Was the Kingdom of God WITHIN the Pharisees?

Was the KIngdom of God WITHIN the Pharisees?

FFOZ

Rabbi Yeshua warned the Pharisees not to chase after false messiahs and false kingdoms. He said, “For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:21). The Greek preposition entos (ἐντός) allows for some ambiguity. It might mean that the kingdom is “among” the Pharisees, or it might mean that the kingdom is “within” the Pharisees.1

Most translators and Bible teachers prefer “among” rather than “within.” The notion of the kingdom of heaven residing “within” the Pharisees causes Christian readers some discomfort. New Testament teachers explain that the kingdom was “among” the Pharisees in the sense that Yeshua the King stood among them, even though they did not recognize Him.

The context of His words, however, rules out that reading.

Yeshua told them that the kingdom was not visible because it was “within them.” If He meant that the kingdom was “among” them, then why was it not visible to them? Our Master was not invisible. Although He is the messianic King, He cannot have referred to Himself as the kingdom. A king is not a kingdom. Rather a king’s subjects comprise his kingdom.

It seems best to read Yeshua’s words as, “The kingdom of God is within you.” With these words, He internalized the expectations of the Messianic Era, turning them inward.2

The prophets predicted that, in the Messianic Era, the LORD will reign; His Name will be one; He will make a new covenant; all people will know Him; human hearts will undergo transformation; Israel will receive spiritual washing and the forgiveness of sins; and God will bestow His Spirit upon men. Those hallmarks of the Messianic Era can be internalized and, to some extent, grasped and entered prior to the final redemption. This concept of “the kingdom of God within you” underlies our Master’s message of the good news and His call to repentance. It informed subsequent apostolic theology as evidenced throughout all the Epistles.

To the extent that the Pharisees lived their lives in submission to the reign and rule of God through Messiah, they could anticipate participating in the kingdom. In that sense, the kingdom of heaven could be said to be at work within them in the form of repentance. This internalization of the kingdom does not at all supplant the future coming kingdom on earth.

Instead, it points toward repentance as the means for obtaining entrance into that kingdom. The Pharisees themselves developed a similar internalization of the kingdom of heaven. The sages called the declaration of God’s oneness in the recitation of the Shema “receiving the yoke of the kingdom of heaven”:3

Why is the first section of the Shema [Deuteronomy 6:4–9, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one …”] recited before the second section [Deuteronomy 11:13–21, “It shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commandments which I am commanding you today …”]? Because a person should first accept upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven and then take upon himself the yoke of the commandments. (m.Berachot 2:2)

The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas offers a similar saying of the Master loosely based upon Deuteronomy 30:11–14. Compare:4

It is not in [the sky], that you should say, “Who will go up to [the sky] for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?” Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?” But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it. (Deuteronomy 30:12–14)

If those who lead you say to you, “Behold, the kingdom is in the sky,” then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the sea,” then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you. (Gospel of Thomas 3)

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1. Franz Delitzsch elected to translate Luke 17:21 as bekirbechem (בקרבכם), a word choice that offers ambiguity similar to the Greek construction but leans toward the meaning “inside you.” Rabbi Yechiel Tzvi Lichtenstein (Commentary on the New Testament: The Holy Gospel According to Luke [Unpublished, Marshfield, MO: Vine of David, 2010], on Luke 17:21) would have preferred Delitzsch had used beineichem (ביניכם), “For the kingdom of God is through the Messiah who is standing among you.”

2. See Paul P. Levertoff, Love and the Messianic Age (Marshfield, MO: Vine of David, 2009).

3. b.Berachot 13b.

4. Cf. Gospel of Thomas 51: “His disciples said to him, ‘When will the rest for the dead take place, and when will the new world come?’ He said to them, ‘What you are looking forward to has come, but you do not know it.’”