From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.
Matt. 11.12, NIV
“The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.
Luke 16.16, NIV
This post is a first draft for the beginning of the Introduction to my next book on the Kingdom, to see if it will fly. So let me explain why.
To a fault, I am someone who always feels he has to explain things from first principles; in other words, as a logical progression. Like everything there is a time and a place for that; learning a new model of programming language, for example.
And yet it seems that the Kingdom of God is different. I say this despite all the efforts to make it a programmatic subject; I am simply looking at how Jesus spoke to, and interacted with people.
Essentially He was happy to spend most of His time, confusing the heck out of His disciples and His audience; and their response? “You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6.68b) They were drawn in despite – or more likely because – there was so much they didn’t yet understand.
Look for a moment at the two short passages above; Jesus speaking in both cases. I think that the Luke passage has been better handled by the translators than the Matthew one; and that is simply because there is less potential ambiguity in Luke. “Everyone forces their way into it” is a perfectly reasonable rendering of πᾶς εἰς αὐτὴν βιάζεται.
Picture a queue to buy limited tickets to the latest pop sensation – but not in a calmly queuing British-origin culture. Or imagine you are in a burning theatre; you can sit quietly and politely in your seat; or you can force your way out that one tiny exit over there… βιάζεται is a good verb for both cases – provided you read it in the Middle voice (“everyone forces themselves”) rather than Passive (“everyone is forced”).
So we might read Luke 16.16 like this:
The Law and the Prophets until John: since then, the Kingdom of God announces itself, and everyone forces themselves (their way) into it.
And yes, εὐαγγελίζεται (announce good news) has the same Middle / Passive choice; I think the experience of the people following Jesus was that the Kingdom was positively shouting out – not just being announced.
So what has happened with the Matthew passage? it is a famous conundrum – but only because everyone assumes βιάζεται is Passive voice, rather than Middle. And it is a conundrum only because none of the translators seem to understand the Kingdom.
So try this version of Matthew 11.12:
From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of God breaks its way through, and men of action grasp it.
And the key difference in my version is that the very forceful word, ἁρπάζουσιν, is rendered as ‘grasp’ rather than ‘take by force’ – and grasp covers both physical laying hold of something, and “to grasp something with the mind”.
So here is the first key for anyone who wants to lay hold of whatever “the Kingdom of God” is: the Kingdom doesn’t explain itself, it just rolls forward and breaks down obstacles; the philosophically minded may be perturbed, but people who are forceful and action-oriented recognise it and lay hold of it.
So who will this new book be for? Whoever you are, and wherever you are coming from. It isn’t going to try to change your religion or your morality or your social status, because that isn’t how the Kingdom rolls. (And trust me: it does roll.)
But imagine you are a homeless person (and maybe you are); if someone gives you a $20 million mansion, they aren’t demanding that you stop being a homeless person. But now you have options. You can choose to remain homeless; but why would you? So I am not promising that you won’t confront the need to change; but that will be on you, not me. None of my business.
As with Seeing the Kingdom, there will be Greek; don’t let it put you off. It isn’t necessary for you to read the Greek in order to engage with what we are talking about; but I need to shift the discussion from its traditional and sometimes rather inaccurate paths, so I have to show my working.
Seeing the Kingdom 