Entering the Kingdom of God
Much confusion surrounds this action.
1. You do not enter this kingdom by a physical action. You surely understand that you cannot enter the kingdom of God by moving from where you’re sitting and coming to stand in the front. Entering the kingdom of God is a spiritual journey not a physical one. If the kingdom of God happened to be a geographical entity then your body would have to travel to it, but there is no location in this world which is God’s kingdom. Standing near a pulpit or kneeling before a communion table does not mean that you have entered God’s kingdom. Yet there are multitudes of people who believe that they are in the kingdom of God because they have gone through some overt physical act. The standing up and walking to the front has been equated with the spiritual action of entering the kingdom of God. This is so common a fallacy that whenever there is an outward action – raising a hand, having hands placed on your head, speaking or singing in tongues, getting baptised or getting out of your seat and walking to the front – then automatically people are convinced that the inward spiritual journey of entering the kingdom of God has also taken place. You get all these reports of meetings where hundreds entered the kingdom of God. They are referring to the response to what is often very long and very confused pleas by the speaker that people get out of their seats and walk to the front while the choir is singing and singing and singing.
Listen to John chapter 3;
I tell you the truth, no-one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. ‘How can a man be born when he is old?’ Nicodemus asked. ‘Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you the truth, no-one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit’ (John 3:3-8).
If entering the kingdom of God is some kind of a physical act then I don’t need a special inward work of the Holy Spirit so radical and life transforming that it is compared to my undergoing another birth. All I need is the guts to get out of my seat, stand up and walk to the front. I don’t need a birth from God to do that. I don’t need the sovereign Spirit to blow like a wind from heaven on me to do that. I don’t need any spiritual illumination from the third person of the Godhead to do that. I just need some chutzpah, some determination – ‘let’s all stand up and be counted in decadent days’. But our Lord said that to see, let alone to enter, the kingdom of God is such that no one can do it unless first there is a mighty operation of God called ‘a birth from above’.
2. But I must hasten on and remove another piece of confusion about entering the kingdom of God. You do not enter this kingdom simply by believing all the things about this kingdom that God tells us in his word. The King is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is God the Son. He was born of the virgin, lived a sinless life, died for sinners, was buried, he rose again and is seated at the right hand of God. Forgiveness of sins comes through his great work alone, and one day he is coming again to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom is his reign of grace over the hearts and lives of all his people. I have told you many truths about God’s kingdom, and many of you may believe that these propositions are true but that does not mean that you have entered the kingdom of God. You may have! But no one ever entered the kingdom of God through merely believing all the stuff about God’s kingdom that’s in the Bible.
I can know everything about North Korea that’s important; I may take a special interest in that sad country, and visit all million sites on the world wide web reading everything there, looking at every picture of the nation I find there. Does that actually take me into North Korea? No. I’m still living in Wales. I have to get a visa and be taken to North Korea by a special flight or I am still here. So too there is one thing essential in order for me to see or enter the kingdom of God. I must have a birth from heaven. God himself must transport me from the kingdom of darkness and confusion where everyone lives into his kingdom or I’ll remain where I’ve been all my life. I can learn what the Bible tells us about the kingdom of God, but that’s not enough. The only thing different within me will be those brain cells that I have charged to retain that special information from the New Testament. Who needs a new birth to assent to the historical facts of the gospel? Just as the average Englishman knows that in 1066 the Battle of Hastings took place and it was won by William the Conqueror defeating Harold, so anyone can do an Alpha course or a Christianity Explained course and learn many facts about the King of kings and the nature of his reign and believe them. That is not entering the kingdom of God. That is a purely mental action. The devils believe all that is written in study courses about Christianity. They can recite all the catechism answers; they are terribly familiar with the narrative of the Bible and the words of every hymn ancient and modern, but they are devils yet.
3. Again, let me amplify this in one more way, that entering this kingdom of God is not some mystical, private, personal experience. Many people want us to know that they deplore materialism, and that they believe in what they call ‘spirituality’. In other words they have some kind of vague belief in the kingdom of God, and in a vague kind of way they’ve made a vague kind of commitment to a vaguely known God. ‘Back off!’ they are saying to us as we speak to them about the King of kings, ‘I have my own private beliefs’. They do, just as long as they’re aware that their beliefs probably have nothing whatsoever to do with the kingdom of God.
This kingdom has a King, and he is not a projection of you; he is not an extension of your own personality at its best. He is utterly different from you. This King is a Spirit infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. He is a King with a name, a King with a character, a King with a Day, a King with a people, a King with a Book, a King with a Son. You may be in all kinds of kingdoms but if you are in his kingdom then just one King reigns there. He is not some vague King who changes from century to century, and from culture to culture. There is not a king for young people and another king for pensioners. There is not a king for women and another king for men. Black people do not have one king while white people have another. One King! Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen (1 Timothy 1:17). To enter his kingdom the King himself must give the birth. And wherever this King reigns the result is not mere religion, nor vague ‘spirituality,’ but those who are under his rule all show three great qualities – righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The apostle says, Anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. Those people alone please God and are approved by the church.
So the kingdom of God is entered by a sovereign work of God the Holy Spirit called the new birth or the birth from above. Those who thus enter the kingdom of God come under the reign of God. They are under his protection, guidance and instruction. He empowers them to live as he instructs them, and so in them and them alone the reign of God on earth has begun. Individuals are in this kingdom, the church is in this kingdom and the Christian family is in this kingdom.