The Kingdom of Me
“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Romans 14:17–19, ESV).
It is all too easy to allow ourselves to be drawn into a shrunken, censorious, opinionated fiefdom of self. It is a dark place, and we have all been there. This fiefdom has a constitution, and it begins, “I am the measure of all things. Mine is the perspective, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Mine are the rights and the rules, and you had better get with the program.” Its national anthem is, “My Way!” and its flag announces the ominous warning, “Don’t Tread on Me!”
I, for one, have been spending some time recently in this fiefdom, a popular tourist resort, but I have found that it's much easier to get in than it is to get out. The darker part of me wants to stay; in fact, it’s reminiscent of that famous Hotel California:
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! “
In the Church, one of the most dangerous manifestations of self’s petty fiefdom is a party spirit of judgmentalism, especially when it comes to applying the nitty gritty, debatable does and don’ts of the law. All this comes down to the light of each individual conscience and is a largely personal business. We know we should not judge one another; but we do anyway. The issues are legion and seem so clear to us. How could they not be clear to everyone? Issues like what method of schooling should we choose for our children, what constitutes a work of necessity on the Lord’s Day and what does not, what does modesty mean in the life of a teenager, etc. It is easy for dominant lions like me to confuse God’s opinion and my own and steamroll over sheep standing in my way.
Paul says that this is a mistake on a number of levels, most notably that it completely misses the nature of the Kingdom of God. But wait, I say, “I’m judging my brothers for their Lord’s Day disobedience. My concerns are 100% about the rule of Christ for their lives.”
“No,” Paul says, “they are not.” The Kingdom of God does not consist in the petty, debatable choices which human beings make over what they should eat and drink, even when the law of the Kingdom has something to say about those things. The Kingdom of God consists of righteousness, peace, and joy. What does Paul mean? Are these the objective realities given to us in the gospel, or should we understand them to be describing our subjective experience? John Murray believes that Paul is referring to the latter.
In other words, Christians must be concerned about their own righteousness. We must be concerned to apply and live according to the will of God (Rom. 12:1-3). This does not, however, authorize us to be the “righteousness-police” when it comes to our neighbor’s life. The will of God has much more to do with earnest, brother-building, fellowship-promoting, Christ-imitating love than it does with loveless nitpicking with respect to our brother’s choices. That doesn’t mean that we can afford to be laissez faire regarding the details of our own walk, you understand, but it does mean that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to get bent out of shape over the details of our brother’s life. We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and we should all probably spend a good deal more time considering how we will fare on that awesome Judgment Day than over how our brother will close out.
The Kingdom of God also has to do with peace. We serve the God of peace, in the name of Christ who made peace, and by the Holy Spirit who rubs this peace like ointment into our lives. Consequently, Paul’s concern is for relational peace in the Church. We should not be fighting over inconsequential things that destroy unity and fellowship.
The Kingdom of God also has to do with joy in the Holy Ghost. While we may debate whether Paul means us to understand righteousness and peace in subjective or objective terms, joy in the Holy Spirit is unquestionably experiential in import. In other words, if we aren’t joyful members of the Kingdom, something has gone terribly wrong. Heaven is a happy place full of joy, and the Church should be as well. We serve a happy God surrounded by a joyful angelic host. When this joy doesn’t trickle down to us, something is always blocking it, and that something is normally selfishness, blindness, and wickedness. Why do we ever struggle to find joy? Well, it’s almost always because we aren’t getting what we want. This is how joy works in the world: get what you want from the king and then be happy! However, in the Kingdom of God, it works exactly the opposite: you want what you get from the King. This is the source of true and lasting joy, one independent of our circumstances.
So as I close out our devotional this morning, let me ask you a question: Do these three terms describe your experience in God’s Kingdom? Are you hungering for righteousness? Are you experiencing peace or anxiety? Are you a joyful Christian? If not, why not? Could it be that you have taken your eyes off of God and have slipped across the border into the shrunken fiefdom of self?