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relevant to human history. Like freedom it is an ideal to be approximated, even though it cannot be perfectly realized. Moreover, the degree to which it can be realized does not depend on what a "politics of realism" might imagine, but upon an openness to the power of the Spirit to transform life and culture. Life in the Spirit not only mandates a concern for culture, but also becomes a channel for the power of the Spirit. The Spirit is the basis for courage, confidence, and hope.
Life in the Spirit and the Kingdom of God: One of the characteristic ways Jesus spoke about the power of the Spirit and the life engendered by it was with the richly symbolic phrase "the Kingdom of God."
For Jesus, the language of the kingdom was a way of speaking of the Spirit and the new life which it created. The coming of the kingdom is the coming of the Spirit, both into individual lives and into history itself. Entering the Kingdom is entering the life of the Spirit, being drawn into the "way" which Jesus taught. That Kingdom has an existence within history as the alternative community of Jesus, that community which lives the life of the Spirit.
That Kingdom is also something to be hoped for, to be brought about by the power of the Spirit of God. Life in the Spirit is thus life lived in relationship to the kingly power of God. Indeed, life in the Spirit is life in the Kingdom of God.
The vision of Jesus thus provides the content for three central images of the Christian life--life in the Spirit, the life of discipleship, and life in the Kingdom of God. Each image points to a life centered in God rather than in the lords and kingdoms of this world, in Spirit and not in culture, and yet seeking to transform those kingdoms through the power of the Spirit.
A challenging vision
The image of Jesus sketched herein confronts us at many points. As a charismatic, he is a vivid challenge to our notion of reality, as a sage he challenges us to leave our lives of conventional wisdom whether secular or religious. As a renewal movement founder and prophet, he points us to an alternative culture which seeks to make the world more compassionate.
Jesus invites us to take seriously the two central presuppositions of the early Judo-Christian tradition.
First there is a dimension of reality beyond the visible world of our ordinary experience, a dimension charged with power, the ultimate quality for which is compassion.
Second the fruits of a life lived in accord with the Spirit are to be embodied not only in individuals, but also in the life of the community.
From The Urantia Book: "And the fruits of the divine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-knowing mortals are: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace." (193:2.2)
As Christians, we are called to become the new church in a culture whose current values are largely alien to the Christian message, and to be, once again, the church of the early Jesus-movement.
Today's churches mostly have no clear vision of what it means to take Jesus seriously. The vision of Jesus as a person of Spirit, deeply involved in the historical crisis of his own time, can re-shape the individual's discipleship today. For us, as for the world in which Jesus lived, Jesus can once again be the light in our darkness.
In a nutshell
Jesus' life was a revelation of the nature of God. To be like Jesus means to be like God.
A life of discipleship means to take seriously those things Jesus took seriously. Jesus was serious about creating an alternative but inclusive community based on compassion.
Living in the kingdom means living a life in relation to the kingly power of God, a life centered in God rather than in the material attractions of this world.
Combine these three--and you have your place in God's kingdom.
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