Tag: Jesus

When Christians Misunderstand the Gospel: Why “God Reigns” Is More Radical Than We Think

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment
A lone silhouetted figure runs along a distant mountain ridge beneath a vast twilight sky of deep blue and violet. Golden light breaks at the horizon, symbolising heaven and earth meeting in the reign of God. The atmosphere is quiet, cosmic, and filled with hope.

What if the greatest misunderstanding in modern Christianity is not about morality or politics but about the gospel itself? What if the good news we share is smaller than the one Jesus announced?

We often describe the gospel as a private story about forgiveness, heaven and personal salvation. Yet in Scripture the gospel is something far larger. It is the announcement that God reigns. It is not only about the state of our souls but about the state of the world. It is a claim about reality itself, a declaration that creation has a rightful King.

And that claim changes everything.

The Gospel as Royal Proclamation

In Hebrew, the word for good news is besorah, a royal announcement of victory (Isaiah 52). In Greek, it is euangelion, the public declaration that a king has triumphed (Mark 1).

Imagine an ancient city under siege. The people wait behind their walls, anxious for word from the battlefield. Then a runner appears on the hills, covered in dust, shouting between breaths, “Good news! Victory! The king has won!”

That was euangelion. It was not advice or philosophy but the kind of announcement that makes the world different because it is true.

When Isaiah writes, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isaiah 52:7), he is describing that runner. The heart of the gospel is that Yahweh has returned to rule His world.

Centuries later, Jesus begins His ministry with the same royal declaration: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). He is not inventing a new religion but announcing that Israel’s long-awaited hope has arrived. God’s reign is breaking in.

The Kingdom Woven into Creation

The story of God’s Kingdom does not begin with Jesus. It begins in Genesis, where the rhythm of creation beats with divine rule (Genesis 1-2).

In the first three days, God shapes the realms of creation: light and darkness, sky and sea, land and vegetation. In the next three, He fills those realms with rulers: the sun and moon, the birds and fish, the animals and humanity.

The story is one of order and relationship. God reigns by creating and sharing. His rule is not control but care. Humanity, made in His image (Genesis 1:26-28), is invited to share that reign and to reflect His goodness, justice and creativity into the world.

To rule, in the biblical sense, is not to dominate. It is to cultivate. It is to join God in the work of making the world flourish.

The Kingdom of God is not a future dream. It is the structure of reality itself. Heaven and earth were made to live together (Genesis 2:15). Sin fractures that harmony, but the mission of God is to bring it back, to restore what was lost and heal what was broken.

Jesus: The King in Person

When Jesus announces the Kingdom, He is not speaking about a distant future or an inner feeling. He is proclaiming a change of reality. Where He walks, heaven and earth meet. The sick are healed, the outcasts restored, and the powers of darkness pushed back (Luke 4:18-9; Matthew 12:28).

At the cross, the world’s false rulers do their worst. Yet in that act of humiliation, the true King is enthroned (John 19:19). Through resurrection, His victory is declared not over Rome but over the powers that hold all creation captive: sin, death and decay (1 Corinthians 15:25-26).

Paul’s hymn in Colossians captures it perfectly:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. In Him all things hold together. Through Him God was pleased to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Colossians 1:15-20).

This is not private spirituality. It is cosmic renewal. Christ holds the whole story together. In Him, the Creator’s original dream of heaven and earth united is set in motion again.

The People of the King

The early Christians understood this far better than we often do. They did not treat faith as an escape plan but as a new citizenship (Philippians 3:20). They believed that the Spirit who raised Jesus now lived within them, calling them to live as citizens of a new world (Romans 8:11).

Every act of love and hospitality, every work of justice or reconciliation, was an echo of the good news. It was a small proclamation that “our God reigns” (Isaiah 52:7).

The Kingdom is not confined to heaven or to church gatherings (though, as I argue elsewhere, the church should be a slice of the new creation). It is wherever the reign of Christ shapes hearts and habits, homes and communities (Matthew 5-7). It is wherever people reflect His character in the ordinary and the everyday.

N. T. Wright once said that the church does not bring the Kingdom by force; it embodies it by faithfulness. That is the invitation: to embody the reign of the King.

The Kingdom Completed: New Creation

The story of Scripture ends where it began, but expanded and fulfilled. A garden becomes a city. Heaven and earth are reunited.

John’s vision in Revelation captures it:

“I saw a new heaven and a new earth… and I heard a voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals’” (Revelation 21:1–3).

This is not an escape from the world, but rather its healing. The good news is not that we leave creation, but that God enters into it and restores it (Romans 8:19–21).

