The kingdom of the heavens should be an incentive to our Christian life and an exercise to our church life. If the kingdom of the heavens is our incentive and exercise today, then in the coming age it will be a reward to us. Therefore, the kingdom of the heavens is an exercise in this age and a reward in the coming age.
This truth is very much lacking among today’s Christians. Hardly anyone is willing to pay the price to take up this truth and to teach it to others. For this reason, we should be burdened to take care of this matter, first being exercised by the kingdom of the heavens in this age so that we may receive it as a reward in the future and then carrying out the burden to preach the gospel of the kingdom to the whole inhabited earth according to Matthew 24:14. In order to help us realize the kingdom of the heavens as an incentive and exercise, we need to see further aspects of the kingdom, all of which are related to the kingdom of the heavens.
Paul tells us that the Father has “delivered us out of the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Col. 1:13). The authority of darkness denotes the authority of Satan. God is light, and Satan is darkness. God has delivered us out of Satan’s authority of darkness into God’s marvelous light. Darkness is Satan as death, but light is God as life. To be delivered out of the authority of darkness is to be delivered from the Devil, who has the might of death (Heb. 2:14; John 17:15). We have been delivered from the Devil, Satan, by the death of Christ (Col. 2:14-15) and by the life of Christ in resurrection (John 5:24).
We have not only been delivered out of the authority of darkness but also transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love. The kingdom of the Son is the authority of Christ (Rev. 11:15; 12:10).
According to the New Testament, the Son of God is the expression of the divine life and its embodiment. This means that the kingdom of the Son is a realm of life. The fact that the kingdom into which we have been transferred is the kingdom of the Son of God’s love indicates that this realm of life is in love, not in fear. The kingdom in which we find ourselves today is a realm full of life, light, and love.
The Son of the Father is the expression of the Father as the source of life (John 1:18, 4; 1 John 1:2). The Father as the source of life is expressed in the Son. The Son of the Father’s love is the object of the Father’s love to be the embodiment of life to us in the divine love with the authority in resurrection. The Son, as the embodiment of the divine life, is the object of the Father’s love. The divine life embodied in the Son is given to us in the divine love. Therefore, the object of the divine love becomes to us the embodiment of life in the divine love with the authority in resurrection. This is the kingdom of the Son of His love.
To be transferred into the kingdom of the Son of the Father’s love is to be transferred into the Son who is life to us (1 John 5:12). The Son in resurrection (1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 6:4-5) is now the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). He rules us in His resurrection life with love. This is the kingdom of the Son of the Father’s love. When we live by the Son as our life in resurrection, we are living in His kingdom, enjoying Him in the Father’s love.
We have been transferred into a realm where we are ruled in love with life. Here, under the heavenly ruling and restriction, we have genuine freedom, the proper freedom in love, with life, and under light. This is what it means to be delivered out of the authority of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son of the Father’s love. Here in this kingdom we enjoy Christ and have the church life.
The kingdom of the Son of God’s love comprises three ages: the present age, in which the church is; the coming age, in which the millennial kingdom will be; and the eternal age with the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and the new earth. These three aspects of the kingdom are considered by Paul in Colossians 1:13 as the kingdom of the Son of God’s love.
The words “the Son of God” are a delight to the Father’s ears. When the Lord Jesus was baptized, the Father declared, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I delight” (Matt. 3:17). When the Lord was transfigured, the Father made the same declaration (Matt. 17:5). Because the Father delights in His Son, the kingdom of the Son of the Father’s love is a pleasant thing, a matter of delight. This is the reason it comprises only three sections—the section of the church life, the section of the heavenly part of the kingdom of the heavens in the millennium, and the new heaven and the new earth with the New Jerusalem as the consummation of the church and the kingdom. In each of these three sections the kingdom of the Son of God’s love is a matter of delight. The Father, by His mercy and grace, has transferred us out of the darkness of Satan into this pleasant part of the kingdom.