17-May-2024 – Do you have the eagerness to be in the kingdom of God?
And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. -Matthew 11:12
This is indeed a difficult verse for me to understand. But today with the help of the Holy Spirit let us try to understand the meaning of it in the context of the kingdom of God.
The things spoken by Jesus this context spans from verse 11 to 15. He talks about the ministry of John and tells that the Elijah that should come is nothing but John the Baptist himself. To understand this, let us recollect the ministry of John.
In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. -Matthew 3:1-2
The ministry of John started from the wilderness of Judea. His message is simple – “Repent for the kingdom of heaven it at hand”. When he preached this message, everyone who heard came to be Baptised.
If we observe carefully, the people were being Baptised for one reason, they wanted to be in the kingdom of heaven. If we see the following verse,
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? -Matthew 3:7
From this verse we can understand that many people including Pharisees and Sadducees came to be baptised. But why? they wanted to be in the kingdom of God. If we check the word used in greek for the “violent take it by force”; it is, “biastes harpazo autos” which translates to something like – “the strong and using force, claim for one’s self eagerly”.
The people who came to John the Baptist has the strong motive to be in the kingdom of heaven and they wanted to be baptised and that shows their eagerness to be in the kingdom of heaven.
Here, even though Jesus did not conclude what he meant, we can take it positively to develop an eagerness to be in the kingdom of God. John came with a message of repentance and the baptism being a symbol for that. Now we have Jesus Christ, who also came with the message of repentance only, but the gospel of forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ.
The people who has the strong desire to be in the kingdom went to John and were baptised. Now if we have the strong desire to be in the kingdom, we need to accept our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as our personal saviour and follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit throughout our life.
Prayer
Dear loving heavenly Father, thank you for you love and grace. Thank you for teaching today about eagerness that we should cultivate towards the kingdom of heaven. Help us to always be mindful of our final destination. I pray in the name of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
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