Every tear will be wiped away. Every injustice will be answered. The scars of the old world will become the beauty of the new (Revelation 21:4–5). The reign of God will fill everything.

Living Under His Reign

If the gospel is the announcement that God reigns, then discipleship is the art of living as if that reign were already true (Matthew 6:10). Repentance means realigning with reality, turning from our small empires to join the life of the King.

Faith is allegiance. It is trust that God’s rule is good and that life under His care is freedom, not bondage (John 8:36).

Every prayer, every meal, every act of mercy or courage is a way of saying again, “Your God reigns” (Isaiah 52:7).

The gospel is not good advice. It is good news.

And that news is this: heaven has begun to come down to earth. The reign of God is arriving quietly, patiently, beautifully, until all things are made new.

The Contemplative Gospel Part I: Creation, Fall, and Our Lost Communion with God

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment
Abstract contemplative artwork of two glowing human silhouettes beneath a starry night sky, their bodies filled with starlight. Beside them stands a lone tree, half in shadow and half in light. Near the tree, a larger silhouette made of starlight represents God walking with them. The scene is cosmic, sacred, and symbolic, in deep blues, purples, and gold.

The Gospel Begins with Wonder, Not Sin

The gospel does not begin with sin. It begins with wonder.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). From the first moment, creation was spoken into being within God’s own presence. Life emerged as song, at his call, not apart from him but held inside his life. Mountains rose and oceans gathered, their beauty already shimmering with his nearness.

And then God stooped low, pressing his breath into dust. Humanity came alive, not only because of lungs and blood, but because every heartbeat throbbed with the life of God. As Paul would later say, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

The world has never existed outside of God. We dwell in him, even as he dwells in us. Every breath you take is not just survival. It is communion.

Created to Share in the Divine Life

“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). From the beginning, we were not just creatures surviving on borrowed breath. We were made as mirrors of the divine, meant to shine with another’s glory.

The apostle Peter writes, “we were made to be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Creation is not simply about survival or usefulness. It is about communion. It is about living our lives inside the very life of God.

Irenaeus of Lyons once said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive, and the life of the human consists in beholding God.” That is creation’s secret. We were meant to live every breath as communion, every heartbeat as sacrament. The mystics remind us again and again that the world is charged with God. Meister Eckhart could say that every creature is “a word of God and a book about God.” Before sermons, before catechisms, creation itself was already preaching. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

What would it look like to see creation, the tree outside your window, the face across the table, as a word of God spoken to you?

The Fracture of the Fall

But then the story bends.

The serpent’s whisper is subtle. “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). The tragedy is that likeness to God was already our inheritance. What could have been received through communion, we tried to seize through grasping. What was meant to be given in love, we reached for in desire.

And in the reaching, something broke. Their eyes opened, but not to glory. Only to shame (Genesis 3:7). Hearts that once lived open to God turned inward and hid from the Presence that still walked in the garden (Genesis 3:8). Communion became exile.

Sin as Broken Communion and Blindness

For the mystic, sin is not simply breaking rules. It is breaking communion. Augustine captures it in his Confessions: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” Restlessness is the echo of what we lost. It is the ache of a heart turned from the fountain of life, thirsting for water while standing beside the spring. Jeremiah gave it his own words: “My people have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

Gregory of Nyssa, the great contemplative, saw humanity as created for an endless ascent into God. Our destiny was always to go deeper into beauty without end. But in the fall, our gaze turned from the Infinite to ourselves. We lost our horizon. We curved inwards. The soul that was meant to climb into God instead closed in on itself.

This is why the mystics often speak of sin as blindness. John of the Cross wrote of the dark night, when the soul cannot perceive the light even though it surrounds her. That is Eden’s exile. The Presence never left. The light still shines in the darkness, but our eyes have forgotten how to see it (John 1:5).

God’s Presence Remains After the Fall

And yet, even here, grace remains.

God does not abandon Adam and Eve to their shame. He clothes them with garments (Genesis 3:21). He keeps walking, keeps calling: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). This is not the cry of a detective chasing criminals. It is the voice of a lover searching for his beloved. Even in exile, God follows. Even in our turning, he does not turn.

Julian of Norwich, reflecting on human sin, once heard Christ speak these words to her: “Sin is behovely, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” For her, sin was not the end. It was the place where mercy would be revealed.

We are dust, but dust still held by God’s breath. We are exiles, but never outside his gaze. The wound is real, but so is the promise. The God who made us to share in his own life will not rest until we do.

