Did Jesus Preach the Gospel? (TGC Classic)

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Tim Keller
So our panel, Don Carson, Kevin de Young, John Piper, all of whom have been introduced. I haven’t been introduced, but I’m not looking forward to Don introducing me tomorrow, so I don’t think we have to spend any more time on who we are, and we’re here to conduct a panel discussion on the subject of, did Jesus preach the gospel? It’s actually a very, very important theme. If you don’t know that it’s an important theme, or you ask the question, why is this an important theme? Don is going to chair, as it were, our panel discussion, and you’ll we’ll get to that very quickly.

Don Carson
I’m going to begin by asking the question that sets up all the rest of the discussion to some in this hall. The question must seem odd, did Jesus preach the gospel? What prompts this question today? What studies or books or trends or assumptions or movements are driving this question? Next question you you know, when you find four Christians together, one of the hardest things to do is to get three Christians through a doorway after, you know, after you I mean, in honor, preferring one another, almost as hard to get four Christians to speak first on a panel.

Tim Keller
Yeah, when I I did not come up out of an evangelical background. I came up out of a mainline I went to a mainline church growing up, became a Christian in college, found myself often listening to a different a different kind of Christianity. We’re talking about the late 60s, early 70s, that was presented by, I guess, what you might call the mainline churches. And generally what I heard there was, perhaps, I would say, was the, I think John and Don will be able to correct me if I’m using it improperly. But the idea of Ernst Kaseman, that, and many other, what you might call more liberal biblical scholars were that Jesus preached the kingdom. That’s the heart of what Christianity is all about. It has a social justice aspect. It has an eschatological aspect. That’s really what Christianity is about, about this future kingdom. It’s broken in now we need to be, in a sense, being a witness, in some ways, to that in breaking kingdom by the way in which we live our lives, it usually meant calling for social justice. And the more traditional idea, more traditional evangelical ministry, of calling people to be born again, calling people to be converted, was individualistic. It was narrowly focused on various Pauline epistles. And that was, that’s, that’s the Christianity I rejected when i i read into when I went to Gordon Conwell, and I considered myself a reformed evangelical. Today, I hear more and more people inside the evangelical world saying the same sorts of things, pitting the preaching of Jesus in the synoptics and preaching of the kingdom against preaching a gospel of what was be called individualistic eternal life, simply Getting your born again certificate, knowing you’re forgiven, and living out your life and going to heaven. And those things are pitted against each other inside the evangelical world. And I’m pretty sure that many of the people who use the same terminology probably don’t mean quite the same thing. I think they are probably more orthodox when you ask them, Well, what do you mean by eternal life in the kingdom and so on, and yet it’s, I would say it’s actually a bit troubling to me that things that probably should be integrated are being pitted against each other. Now that’s the reason why, when I saw the topic that I thought, yes, we definitely have to address that.

Don Carson
I know you’ve got an example or two going.

Kevin DeYoung
Well, let’s figure I should let John Piper speak first. But, you know, we were, we were just talking a little bit about this, and I was reading a book on the plane down here, and a good book in many ways that we could affirm much of it. In the last chapter, the author argues, and admittedly, he says it’s a bit of a provocative thesis, but he argues for a Canon within a canon, and that the Gospels really ought to be that Canon through which we make sense of the rest. Of the Bible. And I just read a few sentences, because I think this will be illustrative for what we’re trying to address, at least in part. So he says, on the one hand, the Gospels, in reality, the life and teachings of Jesus, have often played only a secondary and subsidiary role in our church experience. The real bread and butter of our Christian experience, teaching and worldview formation has come from the epistles and orthodox doctrine, a focus on the death of Jesus, and to a lesser degree His resurrection, has been the extent to which the Jesus traditions have impacted our thought. But even this is primarily mediated through the epistles, summations and applications the actual life and teachings of Jesus have not been the center. I’ll just read the contrast several pages later. Says if we start with the epistles, we may get a somewhat skewed picture of the main point of the New Covenant. This does not mean that our perspective will necessarily be erroneous or incompatible, but rather slightly unbalanced. For example, as is typical in much of the Protestant tradition, the eschatological kingdom of God is not a major theme when the gospel is discussed, but rather justification by faith or something similar. But when we begin with Jesus’ own teaching and the focus of the Gospels, we can rightly read and understand the rest of the New Testament as an outworking and application of this same perspective. So I think that would be from a book that probably appreciate most of it. But I got to the end of that chapter and thought, Hmm, that seems relevant to what we’re trying to discuss on this panel, and it has to do with just what you said. Are we in error in evangelical circles, or have we gone in some imbalanced direction that, in fact, we’re reading everything through Paul and what? What are? What are the problems with even the way I just stated that question, that somehow we have Paul and then you have Jesus, and we know who’s going to win in

John Piper
that one. The problem I have with that is that start feels so irrelevant. Start, if you start with Jesus, if you start with Paul, I don’t care where a person starts. I want to know where they end. In other words, I want to know after you’ve read both of them, what do you believe about them? What do you understand? Who cares whether you read Luke first or Romans first, or Colossians first, or that temporal hermeneutical trick there is odd to me, my brain doesn’t work that way, and I think it’s pretty profound. In other words, we ought to read the gospels and to read the epistles and to understand them both for what they are, and it doesn’t matter which one we start with, we should understand Jesus message. Does it cohere wonderfully with Paul’s? Does Paul’s cohere wonderfully with Jesus? Does each bring to bear on us and what we need to know for life and godliness, something helpful and so I’m not helped by that paragraph of saying we would do well if we started with Jesus, because then we would read Paul in the best light, My guess is the Galatians read Galatians first, and then, then they might have seen John, Luke. Do I look at you like I’m on the attack here, Kevin is the bad guy. Your microphone is

