The clearest place to test this approach is the phrase “the Kingdom of God.”
The Kingdom of God was not a new idea invented by Jesus. His hearers already lived within a religious world in which God was understood as King. Jewish Scripture had long spoken of God's kingship, and Jewish religious imagination also included hopes for a future manifestation of God's rule, judgment, restoration, and deliverance. These expectations were not uniform, however. Different Jewish groups and traditions imagined God's future action in different ways.
Jesus therefore did not introduce his message into a religious vacuum. He entered an already existing world of ideas.
This is important because the question is not simply, “What did Jesus say about the Kingdom?” We must also ask:
«What did his hearers already understand when they heard the words “Kingdom of God”?»
And then comes the more important question:
«What did Jesus want them to see through those familiar words?»
The future Kingdom in the religious imagination
For many people in Jesus' world, the hope of God's future intervention was an important part of religious expectation. God would ultimately defeat evil, establish justice, vindicate the righteous, and bring his purposes to fulfillment. Some traditions connected this expectation with the coming of a messianic figure and with a final judgment.
Jesus himself sometimes used this future-oriented imagery.
He spoke of the coming of the Son of Man. He told stories involving judgment and separation. He used the imagery of a bridegroom whose arrival was awaited. He spoke of a future banquet and of the coming Kingdom. The future dimension of his teaching therefore cannot simply be removed from the Gospels. The Kingdom appears in both present and future forms in the Jesus tradition.
But this raises an important question.
When Jesus used an image of the future, was his primary purpose always to describe exactly what the future would look like?
The parables suggest that the answer is often no.
The future as the setting of the lesson
Consider the story of the sheep and the goats.
The story is presented within a dramatic scene of future judgment. The Son of Man comes in glory, the nations are gathered, and people are separated from one another. Yet the striking feature of the story is not a detailed description of the geography of the future world. The emphasis falls upon the criterion of judgment: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned.
The future judgment provides the setting.
But the moral question concerns the present:
How do you treat the human being in front of you?
The same pattern can be seen in the parable of the ten bridesmaids. The story assumes the expected arrival of the bridegroom. Yet its practical force is the call to remain ready—to remain awake and prepared. The future expectation becomes a way of teaching present attentiveness.
The story of the rich man and Lazarus works in a similar way. It uses images of the afterlife, Abraham, the place of torment, and the great gulf separating the two sides. Yet the moral crisis of the story occurs before death. Lazarus is already lying at the rich man's gate. The problem is not that the rich man does not know about the geography of heaven and hell. The problem is that he fails to see the suffering human being at his own doorstep.
Thus we may formulate an important principle:
«The future was sometimes the setting of Jesus' teaching; the present was the lesson.»
This does not mean that Jesus did not believe in future judgment or future fulfillment. Rather, it means that we should be careful not to confuse the imagery used in a teaching with the main point the teaching was intended to communicate.
From expectation to transformation
This helps us understand something important about Jesus' use of the religious imagination of his time.
Jesus did not necessarily need to dismantle every expectation his hearers possessed before he could teach them something new. He could enter their world of thought and use its familiar images as vehicles for a different vision.
He could speak of judgment in order to teach compassion.
He could speak of the coming bridegroom in order to teach vigilance.
He could speak of heaven and torment in order to expose indifference toward the poor.
And he could speak of the Kingdom of God in order to invite people to begin living under God's rule.
The familiar image remained.
But the listener was being invited to see differently.
This is consistent with the broader pattern of Jesus' parabolic teaching. The Kingdom parables themselves use familiar images—seeds, soil, harvests, leaven, treasure, pearls, banquets—to communicate something about God's reign. Scholars have long debated whether these sayings emphasize a present or future Kingdom; the evidence has led many interpreters toward a both-and understanding.
The Kingdom: already God's reality, not merely a future event
This opens the possibility of understanding Jesus' proclamation in a distinctive way.
If God is truly King, then God's kingship is not something that needs to be created from nothing in the future. The future fulfillment of God's reign may still be hoped for, but God's sovereignty itself is not waiting to begin.
The important question becomes:
How do human beings respond to the reign of the God who is already King?
Here the proclamation “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand” becomes especially significant.
Repentance can be understood not merely as preparation for a future event but as a response to a present reality.
God is King.
The problem is that human beings do not necessarily live as though God is King.
They can live according to fear, greed, pride, violence, resentment, competition, and self-interest. They can organize their lives around values that contradict the character of God's reign.
Repentance, therefore, becomes a turning.
It is a turning away from one way of living and a turning toward another.
It is the beginning of participation in the reality of God's reign.
«The Kingdom does not need to begin; our participation in it needs to begin.»
This formulation should be understood as an interpretive proposal rather than as a claim that Jesus' teaching had no future dimension. The Gospel traditions themselves preserve both dimensions. Indeed, the scholarly discussion of Jesus' Kingdom teaching has repeatedly recognized this tension between present reality and future consummation.
The Kingdom as a lived reality
This gives the Kingdom a profoundly practical meaning.
The Kingdom is not merely a place to which people will eventually go.
It is not simply an event that God will one day perform.
It is the reality of God's reign, and human beings are invited to enter that reality now.
From God's perspective, God is already King.
From the human perspective, the Kingdom becomes a lived reality when a person recognizes God's rule and willingly begins to live within it.
This leads to a formulation that may become central to our understanding of Jesus:
«God's Kingdom is always a reality because God is always King. But it becomes a lived reality for a human being when that person recognizes God's rule and chooses to live within it.»
The Kingdom, then, does not merely answer the question, “What will God do someday?”
It also asks:
“How will I live today?”
And this brings us back to repentance.
If repentance is understood only against the background of future judgment, it can easily become fear-driven:
«“Change, because judgment is coming.”»
But if repentance is understood as a response to the present reality and goodness of God's reign, it can become something deeper:
«“Turn around, because you have discovered who God is and how life is meant to be lived under God's reign.”»
This prepares the way for another transformation in Jesus' teaching: the transformation of our understanding of God himself.
For the God whose Kingdom Jesus announces is not presented merely as a distant King awaiting the day of judgment.
He is also Father.
And if God is Father, then entering the Kingdom is not merely entering a system of divine authority.
It can be understood as coming home.
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