What Jesus meant by “the Kingdom of God” is often misunderstood by those in and outside the church. By “entering the Kingdom of God,” he did not mean going to heaven when we die. Part of that misunderstanding is based on Matthew’s preference for the phrase “Kingdom of heaven” over “Kingdom of God.” Matthew is practicing what is called “divine circumlocution” with his reference to “heaven.” Because Jews considered God too holy to reference directly, they often used other words when referring to the Almighty. Saying the name “Yahweh” and even a direct use of the word “God” could show a chummy disrespect for the holiness of the Creator. Words like “Adonai (Lord)/ throne/name/ heaven/glory/angel of the Lord” served as substitutes for “God.” Matthew, the most Jewish of the four Gospels, uses “the Kingdom of Heaven” where the other Gospel writers usually have “the Kingdom of God.” Jesus could have used both phrases although most of the gospel traditions contain the words “the Kingdom of God” when quoting his teachings.
How we understand the Kingdom of God is important in the passage about going through the eye of a needle. Jesus said it was easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than to enter the Kingdom of God. By Kingdom of heaven/God, Jesus meant the presence and activity of the one he called Abba breaking into time and space through him as God came to Israel and the world in a direct, definitive, and consummating way. Kingdom of God refers to the qualitative life we enter when we join Jesus in communion with and devotion to the One he called “Abba.”
John’s Gospel calls the Kingdom of God “eternal life.” The word “eternal” refers more to the quality of a life lived in communion with God than the quantity/length of that life. We can enter eternal life/the Kingdom of God right now in our own time and space. We would be wrong to assume Jesus meant that the rich are automatically consigned to eternal torment in the fires of hell. He was simply warning that until one gives primary devotion and allegiance to God within a loving relationship made possible by God’s grace, the experience and benefits of eternal life and entering the Kingdom of God would be impossible. Such a limit is not because God refuses to share Her goodness. It’s because the Kingdom of God/eternal life is a relational experience possible only through openness and communion with the Lord. The words “until” and “not yet” are terms of hope and grace in any proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ and any reference to judgment.
We must also remember that the verb “judge” and the noun “judgment” in Hebrew both refer to a deliverance from whatever oppression humans may suffer. To judge is to set right with an ultimate goal of reconciliation. When the prophets speak of God “judging the widow and the orphan,” they mean that God will deliver these victims from the evils of patriarchy and economic oppression. The oppressions from which we need deliverance include sin, injustice, violence, exploitation, illness, and suffering. Justice is a facet of God’s loving kindness and compassion for Her world. Without justice, what we call love is no more than impotent sentimentalism or a means of colluding with evil by refusing expose and overcome oppression in our world.
Guided by these thoughts, there are three passages which are helpful in appreciating the character of God’s judgment. The first is I Corinthians 3:10-14. (I have never heard a sermon based on this passage.)
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care of how he builds upon it. For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive his reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only through fire.
The second passage is in Mark 9:42-50 where Jesus talks about the terrible consequences faced by those who reject the way of the Kin-dom with its focus on love and trust in God’s ways. After warning of the “fire” of Gehenna, he says, “For every one will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.”
The third passage is Malachi 3:2b-3.
For He (the Lord) is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, till they present the right offerings to the Lord.
In all three of the passages, judgment is understood as a purifying, cleansing process. Those things (things, not people) which are not good and of God are burned up and washed away. (It’s interesting that we often hear about the threats of fire but never about the cleansing of soap as the goal of God’s judgment.) Jesus says that we all will be “salted with fire”—every single one of us! And he also says that such salty fire is good! The goal of judgment is to make “good” the person and God’s creation. We are reminded of the “goodness” of creation emphasized in Genesis 1 where God declares the works of Her hands and heart “very good.”
The primary question we must ask is whether God’s wrath and judgment are retributive and punitive or redemptive and restorative. If God’s eternal essence is love, all God does must be from love. Therefore, God’s wrath and judgment are expressions of God’s love. Among other things, they represent God’s refusal to allow humans to destroy themselves. (As I point out in my article “Demons: Part Three,” such a refusal is not a violation of our freedom because we are not actually free to choose. True freedom only exists when we fully understand our choices and their consequences. The Christian faith sees all of us enslaved by sin. Sin is viewed more as an illness needing healing than a crime deserving punishment. Jesus said he came for the sick, not for those who falsely presumed they were healthy and had no need of a physician.)
So, what might that salty fire and cleansing soap look like for us facing a purifying judgment of healing and restoration? Perhaps it would be like the prodigal son experiencing the consequences of his selfish and profligate choices as he finds himself in a pigsty. We are told that he “came to himself” and realized that in his father’s house, servants had a much better life than he had in his estrangement from his father.