Tim Keller
poised over there. Oh, I’m sure the Corinthians read Corinthian first. The Corinthians first. No, I, think when they say, start with the Gospels, I think what it’s saying is that traditionally, evangelicalism has tended to read the gospels through Paul that Paul’s more fundamental, Paul gives us the basic categories, and Paul colors our our reading of the Gospels. And wish he wants to reverse that. He wants the Gospels to give us the categories and and see Paul as the outworking of that. And my problem, too is I really the charge we have to refute, or we have to at least answer, the charge that traditional evangelicalism reads the Gospels in light of Paul. I just don’t think you two wrongs. Don’t make a right. If we if we are using Paul and in a sense, muting the distinctives of the Gospels, then we shouldn’t turn we shouldn’t turn the tables. And it seems to me that they should be mutually informing. I’ve. Always believed, like I think all of us, that the when you interpreting the Scripture, the clear parts shouldn’t, should inform the murkier parts. Now, if you get to some places in the Bible that are kind of murky, you don’t choose a your own particular interpretation of that, and then be so sure you’re right that you go back and reread the rest of the Bible in light of it, you take the clear parts and you use those to understand the murky parts. But Paul’s not murky. The gospels aren’t murky. They should be mutually informing. And I really don’t like the idea again. I think that’s what they mean by starting I don’t like the idea of trying to give one part of the Bible pride of place,

Don Carson
partly hidden behind the question is the fact that the Bible is simultaneously the product of God’s blessed inspiration. It is His Word, yet he has, he has given his word through human beings in particular situations with particular kinds of literature at particular times and places and so forth, and the way the whole thing has been cast is focused purely on that historical plane. Now, there are some questions to be asked about how Paul’s vocabulary is different from Luke’s or whatever. We’ll come to some of those things. But behind all of it is the reality that God gave it all. And it’s not as if one part of it is more the Word of God than another part of it. And so you want to phrase the questions in such a way that all of it is the word of God. There’s one mind behind it, and you want to find the one mind behind it to integrate it all, rather than trying to break it apart on the historical planes and give one part some sort of a privileged status.

John Piper
And before we work hard if we do to rescue the Gospels, because we evangelicals emphasize Paul, who’s to say, Mr. So and so that when you read a sequence of documents, some founding events, and others interpretive, consummative events. Who’s to say that the second would and shouldn’t be the one through which you read the first one? I mean, if I wrote a book, that’s why I’d want you to do it. Read the whole book. Oh, got it. Now, let’s go back and get it. That’s the way I’d want people to do it. So I would need somebody to defend for me why you shouldn’t do it that way. Now I’m going to retreat from that and say, Read Luke for Luke. Let Luke have his say. Read Romans For Romans. Let him have his say. But if God did inspire all these 27 books, he did order in his providence that they come into being and be ordered that way. And he did say, I will bring to your remembrance all things and put in place an apostolate who would then instruct his church how to interpret his life. Why wouldn’t you let Paul have a pretty strong say in what you do with the way we read the gospels. I would ask that person that question,

Kevin DeYoung
and I think getting what both of you said when Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will come and will lead you into all truth, of course, we have to read that contextually. It’s not all truth about who you’re going to marry and where you’re going to live and what your major it’s all the truth about Jesus, Christ and His glory, and bringing these things to mind so that the inspired apostolic record after the events of Jesus, life and death and resurrection should have a bearing on how we understand that, because that’s the work of the Spirit, no less. And I think you were hitting on it. Don that tied up in some of this is really a view of inspiration on a much more popular level. You see this with the frequent attempts to be red letter Christians. I mean, that just comes up and recycles every five or 10 years. I’m not that old, and I’ve seen that thing come or go two or three times that now we’re the we’re the we’re the people that really get it. Okay, there’s Paul and we okay, but we got Jesus words. And how often do you hear just in in media outlets? Well, Jesus never said anything about that. Was just Paul later, and that totally betrays what we ought to believe about the unity of the scriptures, that all scripture is breathed out by God.

Don Carson
I’d like to point out, just to reassure everyone here, that that John Piper actually believes there are 66 inspired books, not just 27 just in case there was any doubt in anybody’s mind

Don Carson
to Follow up here? Sure, and then we’re going to the next question not to that that stands, that’s true. He’s going to ignore that.

John Piper
Why would we expect that the Lord Jesus in coming into the world? Die, I came to die, he said, in more ways than one, why would we assume that his preparatory talking before the performance of salvation would somehow be anywhere near as normative about the nature of the salvation as what follows. In other words, it seems to me that it’s inherently to be expected that before salvation is performed at Good Friday and Easter, one would speak of salvation a bit differently than after it had been performed, and now all could be seen in the light of the performance, of why he came, and therefore the post discussion of it authoritatively after the performance would be different. That would just be what I would expect. And so I don’t again get it. Why one would elevate the pre performance articulation of salvation to the post performance articulation of salvation. Let me

Don Carson
push just a wee bit. Let me push a wee bit on the difference in vocabulary just the same. How do we respond to those who say that Paul preaches the gospel. Gospel is a big word with him. One can mention another list, a whole list of words that are pretty common in Paul, that are not nearly as common in the four canonical gospels, and meanwhile, there is an emphasis on Kingdom, especially in the Synoptic Gospels, that is not as prominent in Paul. So the question that they ask is, how do we respond to those who say Paul preaches gospel while Jesus preaches the Kingdom? In other words, deal now with texts, not just with assumptions.

