Are the “Kingdom of Heaven” and the “Kingdom of God” Different?
This image was taken from the Think blog, a fantastic, Bible-geek blog run by some pastors out of the UK. This might be pastor Andrew Wilson’s son.
Sound bites can mislead… and here is one of those cases where inappropriate expectations of what we read in the Gospels can get Christians into serious trouble.
If you read about the “kingdom” in the Gospels, particularly with the parables of Jesus, you will notice that Matthew exclusively uses the term “kingdom of heaven,” whereas a variety of Gospel writers (including Matthew) use “kingdom of God.” Some draw the conclusion that “kingdom of heaven” and “kingdom of God,” are from the lips of Jesus, and therefore must mean different things. Is this a correct way to interpret Scripture?
Kingdom of Heaven vs. Kingdom of God?
Advocates of this view reason that the “kingdom of heaven” must be physical, since “violence” only makes sense in a physical, and not a spiritual context.
Likewise, if the “kingdom of God” is “within you,” it must be spiritual.
At first glance, this viewpoint may sound quite reasonable. But when you dig more into the Gospels as a whole, you will begin to realize how unworkably complicated this theory really is. Consider just two parables: the parable of the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl of great price.
Holding to a radical distinction between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God puts the Bible reader in a complicated trap. For if the kingdom of heaven is about a physical, and not a spiritual promise, what do you do about the kingdom being something of great value?
Remember those sermons that told you that the kingdom is of such great value, that you will do anything to obtain it? Well, if the kingdom of heaven is really about a future promise to national, ethnic Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital, then these two parables probably would not mean anything to a non-Jewish person. You do not find the parable of the hidden treasure, or the pearl of great price, in any other Gospel, other than Matthew. There is no specific reference to the spiritual kingdom of God, regarding these two parables, in the New Testament. Therefore, unless you are Jewish, all of those sermon lessons are pretty much useless.
So, what is the difference between these two versions of the same parable? Matthew uses kingdom of heaven, whereas Luke uses kingdom of God. Otherwise, we have the same thing. There are no other striking differences. But if the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God are radically different, then you have boxed yourself into yet another trap. You have just created for yourself a discrepancy, if not an outright contradiction, in Scripture, that need not exist!
How many times is “Kingdom of Heaven” vs. “Kingdom of God” found in each of the four Gospels? Matthew takes the “Kingdom of Heaven” prize. Luke loves “Kingdom of God.” Mark has half as many references to the Kingdom, when compared to either Matthew or Luke. John does not say much about the “Kingdom” at all. Took this image from a great discussion found at StackExchange on Biblical Hermeneutics (great stuff).
For these, and many other reasons, most Bible scholars today reject the idea of a radical distinction between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. In other words, the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God are really just two different ways of saying essentially the same thing. There is no need to overcomplicate the Scriptures.
However, you might still wonder: Why the difference in terminology if these statements are direct quotations from Jesus? As I have written about before, “Red Letter Bibles,” where the words of Jesus are written in red, may cause people to have misleading expectations, if folks are not careful. While it is possible that we have at least some (if not many, many!) direct quotations from the mouth of Jesus, in the Gospels, there is nothing with respect to the inspiration or inerrancy of Scripture that would have required the disciples to be carrying around ancient “tape recorders,” making sure that every syllable uttered by Jesus would be accurately recorded in each of Matthew’s, Mark’s, Luke’s or John’s Gospels.
As anyone knows, who pays attention to modern media, it is possible to cherry pick accurately transcribed statements made by someone in the news, and then to frame those statements in ways that completely misrepresent what that person really believes. We call those statements sound bites, and sound bites do not necessarily help us to better understand the truth. The Gospels, on the other hand, are more concerned about properly framing the entire 30+ year life, ministry, and message of Jesus, in compressed narrative form, than are modern people who are obsessed with sound bites.
The Gospels were not modern legal court transcripts, and they did not need to be. Instead, it would have been sufficient for each writer to be able to faithfully record the exact meaning of what Jesus was communicating, and then faithfully adapt that message to the unique audience that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each were specifically trying to reach.
If the whole idea of the Gospels was to give us verbatim transcriptions of what Jesus said, then what would be the point of preaching? If this was indeed the case, would it not be better, to simply record the words of Jesus on an MP3 player, hook it into your church’s sound system during sermon time, press play, and then tell your pastor to take the rest of the day off?
The value of preaching is that we look to pastors, teachers, apologists, and evangelists to take the message of Jesus, and present it in the cultural context we are living in, some twenty centuries later, so that we might better understand it. What we do have with the Gospels is a divinely authorized, divinely inspired set of texts that the earliest Christians used to proclaim the truth of who Jesus really was and is, in their day. Christian pastors and teachers today are given the privilege to use these Gospels as authoritative templates for doing the same type of thing, in our own day.
So, then, how do we explain why Matthew alone uses the kingdom of heaven terminology, whereas someone like Luke favors kingdom of God? The verdict is still out on this question, but there are some credible, compelling answers.
The majority view accepted by scholars today is that Matthew was addressing primarily a Jewish audience, who hesitated to speak the name of God, for fear of using the Lord’s name in vain. Being sensitive to Jewish concerns, Matthew merely substituted the word “heaven” for “God,” so as not to needlessly offend his audience.
The kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God are essentially interchangeable concepts, though the Gospel writers will express these ideas slightly differently, per their respective audiences.
Overly simplistic theories, that try to supposedly “defend the Bible,” can get rather complicated, creating more problems than they try to solve.
The Gospel writers were faithful to Christ’s message, and we can learn something from their different perspectives.
You can trust your Bible.
This post is a “rabbit trail” on the Veracity series concerning “Christian Zionism.” You can find out more about the blog post series here.
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2018 at 6:00 pm	and tagged with christian zionism, dispensationalism, kingdom of god, kingdom of heaven, parables, zionism and posted in The Gospels.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.