Get Your Pretense On!

Chapter 2: The Principle of Reversal and the Upside-Down Kingdom of God • 41

effort to “make things new” again is the core biblical teaching of Jesus and the ultimate point of reference on the meaning of life, under God’s rule. The Kingdom Story was the heart of Jesus’s teaching, and is the central focus of biblical theology. The values and moral vision of the Kingdom Story are final criterion for judging truth and value, and are an indispensable key to understanding human history. It is not the intent of this chapter to explore the wide ranging implications of this reversal inherent in God’s actions in Christ, but to limit the discussion to the main core of the argument: how does our understanding of reversal train us to better live into the meaning of the Kingdom in our lives and identities as agents and ambassadors of Christ. For a fuller discussion of the broader meaning of the Kingdom, I refer the reader to the works of George Eldon Ladd, whose writings outline in great detail the biblical and theological nuances of the Kingdom, and God’s efforts to restore the universe under his reign. The Already/Not Yet Kingdom In assessing Jesus’s unique teaching about the Kingdom over against his contemporaries, one of the prime distinctives is Jesus’s claim that with his appearance in the world the Kingdom (at least in part) had appeared and had drawn near at hand (Mark 1.14-15 – Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, [15] and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”) The Old Testament promise was clear: God almighty had promised the first human pair that he would send an anointed one, the Messiah, to come and offer his life as a sacrifice for sin, reveal the Father’s glory to the nations, and restore the world and creation under God’s reign. The effects of the curse and death would be overcome, and the failure of Adam’s transgression and Israel’s disobedience would be “recapitulated” – the Messiah would