What Jesus said about the kingdom of God
His most constant subject, and the one he never defines.
The kingdom of God is the thing Jesus talks about most. It is also the thing he never once explains directly. Asked what it is, he answers with a farmer, a merchant, a woman with flour, a man who finds something in a field.
That is not evasion. The comparisons are the teaching, and they have a shape in common.
What he compared it to
- Matthew 13:44Treasure hidden in a field, found by accident
- Matthew 13:45–46A merchant who had been looking all along
- Matthew 13:31–32A mustard seed: the smallest, then the largest
- Matthew 13:33Yeast worked through a large batch of flour
- Mark 4:26–29Seed that grows while the farmer sleeps
- Luke 17:20–21Not coming with observation: it is among you
- Matthew 5:3Whose it is, in the first line of the sermon
One of them, with the room around it
the Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in the field, which a man found, and hid. In his joy, he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field.
Spoken to a crowd by a lake, in a run of comparisons delivered one after another. The detail that carries it is three words long: he sells everything in his joy. Not out of duty, and not after weighing it up. The price is total and the man is delighted, which tells you what he thinks he has found.
What the comparisons have in common
They are small, and they are hidden. A seed, some yeast, something buried in a field, something growing while nobody watches. None of them is an institution and none arrives with an announcement — which is the explicit point of Luke 17:20.
And every one of them is worth more than it looks. The man sells everything; the merchant sells everything; the seed becomes the largest plant in the garden. The teaching is consistently that this thing is easy to walk past and costs whatever you have.
The whole collection, one day at a time
Walking with Jesus: Devotional has a collection called Teachings of the Kingdom that walks these one a day, each with the moment it was spoken in, a reflection, a prayer and one thing to carry into the day.
A one-time purchase, about five minutes a morning.
Questions people ask
- What did Jesus mean by the kingdom of God?
- He never defined it directly. He compared it to hidden treasure, a pearl, a mustard seed, yeast in flour and seed growing unseen — pictures that share two traits: it is small and easily missed, and it is worth everything the finder has.
- Is the kingdom of God the same as the kingdom of heaven?
- They appear to be the same thing. Matthew says "kingdom of heaven" in passages where Mark and Luke say "kingdom of God", which is generally understood as a Jewish way of avoiding the direct use of the divine name rather than a difference in meaning.
- Did Jesus say the kingdom of God is within you?
- In Luke 17:21 he tells the Pharisees the kingdom of God does not come with observation, and is "within" or "among" you — translations differ, because the Greek carries both. Either way the point is that it is not something to be spotted arriving.