The twentieth passage of the Sefer Yeshua is based on Lk 17.20-21, and Th 113.1-4. Thomas 3.3 also has one verse in common, but that passage will be covered under the commentary for the next passage, SY 21.
20. 1People enquired of Yeshua and said, ‘When will the kingdom come?’ 2But Yeshua answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God won’t come by watching and waiting for it. Nor will it be a matter of people saying, “Here it is!” or “There it is!” 3Because the kingdom of God is already within you.’
Overview
The phrase, ‘the Kingdom of God’ confuses a lot of people. This is mostly because, depending on the gospel verse where the phrase is used, it seems to mean different things – either a future Kingdom, or a present Kingdom. The reason why it seems to mean different things, is because it actually does.
As I’ve mentioned on numerous other occasions, ancient Aramaic had a much smaller vocabulary than modern languages do. As a consequence, one word had to make do for several concepts, whereas in a modern language we would use several different words. Ancient Aramaic words often had a far broader meaning and application than we might tolerate today.
The Aramaic and Hebrew word malkhūt, whose basic meaning is ‘kingdom’, also means, ‘kingship’, ‘reign’, ‘authority’, ‘rule’, and in compound nouns, ‘royal’.
There are four basic ways in which Yeshua used the word, and which of the four he intended in any given teaching all depended on context.
1. When Yeshua seems to be referring to a coming time of tribulation and judgment in the near future, malkhūt means, ‘Kingship’. It refers to a coming time when God will be acting as King and Judge (e.g. Mt 3:2).
2. When Yeshua seems to be referring to a period of time in the far distant future, often with the idea of some kind of final fulfilment involved, Yeshua is referring to the fulfilment of God’s reign (such as the leaven transforming a large batch of flour, Mt 13:33). At some point in the distant future, the plans of God will be fulfilled; there will be perfect peace and no more war. What others refer to as, ‘the Messianic Age’, in Yeshua’s own personal theology was, ‘the fulfilment of God’s Kingdom’ (for example in the Our Father, when he said, ‘Thy Kingdom come’, that is what he meant: ‘May Your Kingdom be fulfilled’).
3. When Yeshua was speaking of something within us, he was referring to the natural, ethical laws which God places within us at the creation of our souls. Isaiah refers to this as, ‘the Universal Covenant’ (brīt ‛olām, the very first covenant between God and the entire Human race, Isa 24:5). Other prophets refer to the Kingdom within us as, ‘the Way of Righteousness’ (ha-dérekh tzédeq, see Prov 8:20, 12:28, 16:31; cf Isa 40:14; cf also the Essene Book of Jubilees 7:20-28).
4. Lastly, there are occasions when it seems that Yeshua is referring to something that rich people would have difficulty ‘entering’ or becoming a part of. It doesn’t mean that these people would not get into heaven (because in Judaism, everyone eventually gets to heaven). In such instances, Yeshua was referring to a way of life that is lived by the genuine and faithful followers of YHVH, and by a society that is built upon the ethical and moral laws of God’s Kingdom – the laws of the Universal Covenant which are written on the souls of every human being. Rich people, for whom money and the pursuit of wealth is their god, and who see nothing wrong with abusing or exploiting the poor and the vulnerable, for these people such a way of life is impossible to be a part of; they will have extreme difficulty participating in or ‘entering’ such an ethical society.
When we are faced with the phrase, ‘the Kingdom of God’ (and Matthew’s version of it, ‘the Kingdom of heaven’, which means exactly the same thing), we must decide which of these four meanings Yeshua is referring to, if we wish to appreciate what Yeshua was teaching.
Luke’s use of the passage
Having read five different Christian commentaries on the verses, I have realised that Luke uses Yeshua’s words to mean that the signs of the Kingdom – the miraculous works of ‘Jesus Christ’ – are already among us. For Luke, the coming of the Kingdom of God is meant to be a parallel to the coming of ‘Jesus Christ’ (Lk 17:22-23, cf Lk 18:8). For Luke, the people who ask when will the Kingdom come, are Pharisees who cannot recognise who ‘Christ’ is.
However, it is obvious that Yeshua was referring to something that cannot be seen, and so could not have been referring to himself being in the midst of humanity, or to his miracles being displayed. Yeshua’s enquirers are effectively asking about coming signs of the Kingdom, but as Yeshua so eloquently explains, essentially, there will be nothing to see.
In all the commentaries I read, without exception the assertion was always that ‘Christ’ is the kingdom, and that therefore there was no need to look elsewhere for the kingdom, because he was already among them. However, in Aramaic, when Yeshua says, ‘Here it is or there it is’, the word for ‘it’ has to be feminine. You see in Greek, the phrase is literally, ‘Behold here or behold there’, and so the sentence can ambiguously be construed also as, ‘Here he is or there he is’. However, the Jewish Aramaic of the same sentence would literally be, ‘behold here it or behold there it’ (ha kā hī o ha tām hī). In Aramaic, grammar would dictate that you must use the feminine word for ‘it’ (hī), since it would be referring back to malkhūt (‘kingdom’), which is grammatically a feminine noun. Whereas there is ambiguity in the Greek, there is no suchambiguity possible in Aramaic – ‘Christ’ is not the kingdom, at least, not to the Aramaic-speaking Yeshua it wasn’t.
Thomas’s use of the teaching suggests that this was a stand-alone teaching, and that Yeshua was referring to the ways and values of the Kingdom of God, not himself.
The expected signs of the Kingdom
Every community which bases its beliefs on the Hebrew Bible will have its own ideas about what the future will be like. They will ask, ‘What are the heavenly signs of the coming kingdom? What are the earthly signs of its impending arrival?’ Back in those days, most people subscribed to messianic expectations about the coming Kingdom – that the kingdom was the messianic kingdom of a descendant of David; that such a king would free Israel from her oppressors, and then reestablish Israel as a free and independent land.
