The Kingdom of God has Come Near
“All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
My husband and I speak different native languages. At first, I could not understand when he spoke to his family. I listened to it as an outsider, so I started to learn his language. Eventually, I could pick up a word or two or get the general topic of the conversation. But even when I could not understand, the conversation always carried meaning. The conversations did not have meaning to me until I could understand the language. It had no meaning until it was revealed.
In today’s verses, we see Jesus welcoming back the seventy disciples after commissioning them to go out into the harvest. In verse 22, Jesus tells the seventy that no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Jesus revealed himself to the seventy. They believed and preached faithfully that the kingdom of God had come near.
The kingdom of God has come near. Come near. As Jesus spoke to his laborers, it was a present reality that the kingdom of God had arrived. Jesus’s “activity is not just approaching; it has come ‘upon you.’”3 Jesus is the revelation of God, and there is no other way to know the Father except through the Son. Said another way, there is no way to make sense of who God is without Jesus revealing himself to you through the Holy Spirit.
It is the work of the Spirit that allows us to know and understand Christ in the Word and as the Word. What is simply a religious text to some is the revelation of the Triune God to those blessed with the eyes to see what those who believe see. What was once meaningless is now the good news of the present and coming kingdom.
Jesus, may I know and experience your nearness. May I have eyes to see and ears to hear. Amen.
ABBY KEY MONCADA
Juris Doctor/Master of Divinity Student
Irving, Texas
3 Darrell L. Bock, The NIV Application Commentary: Luke (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 1996), 292.