A Contemplative Practice

Take a few minutes today to sit quietly. Place your hand on your chest. Feel your breath rise and fall. With each inhale, pray: “In You I live.” With each exhale, pray: “In You I rest.”

As you breathe, remember that the first breath you ever received was God’s. Even in exile, his life still holds you.

Running Between Worlds: A Poetic Retelling of Hebrews 11–12:2

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment
Five shadowed figures walk along a narrow path through a golden field toward distant mountains, under a dark, moody sky.

I think of faith, and it feels like a pulse beneath the skin.
Not loud.
Not something you can point to.
Just the quiet certainty that what we hope for is already alive, even when the eyes see nothing.

This is how they lived, those who came before us.
They stepped forward into places they could not see.
They believed a voice that spoke before time began.
The world was called out of nothing, from what no hand could hold.

I remember Abel, whose blood still sings.
Enoch, who walked with God until the earth could no longer keep him.
Noah, hammering wood while the sky stayed clear.
Abraham, leaving the warmth of the known, set up tents in a land that was only his by promise.
Sarah, laughing at the thought, then held laughter itself in her arms.

The dying blesses the living.
The bound blessing the free.
The exiles blessed the land they had never touched.

Some saw seas open.
Some saw walls crumble.
Some silenced the mouths of lions.
Others felt the weight of chains, the teeth of the saw.
They wandered deserts, hid in caves, clothed in skins, strangers, the world was not worthy of.

And all of them died still looking forward,
eyes lit by a promise that waited for us too.

So here we are, surrounded by their presence,
their stories still breathing in the air around us.
We let go of what weighs us down.
We shake free from the sin that clings like a shadow.
We run, slow and steady, breath after breath,
our eyes on Jesus.

He is the one who began this faith.
He is the one who will bring it to completion.
For joy beyond the grave, He endured the cross.
He bore the shame and broke its hold.
And now He rests in light, at the right hand of God.

The God Who Refuses to Behave: Wrestling with God at Peniel

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I’ve been told God is tidy. Predictable.

A polite guest who knocks at the door of my heart (Revelation 3:20)
and waits patiently until I invite Him in.

Calm. Respectable.
Never raising His voice.
Never moving a chair out of place
unless I have done something so bad He cannot ignore it.

But that is not the God I have met.

The God I know does not knock.

He storms in
like a summer squall,
blowing the screen door off its hinges.

I have felt Him in the sting of sudden tears while washing dishes.
In the silence after a friend spoke truth I did not want to hear.
In the way a bush can blaze in the middle of nowhere (Exodus 3:2).

He walks through locked rooms (John 20:19).
He meets you in the night for a wrestling with God
until you cannot tell if you are losing or being saved
just as Jacob did at Peniel (Genesis 32:24–30).

Some days I love Him for this.
Some days I do not.

Not the God of Neat Theology

I used to think faith was holding the right answers in a tight grip.

I could draw the Trinity’s diagram.
Recite the problem of evil like a manual.
God as a solved equation.

But He slipped through my grip.

Like wind through a cracked window
rattling the frame.

Job knew this.
He asked for reasons and got a whirlwind (Job 38–41).

Questions instead of answers.
Not cruelty, invitation.
Awe, not explanation.

The Bible’s God has edges.

Fire on Sinai (Exodus 19:18).
A whisper Elijah almost misses (1 Kings 19:12).
Splitting seas (Exodus 14:21–22).
Walking gardens at dusk (Genesis 3:8).

Same God.
No one pattern.
The same untameable God who shows up in ways we never expect.

The Unmanageable Presence

We put Him in systems.
Creeds.
Charts.

Doctrine matters.
But I have seen how beautiful cages still hold prisoners.

And the God inside always finds a way out.

Jeremiah sees almond blossoms in winter (Jeremiah 1:11–12).
Hosea marries the unfaithful (Hosea 3:1).
Mary gives birth in straw and animal breath (Luke 2:7).

None of it fits the script.

The mystics knew.

Meister Eckhart prayed, “God, rid me of God.”
Julian of Norwich called Him “our clothing”
close as skin
but also a love without edge or floor.

The Rebellion of Love

I have heard Him in creation groaning (Romans 8:22).
In the psalmist’s clenched fist:
“Awake, O Lord! Why do You sleep?” (Psalm 44:23).

I have seen Him in the eyes of the crucified
where my answers go to die (Mark 15:34).

I do not want the domesticated god anymore.

The god who never interrupts.
The god who never overturns.

The real God flips tables (John 2:15).
Strips my blankets.
Leaves me with Himself.

No roadmap.
No checklist.

Just a Presence.
Wild. Untameable.
Too beautiful to bear for long.

