TENSION.
The “already-not-yet.”
It’s the phrase humanity has used since the 20th century to grasp the concept of the Kingdom of God. It’s a way for us to hold two truths simultaneously: indescribable good and inexorable evil coexist.
It comes from Scriptures like Luke 17:21, where Jesus explains to His critics that “the Kingdom of God is already among you” (NLT).
But He and they were still under foreign political domination and religious oppression. They were still in socioeconomic disarray. They were still fighting racial wars.
So Jesus’ statement was either a cruelly sarcastic joke or a deep truth hidden in plain sight.
And some 2,000 years later, we wrestle with these same truths.
The Kingdom is here.
It’s here in babies diagnosed with failure to thrive who grow up and become college athletes. It’s here in recovering alcoholics who wake up to another sunrise sober. It’s here in the pinecones that only split after a forest fire, releasing seeds that re-green the charred earth. It’s here in every pay-it-forward at the Starbucks drive-thru and in mechanics who don’t charge the single mom for an oil change.
Every health, every life, every hope, every reversal of a statistic that takes away a number and gives it a face. The Kingdom is here.
And the Kingdom is not here.
It’s not here in white kneecaps pressing against black throats. It’s not here in lives lost to multi-organ failure in the race against time to develop vaccines. It’s not here in chemical weapons released over Middle Eastern suburbs in the throes of a civil war. It’s not here in insulated, busy lifestyles that make it far too easy to muffle the voices of the underserved. It’s not here in well-intentioned thoughts that have no guts to translate into action.
Earth is hell with corners of heaven — or vice versa, depending on your day.
It is and it isn’t. It’s yes and no. To borrow G. E. Ladd’s phrase, it’s fulfillment without consummation.
And so we live in the in-between.
We live with eyes wide open and closed, abhorring accounts of racial inequality broadcasted globally while knowing our own psyches are not exempt from those same seeds of prejudice. We rejoice and grieve in the same breath, hitting milestones like graduations and weddings while watching soaring unemployment rates and mounting death tolls.
These truths-in-tension will kill you or preserve your life: it depends on your end game.
The end game that inspires maximum hope is the one that says there will come an end to the not-yet. Our worn-out earth will continue to wear out until there’s nothing left to do but make it new and merge it with heaven. Then the throne of God will shout that finally, fully, the dwelling place of God is with man (Revelation 21:3). What we know of His Kingdom is that it’s a matter of “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17, ESV)
And that’s great news because the Holy Spirit is already here. The Holy Spirit is an other-worldly down payment, our promise that a righteous, peaceful, joyful future is not a pipe dream or an unattainable ideal. Instead of staying on in the physical person, Jesus imparted His Spirit so there could be thousands, millions, billions of human representations of what He would say and do.
Pentecost Sunday marks this impartation, and this year, it came on the heels of George Floyd’s death. The first Pentecost Sunday ushered in a new era in which Jesus began imbuing people with His power — His power to proclaim the gospel that the Kingdom of God is near. It’s here and not here. It’s already and not yet. But one day it will arrive in all its fullness and there will be no more pain nor sorrow nor racial inequality nor all other evils because Jesus exchanged His life for ours on this blood-soaked planet, promising a future of resurrection and restoration.
We need to speak power to truth. That is, we need to speak the Holy Spirit’s power to truth-in-tension. The truth of George Floyd’s death is that evil prevails in this day, but in another day, the kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever (Revelation 11:15, NLT). And we live on in spirit and substance, good and evil, life and death, until that day.