Mission and Body Life—Indivisible
“Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness . . . .” (Matt. 6:33)
“The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” (Rom. 14:17)
“He must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.” (1 Cor. 15:25)
Central Thesis
The gospel of Jesus Christ is not merely the proclamation of individual salvation, but the announcement and manifestation of the kingdom of God—a present spiritual reign expressed through a covenant people, formed into one body, one temple, one bride, one Church, and one kingdom under the headship of Christ.
The mission of the Church cannot be separated from the life of the Church.
The message of reconciliation must be embodied in a reconciled people.
The proclamation of the kingdom must be accompanied by a visible kingdom reality.
The Church does not merely announce Christ’s reign—the Church is the earthly vessel through which His reign is made visible.
Introduction
A couple of weeks ago, Brother Howard, Brother Daniel, and I sat down with leaders of a sizable movement in Europe to discuss what God is doing in their midst, what their vision is, what He is doing in our midst, and what our vision is. I would say, first of all, that it was an incredibly productive conversation. Rarely have I found so much resonance on common ground with someone in their interpretation of Scripture, in their burden, in their view of what the Church is supposed to be, and in their understanding of communion. There were layers upon layers of mutual understanding.
But there was one central framework that the individual raised that I would like to discuss today. He wanted to know whether we see the unique lifestyle we encourage as the mission of Christ, or as auxiliary to that mission. He clearly saw the mission of Christ as the Great Commission, bringing the gospel to all people of every nation. He saw it as bringing a message of repentance and baptism, of water and Spirit, and of the Spirit’s power to work miracles and bring deliverance in people’s lives. And he wanted to know whether we saw the vision and calling to community as equal to that mission, or on a par with it.
And I suppose my question is: to what extent can we parse these apart from a biblical perspective?
But before we get into that, I want to reference another challenge that I recently saw on one of our posts online. A Christian posted a question or comment, and it went something like this: “It is clear that you are conscious of wanting to separate yourselves from the idols of modernity, and that is appropriate and admirable. But if you are building a life for yourself and your children and family that is essentially about what is most comfortable to you, is that not a negation of your mission, and therefore the replacing of one group of idols of modernity with another idol of comfort?”
I think we can see a common theme in both of these challenges that we have received recently. And I think it reveals a great deal about what is guiding Christian thought, and perhaps at times even abridging or precluding Christian thought, as many live in a framework that separates the fullness of life—family life, community life, shared economic life, covenant life—from the mission of the gospel, which they see primarily as bringing an individualistic salvation to as many individuals as possible.
I would like to examine this. And I would like to finish today with a clearer understanding of what the Church’s mission is. I would like for you to be able to say, with conviction, what you believe your participation in this mission is. And I do not just mean this local church. I mean God’s Church in all of its expressions. We are only one of many of its expressions, but we want to be a faithful expression, do we not?
The Millennial Divide
Let me begin by saying that, in the dialogue with this Christian leader, one of the first things that occurred to me was how radically different his millennial view is from ours.
And who wants to explain what your millennial view is? As a hint, it has nothing to do with watermelon, cantaloupes, or skin shades. Your millennial view refers to the millennium, and to your understanding of what the nature of Christ’s kingdom is supposed to be on the earth, when it comes, how it comes, and by what kind of power.
If you have a premillennial outlook, you will separate the Church’s evangelism from the dominion of Christ through the Church in all of human existence. But if you hold a realized millennial view, as we do, then you are going to see that Christ’s mandate to reign, to bring all things into subjection under His feet, and to reign until He comes, coincides with and is another expression of His demand that we preach the gospel and carry the Great Commission. For “He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. 15:25).
In short, from our view, the millennium is happening now. And it is happening through and in the Church. We are not able to separate the saving gospel from that millennial kingdom, because the gospel is called “the gospel of the kingdom” (Matt. 4:23; Mark 1:15). It is not called the gospel of the individual. It is not even called the gospel of personal salvation. It is called “the gospel of God” (Rom. 1:1), and it is called the gospel of the kingdom. It is the heralding of a new order, the royal announcement that another King has taken His throne.
