A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

by Brian Zahnd

The revolutionary insight that’s been central to my theological journey is a deeper understanding of what the kingdom of God actually is. I remember telling my church eight years ago that seeing the kingdom of God had given me “new eyes.” Reading the Bible with “kingdom eyes” made Scripture brand new to me. I came to realize that the kingdom of God was virtually the sole topic of Jesus’ teaching ministry. The gospel of the kingdom is what the apostles were announcing in the book of Acts. And even though Paul doesn’t often use the term “kingdom of God” in his epistles, I came to understand that what Jesus tends to call the kingdom of God, Paul tends to call salvation, but they’re talking about the same thing! In 2006 I worked on this single question for several months: What is salvation? I finally concluded that this is the best answer: Salvation is the kingdom of God. Our personal experience with the kingdom of God (including forgiveness) is our personal experience of salvation, but the kingdom of God is much bigger than our personal experience of it. The problem we have today is that the term “kingdom of God” is archaic and obscured under layers of religious veneer. “Kingdoms” went out with the Middle Ages and we tend to think of the “kingdom of God/heaven” as privatized Christianity experienced in our personal spiritual lives. But Jesus was [doing something far more radical when He proclaimed the kingdom of God—he was announcing] that the government of God was at long la...