Or we could think of the rich fool in Jesus’ parable whose sole goal in life was to amass wealth. Jesus said in the parable that this foolish man cannot take his wealth with him. As the Spanish proverb reminds us, “There are no pockets in a shroud.” In a dimension where amassing wealth is meaningless and impossible, how miserable might a greedy person be? Might this new setting provide the painful realization that he has spent his whole life in pursuit of ephemeral goals and now has nothing to show of value for his time on earth? And might this realization provide the opportunity for repentance and transformation? Paul said that in the judgment to come, all the “wood, hay, and straw” we have so idolatrously valued will be burned away. What will be left is our naked selves which then might be open to the healing and transforming love of God.
Or let’s consider someone afflicted by the choice and/or sickness of addiction showing up at an AA meeting and saying, “I can’t save myself from my addiction. I’ve reached the bottom of an abyss I can’t get out of. I need help from a Higher Power and from a community who understands because they have been where I am.”
Or maybe a murderer who is burdened with guilt and in prison discovers the unconditional love of God. In that consuming fire of God’s judgment (which is a form of tough love) where he regrets his past life, he finds like John Newton the “amazing grace” of divine forgiveness and the beginnings of a new resurrected life even behind bars.
Or a Nazi torturer of Jews and other victims of Nazism who now is tormented day and night by his past and receives the unbelievable forgiveness of a Corrie ten Boom. Where he saw only the everlasting torment of guilt and pain as his future, he is transformed by the unfathomable love of God offered through those he wronged. (I realize that I would have to go through eons of conditioning before I could practice such mercy. Please do not hear me say that the victims of such monstrous evil should or must forgive their tormentors. To insist on such forgiveness on the part of others would only compound their pain. They may not completely heal until they let go of their past and forgive their tormentors, but such a move on their parts must be their decision only when they are ready and able to do so. See my blog article entitled “The Dynamics of Forgiveness.”)
Or maybe it’s me as I look back over my life and remember the unkind things I said and did and the opportunities I passed up to make a healing difference at a critical point in someone’s life. We are all haunted by parts of our past.
At some point we shall have to face who we are and what we have done or not done in this life. Justice is a part of God’s love, and justice, for all our sakes, demands repentance and a recognition of the wrongs we have done so that healing can take place. Jesus’ teaching in Mark 9 encourages us to open ourselves to this salty fire in the here and now so that in this life, healing and restorative judgment can allow us to enter the Kingdom of God. Now or later, we must be honest about ourselves. And in the pure light/fire of God’s unconditional love, we will have to face the truth of our lives. Such a process will be painful not because God is “punishing us” but because such pure love is like a bright light exposing the darkness we have chosen and are reluctant to admit or let go. It can be the bitter medicine or the painful antiseptic we need to heal and flourish. (I remember the burning of the mercurochrome my mother would put on my cuts and scratches. Ouch! But without that treatment, I could have developed an infection.)
Many theologians understand the wrath of God as God letting us experience and endure the consequences of our choices in life. We are free to choose but we are not free from the consequences of those choices. And tragically, because the world is a matrix or web of connections, neither are others, often those we love, spared the pain of those consequences. How we choose and exercise our freedom affects others. As John Donne said, no one is island. That’s a truth our competitive, individualistic, narcissistic, and self-centered society cannot understand. So, in one sense, God’s wrath is God saying to us, “Thy will be done. Live with your choices and their consequences.”
But there is another side to God’s wrath. God’s wrath is God’s refusal to stop loving us—God’s stubborn unwillingness to let us destroy ourselves by our stupid and convoluted choices. God’s love will pursue us until it finds us. God will descend into the lowest depths of the hells we create and will not leave until She can bring us willingly and joyfully home. And She will endure the pain of our choices and make it Her own. And in the omnipotence of Her love, we shall all be freely and gladly gathered to Her bosom.
We are more sick than evil, more imprisoned than guilty. Jesus, the Word Incarnate, is One who can pray from the cross for those who are torturing him to death, “Abba, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Most sin is committed by those who don’t know or have not experienced a better way and who don’t realize they are unconditionally and eternally loved by a God whose heart is infinitely larger than the universe.
So, yes, it’s possible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God/to go through the eye of a needle. Of course, like Zacchaeus, he won’t look much like the camel he was before he went through that tiny hole/salty fire/thorough cleansing. But as Jesus said, with God all things are possible.
However, it would still be better if we allowed ourselves to be salted with fire now rather than later when the purification process may be more difficult and painful. Now is the time of healing/salvation. That does not mean that in the next dimension, there will be no opportunities for repentance and restoration. But why wait? The joy and communion of love are available now!
[Those wanting to explore the nature of authentic freedom may want to look at my three-article series entitled “The Illusion of Freedom” (especially part three) and “Demons: Part Three.” The article “Shalom: Part Three” presents a picture of judgment whereby we are immersed in the unconditional love of God as we painfully see and experience those aspects of our lives which have contributed to evil and suffering.]