Tim Keller
Well, I have a question to you. I know that’s not fair. You just asked the question, right? But you’re Don is one of the great John scholars, Johann and scholars in the world. I think it’s a little interesting that when they say in the gospels, you have the kingdom, kingdom, kingdom, kingdom, in Paul, the word kingdom doesn’t come up very much, but they’re forgetting one of the Gospels, which is the Gospel of John, which hardly uses the word kingdom. And in fact, I really wonder why, why that that approach shows such disrespect to the Gospel of John. It gives you the impression that Jesus, in His own ministry, would never have preached the gospel as it were, would never, never have given people the good news without talking about the kingdom. But in Gospel of John, he only uses the kingdom in the term kingdom in his own language, where twice one is three times with Nicodemus, but he Okay, well, you’re the John scholar.

Don Carson
No, twice with Nicodemus and John 18

Tim Keller
when he’s when he’s talking with Pilate. Where’s the other one?

Don Carson
No, twice with with Nicodemus and once with Pilate. In John 18, I knew that, but this is why they pay me the big bucks.

Tim Keller
I was considering that twice, but anyway,

Don Carson
and they all, with one accord, began to make excuse

Tim Keller
that seems to give the lie to the assumption. I mean this for the for this is the first time I put it in my mind this way. The assumption seems to be that using the term kingdom is the superior way to preach the Christian message, and that if you don’t use the term because Jesus used the term, other ways are somehow deficient, and yet you have one of the four Gospels in which Jesus doesn’t ordinarily use the term kingdom. It seems almost like eternal life. Test my hypothesis with this John scholar, eternal life seems to almost be in the place of the kingdom. He seems to talk about the eternal life. So much more there. So that, again, seems to me to get rid of this idea that somehow the synoptic preaching of Jesus is the, is the is the peak, and everything else is sort of downhill from there. What do you think, Mr.

Don Carson
Johnson, historically, you’re entirely right. And that is to say, most of those who insist on this, on the primacy of Kingdom language for the historical Jesus, end up either implicitly or explicitly depreciating the value of John’s gospel for understanding the historical Jesus that it all has to be dismissed as as a later theological reflection, rather than something that is a faithful witness to the historical Jesus. And so you end up not only depreciating Paul, you end up depreciating John. Then if you push a little farther, because you’ve got the synoptic dependence, you go for Mark and priority. And at the end of the day, the supreme record for getting at the historical Jesus is Mark. And thus you’re not only having a Canon within a canon, if you’re not careful, you’re having a Canon within a canon, within a cannon, within a. Cannon and and that kind of reductionism at the end of the day, surely has to make anybody nervous. Who thinks that God has given us 66 books?

John Piper
Kevin has something to say.

Unknown Speaker
He’s got his Bible open say something, Kevin,

Kevin DeYoung
I’m thinking of Mark because Mark begins verse one, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. There’s the title page. This is going to be a book about the gospel of Jesus Christ. So pretty good indication that we learn something about the gospel here, and the very first thing out of Jesus mouth in Mark’s gospel, The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. And whether you you understand those two clauses to be equivalent, or at least they’re explanatory, one of another, leaning into each other. The kingdom of God is at hand. This, this heavenly reign and rule of God is breaking in in the person of Christ, and then what repent and believe. Now, it doesn’t seem a stretch to me that you start to sound very Pauline very quickly that we’re talking about repentance, we’re talking about faith. That’s also John’s language, more than any other, with faith. And then by Mark chapter two, Jesus is healing the paralytic, and says, Son, your sins are forgiven. So it seems to be uppermost in his mind that the gospel has at its center, the forgiveness of sins, and then at the end, when he calls Levi and what we saw this morning parallel passage, it’s not those who are well who have need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. And you can go through Mark’s gospel, which is supposed to be the quintessential example of this kind of Kingdom language to show that part and parcel of the kingdom is calling people not to do, though there are lots of commands Jesus gives, but the verbs related to the kingdom are verbs of inheritance, reception, entering in receiving. You’re receiving this gift through faith and repentance, and that, to me, sounds not only what the gospel is in Mark, but what we preach when we come to Romans and Galatians and Philippians.

Don Carson
Now I know that that you guys did some preparation for this, and thought you looked up some stuff on Kingdom, for example, in in Paul, that I thought was really helpful. And I know that you did some reading in a book. Would you like to talk about those things in relevance to this question? How do we think about this charge that at the end of the day, the vocabulary differences are just so notable that you have to think in different categories. I mean, Kevin has introduced it go further

John Piper
right if you simply judge by proportion what you have 90 some gospels, 1314, in the epistles, references to kingdom, not insignificant references Kingdom is righteous in joy and peace. These are Romans, First Corinthians. Kingdom is not talk, but power. He will not inherit the kingdom. He must. He must reign until he puts all of his enemies, then He hands the kingdom over to the Father. And many more have you know, seven or eight more. So Kingdom language not missing. Here’s my take on the reason for the disproportion, and you tell me what you think Jesus intentionally did not preach Jesus as explicitly as Paul preaches Jesus. In fact, he hid Jesus. Don’t tell anybody. And I think you and your talk alluded to why, namely, they didn’t have a clue what real Messiah was and real kingdom was. So Jesus was gradually reinterpreting Messiah, reinterpreting kingdom, and he winds up stretch out on a cross as king. Are you the King? You say that I am, and now I’m reaching my goal, dead. So Jesus is gradually deconstructing kingdom, transforming kingdom, lowering kingdom, the rulers of this earth lorded over those but I am among you as one who serves think kingdom. So he’s reinterpreting kingdom and concealing himself as it were, temporarily until he does his work. And when Paul comes along, he preaches Christ, we preach Christ as Lord. So in my understanding, Paul perfectly understood what Jesus. Doing in reinterpreting kingdom, making himself ready to be the crucified, truly understood Messiah, King, and now I don’t preach that kingdom anymore, as often I preach Christ the King, and then Kingdom is brought in subordinately So Jesus foregrounds it and reinterprets it, Paul backgrounds it and puts the King Jesus in the foreground, which is just what I think Jesus would want him to do, and what makes sense that he should do.

