The Baptist Faith and Message (2000) is the statement of faith adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. This statement addresses the traditional doctrines of God, man, sin and salvation, and it also includes a section on the Kingdom of God (which I’ve numbered for ease of reference):
[1] The Kingdom of God includes both His general sovereignty over the universe and [2] His particular kingship over men who willfully acknowledge Him as King. Particularly the Kingdom is the realm of salvation into which men enter by trustful, childlike commitment to Jesus Christ. [3] Christians ought to pray and to labor that the Kingdom may come and God’s will be done on earth. [4] The full consummation of the Kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ and the end of this age.
What does this paragraph mean? In this article, I’ll unpack each enumerated sentence in turn and elaborate on a few implications, especially for the present age.
1. General Sovereignty Over the Universe
We read first, “The Kingdom of God includes both His general sovereignty over the universe and His particular kingship over men who willfully acknowledge Him as King.”
Established by Creation
God’s general sovereignty over the universe was established by the act of creation. The sovereignty of God’s decision to create, uninformed and unmoved by anything outside of himself, establishes the paradigm by which every sphere of sovereignty is defined. By providence, God brings to bear his sovereign creative power in the ongoing natural order and the workings of all its forces, its animal constituents, and its rational beings. Every event within that sphere manifests the sovereign power and immutable will demonstrated at every point of the six days of creation.
Continued by Providence
He has not only created all things but rules all things with precision by that very power of creation (Col. 1:16–17). As he brought the universe into existence by his will and Word, so now he “works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11 NKJV).
Manifested in Judgment
Within this kingdom of the created order, God executes judgment (Acts 17:24, 31). All the words, deeds, thoughts, and intentions of all persons will be judged, from the first breath of Adam to the last person born to procreation. In the final day no protest will arise, for each will know that he is liable to divine retribution (Rom. 3:19). As Nebuchadnezzar discovered in a demeaning providence, “His kingdom endures from generation to generation . . . and no one can ward off His hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan. 4:34, 35 NASB). “This is my Father’s world” rightly states the truth that all that the Lord has made, he rules. It is a distinct manifestation of his kingdom.
2. A Kingdom of Redemption
The Kingdom of God also implies God’s “particular kingship over men who willfully acknowledge Him as King.” This proposition is virtually synonymous with the next sentence, “Particularly the Kingdom is the realm of salvation into which men enter by trustful, childlike commitment to Jesus Christ.” These words emphasize that faith is an unvarnished, disarmed, completely reliant reception of the free gift of God’s saving work through Christ. The Man who judges in righteousness is the same who accomplished perfect righteousness for redemption.
The particularity of this kingship is contained in full in the covenant of redemption founded in divine foreknowledge and consisting of all saving graces from election to glorification. “Whom he did foreknow, he also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son . . . Moreover whom he predestinated, these he also called; whom he called, these he also justified; and whom he justified, these he also glorified” (Romans 8:29, 30 NKJV, emphasis added). These verbs point to the unilateral sovereignty of God’s kingship in salvation. Nothing is redeemed that he did not foreknow. As the triune God is the King of creation, providence, and judgment, even so he is the king of his redeeming purpose.
The Bible identifies Paul’s work of evangelism and strengthening the disciples as “kingdom” work. In Acts 14:22, Paul, after the near-death experience of stoning, instructed believers to continue in the faith saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” In Ephesus, Paul entered the synagogue and for three months was “reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8 NASB). He saw these ideas as synonymous—“to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God,” and his ministry in which he “went about preaching the kingdom” (Acts 20:24, 25 NASB). We also see this identification at the end of Acts (Acts 28:23). In the last verse of Acts, Luke described Paul as “preaching the kingdom of God and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28:31 NASB). Paul’s letter to the church at Colosse unfolds these principles; Paul writes that God has “delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:12–14 NKJV).
