By Ryan Shaw
This is the fourth article in our series considering the ‘Gospel of the Kingdom’ and what it involves. We introduced a helpful five phase framework of the ‘Gospel of the Kingdom.’ Each phase includes many sub-truths necessary to rightly see Gospel transformation in a human life and community.
Jesus taught more on the subject of the Kingdom of God than any other topic. We know, therefore, the message we bear among the unreached and unengaged must relate directly to the nature and notion of the Kingdom of God. Gospel presentations void of these themes may include a portion of the Gospel, yet are not revealing the whole message.
We are often guilty of minimizing the Gospel. We give people a part, yet not the whole. This is producing believers around the world who often backslide or are not solid in their foundation.
Jesus’ vision is the fullness of the Gospel provided to unreached and unengaged people groups revealing the greatness and glory of God in Jesus Christ, bringing them to salvation, empowering them through all the benefits of their Kingdom inheritance and their reproducing this inheritance among multitudes of others.
The only way to produce disciples of this caliber is through giving time and energy to teaching and demonstrating all five phases of the Gospel of the Kingdom being discussed.
Today, we are looking at the third phase – Those who enter the Kingdom receive all the benefits, blessings and privileges of our new inheritance.
This phase is largely overlooked as we focus efforts among the unreached on getting them saved. Yet, this phase is actually where true disciples are made – where new believers in Christ embrace experiential understanding of all that is rightfully theirs through Jesus Christ.
New believers have become first class citizens of the Kingdom, qualified by God Himself to share in His inheritance. We have been rescued from darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of His glorious light.
We have been adopted, accepted in God as His beloved, redeemed (purchased from sin, darkness, eternal death), and forgiven (cleansed, washed and delivered from the power of sin).
We have access to all spiritual wisdom, understanding and experiential knowledge of God available through the Holy Spirit and the written Word of God , while being empowered to live holy, blameless and victorious over every besetting sin and temptation.
We are enabled by God to live and reproduce the crucified and resurrection life Jesus Himself walked in. This is possible because we possess the indwelling Holy Spirit with the promise of the consistent filling of the Holy Spirit as we yield to His conditions.
We are part of God’s royal family, possessing all the rights and authority of the King Himself – particularly to experience the fullness of God’s love in Jesus Christ – able to receive it, enjoy it and give it back to Him at the highest levels with abandoned devotion.
We have become new creations in Christ. Our spirit has become brand new as Jesus has redeemed us from inner destruction while our natural, physical selves remain. We continue to fight the flesh yet now possess spiritual power in Jesus to overcome (something impossible previously).
We experience “God with us,” His presence with us in every situation and circumstance faced. No longer alone, His abiding presence never leaves or forsakes us.
Our identity has shifted from what we do, who recognizes us, what strata of society we come from or how important or influential our family is to now being sons and daughters of the living God, King over all.
We have been made spiritually alive in God through Christ, previously spiritually dead in our failings and shortcomings. The evil one, the accuser of the brethren, has nothing to stand on in our lives, though he seeks to deceive us constantly to think otherwise.
We immediately have access to all the spiritual blessings of the Kingdom of God, the natural blessings of favor and blessed circumstances and all the promises of Scripture and those given by the Holy Spirit. They are ours yet are received by faith into our situations, persevering over time in seeing them released in our midst.
New life in the Kingdom includes available deliverance related to our body, soul, mind and spirit, from all addictions and spiritual bondages. Jesus’ inheritance includes His healing of emotional, physical, psychological, relational and spiritual wounds, restoring soundness in every area.
We possess spiritual authority to stand against every attack, plan, assignment and scheme of the evil one over our lives, circumstances, finances, relationships, property, families, workplaces, towns, cities and nations.
Through the death and resurrection of Jesus we possess power with God and resist the evil one over these areas. We have been delivered from the power of inordinate fears related to the spirit world that once gripped and sidelined us.
There are many additional benefits, blessings and privileges of the Kingdom we will consider in the next article.
