The Wine of the Kingdom

This book explores the implications of some of Jesus’s teaching about the nature of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is penetrational, in contrast to congregational. The kingdom is inner and spiritual, in contrast to external and physical. The kingdom is relational, in contrast to impersonal. The kingdom manifests itself in humility, weakness, and obscurity in contrast to domination, position, and visibility. The kingdom begins small without recognition but achieves great influence. The kingdom is entered by a second birth, but one’s first birth is a valuable indicator of and contributor to one’s calling within it. The kingdom is now. The kingdom is future. Kingdom teaching has been largely ignored and contradicted throughout church history by the various institutions of Christendom, but children of the kingdom have been present both within and without those institutions. This book is a call to focus on the centrality of Jesus’s teaching, to embrace kingdom values, and to proceed accordingly.