Don Carson
That’s hugely helpful. You’ve got some really good stuff there

Tim Keller
from Yes, I don’t have anything as hugely helpful as that. I don’t think, honestly, that very helpful to me too. What the reason I actually brought up the Gospel of John is, I think it’s intriguing to see ways in which, if you go back and forth between John and the synoptics, it’s you don’t want to say they’re exactly synonymous, but the terms inherit Eternal life, enter the kingdom of God be saved, to turn or be converted, are very they’re used in very similar ways. So one example is in Mark 10. Of course, Matthew 19, Luke, the rich young ruler, asked Jesus, what must he do to inherit eternal life? And when he goes away discouraged, Jesus doesn’t say, oh, it’s really hard for the rich to get eternal life he could have. But instead, he says, it’s hard for those with wealth to enter the kingdom of God. Almost looks like they’re the same thing. Another interesting spot would be if you take a look at Matthew 18 three, it says, Truly, truly. I say to you, Jesus says, unless you turn, which is that word? Actually, some translations say unless you’re converted, unless you turn and become like children, you’ll never enter the kingdom of heaven. John three. Three says, Truly, truly. I say to you, unless one is born again. Verse five, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. And the parallels, I mean, the thing I’d love to hear from my my brothers here is, I don’t believe they’re complete synonyms. I don’t think God would have the different terms unless each term brought out maybe a different aspect. But what brought this all together was years ago, reading a George Ladd theology of the New Testament. And George Ladd says, Here’s what brings it all together. Eternal life is future life brought into the present now through faith in the work of Jesus Christ. So when I believe in Jesus Christ, eternal life doesn’t mean just simply that. Now I know that I’ll live forever because I’m forgiven. Eternal life is a quality of life from the future that comes in now, Dick gaffett also was very, very good at talking about that, you know, he brings out the fact that PAL and Genesee the renewal of all things in Matthew 19 is also a word that Paul uses in Titus for what happens in you when he talks about regeneration, he uses a word that means the renewal of all things at The End of Time is also what renews you now when you’re born again. So what always helped me enormously was to say kingdom life is eternal life. It’s the life of the future come in now, which I get through faith in Christ. It’s not, you know, it’s already, but not yet. It’s here, partially. I’m part, I’m partly renewed, but it’s certainly not fully here yet, because it’s a it’s a down payment on my on the future that draws it all together. And it’s one of the reasons why in John you don’t need to use the word kingdom necessarily. I believe everything that John Piper just said about why it could be that kingdom, Kingdom terminology actually seems to fade a bit with Paul, and maybe you could even say it in John, since John’s the last of the of the Gospels to be written, maybe it’s not necessary for to background Jesus anymore. I think that’s actually quite helpful. But just the idea that eternal life is the future life of the Kingdom now has always drawn it all together for me, and it makes it impossible for me to see why we’re pitting these against each other, why we have to say the kingdom language the synoptics has to take precedence over what Paul says.

Don Carson
Is there any sense at all in which it is helpful to talk about the gospel of Paul, the gospel of justification, the gospel of the kingdom. Mean the expression the gospel of the kingdom is found, of course, in synoptics. Is it? Is it helpful for us to use those expressions today, the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of Paul, the gospel of justification, or whatever? And if so, in what ways can we properly use them? And in what ways must we not use them?

John Piper
You tweeted about this yesterday or today according to and of That’s right, that’s relevant. Good. You want me to remind you

Kevin DeYoung
what you said. I do remember now. Well, I. It. You look in your Bible and it will say the Gospel according to Mark, and you’ve talked about this a number of times, Don The Gospel According to Matthew, that there’s a reason it’s not the gospel of Mark’s, Mark’s got a gospel and John’s got a gospel and well, maybe they worked together. Who knows? It was a deliberate understanding of the early church that there was one story, there was one narrative, there was one storyline of good news, and these four gospels are giving it according to Mark. So here’s Mark’s going to give his angle, but it’s the one gospel. It’s the same about so I guess to your question, for that reason, I’m I’m trying to think when or why I would want to say the gospel of Paul in Contra distinction to some other kind of gospel, because it seems to just work into this kind of Jesus versus Paul, Kingdom versus justification. But maybe there’s some helpful way I’m not thinking of

Don Carson
what I was after was really two things, and you’ve mentioned one of them already. That is to say, in the first century, without any doubt at all. This has been very clearly shown by many people, especially a chap called Martin Hengel. What was understood was that it was the gospel of Jesus Christ, according to Matthew, the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark, the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Luke and so on. So they were the witnesses bearing witness to the one true gospel. That’s why for all of us who have taken first year baby Greek and get our first, our first feel of a New Testament in our hands, and we open it up, and you see the first word on on the page of the New Testament, kata, mathion, according to Matthew. It’s not, it’s not the Gospel of Matthew. It’s, it’s the gospel of Jesus Christ, according to Matthew. And eventually the term gospel became later on, in the second and third century, it came to refer to a genre of literature, so gospels as opposed to epistles. But in the first century, nobody used the term that way. There was no such thing as a gospel in a literary sense. It was the gospel of Jesus Christ, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and it was only later that the term came to be associated with the literary genre. But then the second element is, what do you do with an expression like the gospel of the kingdom? Is that, is that a subset, an equivalent, an alternative? I mean that is, that is, after all, a biblical category. What does it mean to

John Piper
intensify the question, Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom. That’s Matthew. And here’s Matthew, 2414 this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout all the world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come, which means, in Jesus’ mind, what he was preaching would be preached to the end. And my take on that is he looked at what Paul did and said, That’s exactly what I mean. You’re doing it. You’re doing it. He did not mean mimic my phraseology, which is being formulated carefully to get me to the cross at the appointed hour and not an hour sooner, by the people that are trying to make me King because I fed their bellies. I need to get to the cross and show you what King is, what kings are like in the kingdom, so that you can preach the gospel of the Crucified kingdom forever, which is what Paul and the apostles helped us do.

