What Is God’s Kingdom?
The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of Grace
The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of rest & peace. The Kingdom of God is also a Kingdom of Grace.
The benefits of God’s grace can never be “earned.” They must be received through a relationship with Jesus! That’s grace! And it’s through faith that we access His amazing grace! (Rm. 5:2) Faith responds to God’s grace with humble obedience to His Word. (Jn. 14:21)
The Word of God is what reveals the laws of His Kingdom. Humility is one of those laws and it is close to God’s heart and part of His character. Jesus, God Himself, was manifest in the flesh (Jn. 1:14) and called Himself meek and lowly in heart (Mt. 11:29). Jesus was humble. He was the perfect representation of the Father (Heb. 1:3), which means God is also humble! That’s why God responds positively to humility! Yet at the name of Jesus, everyone and everything with a knee will bow and confess Him as Lord (Phil. 2:10-11).
Let’s read what James, the half-brother of Jesus had to say:
“He gives more grace. Wherefore He says, God RESISTS the proud but gives more grace to the humble” (Jm. 4:6).
Wow! Powerful scripture! But what is grace? Grace can be viewed as everything God has ALREADY done for us prior to our ever being here on planet earth! He created everything with us in mind! And He created everything so it would reproduce after its own kind! That’s so awesome! Look up! God created the universe and all that’s in it. Look down at the earth, and everything you see came from something God made before we were ever here! Wow!
Now imagine God giving you even MORE grace! How does that happen? By being humble. Humility opens our hearts up to receiving even more of God’s grace! And the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of GRACE! All that God is and ALL that God offers to us IN CHRIST is on an unearned, undeserved basis (Rm.12:6). We must learn how to respond to God’s grace in faith.
Today we each have a choice. 1) Receive Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior and enter into the “Great” Exchange or 2) don’t receive Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior and receive what we do deserve at the end of our life. Period! If you have not yet done this, simply ask Jesus into your heart, confess Him as your Lord and Savior, and believe that God raised Him from the dead (Rm. 10:9-10). If you’ve done this, congratulations! You are now in the family of God!
As we move along in this study, we will continue to discover that humility is a spiritual law, learn what true humility is, and how to cooperate with the spiritual laws of God’s Kingdom so we can be TRULY blessed! We will discover that humility actually governs God’s kingdom!