Jesus, Paul, & the Kingdom of God

Jesus' primary message was the Kingdom of God. Yet Paul didn't seem to speak about the Kingdom much. Did Paul have a different theological center? What's the connection between the Kingdom & Spirit?

Biblical scholars unanimously agree that the central message of Jesus was related to the Kingdom of God. Jesus stated “I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other towns, too, because that is why I was sent” (Luke 4:43). Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus constantly proclaiming and demonstrating the Kingdom of God. The Gospel of Luke connects the preaching of the Kingdom as mentioned in 4:43 to both the casting out of demons (Luke 4:31-37) and Jesus’ healing ministry (Luke 4:38-41), with these themes being repeated in all of the Gospels throughout Jesus’ public ministry. Or, as George Eldon Ladd wrote,"

“The sayings about the Kingdom of God as a present reality must be interpreted against this background. The strongest statement is Matthew 12:28: “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.” One of Jesus’ most characteristic miracles was the exorcism of demons. Jesus amazed people because he spoke words of command and people were at once delivered from satanic bondage (Mk. 1:28). When accused of himself exercising satanic power, he replied that he cast out demons by the power of God, and this was proof that the Kingdom of God had come upon them.” (George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 63, emphasis mine)

The nature of the Kingdom of God has become well established in New Testament scholarship through the lens of Inaugurated Eschatology, the idea that the Kingdom of God is “now and not yet.” Thus, Jesus spent the majority of his ministry during the first century pointing people to the message of the Kingdom and demonstrating the incoming Kingdom’s implications for reality. Jesus pointed people to the inaugurated, dynamic, and enacted rule and reign of God.

But what about Paul? Careful readers of the Pauline corpus will note that Paul didn’t use Kingdom language nearly in the same centralized manner as Jesus. As Larry J. Kreitzer states:

“While the idea of the kingdom of God or kingdom of Christ is certainly foundational to the whole of Paul’s thought, it is somewhat surprising to discover the comparative rarity of explicit references to “the kingdom” within the Pauline letters” (Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 524, emphasis mine).

So what gives? Why doesn’t Paul mention the Kingdom of God more? Why does he not build an extensive theology around Jesus’ central message? Did he just assume that his readers would have been familiar with Jesus’ teachings and he wanted to add more in other areas?

Perhaps the best answer to this question is found in Youngmo Cho’s Spirit and Kingdom in the Writings of Luke and Paul: An Attempt to Reconcile these Concepts. A comprehensive scholarly look at Paul’s theology of the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of God, we find the solution to the question of Paul’s theology of the Kingdom in Paul’s pneumatology!

Cho convincingly demonstrates that Paul’s language around the Holy Spirit is the connection to Jesus’ theology of the Kingdom. Cho writes,

“For this purpose, we have questioned why the central message of Jesus (the kingdom of God) has been so sporadically used by the apostle Paul on the one hand, and why he has used the Spirit language in his writings so often on the other. By way of answering these questions, it has been argued that Paul’s use of language about the Spirit is an alternative expression for the kingdom of God in the Synoptics: Paul relates Jesus’ central teaching on the kingdom through his own emphasis on the concept ‘Spirit’. This can be deduced from the similarity of the eschatological framework between the Spirit in Paul and the kingdom of God in the Synoptics. More convincingly, this can be further deduced from the logical thrust that the various aspects of kingdom-life (new life, sonship, righteousness/justification, resurrection, ethical power), which are closely linked to the Spirit in Paul, are also conceptually related to the kingdom of God in the Synoptics. In other words, life in the Spirit in Paul is conceptually close to life in the kingdom of God in the Synoptics. In this way, for Paul, life in the Spirit becomes his way of speaking about life in the kingdom. The Spirit for him embodies the essence of the kingdom of God.” (Youngmo Cho, Spirit and Kingdom in the Writings of Luke and Paul: An Attempt to Reconcile These Concepts, 196, emphasis mine)

In other words, Paul is building his pneumatology on Jesus’ kingdom theology. Paul’s letters emphasize what living as a part of the Kingdom of God looks like and how that experience impacts the Christian life through the lens of the Spirit. For Cho, Paul “views the Spirit as the essence of the kingdom of God” (197).

While Cho’s work is focused on Paul’s theology of the Kingdom / Spirit, he also provides some very helpful clarifications toward understanding Luke’s missional thrust toward understanding Jesus’ theology of the Kingdom and the expansion of the Spirit’s work in the world. He writes:

“Luke’s understanding of the Spirit in relation to the kingdom is not depicted in this manner. For Luke, the Spirit primarily functions as the source of the inspired preaching of the kingdom which provides the occasion for people to enter the kingdom. The Spirit inspires Jesus to proclaim the kingdom to Israel, the disciples to proclaim it beyond Israel, Philip to proclaim it in Samaria, and Paul to proclaim it to the wider Gentile community. For Luke, where the Spirit is at work there the kingdom is being proclaimed” (197).

All this is to say that if you are about the Holy Spirit, you are about the Kingdom of God. And if you are all about the Kingdom of God, you should be all about the Holy Spirit. Which should be very familiar for those of us in the Vineyard movement.

About the Author

Luke Geraty is a pastor-theologian in northern California. With a few theology degrees and nearly twenty years of pastoral leadership, Luke loves the Bible, theology, fly fishing, coffee, and books. All opinions are his own and not the views of any other organizations he’s affiliated with. You can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe to his YouTube.