Righteousness and love in the invisible kingdom

On his robe and on his thigh he had this name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Revelation 19:16

Jesus told the crowd to seek fi rst God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. He spoke of an invisible kingdom. God’s Kingdom is a place of righteousness as opposed to a world where evil is present. We’re not there yet. The battle for decency goes on every day.

Jesus taught that the problems of society are really the problems of the heart. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matthew 15:19), said Jesus.

“Okay, we know it’s out there,” you say, “but how can we disengage ourselves from it? How can we keep ourselves and our kids from the moral pollution?”

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” explained Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:17. God brings an internal transformation in the lives of those who are citizens of God’s Kingdom. We acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord and King of our lives and that we are controlled not by our old natures that war within, but by the

Spirit of God who dwells within us.

The invisible kingdom is also a kingdom of love, and those whose lives are touched by God are changed. It enables them to love, whereas they would have hated, or at least been indifferent to others.

Have you as a spiritual affi rmation said, “Lord Jesus, I want You to rule and reign in my heart and life. I crown You as my

King and place you over the kingdom of my life”? When you do that, you indeed become a citizen of the invisible kingdom, the Kingdom of God.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

2 Corinthians 4:6-10