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Volume 25 Number 4 April 2023	Page 5

The Church and the
Kingdom Are the Same

Sunny David

Reading from Matthew 16:18-19, we observe that Jesus told Peter that He would build His church on the rock, which was on Peter’s confession of Christ as the Son of the living God. In the same breath, Jesus also told Peter that He would give him the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and that whatever he would bind on Earth would be bound in Heaven, and whatever he would loose on Earth would be loosed in Heaven. Later, this promise was also made to the other apostles (Matthew 18:18). However, in this case, Christ was foretelling that Peter was going to preach the Gospel, and that He would be the first one to let people know what they must do to enter the church or the kingdom of Christ (Acts 2:37-41). He used the word “church” interchangeably with the word “kingdom.” It is noteworthy from the preceding texts in Matthew 16 that when Christ made the statement about building His church, He made no difference whatsoever between the two words “church” and “kingdom.” When He said that He would build His church, He also meant that He would establish His kingdom.

True to the promise, when the first Gospel sermon was preached on the day of Pentecost following our Lord’s ascension, in the city of Jerusalem about A.D. 33, it was Peter who told those who had become believers in Christ to repent and to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. Again, it is also significant that it was the apostle Peter who told the backsliding Simon what one must do to return to Christ if one goes back into the world after becoming a Christian (Acts 8:22).

According to the Bible, those who believed in Christ repented of theirs sins and were baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. Consequently, they were saved, and the Lord added them to the church, which is the body of the saved ones (Mark 16:16; Acts 2:37-47). The Lord has not changed His plan for human redemption from sin. Acts 2 tells us how the church that Christ had promised to build was established.

To the saved ones, who were in the church, the apostle Paul later wrote, “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14 NKJV). What was the apostle saying? He was saying that those who were added to the church, after receiving the forgiveness of sins, were, in fact, put into the kingdom of the Lord. From this, we learn that the church of Christ is the kingdom of the Lord, or the kingdom of Christ is the church of the Lord. Both are the same.

Another remarkable passage that proves the point is Mark 9:1, wherein Christ said to the apostles, “…Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power.” There, Christ assured His apostles that the kingdom would come during their lifetime. They would not die until they saw the kingdom of God present with power. Has the kingdom come? Surely it has, since it was to come, according to Christ, when the apostles were still living. There are no apostles living on earth today. They all died almost 2,000 years ago. Yet, millions of people around the world are still ignorantly parroting, “Your kingdom come.” When Christ taught that prayer of example to the apostles in Matthew 6, the kingdom had not yet come. Christ had promised to them, though, that during their lifetime the kingdom would come. The kingdom did come, as the apostle Paul said to the Christians in Colosse who were conveyed into the kingdom of the Son.

Notice too, according to Christ, the kingdom was to come with power, and the power, according to Acts 1:8 was to come with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit and the power came, as we read in Acts 2:1-4, on the day of Pentecost when the apostles began to preach the Gospel. The preaching by Peter and the other apostles caused the listeners to ask, “…What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). They were told to repent and to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38), and as they did that (Acts 2:41), the Lord added them to the church (Acts 2:47). By the same process, Jesus translated or put them into the kingdom!

Also note that Acts 2:38, 47 and Colossians 1:13-14 talk about the “forgiveness of sins,” and on the basis of receiving the forgiveness of sins, converts were added to the church or put into the kingdom. The forgiveness of sins, which they had received by being baptized into Christ, was possible through the blood of Christ (Ephesians 1:7; Revelation 1:5).

Now look at Acts 20:28, as the apostle Paul conversed with the elders of the church from Ephesus. He told them, “…to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” Here the church of Christ (Romans 16:16) is called the church of God (cf., 1 Corinthians 1:2), and the apostle said that God purchased the church with His own blood, stating thereby that those in the church have been redeemed by the blood of God – God the Son – Jesus Christ.

So, we learn that the church of Christ is the church of God, and the church of God is the church of Christ. Similarly, the church is called the kingdom. The kingdom of the Son of His love, as we read from Colossians 1:13, is the kingdom of Christ, also called the kingdom of Heaven or of God, because both Christ and God are in Heaven.

On the day of resurrection and judgment when Christ will appear, His kingdom or the church will be lifted up to meet with Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). As Christ receives His kingdom, He will deliver the kingdom to the Father, so the earthly will become heavenly (1 Corinthians 15:24).

Yet, on earth, both good and bad people, as God sees them, may be in the church. Speaking about the heavenly kingdom, the apostle John wrote in Revelation 21:27, “But there shall by no means enter in anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

While He was on earth, Christ warned, “The Son of man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42, 47-50).

The truth of the matter is that God’s kingdom exists today in the form of His church. Those who are in the blood-bought church have the conditional assurance that if they will remain faithful to Him until death, they will receive the crown of life – eternal life in Heaven.