Now, we could go into a deep dive on the four predominant views of the millennium in Protestant Christianity—the premillennial view, the postmillennial view, the amillennial view, and the realized millennial view. But suffice it to say that the first views the kingdom as a reality that Christ will bring after the Church is removed, and it tends to imagine that kingdom through political power. That is enough reason to reject it. The second sees the kingdom as needing to come now on earth, but still often imagines it through the lens of political force or societal leverage. The amillennial position gets closer because it understands that power is heavenly. But the realized millennial view, to which we subscribe, holds that the kingdom is now, it is for today, and its power is not political, coercive, or in any way tied to the sword. Its power is the power of the Holy Spirit, voluntarily accepted and adopted by the Church, so that through truth, love, holiness, and non-coercive authority, all things in heaven and on earth may be brought into subjection under Christ’s feet through His people.
The Kingdom Is Now
Without getting into a full explication of those views or defending them exhaustively from Scripture, I would point to several key passages as a starting point.
In Mark 9:1, Jesus says that some standing there would not taste death until they had seen “the kingdom of God come with power.” Notice that word: power. That connects directly to His departure in Acts 1. The last words spoken by the disciples to God in the flesh before He ascended were, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). The question was: When does the kingdom come back?
And the answer, in essence, is: You will know when it comes because “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you” (Acts 1:8).
So we connect the promise of power in Acts 1 with the statement of power in Mark 9:1. And then we connect both of those to Jesus’ own definition of the kingdom: “If it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28).
Not will come.
Not will come in a thousand years.
Not will come in a political administration.
But “has come upon you.”
By this we establish that the kingdom is now, the kingdom is real, and the kingdom is powerful. But it is the power of the Spirit. “For the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds . . . arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:4-5). The kingdom does not tear down governments by worldly force. It tears down arguments, strongholds, deceits, demonic oppressions, and every false thing that enthrones itself against God.
That is a very clear definition of the kingdom: the overthrow of nefarious spiritual power, authority, control, and oppression from the devil by the Holy Spirit of God.
Paul’s definition aligns perfectly with it. He says, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). He is speaking to a church embroiled in disputes about eating and drinking, and he tells them to stop magnifying what is not central, because that is not the kingdom. The kingdom is this: righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
It is the power to live rightly.
It is the peace that comes after Christ has conquered the enemies of the soul and put us at rest.
It is the joy of triumph that we are His possession and that the internal wars have ceased.
If you do not have the power of righteousness, you do not have the kingdom.
If you do not have peace with God reigning in your heart and mind, you do not have the kingdom.
If you do not have joy overall in the Holy Spirit, you do not have the kingdom.
But if you have these things, you can only have them in the Holy Spirit. And if you have them in the Holy Spirit, then you have the kingdom.
Pentecost and the Arrival of the Kingdom
The disciples were obsessed with the kingdom. “Where is it?” “When is it?” “Can we be part of it?” “Can I sit on Your right?” “Can he sit on Your left?” They were full of questions until Pentecost. And then, after Pentecost, you do not find Christians continuing to ask when the kingdom is going to come, because it had become clear: it has come.
On the same feast day in which Israel was historically bound to God through the law brought down from Sinai, on that very same day of Pentecost, Jesus, the greater Moses, descended not carrying two tablets of stone, but pouring out the Holy Spirit, so that God might write His law and will upon our hearts. “I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33). He did this in order to empower us “to follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws” (Ezek. 36:27).
One People Seen from Five Angles
So the brother who asks whether our lifestyle is competing with our mission, or is merely a novel support structure for it, needs to understand that we do not believe Christ’s requirement that we reign in dominion can be separated from Christ’s mission of salvation.
