Kingdom Values (Foundations Book 1)

by Jon Tyson

In studying the teachings of Jesus recorded in the New Testament, our church has found it helpful to summarize these teachings into five core values: gospel, identity, community, mission, and power. We believe these five values not only provide a roadmap for many of Jesus’ central teachings, but that they also point to a wholistic, integrated way of pursuing the abundant life offered in Jesus; together they stand in stark contrast to the many broken ways of life our world offers to us.

As a redeemed people, God invites us to join Him in His good work of bringing His kingdom and renewing our world. This mission involves spiritual renewal (proclaiming the good news of the kingdom so that people can be brought from darkness to light, from enemies of God to children of God), social renewal (tearing down the dividing walls that sin has created between individuals and communities), and cultural renewal (bringing every part of human society under the reign of God, so culture serves to aid in the flourishing of humanity and creation). Every one of us is sent by Jesus into our world to bring the kingdom, steward the gifts and resources He has given us for human flourishing, and to model His servant-love to those around us. Our mission is to glorify God through our worship and our everyday lives. There is no greater joy in life than to enjoy God’s presence and to make Him known.

Recent Barna studies have found that 60% of Americans who identify as Christian do not regularly attend church, pray, or read their Bibles, and that many Christians have taken beliefs from other religions and schools of thought that are seamlessly integrated into their own thinking – often without ever realizing that these views are in sharp contrast to the truths found in the Bible. As Brooke Hempell, senior VP of research for Barna asserts: “The call for the Church, and its teachers and thinkers, is to help Christians dissect popular beliefs before allowing them to settle in their own ideology.”

The gospel is the good news that God our Father, the Creator, out of His great love for us, has come to rescue us from sin, Satan, death and hell, and to renew all things, in and through the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, to establish His kingdom, through His people, in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is for God’s great glory, and our profound joy.

He also brings good news to all people by spending time with those society considered unrighteous or unclean; Jesus was accused of dining too much with “prostitutes and sinners.” Many of Jesus’ parables are stories about parties: the wedding feast, the banquet, and the three “lost” parables which all end with the person finding the lost item and then throwing a party! (Luke 15) The consistent message Jesus gives is that God wants to throw a party and invite people to this celebration; He wants to find the lost and bring them into His kingdom with great rejoicing. “I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (Luke 15:10)

How is our culture forming our identity and how does Jesus want to form (or re-form) our identity?

When we seek to answer the question “who am I?” our name and genealogy will not suffice; instead our identity is our “sense of self and sense of worth; it’s our core trust and our source of value and recognition. … It’s whatever [we] look to as the ultimate source of our security and worth.” (Keller) Put another way, our identity is “defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done or what I endorse or oppose.” (Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self)

When we become who God created us to be, through the work of the Spirit, we see that His goodness is now reflected in a small way in the goodness that we too have become.

We might see ourselves as the prodigal son (Lk 15), who has to earn his way into his father’s graces and earn a seat at the table, but the exact opposite is true. The Father sees us while we are a long way off from Him and makes a way, through Jesus, for us to enter His Kingdom. He then clothes us with His robes of righteousness, seals us with His Spirit, places His signet ring of sonship on our finger, and then gladly sheds His sacrificial blood to welcome us home with celebration. The praise and affirmation and sense of belonging that you long for in life can be found in Him. He declares you holy, makes you holy, and then fully accepts you into the Kingdom of God by throwing a huge party where everyone is cheering your arrival (Lk 15:10).

Paul calls this process of clinging to God’s truth in the midst of a culture of false identities, “putting off” and “putting on”: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:22-24) When the world tells us we are one thing, or that we should pursue certain desires and achievements, we are to take off this false sense of self. We are to renounce the lies that our sense of self and value is primarily defined by our achievements, other’s approval, or other “identity markers.” After putting this off, we then choose to put on our true identities as beloved, holy children of God. We find our primary sense of self and value in our new God-given identity and consider all other identity markers (such as race, gender, industry, class) as far inferior to this first identity.

In short, ethical communities are built on relationships of responsibilities. These are relationships formed by commitment, love, covenant, and even familial fidelity. One of the fundamental shifts in our social matrix is that our relationships are increasingly made up of peg communities rather than ethical communities. (A.J. Swoboda summarizing Bauman in The Subversive Sabbath)

This focus in present-day America on the self and personal preference has only intensified our desire for peg communities instead of thick communities. A.J. Swoboda writes, “Today, in a world where we can find whole communities of people who think like us, share our values, and have common likes, we are trading in our ethical relationships for peg relationships.

