Kingdom of Israel / Kingdom of God

Jesus told His disciples - "It is not for you to know the times or seasons...." When Russians hear this, it comes across much stronger in their language: "It's none of your business to know the times or seasons.... But you must be my witnesses!" Sometimes we try to peer into a crystal ball to figure out exactly how things will turn out in the end times, but that's the wrong thing to do. The three-month-long protests all over Ukraine for "democracy, transparency and an end to corruption" illustrate the ongoing dilemma of exactly how we Christians should enable the Kingdom of God to come on this earth, as the Lord Jesus taught us to pray - "Our Father in heaven, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Mat. 5:10).

In ancient Israel the kingdom was a theocracy, led jointly by its king and its high priest. In fact, the Levites - the "priestly" tribe of Israel - performed many of the functions of government. The Law of God was synonymous with the laws of the nation of Israel: in Lev. 20:1-27 we read that the death penalty was to be applied for idolatry, adultery, homosexual acts, etc. And in Lev. 24:10-23 we see that the death penalty also applied for blasphemy. These laws applied not only to Israelites, but also to the foreigners who resided in Israel (Num. 15:15-16). The nation of Israel, however, continually failed to live up to the laws of God: in Christ's time on earth, adultery was given a pass and Jews kept swine!

This pattern of theocracy, the merging of temporal and spiritual realms, was interrupted in Early Christianity: Christ drew a distinction between Israel - the ruling Jews, and Himself - His Kingdom - in the parable of the Master of the vineyard (Mark 12:1-12), where He explains that the Master (God the Father) built a vineyard and entrusted it to a farmer (Israel), who stoned the Master's servants and finally killed His Son. "What therefore will the lord of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the farmers, and will give the vineyard to others" (v. 9). The parable concludes - "they perceived that he spoke the parable against them" (v. 12) - and they were right!

Then in the Gospel of John, Christ told the Jewish leaders - "You are from below, I am from above. You are of this world, but I am not of this world" (John 8:23). Similarly, when Christ was on trial before Pontius Pilate, He said - "My Kingdom is not of this world. If my Kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight, that I wouldn't be delivered to the Jews. But now my Kingdom is not from here" (John 18:36).

The Apostle Paul later penned these words - "I wrote to you in my letter to have no company with sexual sinners; yet not at all meaning with the sexual sinners of this world, or with the covetous and extortioners, or with idolaters; for then you would have to leave the world. But as it is, I wrote to you not to associate with anyone who is called a brother who is a sexual sinner, or covetous, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner. Don't even eat with such a person. For what have I to do with also judging those who are outside? Don't you judge those who are within?" (1 Cor. 5:9-11). So the Old Covenant law of capital punishment for such sins is changed in the New Covenant to excommunication (rebuke, exclusion from communion and possible expulsion), but the Church should leave to God those sinners who are outside the Church.

In the next chapter Paul stated - "Don't be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortioners, will inherit the Kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 6:9b-10). And in 2 Cor. 10:3-4 Paul writes - "For though we walk in the flesh, we don't wage war according to the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds." The Gospel is a message of grace + spiritual conversion, not law + physical compulsion.

Until the conversion of Emperor Constantine, the Church - the inheritor of spiritual Israel - was separated from the state and often persecuted by the Roman Empire. But with Constantine's conversion, the Church and the Empire began to converge. The ideal in Eastern Orthodoxy was and is to achieve a "symphony" of Church and state, a mutually harmonious relationship. That ideal, however, was rarely realized in fact.

In the Western half of the Roman Empire, as the state began to disintegrate under the attacks of the pagan Germanic tribes, the Church took over the functions of government and became the "Holy Roman Empire." This continued for 1000 or more years, through the Medieval period and into the Renaissance. Vestiges of this remained up until World War One in the form of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - to me still very real because we lived for two years in Vienna, the capital of that former Empire. After the end of WWI, democratic governments were set up in Western Europe, separating church and state... for better or worse.

The situation was more complicated in Eastern Christianity because of the rise of Islam in the sixth century, conquering most of the territory of original Christianity in the Middle East and North Africa, and finally capturing the capital Constantinople in the 13th century. Eastern Christianity moved nortward into the Slavic lands of Central Europe called "Ruthenia" and ancient Rus, centered in Kiev/Kyiv. The Muslim Ottoman Turkish Empire invaded from the south, and the Muslim "Golden Horde" of Genghis Khan invaded from the east, eventually capturing Moscow and subjugating the Russian Tsar and the Russian Orthodox Church. Then the Polish-Lithuanian and the Austro-Hungarian Empires took over much of Central Europe, even extending into the Ukraine.

But after Tsar Ivan the Terrible "cast off the Mongol yoke" in the 16th century, the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church - now headed by its own Patriarch (after holding the Patriarch of Constantinople hostage until he elevated the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan to a Patriarch) - again jointly took over the reins of government up until the 1917 Communist Revolution. But communism was and is a "humanist" ideology, a distorted form of humanized, "decapitated Christianity" - Christianity without Christ-God as its Head - that merged a socialist do-gooder, pseudo-Christian ideology with the state. Both Lenin and Stalin were formerly Russian Orthodox seminarians turned atheists! And with the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1989-1991, which we also witnessed first-hand, the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church once again jointly took over the reins of government.

So we can see that the notions of democracy and separating church (ideology) from state have deeper roots in the West than in the East. But is it necessarily a good thing that the will of the people, the majority should override the revealed will of God? Or should a humanized, "decapitated Christianity" ideology that proclaims sexual immorality to be normal and homosexual marriage to be acceptable be also the norm for the Church? Not at all! Christians must observe the moral and ethical standards for the Church, while letting the state pass whatever laws it will. But we also must not allow the state to co-opt the functions of the Church and squeeze Her out of the social sphere. Although we should vote and take part in society, we as followers of Christ are bound by a higher law than that of the state: Christ's kingdom is not of this world.

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 16 Feb. 2014.)