Citizenship in God's Kingdom Means Freedom from Poverty

What Americans need now is not love, sweet love. In spite of the millions who live in poverty, Americans don't need to know how to get rich. Americans need to understand the meaning of kingdom.

I have been listening to Myles Munroe teach about the biblical meaning of kingdom. He pastors a church in the Bahamas. Bahama is a state of the United Kingdom. Munroe grew up under British rule, and he was a subject of the king/queen of the United Kingdom. Unlike Americans, he knows what it is like living under the rule of a modern kingdom. One of the scriptures he has quoted is Luke 6:20:

"Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."

According to Pastor Munroe, citizens of a kingdom do not speak of getting wealth because it is the king who provides for every need of his citizens. How his citizens live reflects on his rule. Poor citizens are a curse to a king. Therefore, citizens of a good king live well because it is for his name's sake. God is a good king. The prosperity message preached today is only relevant when it is in this context.

Paul taught Jesus was a king who desires his citizens to be rich. For example, Paul wrote to the Corinthians that "the Jesus Christ became poor so that his citizens could become rich. (2 Cor. 8:9) This is the redemptive grace believers experience as a result of his substitutionary poverty.

Does this mean all followers of Jesus--his citizens--are supposed to become millionaires? No, that is not what Paul meant. Here is what he meant:

"God is able to make his grace abound to you, so that always having sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good work." (2 Cor. 9:8)

We must not be mistaken by thinking his is a divine welfare system in the modern meaning welfare politics. Paul is teaching what Jesus in effect first did: Jesus sowed his life in order to reap a kingdom. Consider what Paul wrote just prior to the above.

"He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." (9:6)

We, therefore, sow what we need by investing our surplus to reap everything we need. This a principle of kingdom economics. What if some are poor and do not have a surplus? This is not a problem for consider what else Paul wrote:

"Now He (God) who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness." (9:10)

Here is a double blessing of kingdom living. God supplies an abundance of both material things and social and moral qualities required of his citizens. Sowing and reaping as giving and getting according to God's planned economy is called obedience. This is what Jesus meant when he said:

"Seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you." (Mat. 6:33)

It is true that citizens of God's kingdom are as dependent divine government as the modern poor are on the welfare economy of liberal government. However, Jesus makes his people free while liberal governments enslave theirs. Dependent citizens and free popular government is a oxymoron.

Nevertheless, power, glory, and honor to authority are the ends of such governments--God's and man's.