As you know, the good news of Christ Jesus is that God’s Kingdom is near: There’s this Kingdom that He wants to set up, in which people lovingly follow God, sin is abolished, and life is good and abundant and forever. It fulfills the loose outline of a worldly kingdom that God presented in the Law; it fulfills the royal line of David that God set up; it fulfills His original intention for people to live in Paradise and for Him to be our God and walk among us.
At the same time, He also created the church. Church (Greek,ekklisía) means a set-apart group, or called-out group; a group of people who are for some reason separated from other people. The reason? To follow Jesus. How do we follow Jesus? We get ready for the Kingdom—by living in it now. Jesus’s teachings essentially tell us that even though the Kingdom is coming and not yet here, we can live, now, like we’re in it already. We must adopt the lifestyle of Kingdom people. We can get ready for heaven by living like we’re already there.
So does this mean the church is the same as the Kingdom?
Well… that’s under debate. Some Christians say yes, absolutely. Other Christians say no; the church is only part of the Kingdom. I lean towards yes, but of course with all the caveats of a good nit-picking theologian; it’s why I tend to say “Kingdom” whenever I refer to the universal church of Christ Jesus that consists of every Christian, everywhere.
Where Kingdom and church overlap.
Right now, at this instant, if we’re Christians, we’re pretty sure we’re in the Kingdom. Though if you’re actually not sure, repent, say a sinner’s prayer, tell the people of your church that you’re following Jesus now and you need their support, and start actually following Him. Yes, right now; you need to get on that. Stop reading this and initiate that relationship with God. This can wait.
…Okay, for those of you still with me, that just goes to show you that not everyone who calls themselves a Christian is right with God. Lots of us have managed to blend into the Christian culture without actually knowing God personally; they don’t produce any fruit, yet nobody ever notices. The Holy Spirit knows the difference; He indwells the ones who are His, and is still working on the others, which is usually why they still bother to go to church. But only He knows which of us are gonna be in the Kingdom at the End, and which of us aren’t.
Theologians call the folks whom we think are Christians “the visible church.” They’re the people who, as far as we can see, are Christians—the people who go to our particular church, and the people who go to all of the churches that we approve of. If you consider Episcopalians to be Christians, then to you they’re part of the visible church. If you consider Copts to be Christians, they’re also part. If you consider Mormons to be Christians, they’re also part. Depending on who’s doing the considering and the counting, there are either 3 billion Christians on the planet (roughly a third of humanity)—or there are ten: The ten people who go to your home church who are real Christians, whereas everyone else (including me) is somehow wrong and going to hell. And you’re not so sure about half of the ten.
What theologians call “the invisible church” are of course all the people who are actually indwelt by the Spirit. That number’s still growing, by the way. Some folks figure it won’t be complete until Jesus returns. Other Christians figure it won’t be complete even then, since we believe there will be a thousand years of personally-governed Kingdom (“the millennium”) before God makes His final judgment about who goes where. Still, to be on the safe side, concentrate on finding those people in the visible church, who aren’t yet in the invisible church, before Jesus returns. Okay?
Now, the invisible church consists of every real Christian in the churches. And it also consists of every real Christian who is not in a church—who really ought to be in one, but for one reason or another, legitimate or not, isn’t. And it also consists of every real Christian who doesn’t know they’re a real Christian: People whom God wants saved, and have been obedient to everything He’s revealed to them thus far, but don’t necessarily realize it’s Jesus they’ve been following all along. Like Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, and every saint in the Old Testament; like all the God-followers in the Roman Empire before Paul and the Christians came to town to tell them about God’s Messiah; like all the witch-doctors in remote tribes who are just waiting for a missionary to fill in all the blanks they have about the God they follow. If God wants you saved, you’re gonna get saved. And the invisible church includes everyone whom God wants saved. Again, to be on the safe side, don’t take for granted that God’s gonna save whoever we’re too lazy to evangelize; find them and share Jesus with them. Okay?
The invisible church, of course, is the universal church of Christ Jesus. It is synonymous with the Kingdom, which is why I use “Kingdom” as a synonym for every Christian, everywhere. That’s my caveat: The Kingdom is the invisible church.
But we don’t know who’s in the invisible church—well, apart from ourselves, and those Christians around us whom we know bear fruit. Most of the Christians we know, we just assume they’re in the Kingdom. After all, why assume otherwise? Why would they hang out with Christians, and participate in church stuff, if they weren’t? And to be fair, a lot of them probably are in the Kingdom; they might suck at producing fruit, and be no better at it than a newbie, but God considers them His. Unless you have a church full of awful, wretched people, it’s a safe assumption that most of the folks in it are true Christians.
Confusing the visible church with the Kingdom.
Since most Christians make that assumption—that the folks in our churches are likely Christians—we usually make the further assumption that our church is part of the Kingdom. And so are all the other churches that we get along with, or approve of. And maybe some of the churches that we’re not so sure about; they might be a little too loosey-goosey liberal, or too angry-legalist conservative, for us. And probably not the heretics—depending on what we’d call heresy. And so forth.
In other words, the visible church—the people whom we assume are Christians like us—are the folks we’d consider to be in the Kingdom. Based on what? Well, most of the time, similar beliefs and teachings and theology. Not fruit. We might not even know what their fruit is—or care, ’cause their theology is too weird for their fruit to even count.
At least, that’s the way we think. What does the Holy Spirit think? Well, we haven’t asked. And we may not even believe His answer anyway.
But that’s the basis of our belief on how big the Kingdom is: It’s based on what people claim to believe, rather than on how they live. When you read Jesus’s parables, you notice that whenever He talked about the Kingdom, His focus was on lifestyle. Not theology. Not that theology isn’t important; having the wrong theology is definitely going to mess with your lifestyle. But we don’t even look at the lifestyles, most of the time. We don’t look at whether possible Christians act like Kingdom citizens; and maybe that’s most of the reason why we have some screwy ideas about what the Kingdom should look like—more reigning from thrones alongside Jesus than washing feet with Him; more rules and restrictions and doctrinal purity than love; more fascism than freedom.
Looking for the lifestyles will probably shift your view drastically about the population of the Kingdom, as well as about the purpose. If you’re not gracious about it—if you’re focused on perfect human behavior instead of the most basic signs of fruit of the Spirit—you’re gonna think the number is ridiculously small. If you are gracious about it, you’re gonna see the number as ridiculously large. That was Elijah’s problem; he was a pessimist, and God had to point out to him that He had a lot more solid followers than just Elijah. (1Ki 19.13-18) The invisible church really is invisible sometimes. But when Jesus returns, we will be ready to rejoicingly join His side—and we may be surprised at just how many of us there are.