Don Carson
You know you had a you referred earlier, when we were having supper, to an essay by a young scholar at Cambridge, in which he works out three patterns of understanding the relationship between us and God in the Gospels and in Paul. You want to just outline that. I thought

Tim Keller
that was pretty helpful. Well, Simon gathercole, who’s now at Cambridge, right, yeah, wrote an article about the gospel of Paul and the gospel of Jesus, or the supposed gospel of Paul and Jesus. He felt that when Paul talked about the gospel, the three elements in Paul’s Gospel were who Jesus is. He’s the incarnate Son of David, beginning of Romans. Romans. One, secondly, he died for atonement and justification. And then thirdly, Jesus brings the new creation. I mean, Paul is very eschatological, if you read Romans eight, and even what Dick Gaffin always points out with Titus, where Paul is talking about the essentially, the future renewal of all things is coming into my life now through the new birth. He. And so the third thing is Paul talks about after who Jesus is, and his death for atonement and justification. And then he brings in the new creation, which is seen, yes, more in terms in Paul of how individually, we are freed from the dominion of sin. We’re freed from the kingdom of sin and brought into the kingdom of of our his dear son. So it’s a little more got to do with freedom from the dominion of sin in the new creation. Then he says, You go to the synoptics, and what you have is Jesus is the Messiah. So he’s the prophesied Messiah. You have Jesus death for many. He gave His life a ransom. For many, that’s a little Pauline bomb right in the middle of, you know, Mark and Matthew. But then, of course, there’s the reign of God over the demons. He would say that in the synoptics, there’s more talk about Jesus overcoming the demonic in the world and delivering us from the demonic. Paul would talk more about deliverance from indwelling sin, but he says those same three elements, which is, who is Jesus, death for many, and the new creation, the reign of God, are really there in all three there. The thing that I think we have to make sure before we’re done, is talk about, in what way the term kingdom, the way the synoptic preaching of Jesus goes, how and what value does that add? Because I don’t believe it would be in the canon unless God wanted us to say, when you when you preach, it like this. Here’s here’s the John way, eternal life. Here’s the synoptics way, kingdom of God. Here’s the Paul way more on justification and dominion. What? But do Are they not mutually? Don’t they basically inform each other? Don’t they actually give us a fuller and richer understanding of our salvation? I think so. But that that essay is in a compendium of it was a one. It’s called God’s power to save. That’s where Simon gather Cole’s article. And there’s, in fact, the whole thing is about that. It’s a

Don Carson
edited by Chris Green,

Tim Keller
yeah, edit by Chris Green Oak Hill, annual School of Theology, God’s power to save, really, basically on the subject we’re talking about here tonight.

Kevin DeYoung
Can I start to answer that, and then I’ll let please clean it up. But why the kingdom language and what value? Obviously, you know Jesus speaks that way so often. I think what you said is exactly right. The kingdom is the heavenly rule and reign. It’s this eternal life breaking in here. So I think of it as the sun that is, and it breaks through the clouds with greater intensity. And that way it’s not, there’s not more or less, but it comes into our world in increasing amounts. That kingdom comes in that way. And I think of it as So, what is this? This heavenly world going to be? Well, there’s, there’s not going to be any want or scarcity or poverty. Well, that has something to say about the kingdom. Here and now. What is this kingdom to come, this heavenly realm? Well, everyone bows the knee to Christ. That’s why, I think you have to acknowledge the king, repent and believe in the King to be a part of the kingdom. There are no wicked that’s why there’s an over realized eschatology. Sometimes people say, we have to, we have to do all these things to affect the kingdom in our world, yes and no. Before we go too far with that, we say, well, you know, in the kingdom, there’s also no wicked people. So is that part of we go and punish all the throw them into the lake of fire now? Well, no, because the church is a kind of outpost of the kingdom where those heavenly realities and virtues and values come to bear. So that church discipline is that kind of precursor to that kingdom ethic the church having everything in common, so that no one was in want. Was that heavenly ethic coming down into the context of the church, we might say it not completely circumscribed by those boundaries, but I think that’s where the kingdom becomes incredibly helpful for what it is God is doing right now, establishing his rule and reign. And some of that heavenly reality that we can enjoy is breaking in right now, and I would say it’s located in the church, and that would be an interesting discussion we could have

Don Carson
when I’m happy to go down that line. But let me ask a subset question first, just to push this little bit further, a lot of the contemporary discussion speaks quite a bit of Kingdom ethics, kingdom, Kingdom this, Kingdom this kingdom, that kingdom, where Kingdom is essentially an adjective, although it’s just not an adjective at all. I mean, it is an it is a noun, or it’s as a verb. God reigns. Is there any appropriateness to speaking of Kingdom ethics and kingdom self denial and kingdom generosity? And kingdom and so on, or is that just taking us astray?

Kevin DeYoung
Well, I’m talking too much, but I would just, I would say, if you take that analogy, the Kingdom outpost sort of an embassy of another world, if you have your country’s embassy in another country. You’re there to advance the purposes of some foreign nation. And so you live by the rules of a foreign nation. You’re there to further the mission of that so in that way, I think you could say we are here as Christians and in the church and outpost an embassy of another kingdom breaking in. And in that sense, we’re going to live according to the rules of that kingdom, advance the mission of that kingdom, that we’re here in this world, but our allegiance is primarily to another. And in that way, I think you can say there’s Kingdom ethics.