Jesus introduced this kingdom to Nicodemus when he said, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” He then restated it, enhancing the reality that an effectual and cleansing operation of the Holy Spirit must produce this, saying, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3: 3, 5 ESV). The confession describes this Spirit-wrought faith as a “trustful, childlike commitment.” The Son of God came from heaven as the Son of Man for the very purpose of being “lifted up” (John 3:14) as the sin-bearer to remove sinners from condemnation. Spiritual new-birth produces the faith by which one enters into the kingdom as the “realm of salvation.”
By such childlike faith the kingdom of God is inhabited (Matt. 19:14). The redeemed community experiences the kingship of Jesus in this way. “The King of Love my Shepherd is, Whose goodness faileth never. I nothing lack if I am His, and He is mine forever.”
3. The Kingdom in this Present Age
The confession goes on to assert, “Christians ought to pray and to labor that the Kingdom may come and God’s will be done on earth.” Seeking to inculcate kingdom values in this present age is an element of Kingdom work. We pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10 NKJV). Even as we work for the kingdom consisting of the redeemed ones, so we “labor that the Kingdom may come.” We learn much about these Kingdom values from the conditions that existed in an unfallen world, the mandates given in a fallen world, and the principles of judgment by which God will exclude people from the eternal kingdom.
In summary, these three spheres coalesce in a single standard of righteousness that constitutes love of God and love of neighbor. The Ten Commandments, their summary into two tables, the specific applications of them in the New Testament, the fruit of the Spirit, and the command to be holy establish a kingdom focus for human life (Mark 12:29–31; Galatians 5:13–14, 22–23; 1 Peter 1:13–16). All of this consummates in the appearance of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and his perfect execution of the redemptive task assigned him by the Father. In this, the announcement of the angel to Mary comes to pass: “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32–33).
Several contemporary pressing issues may be seen in the principles established in Eden. God gave to the parents of the entire human race (Gen. 1:26–31; 2:7–8, 15–17; 20–25) an established order for human society, a set of principles valid for all time: the race consists of male and female, marriage of a male to a female, the bearing and birth of children, cultivation and rule over the natural order for human prosperity, and obedience to God’s commands. Kingdom work, therefore, involves seeking to establish the order set forth in the original condition of innocence and positive goodness within human society. Today, there are three particular areas of this heavenly kingdom that are under assault: the male and female binary, human sexuality, and abortion.
Male and Female
We labor for the kingdom, therefore, when we defend the ordering of male and female (Gen. 2:27; 5:2) as a divine prerogative. Seeking the Kingdom of God involves opposition to all attempts to confuse the natural binary of male and female. “It is He who has made us,” refers not only to the single genetic origin of the race in Adam, but to each individual (Ps. 139: 13, 15). God made Adam’s body before he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Gen. 2:7). Then out of the body of Adam, God took a rib, and “He made into a woman,” Eve, as the only creature fit for Adam (Gen. 2:22). As a matter of creation and propagation, God controls the gender of all his image-bearers, permanently fashioning according to his omnipotent operation upon their “unformed substance.” Certainly, within the church, transgenderism is untenable at every point of Christian profession.
Also, transgenderism is a seed for the destruction of human relations in society as a whole. Paul places strong oughtness in the reality of God’s created order in describing the sinfulness of dishonoring of the body as an act against the Creator (Rom. 1:24, 25). To “glorify God in your body,” (1 Cor. 6:20) as a redemptive principle implies that the creature’s honor of the Creator is an original expectation. Acting as salt and light and seeking to teach this aboriginal truth of God’s constitution of humanity is kingdom work. Jesus taught that “Whoever does and teaches them [the Law and the prophets] will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:13–16; 19). This section of Scripture includes the absolute expectation of honoring the creation ordinance of humanity’s existence as permanently (and contentedly) male and female. Taking a biblical stance on the issue of transgenderism is kingdom work.
The Nature of Human Sexuality
We labor for the kingdom when we seek to foster healthy marriages in the church and society. This includes biblical instruction in maintaining happiness, respect, love, orderliness, and spiritual unity with biblical roles between husband and wife. kingdom work includes instruction in the fundamental creation reality that marriage consists of the union in loyalty, commitment, and body between a man and a woman. Teaching and preaching that the marriage relationship is the only legitimate sphere of sexual engagement honors the rule of God over his creation.
