The Gospel of the Kingdom and Spiritual Formation

Dallas Willard

Element 1: The gospel of the kingdom is the realm of God's active goodness in forming us in Christ as we follow Him. The kingdom of God is grand, majestic, and full of beauty. We come to understand the kingdom by repenting and simply becoming apprentices of Jesus in His kingdom.

Description: Jesus said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15, NASB). God invites us to repent, believe, and follow Him in discovering the beauty of His kingdom. We are privileged to step into eternal life as we enter the kingdom of God (see John 17:3).

The apostle Paul said, "For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1:13-14, NASB). The kingdom of God is the realm of God's action, His resurrection life, and His mission. We are invited to be His followers and learn from Him as He is active in us and around us. We are called to enter into eternal life that begins the moment we enter the kingdom through Christ to be conformed to His image. We are His apprentices.

In Him are hidden "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). The complexity of the kingdom is the vastness and infinite beauty of God's realm that we will be discovering for all of eternity. The simplicity is that we discover all of the complexity of the kingdom by simply following Jesus. As we follow Him, we are also formed in Him.

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There is a deep longing among Christians and non-Christians alike for the personal purity and power to live as our hearts tell us we should. What we need is a deeper insight into our practical relationship with God in redemption. We need an understanding that can guide us into constant interaction with the Kingdom of God as a real part of our daily lives. — Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

To enter into the fullness of human life as God intended it — and thus become the kind of persons we would expect from looking at Jesus and His teachings — requires us to live our lives in the kingdom of God. Constant and whole-life interaction with the kingdom of God is the spiritual atmosphere of steady progression in Christlikeness. The New Birth — the birth "from above" — is precisely birth into the kingdom of God (see John 3:5). The apostle Paul described it as being "rescued ... from the domain of darkness, and transferred ... to the kingdom of His beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13, NASB).

That is the beginning of new life in Christ. At that point we are in the kingdom. It has claimed us, but it is not yet in much of what we are. That is where spiritual growth or formation comes in. Jesus therefore directed us continually to seek the kingdom — which can be thought of as God in action, more than anything else — and to seek the kind of rightness or goodness characteristic of that kingdom. That is, we are called to intensely look for it everywhere. Then, Jesus said, everything else that we need will be provided (see Matthew 6:33).

You will notice that the emphasis here is upon what we are to do. Like many other key passages in the New Testament, we are called to well-informed action in the process of our own spiritual growth. The agencies of the kingdom — especially of the Word and of the Holy Spirit — are also essential. But we can trust them to do their part. What we must attend to is our part. The chapters that follow are designed to help us do that. They help us understand the relationship between living in the kingdom of God and spiritual formation. They help us understand what Christian spiritual formation is and how it develops. What is the nature of the changes involved, and what brings them about? In this first chapter, I want to pay special attention to several points about the kingdom of God that we must get right in order for spiritual transformation toward full Christlikeness to progress as it should.

Let us begin by noting that ifwe do not preach the gospel of the kingdom of God as Jesus did but preach some other gospel — of which there now are several — we cannot truly progress in the formation of character into Christlikeness. That is because the message preached will have no essential connection with constant spiritual growth. We need to announce (preach), teach, and manifest the good news that Jesus Himself announced. That good news is of the availability of life now in the kingdom of God by placing our confidence in Jesus as the Lord of all (see Matthew 4:17,23; 9:35; Mark 1:15; Luke 4:43; Romans 10:9-10; 14:17). Unfortunately, this is not the gospel generally given out by Christians today, and that is one reason why spiritual transformation into Christlikeness is not the routine or normal course of Christian life.

Here is an actual statement about what it means to trust Christ, by one of the most well-known evangelical ministers of our day:

When you trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, here is what you did. You placed your trust in Jesus' death at Calvary, who bore your sin and your iniquity and your wickedness and your vileness on the cross, and as a result God punished Him for your sinfulness and made it possible for you to be forgiven because He is your substitute.

That is all. This very fine and influential Christian minister then proceeded to try to elaborate his view of atonement and of what it means to trust Jesus Christ into an account of our identification with Christ that would include a transformation into actual Christlikeness. But the facts of Christian living today simply do not bear out the connection he wished to make. Transformation through identification with Christ is not forthcoming for any but a vanishingly small percentage of those who have "placed their trust in Jesus' death at Calvary." Or else we must say that they did not actually so place their trust — an alternative that almost no one would be prepared to...