Discovering the Real Jesus in Monroe

(I took this picture of a moth on a wall at Monroe County Community College yesterday. Anyone know what kind it is?)

Today I’m spending time preparing for my first semester Kingdom of God class I’ll teach in our coming Redeemer Ministry School. I absolutely LOVE taking time to study like this and being able to focus on and dig in to the things that I value most highly and deeply.

The main text for my Kingdom of God class is George Ladd’s excellent The Gospel of the Kingdom. Ladd’s essential point is that, in the Bible, the Kingdom of God is both future and present. The presentness of God’s Kingdom is seen in Hebrews 6:5, where we are told that there are those who have “tasted… the powers of the age to come.”

This is a now-thing; an experiential reality of this life. Thus our faith in Jesus is not merely a religion of promise and future hope. Listen to how Ladd writes about this.

“The Age to Come is still future, but we may taste the powers of that Age. Something has happened by virtue of which that which belongs to the future has become present. The powers of The Age to Come have penetrated This Age. while we still live in the present evil Age and while Satan is still the god of This Age, we may taste the powers of The Coming Age. Now a taste is not a seven-course banquet. We still look forward to the glorious consummation and fulfillment of that which we have only tasted. Yet a taste is real. It is more than a promise; it is realization; it is experience. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” We have “tasted the powers of The Age to Come.” (41)

For some really excellent reading on how this shakes down in a person’s life today, see Bill Johnson’s When Heaven Invades Earth.