The Empire of Heaven
focusing on what rules us, and in what manner
Scot McKnight writes:
There are two major themes in the Synoptic Gospels: first, Yēsous himself and, second, Empire of God or, as Matthaios almost always phrases it, the “Heavens’ Empire” or the “Empire of the heavens.” Readers of the Gospel of Matthaios need to see that this text is called “the Gospel” of Matthaios because it’s the gospel itself. The gospel of the Second Testament is that Yēsous is the long-awaited Messiah (here: Christos), the royal Son of God and Son of Dauid [David], who delivers Yisraēl [Israel] and others from their sins so they can live with and before God in a way that honors God and establishes God’s Empire as society and culture. Empire, the second theme, highlights five convictions:
that God alone is king in his Son Yēsous
that this one true God rules by rescuing people from their wrongs and governing them
that this king rules a people—in the First Testament called “Yisraēl,” and in the Second Testament this people becomes the “church”
that this people follows the will of God as taught by Yēsous
that this people is governed by God in a now-universal land that has its own covenant in the pages of the Second Testament
One needs to note, too, that this Empire theme includes the very common theme in the Gospel of Matthaios of discipleship, Apprenticeship, or following Yēsous. It was impossible for Yēsous—and the Gospel authors—to have used this term Empire and have it not carry some notes of resistance to the all-too-common political empires of the day. You can’t call the work of Yēsous “Empire” without raising eyebrows, without raising some blood pressure, and without awakening hopes for a new world.1
I strongly appreciate these observations, but I also find his five convictions springing from the implications of Empire in need of fixing. Here is how I would put them:
that God alone is king in his Son Jesus
that this one true God rules by rescuing people from their wrongs and governing them
that this king rules a people—a commonwealth in which native-born and transferred-in comprise one new people
that this people follows the will of God as clarified by Jesus
that this people is governed by God in a now-universal land that is a down-payment on the realization of the New Covenant mentioned in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hebrews.
There, now it can’t as easily be misconstrued to bifurcate God’s people and segment God’s Empire.
Scot McKnight, The Second Testament: A New Translation (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2023), Mt., p. 1.