The result is troubling: We do not really need to love anybody who is different if we do not feel like it. We can cower in the corner with all the people we agree with.”

When you make a promise, you tie yourself to other persons by unseen fibers of loyalty. You agree to stick with people you are stuck with. When everything else tells them they can count on nothing, they can count on you. When they do not have the faintest notion of what in the world is going on around them, they will know that you are going to be there with them. You have created a small sanctuary of trust within the jungle of unpredictability: you have made a promise that you intend to keep.

Jon Tyson noted in Sacred Roots, “When radical individualism overshadows our faith, we will only process Jesus’ teachings and wrestle with Jesus’ call to discipleship as individuals. But according to Jesus himself, such individualistic treatment misses the full experience of faith.” A life of faith is a call to love and commit to one another.

In today’s culture, we have loose communal groups built upon identity markers and personal preference, which are fueled by shared experiences. But in the Kingdom of God, He uses an entirely different paradigm to create holy community. God brings people together from many different backgrounds and renames them “the people of God.”

He then gives them a shared purpose in the world to build His Kingdom. Instead of allowing people to endlessly run after their own preferences and desires in search of or in defense of their individual identity, He gives each person a part to play in His shared mission. Each person is a unique, yet interdependent, part of “the body of Christ.”

Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological make-up, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other. There are many groups that have been formed to protect their own interests, to defend their own status, or to promote their own causes, but none of these is a Christian community. Instead of breaking through the walls of fear and creating new space for God, they close themselves to real or imaginary intruders. The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and daughters of his heavenly Father.

C.O.R.E. is a tool to use with 2–3 other believers to grow in Jesus together and can be found on our church website. The acronym stands for: Confession – Spend time reflecting upon your weeks and confessing to one another any sins so you can encourage and hold one another accountable. Others – Pray for anyone in each of your lives that does not know Jesus. Ask God to give you opportunities to share Jesus with them. Read – Share with each other what God is teaching you through the Bible. Encourage – Spend time encouraging one another (not generically, but specifically). Exhort one another by “putting courage in” each other to continue to follow Jesus and grow in Him.

Jesus came to bring God’s kingdom by first redeeming and renewing humanity. Jesus satisfied God’s perfect justice through His death on the cross, and then He sent His Holy Spirit to give His disciples a new spiritual birth so they would finally have hearts that wanted to obey God and live in His kingdom.

As we learn to live in the way of Jesus, Jesus teaches us to seek new things, to see ourselves as sent, and to steward our energies in a new direction, and together this transforms our heart and life into one of mission.

Beverly James defined going while praying as “talking to God about our neighbors before we talk to our neighbors about God.” And the root of this strategy is knowing WHO is sending us out – that He is the one who draws people to Himself.

Jesus followed these eight steps and then taught His disciples to do likewise: select teachable people to be His disciples, remain in close association and relationship with them, consecrate these people for the mission, impart His teachings and way of life to them, demonstrate how to daily live out of a Kingdom paradigm, delegate to them to begin sharing the gospel, supervise them as they continue to grow, and then show them how to produce multiplying disciples themselves.This was Jesus’ method for teaching people how to become His disciples and then make new disciples.

“Intercessory prayer is spiritual defiance of what is in the way of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current forces. Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present. History belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being.”

John Ortberg so rightly concludes, “Any time you see life flourishing, it is because it is receiving nourishment from outside of itself.” So, too, we are invited to receive nourishment and life outside of ourselves.

As modern-day Christians it is still vital to our spiritual health to practice the Sabbath. In setting aside a whole day to rest and worship, we are actively seeking to abide in the Spirit’s presence. The goal of the Sabbath, and of attending a Sunday church service, is not the gathering together with people for play and community, but to enter into God’s presence. As Philip Yancey writes: “Church exists primarily not to provide entertainment or to encourage vulnerability or to build self-esteem or to facilitate friendships but to worship God; if it fails in that, it fails. I have learned that the ministers, the music, the sacraments, and the other ‘trappings’ of worship are mere promptings to support the ultimate goal of getting worshipers in touch with God.”