Opening the Door to the Kingdom

In an earlier study, I made the case for connections between God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and man. I return to the theme of connections in Luke 18:15-30. Christ delivers two truths about entrance into the kingdom of God. What I hope to show in this study is simple. The connections will be made plain.

Opening the door to the kingdom is, in fact, being open to the door.

Two cases are presented to Jesus. First is the spirit of the children who are brought to him to be touched. Second is the spirit of the ruler who asked Jesus what he needed to do.

When the disciples acted on Jesus' behalf, thinking to clear him some space, trying to keep the overwhelming multitudes at bay, Jesus answered them with these words.

Luke 18:16, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”

Upon hearing Jesus tell him to sell all and follow him, the rich ruler was very sorrowful. Noting the spirit of the ruler, Jesus made the following comment.

Luke 18:24, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God.”

One spirit is pro-kingdom, one spirit is pro-world, pro-wealth. In the spirit of the small child being brought to Christ, there is no sacrifice, there is no sorrow. The spirit of the small child is on a learning curve, gaining new experience with excitement and singular focus. The spirit of the small child sets its desire on what is before it, without comparing what lies ahead to the things of the world. There are no worldly expectations in the spirit of the child.

Now, I wish to take the mindset of the small child, described above, and show it's connection to previously explained connections.

Jesus is the door, he said so. He is that entrance into the kingdom of God which this study explores. God the Father and 'Door' the son are one. That is to say that they are connected by the same spirit – the Holy Spirit.

Both the door into the kingdom of God and our own openness to that door are found in the spirit of the individual. Jesus prayed in John 17 that you and I might be one with the Father and the Son. To be on that same page, we must have a matching spirit.

Think of the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. If we want to fit into the big picture, the only way we can do that is to be one of the interlocking pieces. We may not be something other than one of the pieces that came with the original set. Neither may we be a piece from another big picture.

Every spirit in every individual is naturally a part of the big spirit; the Holy Spirit is the spirit that is special to the Father and the Son – the spirit that makes them one. Our connection to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is an internal connection. It's a connection from our spirit to the Holy Spirit. We may not find that connection through anything physical such as worldly possessions.

In the context of the verses referred to in this study, both the small child and the rich ruler were connected through their personal spirits to the one spirit of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. So, I ask this – what propelled the child forward, and what detained the adult?

The case with the spirit of the child is this – there is no dilution of the spirit with worldly concretion. There is no determent, no dissuasion, no preclusion or disincentive.

The case with the spirit of the adult proves otherwise. There is dilution. There is a full lifetime of concretion. Two red flags jump out at us. One is choice, the other is free will. Free will (or willfulness) is an act of separation. This separation is implemented through desire, which walks hand-in-hand with choice.

Willfully and knowingly, man chooses to be separate from the spirit of God. Man chooses concretion deliberately, ignoring the truth that his will is unable to detach his little spirit from the big spirit. Therefore, man must view himself as physical and worldly rather than spiritual. It is choice that binds man in the chains of darkness.

The disciples were horrified. Everyone had possessions; they wondered how any of them could possibly overcome such an insurmountable obstacle. Jesus answered them with the following words.

Luke 18:27, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”

Do you see it? It is a comparison between the physical, external, worldly man that man has created through willful separation and the internal, spiritual component in a man that no man, through any willful act, is able to separate himself from. It is a comparison between the external man of choice and the internal man of his true nature. That true nature, that spirit-to-spirit connection, can make all things possible.

We have a saying, 'fighting fire with fire.' Mankind does that every day. We may also fight choice with choice. The separating choice of the external man may be undone by the connecting choice of the internal man. The internal man is spiritual, the internal man is a spirit. God is a Spirit, Jesus said so. Man is a small spiritually interconnecting piece in the bigger picture.

The willful man who thinks he is separate can never escape the truth of his nature. One is either connected by choice or connected despite himself.

Finally, the kingdom of God, with its entrance (our internal Jesus/door connection,) is connected to yet another concept. That new concept, found in verse 30, is 'the world to come.' The disciples had forsaken all to follow Jesus, hoping to be a part of the kingdom of God. We must ask, are the kingdom of God and the world to come the same thing?

We may not say so with any certainty. The reward associated with the world to come is “life everlasting.” What is that exactly? Is it the same thing as life eternal? One synonym for the word everlasting is the word perpetual. The definition of the word perpetual is this: 'occurring repeatedly; so frequent as to seem endless and uninterrupted.'

What if the world to come is but another round of the perpetual life/death cycle? Certainly, even those who have forsaken all hope for more from the kingdom of God. What is the kingdom of God – really?

Matthew 12:28, “But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.”

The good rewards that the disciples hoped to receive from the kingdom of God, Jesus claimed they would receive in this present world. Luke 18:29-30, “There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time.”

Just saying . . .