The Language Of The Kingdom! Series

A few chapters on from here and Paul comes out with another couple of verses on love; “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong. Do everything in love.” (1 Corinthians 16:13-16) Paul saw that the church at the time was encountering as it does today wrong teaching, where a firm faith was not a key to the relationships that were occurring in the church, where the people were not courageous, or strong, where people were slipping back into old ways.

In a later letter to a young in the faith Christian, Paul warns Timothy about these people when he says this: You should know this, Timothy that in the last days there will be very difficult times. 2 For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. 3 They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. 4 They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. 5 They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that! (2 Timothy 3:1-5, NLT). Well there’s an example of what is not love, what is not the language of the kingdom as we would be speaking it, kingdom language is none of the above. But how easy is it for us to act in these ways, to act this way with one another, out of selfishness to not act out of or speak out of love. When it happened at the tower of Babel, God confused their languages; did you notice what else occurred?

Verse eight of that passage from Genesis eleven says this “So the Lord scattered them from there all over the earth, [wait for it] and they stopped building the city.”

Kingdom growth stops where there is self-seeking, kingdom grow stops where Christians engage in worldly things rather than the things of and the language of the kingdom and people who were once part get scattered.

Paul say’s this in 2 Corinthians 5: 16-21: “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Do you see the actions of love in these things, we have been given a ministry of reconciliation, are we all reconciled with one another, we are to be ambassadors of reconciliation. Do we count someone’s sins against them or are we engaging in kingdom language, as though God were making his appeal through us?