Meditations in Matthew Nineteen: Four Kingdom Images

Matthew’s gospel emphasizes the kingdom of heaven.¹ “The central emphasis of the book is found in what is designated (uniquely in the Gospels) as … ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; cf. 26:13).”²

To understand the gospel, we must understand the kingdom. In Matthew 19, Jesus uses four images to describe his “reign over his messianic-age church.”³ Some of them may surprise us.

Eunuchs

Jesus said people in the kingdom will make radical sacrifices for it. This revelation occurs in his teaching on divorce and remarriage (Matt 19:1–9). His instructions shocked his disciples. They said, “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry” (Matt 19:10).

Jesus acknowledged the difficulties his teaching created. Still, some men would make “themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” (Matt 19:12; emphasis added). They would remain unmarried and chaste if the King said they should do so.

Our purpose here is not to discuss the bases for this abstinence. It is to show the importance of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said some men would deny their sexual desires for it. 

Men are not willing to do this for an “abstract idea.”⁴ Such self-denial implies that they understand the kingdom as a concrete reality. These “eunuchs” know what it is and what God intends to do through it. They have a deep commitment to his kingdom agenda.

Paul applied Jesus’s teaching in the church at Corinth. He said, “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband” (1 Cor 7:10–11; emphasis added). 

He made such sexual abstinence a part of the Corinthians inheriting the kingdom of God (cp. 1 Cor 6:10). Persons who seek the kingdom above all else will make this kind of sacrifice (cp. Matt 6:33).

Jesus’s eunuch imagery shows the radical nature of commitment to the kingdom. 

Little Children

The kingdom is the home of little children (Matt 19:13–15). We saw this in our last post (here). Unless a person humbles himself like a little child, he cannot enter the kingdom (Matt 18:3).

Here, Jesus takes the simile a step further. The kingdom of heaven—the churches over which Christ reigns—comprises only such “little children.” 

Characters of a different sort appear to be members of the kingdom. For example, Jesus said the church in Smyrna contained “them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Rev 2:9). Pergamos had “them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans” (Rev 2:15). Thyatira suffered “Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce [Jesus’s] servants to commit fornication.” Jesus said he would “cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts” (Rev 2:20–23).

Such persons may have a pseudo-membership in Christ’s churches. God will show they are not true members (cp. 1 John 2:19).

In a previous post (here), we saw another place where Jesus described kingdom citizens. He said, “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matt 11:11). In that context, we read: “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matt 11:25).

Jesus reigns over a kingdom of little children. “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein” (Mark 10:15).

Eternal Life

The kingdom is the place of eternal life (Matt 19:16–22). We see this in a rich young man’s interaction with Jesus. He wanted to know what he must do to “have eternal life” (Matt 19:16; emphasis added).

Jesus told him to “keep the commandments.” The young man was not humble like the little children Jesus had just described. He arrogantly said, “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?” (Matt 19:20). He did not realize the true meaning of the commandments as Jesus explained them in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7).

Jesus forced the issue. He “said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions” (Matt 19:21–22).

Our point about the kingdom comes from Jesus’s follow-up words to his disciples. “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matt 19:23–24; emphasis added).

Jesus equated eternal life with entering the kingdom of heaven. The disciples did so, too. For them to expound, testify, and preach the kingdom of God was for them to proclaim God’s salvation (Acts 28:23, 28, 31).

Jon Douglas Levenson put it this way in his comments on Dan 12:1–3:

The granting of “eternal life” thus corresponds to—indeed, it is inseparable from—the prediction earlier in Daniel that

the God of Heaven will establish the kingdom that shall never be destroyed, a kingdom that shall not be transferred to another people. It will crush and wipe out all these kingdoms, but shall itself last forever. (Dan 2:44)

The irreversible triumph of life is, in other words, of a piece with the establishment of the kingdom of heaven and the decisive and definitive victory of justice over the injustice that has, in the author’s view, characterized all human history to date.⁵

We will see this equation of eternal life to entering the kingdom again below. 

This teaching gave a second shock to the disciples. They thought the Lord required more than was possible. “When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?” (Matt 19:25).

Jesus acknowledged the impossibility of a man entering the kingdom on his own. He “said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible” (Matt 19:26). Only by God’s sovereign mercy can we inherit eternal life and enter the kingdom.