Tim Keller
Yeah, our citizenship is in heaven. So I’ve always found that intriguing, though, because if you’re an ambassador, that is if you’re a citizen of another country, but you have now, you come to a to another, to a new country, you’re representing the country you came from. You’re not simply, you’re not just an immigrant, really. And yet, the same time, you do have to live here, and you have to show great respect, and you have to know the language. I think that Ambassador idea, which I always thought it not only is a great preaching that, but it just, there’s so many aspects. The more you meditate on it, the more it gives you insights as to what it means to be a Christian in the world today. I think in that sense too, I agree with Kevin, that you can say the idea of Kingdom ethics means you come from a place where the values are very different. I think Michael Wilcock has a great in his little exposition of Luke He talks about the upside down values of the kingdom in Luke six, where Jesus essentially says the things the world loves the you know, the Kingdom you know doesn’t, and the things the kingdom loves the world doesn’t. So he said, recognition, power, fame, all the things that in the world, that’s the coinage of the realm. In the kingdom, those things aren’t valuable. In fact, almost the opposites are valued. Humility is valuable in all that sense? Yes, I absolutely would say that there is a there’s a way in which you could say the values of my homeland, which I want to represent and, and, and and live according to in this foreign land in that sense. Yes, we could be talking about Kingdom ethics. I think so. Now, have you heard it used in a way that you don’t like? Don or John, yes, okay,

John Piper
I don’t like the term.

Tim Keller
I can sense that coming

John Piper
so I wouldn’t you know if somebody used it. I’d just say, What do you mean? And then I would decide if I agreed or not. But, but the term, to me, smacks of a resistance to the flow of the New Testament. Because if I were to use the term, which I could do, since the kingdom has come, I do live in it. I have a king, and I am his ambassador, and I ought to behave a certain way because of it. And you could call that kingdom ethics. I could use that Paul never, I don’t think comes close to using it that way. Well, it comes close. Perhaps in Colossians, we’ve been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into King, the beloved son, and that has moral implications in Colossians. But what I’d want to know is, when you say Kingdom ethics, do you mean you have moved through Jesus’ life, His death, His resurrection, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And you are taking your cue from authoritative apostles who are showing us how to build and nurture the church. If so, do you mean Romans six? Do you mean Romans 12? Do you mean Ephesians, four through six? Do you mean first, Peter two? And if they said, Yes, that’s what I mean, I said, not a problem that I don’t think that’s what’s usually meant. I don’t think so that. I think it’s used by people who are a little disillusioned with the fruit of the Holy Spirit, talk, or the talk of being transformed by the renewing of your mind because of the mercies of God. All that, all that epistle talk of how you move towards holiness is a little bit they don’t want to go there. They want to get back, you know, 50 years, and plant themselves in the Sermon on the Mount or somewhere, and distance themselves. And I go just the opposite. I am going to stake my life, what’s left of it on the fact that the New Testament and the apostles represent what one ought to make of Jesus for the church. One ought to make Romans. One ought to make First Corinthians. One ought to make Colossians and Galatians. That’s the way the apostles did Jesus. Jesus for the church, they didn’t go back and try to restate an interesting appeal to Donnie. I remember working on my degree. The Scandinavians had this sense that the tradition, the oral tradition, being preserved, of the sayings and the acts of Jesus, was running parallel with the application of it in epistolary language, because they would say, there’s almost no doubt that early Christians were told the sorts of things Jesus did and said. And there’s all the scholars are scratching their head, why isn’t it showing up more in the epistles? And the answer was that this was almost like a sacred tradition had Jewish counterparts, and here’s the way it got applied, and that’s what’s preserved for us. So whether that’s accurate or not as a possible explanation, what we do know is that we have Paul and Peter and James, and they are authoritative for us for how to nurture and care for the church. But I totally agree with where you were going in saying, but don’t all the pieces make significant contributions. And I would, I would say, absolutely they do. And if you ask, then Paul or the person trying to read Romans 12 or six in terms of ethics, any emphasis that could be brought to that from the kingdom, emphasis of the of the epistles, the answer would be yes. There would be great late light to be shown of he’s king, and look what he did with the kingdom, right he?

Tim Keller
But you know, even when, when Paul’s talking about, in Romans 14, dealing with being very practical, about dealing with the various factions in the church, being merciful to each other and honoring each other’s consciences and all that, he says. But you know, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking, but of you know, righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. That is very clearly an ethical there’s an ethical thrust there. But he’s not just saying that exactly here’s here’s ethical principles of behavior. He’s trying to say something about the fact that. But he is saying, in the kingdom of God. He’s actually in the kingdom of God. We shouldn’t behave like this. So there’s a there’s an ethical thrust, and yet it’s not just a set of ethics. I would say,

John Piper
absolutely right. I would say what that very sentence does, the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit. He would say, I’m showing you how to talk about the kingdom now,

Tim Keller
well, that’s what’s so intriguing, because he really does equate life in the Spirit with the kingdom of God. Yes, that’s exactly there’s no problem. He has no problem with that. He’s not pitting them against each other.

Kevin DeYoung
So if I hear you, John, I mean your concern is just making Kingdom an adjective is folks who are eager to get to what they see as the ethics of Jesus, and they don’t have to go through doctrine. They don’t have to go through they don’t have any of these other sort of categories. And that’s what you see, sometimes in a sophisticated way, sometimes in a clumsy way. Isn’t this wonderful? We got Jesus and we got kingdom. Like an evangelist that was at Michigan State one time and ended his his climax was holding up a red crayon and saying, Who wants to go paint the world red for Jesus, it was kind of make a difference and follow in Jesus footsteps. And of course, left out the biggest footstep, which is the cross. And you’ve said many times, we have to read the gospels backwards. I mean, I got that from you. Matthew 121, right?

