Tony Evans

Even when we believe that God is at work in the world, it can sometimes be hard to figure out what He is up to. Understanding the ways He chooses to work in the lives of His people is important for understanding how His purposes are being worked out. He has had distinctive ways of dealing with humanity in every era of history.

For example, through much of the Old Testament, God was focused on working through a people—the Jews. In this age, which many theologians have referred to as “the church age,” God has chosen the church to be His primary means for proclaiming His kingdom rule in this world. It is to the church that Christ has handed over the “keys of the kingdom” (Matt. 16:19), so that the kingdom is unlocked and manifested as the church participates in Christ’s mission of proclaiming “the kingdom of heaven,” which is “at hand” (Matt. 4:17). God has chosen to work through the church, which can be defined as a community of individuals spiritually linked together with the purpose of reflecting and legislating the values of the kingdom of God.

But often the church doesn’t seem to do a very good job of fulfilling this mission. Some cynics have suggested that the church is comprised of Christians who are “so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good.” Their belief, it is claimed, is mostly a personal matter and makes little impact upon the world around them. And such a charge is sometimes not without merit. Often it seems that the church may have the right knowledge about God and His kingdom—rooted in solid theology—but it seems unable to apply that knowledge in meaningful ways into lives that would create a kingdom impact on their homes, workplaces, and communities. They live out their insulated Christian lives without any real concern for the advancement of God’s rule over His world.

Of course, the opposite might be said of some churches, who are, in essence, “so earthly minded that they are of no heavenly good.” This type of church has been colonized by the kingdom of this world, taking up the ethics and values of the world instead of the ethics and values of the kingdom of God. As a result, they cannot function as the “salt of the earth” or as the “light of the world,” because they can hardly be distinguished from that world. Neither of these extremes should characterize the church that understands its purpose in the kingdom of God and the part it was designed to play in advancing that kingdom’s agenda.

In Matthew 16:13–16, we see Jesus confronting His disciples with a crucial question: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The disciples respond by giving Him some of the common perceptions in play: the people see Him in the tradition of John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets. But Jesus, in His typical fashion, does not let the question rest there. He asks them this penetrating and all-important question: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15).

Simon Peter responds to Jesus on behalf of the disciples with this confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). And Jesus says that it is upon this confession that He will build His church (Matthew 16:18). This means that the very foundation of the community Jesus is building is first and foremost a community marked by their confession that Christ is Messiah and Lord.

This, then, is both how we enter the community of Christ’s church, through our personal profession of faith in Him as our Lord and Ruler, and how the community of Christ’s church helps us to grow, by teaching us to submit every area of our life to His rule. The church is the community where we learn to confess Christ as our King and to submit our lives to His rule.

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This article is adapted from Tony Evans Training Center course materials on The Kingdom Church.
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