Now, let us look at this carefully. I am saying that there is a complete merger between what the Church is and what the kingdom is.
As I have said before, I will say again: the terms church, temple, kingdom, bride, and body of Christ all refer to the same entity—the covenant people of God. They are not separate realities. They are different angles emphasizing different aspects of one reality: spiritual Israel.
Five Scriptural Descriptions of the One People of God
1. Kingdom—dominion under Christ
When we call the people of God the kingdom, we emphasize dominion—dominion over our fallen natures, dominion over the power of the devil, dominion over the elementary principles of the world, dominion over every argument and high thing that exalts itself above the knowledge of God. For He is reigning “until He has put all His enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. 15:25), and we are to “reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17).
2. Church—the called-out people
When we call ourselves the Church, we emphasize that God has constituted a representational body and vested His authority in heaven in a representative commission on earth. We emphasize that we are the called-out people. The word itself points to that. We have gone on an exodus and are still on an exodus. We are constantly moving out of one world and into another, because the Church is the company of the called-out ones. “Come out from them and be separate” (2 Cor. 6:17). We have been “rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought . . . into the kingdom of the Son He loves” (Col. 1:13).
3. Bride—covenant union with Christ
When we call ourselves the bride of Christ, we emphasize that Christ is in covenant with a single entity, and that covenant relationship is a marriage covenant. That entity is the people of God, seen as “the Lamb’s wife” (Rev. 21:9). So we must be part of that covenant bride in order to transfer our liabilities to our heavenly Husband and receive His assets as our possession. This is to emphasize that salvation is not dealt out to the independent and autonomous, but is descriptive of a covenant love between God and a covenant bride whom He has purchased with His own blood. “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her . . . that He might present her to Himself a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish” (Eph. 5:25–27).
4. Temple—the dwelling place of God
When we call ourselves the temple, we refer to ourselves as a house—and not just any house, but a sanctuary house, a house of consecration, of separation, a holy dwelling for God. “You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2:5). “We are the temple of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16). This metaphor helps us understand consecration, habitation, sanctity, priestly order, and the corporate dwelling of God by the Spirit.
5. Body—living union with Christ
And this does not contradict the final metaphor when we call ourselves the body of Christ. Here we understand that we are not some structure separated from Him, but that His union with us becomes so complete, so total, that He is willing to speak as though the two are one flesh. The Head can no longer say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” (1 Cor. 12:21). He is the Head; we are His members. He means to incarnate His Spirit, His will, and His truth in a people who begin to look at one another as legitimate extensions of the Lord Jesus. “Whoever welcomes you welcomes Me” (Matt. 10:40). “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of Mine, you did for Me” (Matt. 25:40). “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).
But all of these metaphors—kingdom, church, temple, bride, body—they all refer to one entity: spiritual Israel, the covenant people of God.
The Question Returns
Now, have you forgotten the question we started with?
What does all this community life, living on the land, growing your own food, schooling your own children, birthing at home, and building an ordered life together have to do with the gospel? What does it have to do with the mission, or the Great Commission, of bringing the message of salvation to the lost?
Is it a distraction?
Is it an idol of comfort?
Is it some sentimental side project while you ought to be neglecting your families, neglecting your life together, or at least viewing these things as secondary while you go out and tell what Jesus did for people?
But what if our mandate from God is twofold?
What if He has commanded us to be the living proof that all things can be brought under dominion to His feet?
What if He has commanded us to serve one another His grace, or else live deprived of some of what we need to make it?
What if He has required that we reign until He comes, and that all of those dominion requirements serve in tandem with the requirement that we herald, preach, and witness to what Jesus has done?
And what if the declaration of what Jesus has done is not merely an insurance policy for another life? What if it is an announcement of fellowship with Him now—through the Spirit, through the Word, and through the body?
And what if that message and hope become false, empty, and even dishonest if they do not correlate to a real, imperfect, but vital and viable example of Christ living in His people, bringing all things under dominion to His obedience in the here and now?