Others would pore through the words of prophecy for signs of a coming messianic age – that the lion will lie down with the lamb, the exiles will return, but that yet again, a descendant of David would be king over Israel – essentially, that the messiah was the central most important aspect of God’s Message and of the Jewish faith (and therefore, not God).
Yeshua’s response indicates that he rejected any technique, measurement or applied process of sign-watching – they were pointless, because they didn’t take the true nature of the Kingdom into account. In the Christian gospels, ‘Christ’ is the king of God’s Kingdom. However, for Yeshua, it was their heavenly Father who was the King of God’s Kingdom (it is in the name after all); that King had always been with them, and always would be; Israel does not have to wait for the One who is Israel’s True King.
‘Watching and waiting for the Kingdom’
In spite of being aware of the four meanings of ‘Kingdom of God’, this pericope isn’t a conflict of definitions; these verses are all about which, out of all the definitions of ‘the Kingdom of God’, is the most important.
Didn’t Yeshua teach us to be watchful (Mk 13:32-37, Lk 12:35-40)? So what was he saying here in contradiction of that – that it’s not a case of watching and waiting? This is actually a clue that this saying is not about definitions, but rather about which of the definitions was the most important and enduring.
For the earliest Jewish Followers of the Way, Yeshua was a prophet of the coming tribulation and Exile, just as Jeremiah had been a prophet of the Babylonian Exile centuries earlier, and just as Amos had been a prophet of the Assyrian Exile. Yeshua’s primary purpose as a prophet was to warn the Jewish people of what was soon to come, in order to save them from annihilation by the Romans. He accomplished this by calling us back to the original values, teachings and ethical laws of God in Torah, in the teachings of the biblical prophets, and throughout the Hebrew Bible.
However, this is not what the Kingdom of God is to be eternally remembered for – not for trial, judgment or tribulation. One day, this time of tribulation would end, but the Kingdom of God – the rule, authority and reign of God – would continue forever. The Kingdom of God would not come to an end once the tribulation had passed.
This is why the third meaning of, ‘the ethical laws that God has placed within us’ was the more important one to remember.
‘Here it is’ or ‘There it is’
The words of this part of the passage emphasise that the most important aspect of the Kingdom of God – the most important meaning – is not something that can be seen.
The Universal Covenant is the very first covenant of human conscience, even preceding the Adamic and Noachide covenants. It is the one covenant that no subsequent covenants can overturn or overrule. Every covenant is basically an addition to the first and Universal Covenant.
There is much more that is inscribed on our human consciences than can be written down in ink on parchment. Dt 6:18a says, “You shall do whatever YHVH regards as [ethically] upright and good.” Even though this is just one sentence, this commandment is more expansive than anything else the written Torah can possibly say! It refers back to the vast corpus of ethical material that is already written on our hearts.
When we interpret and apply the commandments of Torah, we are meant to use what YHVH has already written on our souls as part of the Universal Covenant, in order to gauge their meaning. We are not meant to apply Torah with cruelty or injustice (that is how Jewish society never became the kind of society that fundamentalist Islamism envisages). Sometimes, some Torah commandments can seem harsh, but if you apply your natural, God-given conscience to seek out a compassionate and merciful way of applying the commandments, you will be doing ‘what YHVH regards as upright and good’, by applying the laws of the Universal Covenant to determine the truth of what is to be done.
The Kingdom of God is within you
The Kingdom of God is already active and present – it is not something that we have to wait for, long for, or waste our years in inactivity waiting for something to come. YHVH already reigns; YHVH’s laws already apply; YHVH’s Kingdom is, was, and always will be. There is no waiting; God’s Kingdom is already here. And because YHVH’s Kingdom is already among us, God’s ethical laws and way of life already apply, and always have.
In his commentary on Luke, Robert Stein staunchly rejects any assertion that there is an internal kingdom of the heart (p.438), because he claims that there is no evidence in scripture of any such internal law within our hearts. He defiantly declares, “nowhere in the Scriptures is God’s Kingdom portrayed as an inner condition of the human heart”, dismissing it instead as the invention of liberal theologians. However, an ‘uncircumcised heart’ (Lev 26:41) is a heart and mind which is not dedicated to YHVH; and when God’s Covenant is restored, God’s law will be written on our hearts (Jer 31:33). Both biblical writers assumed an existing concept of God’s internal law on our hearts.
The laws of God’s Kingdom – the laws of the Universal Covenant – are already written on our hearts, and are the ultimate laws that determine the practice of our religion. The Talmidi approach to religion, the one taught by our prophet Yeshua, is to practice religion with compassion, with understanding, and with love. That is the law of the Kingdom. Talmidis interpret the Torah, and all the principles and teachings written in the Hebrew Bible, through the laws of the Kingdom of God, which are written on the human conscience every time a human soul is created.
It has often been said, by way of stern accusation, that we apply the values of the modern West to the commandments of the Bible. However, the people who say this have obviously never read the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or the universalist parts of the Book of Isaiah. These all came way before the Christian West, and long before the various philosophies of the Greeks.
Yeshua’s teaching was therefore not something new. He was restoring what had already been part of the Israelite faith – something which, in his era of institutionalised injustice, exploitation of the poor and religious hypocrisy, had long fallen out of practice.
The laws of the human conscience are not in opposition to God. Quite the opposite – the laws of our consciences are God’s laws. The laws of God’s Kingdom are laws you cannot see, or watch and wait for, because they are already within us.