The Wrong Question
The Gospel of the Kingdom — Part 3
“Are you going to heaven when you die?”
You’ve heard that question. It gets used as the front door of the faith — answer it right and you’re in. It’s not a bad question. But I want you to notice something. Jesus never once asked it. Not to a single person. He preached the Kingdom, like it was the whole point.
So there’s a gap between what He preached and what we mostly hear on Sunday. Let me walk you through it.
The way it usually gets framed, there are two outcomes. You go to hell, or you go to heaven — and if you make heaven, you get everything. You’re in the club, full membership, nothing more to it. Saved is saved.
But if you actually read what Jesus said, that doesn’t hold together. Look at these side by side.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Just believe. That’s the whole condition.
Now look at Matthew.
Matthew 7:21-23 Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’
People who prophesied. People who cast out demons in His name. And He says, “I never knew you.” That is not a description of easy believing. That’s a description of a door some people don’t walk through.
And notice what He says they won’t enter. Not heaven — the kingdom of heaven. Going to heaven and entering the kingdom of heaven are two distinctly different things.
So which is it? Just believe, or do the will of the Father? If both passages are talking about the same thing, you’ve got a contradiction, and I don’t believe the Bible contradicts itself. It only makes sense if they’re talking about two different things.
Here’s what I’ve come to. Many churches have taken two different things and preached them as one.
The first one, the church calls the gospel of salvation. Now, go looking for that phrase and you’ll find it exactly once in the whole New Testament. Paul uses it in Ephesians, writing to people who had gotten saved.
Ephesians 1:13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,
That’s a strong verse, and it’s likely where the church got the idea. But notice what Paul is doing. He’s telling the Ephesians what happened to them when they believed. And Jesus never once preached a gospel by that name.
Now somebody’s going to say, “Well, of course He didn’t preach salvation. He hadn’t gone to the cross yet.” Fair enough. So look at what He preached after the cross.
Acts 1:3 To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.
Forty days. Risen from the dead. Salvation bought and paid for. And what is He talking about? The kingdom. Same message after the cross as before it.
So back to Ephesians. What Paul is describing there is the free gift. Believe, confess, and you’re out of the cage, you’re not going to hell, you transition into the spiritual realm when you die. Nothing you do earns it, and nobody can take it from you. But you can throw it away.
And then there’s the gospel of the Kingdom — which is what Jesus preached. It includes salvation, but it goes several steps past it. The Kingdom is not a free gift. It has requirements. It costs something.
Matthew 6:33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Seek first. That’s an instruction to go after something, not to receive something and sit down.
So the question “are you going to heaven when you die” turns out to be too small. It’s asking about the free gift and treating it like the finish line. The real question Jesus put in front of people was: are you going to seek the Kingdom?
And that’s where many churches have gone wrong. They treat salvation as the finish line. Somebody prays the sinner’s prayer, accepts that Jesus is God, and they count the work done. In reality, the work is just getting started. We were commanded to make disciples of all nations, not converts. And it’s much easier to make converts than disciples — because making a disciple takes time, and influence, and effort, and mentoring, and leadership. It takes picking up your cross daily and running the race.
More where this came from. Follow along.