John Piper
Read the gospels backwards, means, in order for me to to grasp what Luke is trying to do in chapters one and two, I really do need to know how the forgiveness of sins is going to be worked out and and Luke certainly did not intend for me to read chapter one and two, close the book and go try to live that way. He wanted the whole book to have its whole message, and then I would add the whole New Testament. And in fact, all 66 books Amen. So so I really dislike cannon within a Canon talk, or start here, and it makes all the difference talk. I want us to be a people who take it all seriously and ask a question at any given point where we’re interpreting a piece of Paul or a piece of Jesus. Is there anything in Paul that would make this interpretation of Jesus look wrong? If that’s true, I probably got it wrong. Is that, is there anything I’m interpreting over here in Paul, that anything over here would make that look wrong from Jesus? If so, I probably got this wrong, and so I’m constantly being helped and corrected and refined in my theology by taking all of it seriously wherever I start.

Don Carson
Let me complete. Maxify it one more notch, if I may, in a handful of cases in the Old Testament, specifically, but then everywhere, thematically, God is presented as the great king overall. He He does what He wills in the armies of heaven. He does what He wills among men, not a not a bird falls from the heaven. According to Jesus, apart from his sanction. In Proverbs, you throw the dice and which numbers come up, that’s under God’s sovereignty. And so God’s Kingdom rules overall and and in that sense, we’re all in the kingdom, whether we like it or not. You can be an atheist, a Buddhist, a Muslim, you can be a secular. It doesn’t matter where you are, where you were born, you’re in the kingdom. Now, some uses of Kingdom language in the gospels are that embracive, and some are not. So when Jesus, for example, likens the kingdom in some sense, to the parable of the wheat and the tares. It includes both wheat and tares. That is, in the sweep of God’s sovereignty, there’s both wheat and tares. And then even after the resurrection, Jesus says all authority is given to Me in heaven and on earth. And yet, there are lots of other Kingdom References in which in which you’re at the risk of using mechanical or spatial language. The kingdom under which there is life is some subset of the totality of God’s sovereignty under which there is eternal life, and that that subset is coming, and yet, at the same time, while that subset is coming, you’re either in it or you’re not, yet, in some sense, you’re under Christ’s authority. Now he’s ruling, and all of God’s sovereignty is mediated through him until the last enemy is destroyed, namely death itself. And then, and then God has made all in all. And that is another element of kingdom that is sometimes left out of this discussion, right? And so let me hear how you guys are going to integrate that into everything that we’ve said.

John Piper
You said, right already, so you must agree,

Tim Keller
I’m all for it. I think it’s interesting that Jesus says to Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world. So right there, he’s using it differently than the providential kingdom, I’m in control. And yet, almost in the same breath, he says to Pilate, you’ve got no power except that which you’re my father gave me. In other words, the only reason that you’ve got power to crucify Me is you’re actually doing my father’s will right. Now, it’s intriguing that he almost talks about the two aspects. In one sense, My kingdom is not here. It’s not of this world, meaning it’s not a political kingdom. It’s a spiritual kingdom of people who are born again. And yet he almost turns right around and says, and yet, you’re only doing what the great king of the history and the universe wants you to do. It’s not that he uses the word kingdom twice, but very much that they’re both there in that very same passage, the two aspects very complexifying.

Kevin DeYoung
Yeah, I mean, it just just seems like it’s, it’s some of that already and not yet. And just like there’s different ways in which the term of the world can be used. So God is the king over all things, and Christ is the king right now, whether anyone in this room acknowledges it or not, whether we sing another song, whether anyone in this whole country he is King, that we don’t make him king, he is. And yet when he comes back, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord to the glory of God, the Father. It seems like one of the closest passages to what you’re talking about Don is in Hebrews two now, in putting everything in subjection to Him, He left nothing outside his control. That sounds pretty absolute already. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him, but we see him who, for a little while, was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death. So he is a king. Has been a king? Is a coming King and bringing more people into His kingdom.

Don Carson
And sometimes under that usage of King, there is a subset in which you’re either in it or not, yes, and that needs to be integrated with this broader sense in which he is ruling, but his rule is still contested, until one day there’s no more contestation. But there’s still this subset usage, that is, unless you’re born again, you cannot see, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. Well, that means some are in and some are not. It’s not just a question of it having dawned and and he is reigning, but it’s being contested. There is some use of of Kingdom in which the locus is not as broad as the complete sovereignty of God mediated through Christ. And it’s important to get those things clear, it seems to me, as we’re teaching

Tim Keller
Scripture, the this, okay, here’s another aspect of Kingdom, in a sense, if. Because tomorrow, in the after conference plug, we’ll be talking about the integration of faith and work. Now this gets us into an area that Abraham Kuyper talked about, by the way, he was Dutch, you would have liked him at smuck Lick. But you know, Kuyper, of course, said that because Jesus is Lord, that means he’s Lord not only of your private life, but every area of your life, simple and that is the most especially, I think, increasingly, in this country, as you might say that the public culture becomes colder to Christians. It’ll get easier and easier for us to seal our our public life and our work life off from our faith. That’s to say, my faith is for giving me personal peace and help in my private life. But when it comes to thinking about how it affects the way in which I do business and the way new politics, how I work out in the world, I don’t want to go there because it’s complex, and I haven’t figured it out. What Kuyper by bringing Abraham Kuyper by lifting up the kingship of Christ over every area of life. He forces you into whole life discipleship. He forces you to see if he’s not just my savior that gives me eternal life, so I’ll live forever. He’s the king, and every area of my life is under his kingship, I have to ask, Am I really doing His will in as a banker? I’m a banker. Am I? Am I just being conformed to the world? I mean, what are the implications of what the Bible says about how I should be living my life under Christ? That has an implication on how I do banking. And you have to ask that question. And I think that’s here’s there’s another way in which the kingdom is of value. It’s if you don’t have that word in there, especially Americans, we don’t like the idea of having a king. We want someone who meets our needs. We don’t want someone who rules over us. And there that’s another aspect and a very area, every area of our lives, and that’s the reason why that’s a value, that the Kingdom language adds

