In the two preceding messages we considered four important matters: the background of the Lord’s ministry, the Lord as the Sower sowing Himself into God’s people, the condition of the disciples as “soil,” and the Lord’s healing of this soil through His death and resurrection. We saw that through this healing the one hundred twenty became the good ground for the Lord’s sowing. However, we saw that in Acts 10 and 21 and Galatians 2 there are strong indications that the “weeds” of things that replace Christ had begun to grow again.
We concluded the last message with a word concerning the kingdom of God. We pointed out that, according to the New Testament, the kingdom of God is a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, sown into us in order to be developed. In His ministry, the Lord came to sow Himself as the seed of the kingdom into God’s chosen people so that this seed might develop into God’s kingdom.
We see another aspect of the kingdom in 9:1-8. In 9:1 the Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I tell you, there are some of those standing here who shall by no means taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power.” This verse is immediately followed by the record of the Lord’s transfiguration on the mount. Verses 2 and 3 go on to say, “And after six days Jesus takes with Him Peter and James and John, and brings them up into a high mountain by themselves alone. And He was transformed before them; and His garments became brilliant, exceedingly white, such as no fuller on earth could whiten them.”
When we put these verses together, we see that the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus was the coming of the kingdom. This proves that the kingdom is not a material realm. Rather, these verses indicate that the kingdom is a Person transfigured. When the Lord Jesus was transfigured, that was the coming of the kingdom. What, then, is the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is the Lord Jesus Himself transfigured.
We need to consider this understanding of the kingdom as the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus in the light of our experience. When you believed in the Lord Jesus and received Him, you received a Jesus who was not transfigured. Just as the seed received by the soil is a seed that has not yet been transfigured, so in our experience the Christ we received was a Christ not transfigured. The transfiguration of a seed requires the growth of that seed into a mature plant and the blossoming of that plant. Therefore, we may say that the transfiguration of a seed requires growth and blossoming. In a similar way, the Lord Jesus we received needs to grow in us until He blossoms from within us.
We are the soil, and the Lord Jesus is the seed of the kingdom. When we received Him into us, we received Him as the One who had not yet been transfigured in our experience. Have you received the Lord Jesus, and is He now in you? We all can testify strongly that we have received the Lord and that He is in us. But has the Lord been transfigured in you? If the Lord who is in you has not yet been transfigured, others will not be able to see the kingdom of God in you. Since we have not yet experienced this kind of transfiguration, we need the Lord to grow in us until He blossoms. That blossoming will be the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus in us in a practical way. Such a transfiguration is the kingdom of God.
The transfiguration of the Lord Jesus within us becomes not only our enjoyment but also God’s ruling. When the Lord Jesus is transfigured in us in a practical way in our daily living, that transfiguration becomes the kingdom of God ruling everything in our life. This kingdom rules us and also gives us the full enjoyment of God.