The One Year Bible - Day 20

Matthew 13 today and the parable of the wheat and weeds. If there is one thing that is often misrepresented in Jesus in churches, it is the strength and the difficulty of many of the things he said. We tend to universalise the message of the gospel and are not good at distinguishing between those who are "people of the Kingdom" and those "who belong to the evil one". We often go so far trying to win people in, we start talking about journey without decision, interest without commitment. It is hard but Jesus makes very clear distinctions about those who are and who are not in His Kingdom.

The parable talks about the co-existence of both types of people, which we understand, then there is a subtle but important statement, "...they will remove from his Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil". What is interesting is that we often picture our life followed by some sort of major re-arrangement of things followed by heaven or hell but this parable basically says the Kingdom is already set up and that all that will happen is that bad stuff will be removed and the Kingdom fully restored to its destiny. In other words, all of the aspects of the Kingdom are already present, which we may see in part or in full: healing, power, authority, miracles. I don't believe there is a limit on these things other than our own sinful nature since God is not limited and presumably has no reason to limit these things - a human notion.

For this reason, we should deny any attempt by the Devil to reduce the Kingdom to some sort of illegitimate forerunner and see if for what it really is including all the amazing things that come with it.