Redemption & Restoration: The Kingdom Message
Praise God -- we are redeemed! We have been released from the tyranny and oppression of the Kingdom of Darkness. I particularly like the way Colossians 1 addresses the relationship:
9. So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard of you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of His will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10. Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow and you learn to know God better and better. 11. We also pray that you will be strengthened with all His glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, 12. always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to His people who live in the Light. 13. For He has rescued us from the Kingdom of Darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of His dear Son. 14. Who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.
Verses 15 through 20 tell who Christ is and why He could provide the blood sacrifice needed. Verses 21 through 23 tell how we now are recipients of this relationship and how we can stay connected.
15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, 16 for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see - such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. 17 He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. 18 Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. 19 For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, 20 and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross. 21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. 23 But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don't drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed as God's servant to proclaim it.
Historically, the Church has concentrated on redemption, and restoration has not been a frequent topic of discussion, teaching, or preaching. The Kingdom message is a message of restoration as well as redemption.
Redemption gets us into the Kingdom, and restoration provides the system to live on earth in power and dominion as we were charged to do at creation. The central theme of the teaching of Christ was the Kingdom of God. Christ taught Nicodemus that redemption was the only way to gain access to the Kingdom of God. We are told to seek the Kingdom of God first, and to discover His way of doing and being right.
Somehow the majority of the Church does not understand or teach the restoration of the Kingdom relationship that comes from the new birth. It appears the desire is to get humanity in, but not to let them know about the provision of our King for those who through faith enter in.
The knowledge that comes from knowing to seek His way of doing and being right, and then to follow His system no matter what situations, circumstances, and relationships are indicating is one of the most powerful and enabling benefits of the Kingdom relationship. That is what was lost when sin entered the relationship between God and Adam. When we as Citizens follow His plan, we will demonstrate the results that humanity is longing and groaning for. We will show results that are from the Sons of God.
Situations, circumstances, and relationships that are manufactured by the defeated Satan to deceive us and to get us to abandon the promises and benefits of our God are defeated when we speak our God's Words out of our mouths in faith. As we are instructed, "we must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it." Father, may it be so with us!