The Regeneration

The kingdom is the period following the regeneration (Matt 19:23–30). Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt 19:28).

Regeneration (Gk. palingenesia) means “new birth.”⁶ The Scriptures use this imagery in two ways. It can describe an act of God’s mercy on individuals. Jesus said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3; emphasis added). Paul also seems to speak of regeneration in this sense: “According to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration (Gk. palingenesia), and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5).

The Scriptures also use this imagery to show what God does to the nation of Israel. In the Song of Moses,⁷ God accused Israel of forgetting him. “Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful, And have forgotten the God who fathered you” (Deut 32:18 NKJV). In Hosea, God speaks of “the day that [Israel] was born” (Hosea 2:3). God birthed Israel as a nation by bringing her out of Egypt. He gave her the law and the priesthood, and brought her into the land of Canaan. There, she lived in an earthly kingdom.

But Israel must be reborn. Isaiah prophesied about this new birth in his description of “the new heavens and the new earth” (Isa 66:22). He said, 

Before she (i.e., Israel) travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child. Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children. (Isa 66:7–8)

The New Testament shows the fulfillment of this prophecy. Peter says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3).

 When Jesus rose from the grave, Israel was reborn. She became “an holy nation” through Christ’s righteousness (1 Pet 2:9; contrast Exod 19:6). She now lives in a heavenly kingdom.

Jesus had the rebirth of Israel in mind when he referred to “the regeneration.” He was thinking of “the world, or age to come, the kingdom of the Messiah, the Gospel dispensation.”⁸

And, as we saw above, to take part in “the regeneration” and the subsequent kingdom of heaven is to “inherit everlasting life” (Matt 19:28–29).

Conclusion

The prophetic model we adopt will affect our understanding of these images. Inmillennialism says we are living in the age to which they refer. The present kingdom is worth great sacrifice, even to the point of making ourselves eunuchs. It is worth humbling ourselves and becoming like little children.

This prophetic model says participation in the kingdom is equal to having eternal life. It asserts the current kingdom—Christ’s reign over his churches—resulted from the regeneration of which Jesus spoke.

This last point is the most controversial. A comment by W. E. Vine shows the reason for this. Speaking of “the regeneration,” he says: 

In Matt. 19:28 the word is used, in the Lord’s discourse, in the wider sense, of the “restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21, RV), when, as a result of the second advent of Christ, Jehovah “sets His King upon His holy hill of Zion” (Ps. 2:6).⁹

This is typical of other prophetic models. They place Christ’s coming entirely in our future.

In these models, “the regeneration” awaits the second coming of Christ. That coming has not occurred. We are not now living in the kingdom produced by “the regeneration” of Israel.

If this is true, how can “the regeneration” inspire us to live as “eunuchs” or “little children” now? If we are not in the kingdom of “the regeneration” and if God is not now “restoring all things,” how do we experience “everlasting life”? 

Inmillennialism proposes a different scenario. It says God has already set his King upon the holy hill of Zion (Acts 2:30–31). Jesus returned in his generation as he promised (e.g., Matt 16:27–28; 24:34). His return completed the transition to the messianic age. God regenerated Israel and the kingdom became a reality. God is now, through this church kingdom, restoring all things. He is subduing all his enemies. At the end of the messianic age, he will overcome the last enemy. He will defeat death in the resurrection (1 Cor 15:25–26).

Inmillennialism allows all Jesus’s figures—eunuchs, little children, eternal life, and the regeneration—to have their full force. They describe our lives in the present age.

1. Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / CC-BY-SA-3.0. This file (here) is not in the public domain and is used by permission.
2. Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, WBC 33A, ed. Bruce M. Metzger (Dallas: Word, 1995), lx.
3. See our post Meditations in Matthew Sixteen: Church and Kingdom.
4. This is the definition of the kingdom of God given by R. T. France, “The Church and the Kingdom of God Some Hermeneutical Issues,” in Biblical Interpretation and the Church: Text and Context, ed. D. A. Carson (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 2000), 32.
5. Jon Douglas Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 187.
6. W. E. Vine, Merrill F. Unger, and William White Jr., Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 2 vols. (Nashville: T. Nelson, 1996), 2:517.
7. See our discussion of this important passage here. Other references to it appear in the posts here.
8. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 9 vols. (1809–1810; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 7:219.
9. Vine, Unger, and White Jr., “Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary,” 2:518.