In the previous post, I described an upcoming series exploring my broad understanding of the kingdom of God, the kingdom Jesus ushered in and proclaimed…
Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14-15)
What was this kingdom that Jesus proclaimed, and why didn’t his hearers ask, “What kingdom?” So, apparently, they had some kind of understanding of God’s kingdom. It wasn’t necessarily “news” to Jesus’ first-century hearers. However, it appears that Jesus’ proclamation was that his news about the kingdom might be new and fresh – good news.
Let’s start with an understanding of God’s kingdom through the ages.
We should start with the description of a kingdom. Dallas Willard in The Scandal of the Kingdom1 offers a simple definition of a kingdom…
A kingdom is a society of people with a structure in which there is one person, a king or queen, to whom all the citizens offer loyalty, service and respect. The sovereign’s part of this relationship is to provide care, protection, and service for the good of the people.
In his book The Divine Conspiracy2, Willard describes the kingdom of God as the range of God’s effective will, where what God wants done is done. This “effective reign” is present wherever God’s will is actively carried out. To Willard, the kingdom of God is not just a spiritual or internal experience but encompasses all aspects of life, including social, political, and personal domains.
Genesis 1. Starting with the creation story, which we are quite familiar with, we see God as the creator. His kingdom encompassed the entire universe, including the third rock from the sun that we inhabit. To the ancients, God resided in the heavens (note “the heavens,” not heaven). One could also say he lived in “the sky.” Since the sky, to them, was everything above the Earth (think atmosphere), God wasn’t far away as we tend to believe today. At the time of creation, it wouldn’t be a leap to assume God’s will (reign) was on earth as in heaven (where have we heard that before?).
Integral to God’s creative activity was the creation of his image-bearers (Genesis 1:27)…
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
He entrusted his image-bearers to care for his earthly kingdom according to his will. (Think, Thy will be done on earth as in heaven.) They were tasked as stewards to care for the Earth in a way that reflected God’s heart – both environmental and relational stewardship. By definition, a steward is someone employed to manage another’s property. They were workers in and for God’s kingdom. They were to be fruitful and multiply, adding to the number of those serving the kingdom.
Genesis 3. We know what happened next. The image-bearers decided they had a better idea of how to steward the planet. With the encouragement of the serpent, they decided they could manage things as well as God. The serpent got Adam and Eve to take their eyes off God and his will with an enticement to “become like God” (Genesis 3:5). The rest is, as we say, history.
Their decision (sin) meant that the kingdom of God on earth was broken and in need of redemption. One result was that the relational closeness Adam and Eve experienced with God was broken. God’s kingdom didn’t cease to exist. God was still the king of the universe. But, things were not on earth as in heaven! The entirety of the scriptures post-Genesis 3 is the story of God’s redemption (new creation) project, using his image-bearers to assist in the process.
Genesis 12. God kicked his restoration project into full swing by singling out Abram as his ambassador…
2“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
God chose Abram and his descendants to be catalysts in the redemption of the kingdom. They would be workers for God’s kingdom. God would bless Abram and his descendants for the express purpose of, in turn, blessing the image-bearers around them. Abram and his offspring were to help reestablish God’s will “on earth as in heaven.” Ambassadors for the kingdom, as it were.
This King/ambassador relationship with these kingdom people was a covenantal relationship, sealed by God himself (see Smoking Pot in the Old Testament). There is a theme/thread woven throughout the entire redemption story known as the covenant formula. The formula is integral to gaining an understanding of and seeing the kingdom of God throughout the biblical narrative. It can be found throughout scripture as some form of…
I will be your God, and you will be my people.
We will pick up Abram’s story in the next post. Meanwhile, you might want to check out the wealth and richness of covenant formula instances. I created a Google Doc with a list of such Biblical occurrences for your perusal. (When I discovered this thematic thread, it was a game-changer!)
1 Willard, D. (2024). The scandal of the kingdom : how the parables of Jesus revolutionize life with God. Zondervan Books.
2 Willard, Dallas. The divine conspiracy: rediscovering our hidden life in God. HarperOne, 1998.
Practical Theology Today 
3 thoughts on “On Earth as in Heaven…”