A Delicious Paragraph about the Kingdom of God

In “Jesus and the Pharisees,” I reflected on the truth that “Jesus focused on God’s Kingdom.” My Lord, savior, and liberator “sang, sorrowed, and cursed in a Kingdom key.” I also flagged that Jesus’s vision of God’s kingdom radically diverged from the Pharisees’: Their heated public exchanges make this clear. Still, I said little positive about how Jesus conceived of the Kingdom. Let me say more by sharing a quotation.

In chapter nine of The New Testament in Its World, N.T. Wright and Michael Bird offer the following paragraph about how Jesus presents the Kingdom of God in the beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12). Wright and Bird write:

The work of the kingdom is in fact summed up pretty well in the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, those hungering for justice, the merciful, the pure-hearted, peacemakers, and the persecuted. These people are not only blessed, but more than that, even in their vulnerability and weakness, they are the ones precisely through whom Jesus intends blessings to flow to others. These sayings are about the type of people through whom Jesus intends to transform the world. When God wants to change the world, he doesn’t launch missiles. Instead, he sends in the meek, the mourners, and the merciful. When God wants to put things to right, he doesn’t scramble combat jets; he calls people to love and do justice. Through these kinds of people the blessings of God’s reign begin to appear in the world.

Like a delicious piece of chocolate cake, this paragraph is rich and dense. Best of all: We can savor this tasty treat en conjunto. ¡Salud!