The Christian Worldview Lived Out Through The Kingdom Program Of God

We are considering today the concept of a Christian worldview in regard to a holistic understanding of the life of the “Kingdom of God.” This kingdom program of God, finding it’s full revelation in Jesus Christ, involves many aspects including grace, the problem of evil, the nature of redemption, and how humanity ought to live out the new life in Christ. In the fullness of this theological understanding of the kingdom of God we find what it means to view the world from a truly Christian perspective. Secondarily we will also address the topic of ministry, and what sort of core theology would best define the true daily practice of the Christian faith as a saint of the church.

We’ll start right at the beginning, which leads us to the program of sin and evil. We can only properly understand the life of the kingdom when we first consider our origins. The God of the Bible created the world in six days, and rested on the 7th. Everything we see therefore is created by God, or constructed by God’s creations. The observable universe is a brief and limited description of the incredible depth of character, glory, power, and ability within the character of the Author of Life, Jesus Christ who is God. Nature is a picture of the beauty of God.

God created the universe, all the galaxies, time, space, reality, and our Earth. On Earth, with great care and love God built the first humans Adam and Eve. God gave the greatest gift imaginable when he gave free will, the ability to choose right or choose wrong. The first humans existed in a state of spiritual and physical perfection, in the direct presence of their Father, God, who had made a garden on the surface of the Earth for their dwelling and relationship.

So now we consider the origin of evil and sin. God made humanity, but he had other creations as well. In addition to the first humans developed by God, there were also spiritual beings called angels, which God had given the gift of free will. And they freely served their heavenly Father as well. One of these angels was named Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12). This spiritual being corrupted by his own desire for power came into the garden and suggested to the first humans that they ought to be their own gods, accountable to no one and so the first humans sinned and fell under the dominion of Lucifer, also known as Satan the evil one. At this moment of prideful disobedience humanity turned on their God to pursue their own way.

God might've destroyed the first humans and been done with humanity at that moment, but that would’ve been contrary to God’s own gracious, merciful nature. So God the creator established a temporary scenario in which life and death would hang in the balance. God set up a final chance for humanity, allowing the sin their hearts conceived of to spread throughout the garden, across the Earth and the universe itself. At that moment the perfect universe became a crippled tangent universe destined for destruction. That is why the universe is so barren, why stars burn out, why seasons shift between fall, winter, spring and summer; All creation was affected by the curse of sin. Death entered the human race. And the natural inclination to sin, to plot a course outside of the sovereign God of the universe, became the natural state of all humans born into the line of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had ceded control of the human race from God to Satan, and Satan began to establish his own perverted kingdom on the fallen Earth.

God continued to interact with humanity, and pursue humanity, establishing the nation of Israel through the line of Abraham, as the descendants of Adam and Eve multiplied. God gave Israel his laws. Yet Israel was unable to follow the laws. Israel struggled through captivity in Egypt, and struggled again in their wandering in the wilderness. Israel went through many wars, struggles, spiritual revivals, and spiritual downfalls, eventually splintered, and broken, and taken into exile by the Babylonian empire. God had spoken through prophets, priests, judges and kings. But all had come to failure, and Israel had become a broken nation, occupied by the Roman Empire.

It was at this time in history when Jesus Christ, the God-man come to Earth was born into human history. God had decided that He would give himself, Immanuel, as an offering to allow his lost people to be rejoined to him as family, justified by faith. The coming of Christ into the world began the kingdom program of God. Jesus at the age of 30 began declaring the coming of the kingdom of heaven. He said that this mystery was that the kingdom of heaven was within each Christian (Luke 17:21).