In short, what if all men cannot know the truth of our message except by our love for one another? For Jesus did say, “By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).
And therefore, what if we are utterly incapable of separating the message of salvation from the life of wholeness and salvation that we must be living out?
Bringing the “Practical” Back under the Lordship of Christ
We do not celebrate or encourage a different approach to economy in this church community because we want to be novel or quaint. We do so because we believe economic stewardship, and the practical duty of providing for one’s own household, has been co-opted and stolen by the systems of this fallen world, and therefore must be brought back under subjection to Christ’s feet.
He has said that He is bringing all things under His feet—“things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:16–18). Do not give Him only the heavenly aspects of life; we desire to see the earthly dimensions of life also brought into submission to Christ.
Practical Expressions of Lordship
Formation of children within the covenant community
That is why we educate our children within the context of the covenant Church. Education has largely been co-opted by world systems as a mechanism of formation detached from the knowledge of God, often alienating children from the faith of their fathers rather than establishing them in it. Yet Scripture commands that the words of God be taught diligently to our children, “when you sit at home and when you walk along the road” (Deut. 6:6–7), and that fathers raise their children “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).
Re-engagement with creation order
That is why many of us have rooted ourselves again in the land—while recognizing that this is a providential blessing not available to every believer —because God placed man in a garden (Gen. 2:15), and creation still bears witness to the Creator, “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities . . . have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Rom. 1:20). In contrast, the dazzling artifices of Babylon cultivate the illusion that man himself is creator, constructing an enclosed world of his own making—an imitation order that subtly displaces dependence upon God.
Participation in formative realities of family life
That is why many of our families embrace childbirth within the home when possible—while fully receiving with gratitude the grace of medical intervention when disease or danger requires it— because there is a formative grace present in participating directly in life’s essential realities. These moments bind generations together and root the family in shared dependence upon God, reminding us that “children are a heritage from the Lord” (Ps. 127:3).
Recovery of covenantal marriage
That is why we have drawn marriage away from the dating model shaped by consumer choice and the commercialization of romantic attachment. We believe love is sacred and must be guarded because the family is the most fundamental building block of the kingdom. Scripture presents covenant faithfulness, not self-gratification, as the foundation of enduring union: “What God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt. 19:6). Where families are strong, the adversary loses one of his most effective instruments of fragmentation and instability.
Embodied distinctiveness of identity and belonging
That is why we dress differently—not in order to be strange, but because human longings, emotional vulnerabilities, and the search for identity have all been co-opted by powers that manipulate fear for profit and try to sell people what can only be received as a gift: belonging, rest, dignity, and incorporation into a people and a kingdom that cannot be shaken in a world that has never ceased shaking.
Everything that people think is strange about our lifestyle is, in fact, intentional. These are precisely the places where the spiritual power of God’s enemy has entered the city, hidden in the Trojan horse of the so-called practical or secular realms of life. But nothing is secular. All is sacred—or at least all ought to be sacred, if all things are “from Him and through Him and for Him” (Rom. 11:36).
The Church as Corporate Witness
What if that life is intended to be a corporate witness, “a town built on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matt. 5:14)? Not scattered into a thousand individual lights, lost in the streets and entrails of Babylon, but brought together, of one mind and of one heart. For that is where the power is poured out. “They were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1). That is where God commands the blessing, for “there the Lord bestows His blessing, even life forevermore” (Ps. 133:3).
What if the Church is the most important thing God is doing on the planet?
What if He is infinitely more concerned with the reality of our love for one another, our unity, our righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit—and with each other—than He is with our ability to spread a message that is not backed by a life?
What if this is a cosmic struggle, a fight between kingdoms, where all the kingdoms of this world are in one coalition backed by lies, fear, and death, and all that is righteous is in another coalition called the kingdom of God, the Church of the living God? And what if this is God’s demonstration “to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” of “His manifold wisdom” (Eph. 3:10)?
