But the phrase ' Kingdom of God ' might also be interpreted of the present life which Christians now live, in so far as this is governed by obedience to Him. The writers of the NT seem sometimes to regard Christians as already members of the coming Kingdom, living according to its laws, and enjoying even now in some measure its privileges. So St. Paul in Ro 14", 'the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit,' and in 1 Co 4^**, ' the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.' So too Col V^, ' hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.' On the whole, this sense seems to be not primary but derivative and con- sequential. Just as the writer of the Hebrews thinks of the true rest as still in the future, be- longing to the world to come (4'*- "*), and at the same time feels that Christians in some sense anticipate and enter into that rest even now (4^), so the NT writers think of the Kingdom of God as waiting to be manifested when Christ comes again, and yet feel that in some sense the Christhan is even now a member of it, and that, as the number of Christian disciples increases, the Kingdom widens here upon earth. But in the NT this belief is always conditioned by the certainty that the Second Coming of Christ is necessary to the full manifestation of the Kingdom.
This double-sidedness of the conceptions ' king- dom ' and ' king ' may in some measure explain why the apostolic writers avoid tliem.* And it is signiticant that another term which was closely connected with the doctrine of the Second Advent is also left unused outside the Gospels. The term ' Son of Man ' is employed in the first three Gospels chiefly in connexion with the ideas circling round
* Sanday finds in St. Paul's conception of 'righteousness' his equivalent for the Gospel term ' kingdom ' {JThSt i. 481 ff.).
the thought of the Death, Resurrection, and Second Coming of Christ. Similarly in the Fourth Gospel it is used chiefly in passages which speak of the lifting up or glorification of the Son of Man. Outside the Gospels it occurs only once— in the mouth of Stephen ; here too of the glorified .state of the Messiah (Ac 7^*^). The remaining NT writers never use it. And yet the thought of the Coming runs like a silver thread of liope through all their writings. They seem to have felt that on the one haiul tlie phrase ' Son of Man ' was too technically Jewish for Gentile readers, and on the other that the terms ' King' and ' Kingdom ' were open to grave misconception. The King for whose appearance they looked was no earthly monarch, and His Kingdom was no rival to earthly kingdoms, nor even in so far as it was now partially present did it prevent men from loyal obedience to tlie existing government. Hence they choose other terms in which to clothe the Gospel hope of Christ's return, and the state of felicity which would ensue. St. Paul uses such terms as the following : ' to wait for his Son from heaven' (1 Th P"), 'the parousia' of the Lord Jesus (1 Th 2'9 S'^ 41^ 5-^), the Lord descending from heaven (1 Th 4^^), 'the day of the Lord' (1 Th 5^, 2 Th 2", 1 Co P 5^, 2 Co P*, Ph P), ' the apocalypse of the Lord Jesus from heaven ' (2 Th V), ' waiting for the apocalypse ' (1 Co 1'), ' until the Lord come'(l Co 4^), 'until he come' (1 Co 11*^), 'the day when God shall judge . . . through Jesus Christ' (Ro 2'"), 'from whence we await the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Chi'ist ' (Ph 3-"), ' the Lord is near' (Ph 4'), ' the manifestation of Christ ' (Col 3'*), ' the epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ' (1 Ti 6''*), 'the epiphany of our Saviour Jesus Christ' (Tit 2").
In the Catholic Ejjistles we have : ' the Parousia of the Lord is at hand' (Ja 5®), ' the apocalypse of Jesus Christ' (1 P P^), 'when the chief Shepherd is manifested' (1 P 5'*), 'the day of the Lord' (2 P 3^"), the manifestation of Christ (1 Jn 3-) ; in Hebrews : ' he that cometh will come, and will not tarry' (10^''); and in the Apocalypse, the many references to the Coming of Christ, beginning witii v.*
By thus expressing the Christian hope in terms of expectation of the Return of Christ, and by substituting for ' King ' and ' Son of Man ' such terms as 'Lord,' 'Saviour,'' Chief Shepherd,' the apostolic writers were able to avoid suspicion of political propaganda, and to give to the thought of the Second Coming a far wider significance than any which they could have suggested by laying too much emphasis upon the future as the estab- lishment of a Kingdom, however much they might have attemi)ted to give to this term a spiritual and non-material connotation. For, after all, Christ is and will be more than king, and ' king- dom ' does not go very far in expressing the con- ditions of the life with Him for which Christians long.