We see this in Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians. In conversion, they were washed and sanctified of all kinds of sexual immorality including fornication, homosexuality, and effeminatism—that is, men imitating the role of the woman in sexual relations (1 Cor. 6:9; See also Rom. 1:26–27). Also, the faith that brings justification (“You were justified”) includes repentance from these things. Defending homosexuality while claiming to believe and propose the doctrine of justification by faith is an absolute inconsistency.
This present moral restitution in conversion implies that those who do not repent of such conduct will be found guilty in the day of judgment. Paul reminded those who professed to have a saving relation with Jesus that “immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God” (Eph. 5:3–5).
Included in a long list of moral violations are these perversions with the judgment that “the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9). Specifically, Paul says, “Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, not idolaters, not adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals . . . will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9–10 NKJV). We must not “be deceived.”
In the glorious picture of the “throne of God” in Revelation 22:1–5, we learn that excluded from it are “the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Rev. 22:15). Both the propagation and reception of falsehood in these areas of absolute divine command and intention concerning sexuality intensifies the evil of the transgression. God does not whisper about these things; rather, he flies banners across the heavens announcing this judgment on evil perversions to the whole world.
Abortion
Even so, abortion is a grotesque violation of kingdom righteousness as portrayed at creation, in providence, and in judgment. When conception occurs, an image-bearer, a real human person comes into being (Gen. 4:1, 25; 5:3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 25, 30, 32). The consistent testimony of Scripture is that the male “begets” a child. That is the only point in the reproductive process in which the male is involved. “Methuselah . . . begot Lamech.” Lamech was there—he existed—at the moment that he was begotten.
From the woman’s standpoint, the moment of begetting is called conception. David knows that his moral nature was established at conception—“In sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps. 51:5). Mary was told that she “would conceive and bear a son,” and at the moment of conception her child would be holy—the holy thing begotten (Luke 1:31, 35).
Kingdom work involves building a thoroughly biblical doctrine of conception to confront the lies of the world about life. Killing a baby from the moment of conception and at any time forward is flat out murder. Neither the sexually immoral nor murderers will inherit the kingdom of God. It matters nothing at all in the final judgment that a murderer of the unborn is legal in human courts. Before the throne of God, the killing of the conceived child is murder. Even this, however, is forgiven in the redemptive kingdom for those who genuinely attain childlike faith in the propitiatory substitution in the cross of Christ.
4. The Return of Christ
The confessional article ends with the simple biblical truth, “The full consummation of the Kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ and the end of this age.” At that time, we will see the full manifestation of what is presently true. Through him all was made, in him all hold together, and all judgment is committed to him, for he not only is the Divine Lawgiver but the embodiment of human righteousness.
He has power to subject all things to himself. His power will grant his redeemed their glorified bodies, every knee will bow at his name that is above every name. In the resurrection the Father seated Christ “at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph. 1:20–21). At that subjection of all things, the Son will place it all under the Father’s eternal dominion (1 Cor. 15:28). Then the glorious relations within the triune God will be eternally and increasingly manifested in that the “throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it” and the “Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come’” (Rev.22:3, 17). This omnipotence, infinite glory, and sovereign prerogative will operate for the benefit of the saints, for “They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:5 ESV).
Conclusion
Far from being an abstract concept, the kingdom of God has real significance in our world today. The kingdom is ruled by an omnipotent king who orders the universe. This king welcomes his enemies to enter his kingdom of citizens and partakers of the kingdom blessings—if they relate to the king by repentance and faith in the gospel of Jesus. Kingdom citizens have real obligations to fight back on the kingdom of the world by living out and advocating for kingdom ethics—which includes the male/female binary, marriage as the only right expression of sexuality, and abhorrence of abortion. Jesus Christ will return and consummate the kingdom of God on earth, and all of the kingdom citizens will worship God in glorified bodies for eternity. This is the story of the kingdom of God rightly told in the Baptist Faith and Message, it is the story of the history, and it is the story of every kingdom citizen who trusts in Christ alone for salvation.
