Repairing the Breach in the Kingdom of God - Part One

Our Calling to Peace With Each Other...

The current cry in the world is for peace. The world is now claiming through media (movies, TV, etc.) that peace will only come through religious tolerance. Those who are promoting this kind of peace believe that all religions ultimately worship the same god and that is how the world wants to unify all people. This has led to our nation’s adultery with foreign gods. In the Kingdom of God, though, peace can only come when we come together as one to worship and obey King Jesus. Christians are commanded to seek God’s knowledge and understanding in His Word, the Bible, so how does God define this peace through King Jesus and what is its true purpose?

"and that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once afar off are made near by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, He making us both one, and He has broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in His flesh the enmity (the Law of commandments contained in ordinances) so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, making peace between them; and so that He might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity in Himself. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and to those who were near.” (Eph 2:12-17 MKJV)

King Jesus Himself is God’s definition of peace! It was His sacrifice that brought peace to the world because sin had separated man from God and also brought division between mankind. Peace comes when two become one. We have peace with God when we become one with Jesus and peace is achieved between people when we become one body in Jesus. The ultimate purpose of peace, then, is for the world to be reconciled to God and for people to be reconciled to each other. Peace is one of the necessary attributes in the Kingdom of God.

Romans 14:17 – “the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”.

The Kingdom of God is defined in this scripture by three things: 1.) righteousness – which is living the right way God wants us to, 2.) peace – living in unity, as one in Jesus, and 3.) joy – which is having happiness in our lives. These three Kingdom attributes are achieved by the power of the Holy Spirit who comes and dwells inside of us when we accept the covenant that Jesus offers to us. These Kingdom attributes pertain to how we live our lives and the relationships we have. So, that means the Kingdom of God should affect every aspect of our lives, especially in our relationships with each other. Christians are to seek peace in every relationship they have, and if they don’t, then a breach is made in the Kingdom.

Kingdom living can also be summed up into the two greatest commandments – love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and love our neighbor as yourself. When I studied the Bible on how to love this way, I discovered that the most honorable and most important relationship in the Kingdom of God is marriage (Heb. 13:4). I believe that understanding the definition of marriage in the Bible is the key to understanding God’s peace in our relationship with Jesus and in our relationships with each other. It also helped me understand why the worship of other gods is considered adultery against God.

When I became born again, I first related to God as my Father and Creator, but then I soon learned that my relationship with Him was to grow into a more mature, intimate relationship as I joined with the body and spirit of Jesus – becoming one with Him. The Bible defines marriage as two becoming one.

For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two of them shall be one flesh." This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. (Eph 5:30-32 MKJV)

I discovered that marriage is the “grown up” relationship that the Church has with Jesus and His marriage to His people is the mystery of the Kingdom that He wants to reveal to us. Unfortunately, in the Church, we have been treating marriage as the least important relationship in our lives. We have not been living in peace with our spouses. We easily give up on marriage and we have been treating our spouses with treachery, indifference, and hate. We claim that divorce will bring us peace, but it really is a false peace. Many people in the Church are facing a crisis like this in their marriage right now. Families are being divided because spouses are choosing not to repair the breach that has come between them. This pattern of defeat and divorce within the Church should concern us because it has caused a great and ever widening breach to develop in the Kingdom of God.

Christians, wanting to be in God’s will as they handle their marriage crisis, turn to many books and counselors in the Christian community for advice, but many of them have different ways of handling the situation. Some advise that if infidelity occurs, then the fate of the marriage has already been decided and divorce is the acceptable option. Christians have also fallen into the trap of believing that they deserve better, so they find scriptures in the Bible that they think justify a divorce so that they can remarry and be happy again. Christians are leaving their families to pursue new lifestyles and new loves while the other spouse is left to deal with the burdens and responsibilities of raising the children and maintaining a home alone.

So how does someone really know what they should do when they are faced with an impending division or breach in their marriage and family? While studying love in the Bible (http://www.basiclovetraining.org), I discovered that God gave us the best example on how to deal with an unfaithful and unloving spouse. It is His love story and it is found all throughout Scripture. Understanding God’s marriage and love story should radically change how Christians view their marriages and how they should really love their spouses and live at peace with them.

God’s marriage to the children of Israel took place at the mountain of God where He gave them His covenant after their exodus from Egypt (Exodus 24). He provided everything for them, but they became a rebellious “wife”. That led to her unfaithfulness to God and then it led to her rejection of God as her Husband. God then decided to separate the disobedient part of her body from the obedient part in order to preserve the heart and soul of His wife. So as she was divided, she became two sisters – Jerusalem and Samaria. (http://www.basiclovetraining.org/blt_level4)

Samaria, the disobedient sister, wanted to leave Him anyway, so she did everything she could to make God angry with her until He finally granted her a divorce, removing her from His sight. (2 Kings 17, Jeremiah 3) Even though she rejected His love, He never broke His covenant to her (Psa 89:30-37). During her unfaithfulness and even after the divorce, He still loved her and asked her to return to Him. Unfortunately, though, she didn’t come back to Him and she was destroyed.

Jerusalem, even after witnessing what happened to Samaria, wound up betraying God and became worse than her sister! She would get into trouble, and when she needed His help, she would come back to Him in pretense, but her heart was not in it. He eventually rejected her false love and allowed her to go into captivity by her lovers and they ruined her.

Despite all of His wife’s unfaithfulness and rejection, God still wanted to have peace with all of her. He wanted to reconcile their relationship personally, so in order to demonstrate to His wife how much He loved her, to give her new life, and to set her free from her captivity, He came to the earth as Jesus and sacrificed His own life for her. This would give her eternal life, and it would make her virtuous, healthy, and whole again. She could now be joined to him by spirit, and as a new united body, her new name would be New Jerusalem, or Zion, the city of King Jesus. (http://www.basiclovetraining.org/blt_level3)

God’s love story doesn’t end there, though.

Instead of becoming one body, she divided again - dividing into the daughters of Zion (Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, & Laodicea), a daughter of Jerusalem (Egypt & Sodom), a daughter of Samaria, and a daughter of Babylon. I believe these are the Ten Virgins that Jesus talked about in one of His parables of the Kingdom of God. All God ever wanted was for His wife to love Him with all her heart, soul, mind, strength, and for her members to unite together as one in love in His city, New Jerusalem. Instead of joining together in the ministry that their Husband, King Jesus, called them to do, they created a breach that separated themselves from each other and from Him. This breach was made because of the wickedness, heavy burdens, oppression, and unnecessary yokes that the daughters put upon each other.