Last week we saw that pursuing social justice is our responsibility because it is part of the kingdom of God that Jesus brought.
Will we be able to complete the fulfillment of the kingdom of God? No. We must wait for Jesus to return and execute a final defeat of evil. There is no passage in the New Testament directing believers to fully establish the kingdom of God in this age. Rather, people are invited into the partial kingdom that Jesus has already established. Jesus and his apostles speak of believers finding the kingdom, entering the kingdom and spreading the message of the kingdom so that others may enter. Jesus brought the kingdom so it is here now and people can choose whether to enter or not. But we can not complete it.
Yet this lack of full establishment does not discourage us because he is using us to spread his kingdom to more hearts and propel history to the time when he returns. In fact, while Jesus is “gone” he makes us so successful that the kingdom of God will grow into an immense tree (Matt. 13:31-32; Luke 13:18-19). Even though comparatively few will enter the narrow gate to the kingdom (Matt. 7:14) the actual number of believers will form a “great multitude” (Rev. 7:9).
And we can still try to better our society by supporting leaders who most closely embody the values of the kingdom of God. We can make efforts to help the needy. When believers find themselves in positions of influence then they can create social structures in harmony with the kingdom of God as much as possible, taking into account human corruption. We cannot pressure people to be Christian, we must always provide freedom for people to be unbelievers and pursue a reasonable living.
But despite all our efforts, we recall that Jesus said to Pilate “my kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36, NIV). We cannot establish the political kingdom of God on earth before Jesus returns. We cannot become the governors of business, media, the arts, and education and expect the population to embrace Christian values in those areas. Attempts to do so only make false Christians out of people.
