When Christ came out to preach the kingdom of God as the gospel (Mark 1:14-15), He was the unique seed of the kingdom of God. After passing through death and resurrection, He released God’s life and dispensed it into His believers, thus bringing forth many grains (John 12:24). At the beginning of the Acts, there were many grains (Acts 1:15) as the spreading of the kingdom of God. Through them the kingdom of God spread again and again (Acts 8:12; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31) into thousands of believers (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 21:20), making them constituents of the kingdom of God.
Daniel 2:34-35 says that a stone was cut out without hands to smite the great image, signifying that Christ will come down from the heavens to smite the Gentile nations. The stone will then become a great mountain and fill the whole earth. The mountain denotes the kingdom. This means that Christ will be enlarged to become the kingdom of Himself and of God which will fill the whole earth (Rev. 11:15). Then in Daniel 2:44 we are told that this is the kingdom which the God of heaven will set up and which will never be destroyed but will stand forever. This kingdom is the enlargement of Christ, which will spread over the whole earth, signified by the stone smiting the nations and growing into a great mountain. In Himself, Christ is the King; in His enlargement, Christ becomes His great and glorious kingdom that spreads throughout the whole earth.
To inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:10; Gal. 5:21) is to inherit the eternal life as an enjoyment (Matt. 19:29). It is different from the receiving of the eternal life as our life. The former is a matter of reward in the coming age; the latter is a matter of being saved in this age. To receive the eternal life is to receive God’s life that we may be regenerated (John 3:5). It is the central part of God’s salvation (John 10:10). Anyone who believes in the Lord Jesus receives this life (John 3:16, 36). To inherit the kingdom of God is to obtain the enjoyment of God’s eternal life in the millennial kingdom through our experiences in His eternal life. Through God’s eternal life we are born into the kingdom of God in this age. We live in the kingdom of God by the eternal life, experiencing and enjoying the eternal life in this age, so that we may inherit the kingdom of God in the coming age, that is, we may inherit the full enjoyment of God’s eternal life as a reward. To receive the eternal life and enter into the kingdom of God, and to live according to the eternal life and inherit the kingdom of God, are both a matter of life. First Peter 1:3 and 2 Peter 1:3-11 show us that we have the life of God through regeneration and have become partakers of the divine nature. Therefore, we should be diligent to pursue the growth and the development of this life until we are richly and bountifully supplied the entrance into the eternal kingdom of God, the kingdom of the heavens within the kingdom of God in the coming age, to enjoy the reward which the Lord has promised to us for our enjoyment (Luke 12:21; James 2:5). To the believers, the kingdom of God is an exercise in this age (Matt. 5:3, 10; 11:12; Luke 9:62; Acts 14:22; Rev. 1:9) and a reward in the coming age (James 2:5; 1 Thes. 2:12; 2 Tim. 4:8, 18). This reward is an incentive to those who respect the Lord’s faithful word and diligently exercise themselves through the grace of the life of God (2 Tim. 4:1b). Since there is a reward, there is also a punishment (Matt. 16:27-28; Rev. 22:12; 2 Cor. 5:10). This punishment is a warning to the saints who would disregard the faithful word of the Lord and neglect the grace of the life of God, and who would not diligently exercise themselves (Matt. 5:20; 7:21).