The Limp of Faith: Wrestling with God

Jacob left Peniel with a blessing and a limp.

The limp is holy.
The awkward walk of those who have been wrestling with God
and lived to tell of it.

I have learned to live with mine.
To let mystery sit where certainty used to.

God’s ways are higher (Isaiah 55:8–9).
Not just in glory
in strangeness too.

Let the theologians frown.
Let the pious keep their polite God.

I will take the One who wrestles me until dawn.
Who wounds to heal.
Who tears down my idols
and gives me Himself.

The Dangerous God Who Saves

He will not fit my doctrines.
But He will fit my wounds.

He splits seas.
Mends hearts.
Consumes like fire (Hebrews 12:29).
Hides me like a refuge (Psalm 32:7).

He will not behave.
And that is good news.

Because a God who will not behave
is a God who will cross every line to find me.

Even the line between life and death.

If that is dangerous theology
then give me more danger.

And if You will not behave

If You will not behave
neither will I.

I will not pray tidy prayers.
I will pray with fists.
With silence.
With the names I do not know how to use for You.

If You will not stay in the lines
take me with You.

Past the fences.
Past the rules.
Past the maps I drew to keep from getting lost.

Find me in the dark.
Wrestle me to the ground.

Bless me with the limp
that teaches me how to walk.

And I will call it love.

Written in Heaven

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A biblical theology of suffering and hope

Suffering will find you

as it found Him.

But your name is written in heaven,

In light no shadow can touch.

In the beginning,

God breathed into dust

and called it good.

But even before the dust was firm beneath our feet,

a shadow waited.

The Serpent spoke,

and we listened.

The Garden shrank behind flaming swords,

and we stepped into the world

with thorns in our hands

and longing in our bones.

(Genesis 3)

Pain was not the beginning

but it was the consequence of forgetting

who we are.

Still, God did not turn away.

He clothed the shame.

He called the wanderers.

He wrestled with Jacob,

wept with Hannah,

answered Job not with reasons

but with a storm.

He carved covenant into stone,

carried the cries of Israel through wilderness,

and spoke comfort even in exile.

(Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Lamentations)

And when words would no longer suffice,

The Word became flesh (John 1).

Not safe flesh,

not unmarked flesh

but bruised, bloody, breakable.

He came not to explain suffering

but to inhabit it.

To be born under empire,

to labour in obscurity,

to sweat blood,

to carry a cross.

“He was a man of sorrows,

acquainted with grief.”

(Isaiah 53:3)

The God of the cosmos

entered the wound of the world

and made it His dwelling place.

The cross is not a detour.

It is the way.

“If anyone would follow me,” He says,

“Let them deny themselves,

take up their cross daily,

and follow.”

(Luke 9:23)

This is not cruelty.

It is an invitation.

To union. To dying. To resurrection.

To be baptised not only in water,

but into His death.

(Romans 6:3–5)

And yet

your name is written in heaven.

(Luke 10:20)

This is what He told them, not after comfort, but after conflict.

Not when they were safe, but when they were sent.

When they saw demons fall and darkness tremble,

He said:

“Do not rejoice in this…”

“Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Because what matters

is not that you wield power,

but that you are known.

Held.

Remembered.

Inscribed in the eternal.

“See, I have engraved you

on the palms of my hands.”

(Isaiah 49:16)

The apostles knew.

They were beaten and blessed.

Scattered and sealed.

They rejoiced to suffer disgrace for the Name. (Acts 5:41)

Paul was no stranger to thorns

in the flesh, in the church, in his prayers.

And yet he wrote:

“We suffer with Him,

that we may also be glorified with Him.”

(Romans 8:17)

“These light and momentary afflictions

are preparing for us

an eternal weight of glory.”

(2 Corinthians 4:17)

Even creation groans, but not in despair,

in birth.

(Romans 8:22)

The Spirit does not take away the ache.

The Spirit groans with us.

Prays when we have no words.

Dwells in the dust with us

until all things are made new.

And they will be.

For He will come again.

Not as a suffering servant,

but as the One who wipes every tear.

(Revelation 21:4)

And He will not forget.

He will open the book, the Lamb’s book

and read the names

that the world has tried to erase.

The names written in heaven

before the foundations of the world.

(Revelation 13:8)

Yours among them.

Suffering is not the evidence that you are lost.

It is the path of the saints,

the shape of the cross,

the echo of Eden groaning toward glory.

And you,

even as you weep,

even when you are wounded—

are not forgotten.

Your name is written in heaven,

in light no shadow can touch.

And the One who knows it

still bears scars of His own.