Jesus Misunderstood

Jesus came announcing that the kingdom of God was at hand (Matthew 3:2) and then preceded to demonstrate what God’s true kingdom on earth would look like. However, as Robert Stein points out, “Jesus never defined exactly what he meant by the kingdom of God/heaven” in his teachings (Stein 61). Instead, Jesus told John’s disciples “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor” (Luke 7:22). In doing as such, Jesus was pointing out his kingdom reign on earth as it is in heaven. The kingdom of God is greater than the nation of Israel had expected, was misunderstood by many from the beginning, yet is best understood through the teachings of Jesus as being both a present and future reality. …show more content…
What is more, the nation was awaiting a political king or a military king who would lead them to another exodus. In fact, the prophets had spoken of their throne being occupied again by their king. Little did they know that the king would be God himself. What is more shocking is that the very people who anticipated the coming king the most missed him and one might even say, they killed him. But this is exactly as God had planned. His kingdom could not be contained within the borders of Israel; he wanted his kingdom to cover the whole earth. Furthermore, his kingdom was not political (although it impacts politics), his kingdom was as N. T. Wright says in his lecture at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Jesus came with “a vision of radical cosmic renewal, but we have turned it into religion” (Wright). In other words, Jesus came to bring God’s kingdom to earth like never before (the Fall) and make all things new. God was putting the world right again because in his kingdom everything is