. so before we dive into the specifics, let us explore what Jesus means by the word “Kingdom.” We start with Mark 1:15.
“The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15 )
What, then, is meant by Kingdom? Is God’s Kingdom a territory or nation over which He rules the same way the kings of France, Spain, and England rule their countries? Or, is it a metaphor symbolizing heaven, in which Jesus claims, in so many words that “If you repent and believe, you can go to heaven when you die”? On the other hand, some theologians assert that the Kingdom of God refers to the advent of the Church. This latter interpretation heralds the advent of the Christian Church’s age. Still, others view the Kingdom of God as a world infused with divine justice and interpret Jesus’ proclamation as a call to social activism. More recently, “spiritually” inclined people have reduced the Kingdom of God to the inner awareness of one’s divinity. Like the ancient Gnostics, they understand the good news of the kingdom to mean “We are divine.”
But how did Jesus and other Jews of the first century understand the phrase ‘the Kingdom of God’? As it happens, the prophets of the Hebrew Bible understood what “Kingdom” meant. They had been using that word for centuries. A normal reading of the Hebrew Bible’s original Greek or Hebrew text is illuminating. In the Septuagint, the Greek word translated as “Kingdom” is βασιλεία (basileia), and the Hebrew word is מַמְלֶכֶת (mamleḵeṯ). So, while basileia (or mamleḵeṯ) often referred to a territory over which a king ruled. However, its meaning, more common during Jesus’ time in the first century, was authority or power. Now, most Bibles translate basileia as “kingdom,” as, for example, in the Parable of the Ten Minas (Luke 19:12).
“A nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom” (Luke 19:12 ESV).
This translation is not helpful to contemporary Christians who may be unaware that the word “kingdom” has a meaning other than territory or country. In the Luke verse above, basileia could certainly mean country, land, or nation. However, basileia also means authority, and the NRSV translators capture the meaning exactly right for this verse. In their understanding, the nobleman goes to a distant land “to get royal power for himself.”
“A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself. (NSRV)
In other words, the scholars who translated the NSRV understood the nobleman’s purpose was to obtain a grant of authority. To reiterate: the purpose of the journey was not to obtain additional land, country, or a nation over which to rule. Rather, the nobleman sought to obtain new and greater authority. To make this clear, if the nobleman’s name were “Bill,” then the NSRV translation of “Kingdom of Bill” would refer to all people subject to the authority of Bill!
Thus, when Jesus proclaims that the Kingdom of God has come near, he means that God’s authority is imminent, if not already present. An accurate paraphrase of Mark 1:15 then might summarize Jesus’ teaching along these lines:
“The time is fulfilled, and the authority of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Of course, Jesus’ announcement of God’s reign did not come in a vacuum. It consistently fulfilled a central theme in first-century Judaism: at the “end-of-days,” Jews wanted, upon resurrection, to find themselves under God’s authority.
Now, go and study
[1] Alternately, the “Kingdom of Heaven.” This version is used when speaking to Jews who do not use the word “God.”