What if the struggle between satan and God is not going to be resolved in the way so many imagine—not in some fleshly theater of worldly violence—but in the spirit of Jehoshaphat, where the people do not rely on swords and chariots and guns and tanks, but go out in yieldedness to God, and hear the word, “the battle is not yours, but God’s” (2 Chron. 20:15)?
And through the power of the Spirit, God demonstrates to principalities and powers that He was right after all: that the most powerful force on earth is love, not fear; life, not death; faith, not suspicion; covenant, not competition.
Reigning through the Church
And what if this is the end of the war that began in Eden, when the devil started stealing from the coalition of Yahweh the hearts and minds and bodies and souls of those who were made in His image?
Paul tells us that “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin . . . and in this way death came to all people” (Rom. 5:12). And then he tells us that through One, grace and life reign to the many, so that those who receive “God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17).
Does he not tell us that Christ is reigning through His people?
And does not Revelation tell us that He “has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve His God and Father” (Rev. 1:6)? Does not Peter tell us that we once “were not a people, but now are the people of God,” and that we have become “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Pet. 2:9-10)?
He does not say we are going to be that later, after Christ returns and sets up a kingdom based on all the power He refused when He was here. No. He says He has made us into that people now.
The Church as God’s Unifying Instrument
The Church is “the administration of the fullness of times” through which God means “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (Eph. 1:10).
It is a unifying instrument that gathers and unites all things that are in Christ under one Head. And who is that Head? It is Jesus the Messiah—Yeshua, the Anointed One. It is the bringing under the lordship and headship of the anointing all things, all people, and all things essential to life.
It is, in short, a battle to steal back from the devil all that he has stolen, and to bring it back under the dominion of Christ, so that we might become a living, breathing, joyful, righteous, loving, flourishing, existential proof that this is how life works, that this is where love lasts, that this is where faith is not betrayed, that this is God’s eternal project, His consummate endeavor, His manifold wisdom, and His final act to shut the mouths of principalities and powers.
To prove that there is an entire nation holy whose God is the Lord. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Ps. 33:12). And they have no political might, and they wield no sword, and they rely on no threat of death or coercion. The Holy Spirit is their power. The love of God is their bond of unity. The truth is their light and their sword. Faith is their shield (Eph. 6:16). The helmet of salvation guards their minds in Christ Jesus. Their feet are “fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:15)—not politics, not war, but peace. “On earth peace to those on whom His favor rests” (Luke 2:14).
The Answer
So, to answer the question of the church leader in Europe: you cannot separate your message from your life—your corporate life, your kingdom life, your Church life in Christ.
If you have a message, you had better have a life.
If you have a gospel to share with the world, you had better have a kingdom reality standing behind it.
If you have an invitation, you had better have “a town built on a hill [that] cannot be hidden” (Matt. 5:14).
If you have a mission and a Great Commission, you had better have a body that is “joined together” (Eph. 2:21), that will not leave people as orphans, but will graft them into the family of God—the family that lives under one Name, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Eph. 3:15).
That is why we cannot accept the false separation between gospel and kingdom, between salvation and Church, between mission and covenant life, between proclamation and embodiment.
The Indivisibility of Gospel and Kingdom
The Church does not merely announce the kingdom.
The Church is the kingdom in earthly manifestation.
The Church does not merely preach reconciliation.
The Church must become reconciled life.
The Church does not merely declare peace.
The Church must be righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
The Church does not merely call men out of Babylon.
The Church must be a city of God set in contrast to Babylon.
The Church does not merely offer individual escape.
The Church is the corporate ark of salvation — the covenant bride, the holy temple, the body of Christ, the kingdom of priests, the holy nation, the people of God.
And therefore we cannot separate the life we are called to build under the lordship of Christ from the message we are called to preach in the name of Christ.
They are not two missions.
They are one.