According to Plan

According to Plan

What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase “kingdom of God” or “kingdom of heaven”?

If you’re like many Christians, you might be thinking about an abstract, non-physical, and largely mysterious reality set in the distant future at an unknown location in outer space.

I fear that so many of us overlook the kingdom of heaven as a very critical element to the biblical storyline and of God’s progressive revelation in Scripture.

To start, the kingdom of God is the kingdom of heaven (the Gospel writers use these terms interchangeably; cf. Matthew 13:31;19:14, 23-24; Mark 4:30; 10:14; Luke 18:16), and it is not some abstract, non-physical and largely mysterious reality set in the distant future.

Rather, the Bible begins with the kingdom of God (heaven) on the earth in the Garden of Eden. It was in Eden where the first humans ruled over creation in perfect fellowship with God (Gen. 1:28).

The kingdom involved God, his people, and all of creation in perfect relationship. This original creation, which God had generated through his word, resulted in the generation of God’s kingdom in Eden.

The kingdom of God was (and still is) essentially and simply the flourishing of humans on earth in a perfect relationship with God, each other, and all of creation.

The fall into sin resulted in the degeneration or obliteration of God’s kingdom in Eden. The sin of Adam and Eve confused the relationship between God, people, and the world.

The rest of the Bible shows God’s gracious and eternal plan to regenerate or restore that original kingdom of heaven, which was present in Eden.

The promises of the OT add up to the regeneration of all things. The story of the Bible is a story of a regeneration of the kingdom in which God, his people, and all of creation exist in perfect harmony, perfectly fulfilling each of their roles.

What God generated at the beginning degenerated through the fall of mankind. Redemption and salvation are seen as the process of regenerating, which affects the whole degenerated creation, including mankind.

The OT reveals a re-creation of the people of God and how they were to relate to the world through the presence and fellowship of God himself.

The NT reveals that this ultimately comes about in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He is true God, true human being, and true world in which God meets his people.

So the kingdom of God, which was foreshadowed in the OT, comes to reality in the person of Jesus Christ.

Regeneration begins in Christ who is the embodiment of the new age. When people are united with Christ, the regeneration begins to be formed in them by Christ’s Spirit.

Then the kingdom continues to come by the Holy Spirit taking the word about Christ into all the world, through the preaching of Christ’s followers.

The personal regeneration of believers through Christ and the Spirit is then completed with the final regeneration of all things at the return of Christ.

Graeme Goldsworthy, an Australian evangelical theologian specializing in the Old Testament and Biblical theology, provides a helpful summary:

“Salvation is the whole process by which God restores his people and the creation to the kingdom. This means the regeneration of all things” (According to Plan, 189).


For more on the kingdom in relation to the storyline of the Bible, see Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1991).