Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Question:

“Would you please define in some measure the terms ‘kingdom of heaven’ and ‘kingdom of God.’ Sometimes they seem interchangeable, and other times not so. Matthew chiefly uses the former, and he only; Luke the latter, as others too.”

Answer:

“The kingdom of the heavens” (the true rendering) is only named in Matthew. It is a dispensational term; while “the kingdom of God” is a moral thing. You find the terms used, in keeping with the gospels you have named: Matthew groups his subjects together dispensationally; Luke does so morally; both departing from the historic order, which Mark observes more than any of the others.

With a Jew the term “kingdom of the heavens” was familiar. (See Deuteronomy 11:21; Psalm 89:29; Daniel 2:44; 4:26-35, and other Scriptures.) It is the “rule of the heavens” owned on earth. It was announced as “at hand” not as come, by John the Baptist (Matthew 3); by the Lord (Matthew 4); by the Twelve (Matthew 10), and rejected; then in chapter 12, which ends the gospel to the Jew, the curse of Antichrist is pronounced upon the nation, and a Remnant owned who do His Father’s will. In chapter 13, the Lord begins a new action as a sower, and the kingdom of the heavens takes a new character, which the prophets did not contemplate: a sphere overrun with evil, with a mingled crop ― the “mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens,” and instead of the true subjects taking their origin from Abraham, they do so from the Word of God, which Christ sows; others accepting the authority of Christ nominally, as professors.

In Luke, who is the great moralizer, the term used is “kingdom of God,” of which Christ could say in answer to the inquiry of the Pharisees if it came with observation, that it was “in the midst of you” (Luke 17:21), for God was there in Him; while of the “kingdom of the heavens” it could only be said it is “at hand,” and it did not (and could not) commence until the Lord was in heaven. To have come in during His presence would have here made it the kingdom of the earth. His authority and that of the heavens was owned by the disciples, even before the coming of the Holy Ghost, during the ten days of interval, while they waited by His directions for the coming of the Holy Ghost. It will run on in its present confused state until the Millennium; hence a good margin of time after the Church’s history is over, as it had commenced before it.

You find two places where it has a moral character assigned it by Paul ― “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:17); “The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20). It is the “exhibition or manifestation of the ruling power of God under any circumstances.” A man must be born afresh to “see” or “enter in” to the kingdom of God, in its verity (John 3); not so of the kingdom of heaven, in which tares and wheat mingle. Souls may profess and submit to God’s kingdom, merely by profession; hence, in Luke 13:18, He uses the term “kingdom of God” where nominal profession is noted in the parable, and where the “kingdom of the heavens” might be used interchangeably. Still, none but the saints would be really of it, as born of God.

When the Millennium comes in, the present confused state of the kingdom of the heavens will be set aside by the judgment of the quick; and it will then be displayed in its verity, in a two-fold, heavenly and earthly state of things. The Son of Man gathers out of His kingdom ― i.e., the earthly part of it (see Psalm 8; Hebrews 2) ― all stumbling-blocks, and them that do iniquity; and then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father ― i.e., the heavenly sphere of it. (See Matthew 13:41-43.)