Don Carson
many of the categories of Scripture do not resonate with anything in the culture, and kingdom is one of them. We’re a republic, and the kingdom we think most of, if we’re thinking of any, is the British monarchy, which is constitutional, and God is not a constitutional monarch, and and then priest. I mean, how many of us go through our lives thinking whether or not you know we’ve got an adequate priest covenant? We don’t use that terminology in everyday speech. So many of the categories of Scripture are not categories that are current in everyday life, but they have to become passionately current in our understanding and thinking, in the church and in our lives, or we simply won’t understand scripture. But although Kuypers emphasis on not one square foot, is there any place in the universe where Jesus does not say, This is mine, yet, there’s a flip side danger to that. You can be so busy talking about how this is God’s all over, that you’re thinking of God’s complete sovereignty, and we’re under God’s sovereignty, and thinking of the way these things work out in various spheres, that we forget that there is this subset use of Kingdom language where you’re either in or out, if you start thinking of God’s sovereignty only with respect to everything, which is a huge theme. I’m not trying to depreciate it at all, but, but, but overlook that there is a subset in which people are either in or out. You’re either in that kingdom or you’re not. Then it seems to me that it’s easy to to start thinking strategically at the global and political and working level, and forget at the same time, you still have to preach you must be born again.

Kevin DeYoung
And to complexify that, because I mean, reformed theologians have often distinguished between the different ways in which Christ reigns yes over all things. So there’s that general summer, and then there’s a mediatorial reign, where he reigns by his word in the church. And so, Amen, yes, and amen, everyone should say to Abraham Kuypers favorite phrase, and yet you need to nuance it, otherwise it becomes just a mess of, well, Christ ought to reign over everything, or he’s exercising that reign now in exactly the same way.

Tim Keller
Yeah, in other words, a utopianism or triumphalism. So that’s why you got to have Don around to complexify otherwise. Well, actually, one of the things that’s so rich about the Kingdom of God is we even talked about the already, but not yet. But don likes to give you about five things, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not just already, but not yet, but it’s, it’s completely here in terms of providential rule. It’s not here in terms, you know, there’s just so many ways in which you can talk about it. Where have you written that down? I know I’ve read it three or four times. Where would be the closest, fastest way for people to get your work on the kingdom?

Don Carson
Don’t have a clue. I mean, I wrote it somewhere, probably two or three times.

Tim Keller
But we have the same problem now. I know I wrote it somewhere, so, but here, listen, I’d like to, can I end on a negative note? Pardon, I’d like to end on a negative note. Tim Keller,

Don Carson
well, you can give us the negative note, then we’ll decide if that’ll end it.

Tim Keller
Well, not really. I’d like to get back to where we were going, and that is, I am very I’m unhappy with people trying to take the kingdom, and I’ve seen a lot of younger ministers over the last 1015 years get this way, and to say, I’m not gonna, I’m gonna, that’s the gospel. Jesus is Lord. That’s the gospel. The kingdom of God is at hand. That’s, it’s more, it seems more biblical. It seems more Jesus. It’s and so and I have seen people say, here’s the gospel presentation. The gospel presentation is that Jesus Christ came here and established His kingdom. It’s not completely here, but it’s a it’s really a people of God. It’s a people now who are carrying out his kingdom program to renew the world and to work for peace and justice, and you need to join it. That’s what ends up happening. And I have to say, you know, you’ve probably heard me say it, perhaps before I said, if that’s the gospel, I don’t know what, where you why would you ever sing? My chains fell off. My heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee. I Where’s the release? Where’s the joy, where’s the the transformation? It just sounds like you are just joining another program. And it’s a, it’s a kind of, kind of a liberal works righteousness, and I so just taking the word kingdom to mean living a great life and making the world a great place, and working for peace of justice, and then putting that in as your gospel presentation, that’s what you’re calling people to do. Is, is, I think it’s very damaging, and it’s not good. And I think in some ways, behind everything else we’ve said here tonight is that that last 1015, years, that tendency on the part of a lot of young ministers to get romantic about the term kingdom and just begin to use it everywhere and not really see all the complexities of it.

Don Carson
Richard Baxter, when he was arguing about justification, whether one likes everything he says about justification or not, one of the wise things that he says is, if somebody comes into your town preaching justification, an erroneous view of justification, an erroneous view is just justification, don’t begin by refuting him. Preach up. That’s his expression. Preach up justification better than he and in exactly the same way, if we see the notion of kingdom being abused in various forms of reductionism, then our first response must be to preach up the kingdom better than they that is to get it right biblically again and again and again and again and within that framework, to show how the reductionisms do not square with Scripture and ultimately do damage to Christ and to the gospel, to The Church for which Christ shed his blood, rather than simply sounding censorious and consigning people to the bottom level of Dante’s Inferno. Would you like to close us in prayer? Please

Kevin DeYoung
our gracious heavenly Father, what a privilege that we can come to you as your adopted children and call you our Father, and we praise you because of the work of Your Holy Spirit through the Word in our lives. We praise you because of your son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, the resurrected once and coming King. And we pray in His name, knowing that He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it, and knowing that one day, when he returns, the kingdom of this world, because will become for all time, The kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. And we pray that you would hasten that day, and if you were to give us any small part in being ambassadors for that great and glorious good news, we would be most privileged. We pray that you would fill us with your spirit. You would guard the truth. You would help us to be men and women of all the book of the whole council of God, using the terms, the vocabulary, the nuances, never pitting one against another. But Lord, we thank You for this book that you have given to us, and for the Spirit who inspired all of it and now gives us the gift of illumination that we might understand it, interpret it, apply it, and amazingly enough, even begin to live it out. Be with us now in the remainder of our evening, and may all. We think and do and say, be fitting for those who worship Jesus as King in his name, amen.