Greg Gilbert says that “inclusion in the Kingdom of God depends entirely on one’s response to the King” (What is the Gospel?, p. 93). Later in the chapter, he goes on to say,
Do you see what Jesus is claiming? He was saying that he himself fulfilled – all at the same time – the roles of the Davidic Messiah, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, and Daniel’s Son of Man! Jesus took the divine nature of the Son of Man, joined it to the substitutionary suffering of the Servant, and finally combined all that with his messianic role. By the time Jesus finished gathering together all the threads of Jewish hope, this King was infinitely more than the earthly revolutionary the Jews were hoping for. He was the divine Servant-King, who would suffer and die for his people to win their salvation, make them righteous in his Father’s eyes, and bring them gloriously into his kingdom.
In light of all that, it’s no wonder that Jesus makes entrance into his kingdom depend solely on whether a person repents of sin and trusts in him and his atoning work on the cross. When Jesus talks about “the gospel of the kingdom,” his point is not just that the kingdom has come. It is that the kingdom has come and you can be included in it if you are united to Me, the King, by faith that I alone can save you from your sin.
Therefore, being a citizen of Christ’s kingdom is not a matter of just “living a kingdom life,” or “following Jesus’ example,” or “living like Jesus lived.” The fact is, a person can be a self-professed “Jesus-follower” or “kingdom-life liver” and still be outside the kingdom. You can live like Jesus lived all you want, but unless you’ve come to the crucified King in repentance and faith, relying on him alone as the perfect sacrifice for your sin and your only hope for salvation, you’re neither a Christian nor a citizen of his kingdom.
The way to be included in Christ’s kingdom is to come to the King, not just hailing him as a great example who shows us a better way to live, but humbly trusting him as the crucified and risen Lord who alone can release you from the sentence of death. At the end of the day, the only wat into the kingdom is through the blood of the King. (What is the Gospel, pp. 95-96. Emphasis his, not mine.)
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