Two Kingdoms and the Mystical Body of Christ

The questions I raised yesterday about Christ's eternal sovereignty persist. How is it that we can believe that in His ascension He received all authority in heaven and on earth and a kingdom in which peoples of all nations and languages serve Him? (Matthew 28:18 and Daniel 7:13-14)

When I return to Nazi Germany, as I have been, I see that while there was great apostasy, there were ever the faithful few. This is indicated by the Confessing Church, started by Dr.Martin Niemoeller in 1933-34. I'll not go into details here other than to point out that these faithful Christians—Lutherans mostly—rejected Hitler's move to create an Aryan church controlled by the state. Many Christians in Germany and in Scandinavia hid Jews and helped them to escape.

Many of these Christians chose to give their lives rather than back down from their convictions about the evil that had pervaded the German national church. Niemoeller was sent to concentration camp. Dietrich Bonheoffer was hung for his  complicity in the attempted assassination of Adolph Hitler. What I personally believe about Bonhoeffer's teaching will have to await another day. Suffice it to say that he died for his beliefs and opposed the Aryan Protestant Church of the Nazi state. Others went out of their way to hide or help Jews to escape Germany.

In discussing this issue I must again distinguish between the two kingdoms, church and state. When confronted by the Roman Prefect or governor Pontius Pilatus about His kingdom, the Lord Jesus replied, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world" (John 18:33-38).

Jesus had already taught us to distinguish the two kingdoms when questioned by the hypocritical Herodians about paying taxes. Jesus knew of their evil intent, so upon receiving a Roman denarius he said, "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:16-21).

These important distinctions had long before been muddled and muddied in Europe, especially with the state supporting the church since the days of Constantine, over 1,000 years.

The kingdom of Christ is one created and sustained by the inner working of the Holy Spirit. In fact, as Jesus pointed out to the inquiring Jewish ruler Nicodemus, one cannot even see or enter it without the creative working of the Spirit in baptism. To be in this kingdom is nothing less than having experienced a rebirth. Those who have been reborn have eternal life (John 3:1-21).

I can only point to these distinctions here. The task of maintaining the separation of the two kingdoms continues in our day. The church is not a political power player. She is the mystical, mysterious, inscrutable and yet very real presence of Christ in this world, working through men and women called by Him to millions and millions of vocations and responsibilities. She still suffers and dies on behalf of the weak and helpless throughout the world as she takes up her cross to follow her Husband and Master (Matthew 10:37-39 and Matthew 16:23-25).