PART II

THE SOCIAL IDEAL OF JESUS

CHAPTER IV

THE KINGDOM OF GOD: ITS VALUES

The Right Social Order is the Highest Good for All

The first three chapters dealt with simple human principles which are common and instinctive with all real men. Jesus simply expanded the range of their application, clarified our comprehension of them, placed them in the very center of religious duty, and so lifted them to the high level of great social and religious principles.

In the next three chapters we shall take up a conception which is not universally human, but which Jesus derived from the historic life of the Hebrew people—the idea of the “Kingdom of God.” A better translation would be “the Reign of Good.” This conception embodied the social ideal and purpose of the best minds of one of the few creative nations of history.

How did Jesus interpret this inherited social ideal? What did the Kingdom of God seem to him to offer men? What did it demand of them? What immediate ethical duty did this social ideal involve? Our inquiry will move along these lines in the next three chapters.

Daily Readings

First Day: The Main Chance

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in the field; which a man found, and hid; and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls: and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.—Matt. 13:44–46.

When war was common, property insecure, and safe deposit vaults were scarce, it was common for men to bury treasure in time of trouble and to forget it when they were dead. Whoever accidentally found it “struck pay dirt” and hastened to locate his claim. An extraordinary jewel, too, was a bonanza. The infant capitalists of that day were wise enough to liquidate their other holdings and invest everything in the main chance. Jesus calls for the application of the same method on the higher level. The Kingdom of God is the highest good of all; why not stake all on the chance of that? These parables were spoken out of his own experience. He was gladly surrendering home, comfort, public approval, and life itself to realize the Reign of God in humanity.

Imagine that Jesus had surrendered his religious idealism, had gained wealth and official standing, and died of old age. Would he have gained? What would the world have lost?

Second Day: The Master Fact

From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.—Matt. 4:17.

The Kingdom of God is a master fact. It takes control. When the Kingdom becomes a reality to us, we can not live on in the old way. We must repent, begin over, overhaul the values of life and put them down at their true price, and so readjust our fundamental directions. The conduct of the individual must rise in response to higher conceptions of the meaning and possibilities of the life of humanity. Tolstoi has described his conversion in the simplest terms in the introduction to “My Religion:”

“Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the doctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation. What I had once wished for I wished for no longer, and I began to desire what I had never desired before. What had once appeared to me right now became wrong, and the wrong of the past I beheld as right. My condition was like that of a man who goes forth upon some errand, and having traversed a portion of the road, decides that the matter is of no importance, and turns back. What was at first on his right hand is now on his left, and what was at his left hand is now on his right; instead of going away from his abode, he desires to get back to it as soon as possible. My life and my desires were completely changed; good and evil interchanged meanings. Why so? Because I understood the doctrine of Jesus in a different way from that in which I had understood it before.” … “I understood the words of Jesus, and life and death ceased to be evil; instead of despair, I tasted joy and happiness.”

Some seek religion to escape hell and attain heaven; some to attain a perfect personality; some to bring in the Reign of God. Give cases. Estimate the relative religious and social significance of these different spiritual experiences.

Third Day: Baptism and the New Order

Even as it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

Behold, I send my messenger before thy face,

Who shall prepare thy way;

The voice of one crying in the wilderness,

Make ye ready the way of the Lord,

Make his paths straight;

John came, who baptized in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins. And there went out unto him all the country of Judæa, and all they of Jerusalem; and they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leathern girdle about his loins, and did eat locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, There cometh after me he that is mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I baptized you in water; but he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit.—Mark 1:2–8.

The men who were baptized by John were not looking forward to death and to salvation after death, but to the coming of the Kingdom of God and of his Messiah. They repented and accepted the badge of baptism in order to have a share in the blessings of the Kingdom and to escape the imminent judgment of the Messiah. Baptism was then the mark of a national and social movement toward a new era, and was a personal dedication to a righteous social order. This original idea of baptism was practically lost to the Christian consciousness in later times. Every man who today realizes the Kingdom of God as the supreme good, can reaffirm his own baptism as a dedication to the social ideal and to the leadership of Jesus who initiated it. Such a social interpretation of our personal discipleship will bring us into closer spiritual agreement with the original aim of Christianity.

Has our baptism ever had a social significance to us?

Fourth Day: The Way to Happiness

Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment? Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.—Matt. 6:25–34.

This is a song of divine carelessness; not the recklessness of a tramp who has lost his self-respect and his capacity for long outlooks, but the carelessness of an aristocratic spirit, conscious of his high human dignity. God has given us life; will he not give what life needs? If the birds and the lilies can make a living, can not we? It is pagan and low-bred to wear out our souls with worry about minor needs.

The key to this passage lies in the words “your Father,” and “his Kingdom.” Man is a child of God, and that dignity gives some calm and assurance amid the worries of life. If we set our life toward the Kingdom as the supreme aim, all the lesser interests will drop to their proper place. In the measure in which the will of God is done and his righteousness practiced among men, the satisfaction of the main material wants will be easy. The Kingdom, the true social order, is the highest good; all other good things are contained in it.

To worry or not to worry, that is the question. Have we ever tried the adoption of a high aim as the way to happiness?

Fifth Day: Sunny Religion

And John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting: and they come and say unto him, Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, Can the sons of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then will they fast in that day. No man seweth a piece of undressed cloth on an old garment: else that which should fill it up taketh from it, the new from the old, and a worse rent is made. And no man putteth new wine into old wine-skins; else the wine will burst the skins, and the wine perisheth, and the skins: but they put new wine into fresh wine-skins.—Mark 2:18–22.

Fasting was an important part of piety with strict Jews. It was an expression of religious sorrow and self-abasement. Afflicting the body intensified...