|
|
Chapter 2. The Poor in Spirit (1)
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ Matthew 5.3.
Of one thing we may be quite certain; the throng of disciples gathered around Jesus on the Galilean hillside would not, for the most part, be particularly rich in the treasures of this world. The Romans imposed heavy taxation of various kinds on their Jewish subjects, most of whom were already finding it hard enough to make ends meet. It seems that, apart from wealthy aristocrats and the Sadducees whom the aristocracy supported, only tax-collectors and others who were prepared to collaborate with their Roman overlords grew rich in those days.
 So was it to the material poverty of those before him that Jesus was drawing attention when he uttered this, the first of his Beatitudes? Some argue that indeed it was; and they point out that, according to Luke, Jesus said, ‘Blessed are you who are poor’ (Luke 6.20), not, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’. The authentic version is, they claim, that of Luke, and Matthew has distorted it by spiritualising it. Jesus was addressing those who were economically impoverished and promising them economical riches in his coming kingdom.
However attractive such a view might appear to its proponents, it is not one that finds any support in Scripture. Although Jesus had compassion on the poor and needy, he never offered them material prosperity either in this world or the world to come. But neither did he ever hold out economic destitution as something either to be desired or to be glad about.
This is not to deny that God might call particularly individuals to get rid of their riches. Jesus called the rich young man to take just such a step (Matthew 19.21) but only, it seems, because riches had captured his heart (Note 1). There is nothing to indicate that Jesus ever criticised the affluence of his close
 |
Note 1
Interestingly enough, he was to use the proceeds to relieve the poverty of others, which, paradoxically, would deprive those others of blessing if this Beatitude related to the economically poor! |
|
|
friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus (John 12.3), or the wealth of Joseph of Arimathea — ‘a rich man ... a disciple of Jesus’ and ‘a good and upright man’ (Matthew 27.57; Luke 23.50). The Master seemed well-enough pleased with Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who, upon his conversion, gave away ‘half’ (but only half) of his possessions to the poor (Luke 19.8). And when Jesus told his parable of the rich man who tore down his existing barns and built bigger ones to house all his grain and his goods, he condemned the man not for his riches but for trusting in them and for being ‘not rich towards God’ (Luke 12.16-21).
In short, no sanction for a call to economic poverty can be found in the first Beatitude; and, outside such a call, such poverty is not a condition that God can or does bless in any special way. Furthermore, those who purport to find in the first Beatitude a basis and commendation for the monastic vow of poverty are mistaken.
Neither Matthew nor Luke is guilty of misrepresentation. Both have accurately reported what Jesus said. Luke has recorded an exact translation of the Master’s words while Matthew has precisely recorded the Master’s meaning. According to both, Jesus was speaking of spiritual poverty. Maybe it was the economic destitution of those before him that provoked the Beatitude, but it was of inner poverty, more akin to humility, on which he pronounced God’s blessing. How can we be so sure? By going behind the text.
In the Greek of the New Testament there are two expressions for ‘the poor’. One is hoi penês and the other is hoi ptôchoi. The first refers to those for whom life is a constant struggle to make ends meet, those who keep body and soul together only by dint of hard graft. The second describes those who have fallen way below any such subsistence level and are in utter destitution — people like the prodigal son who, when he had reached rock-bottom, ‘longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no-one gave him anything’ (Luke 15.16); people like the ‘beggar’ (ptôchos) named Lazarus who, in Jesus’ parable, sat at the rich man’s gate, ‘covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table’ (Luke 16.20). Ptôchoi comes from the verb ptôsseô which means ‘to crouch or to cower’. Hoi ptôchoi are people beaten to their knees by poverty. As has often been said: hoi penês have nothing to spare, hoi ptôchoi have nothing at all. And it is hoi ptôchoi to whom the first Beatitude is addressed according to both Matthew 5.3 and Luke 6.20.
But we have already noted that Jesus would have spoken these Beatitudes not in Greek but in Aramaic, and there lies the clue to the meaning of ‘the
|
Notes 2 and 3
2. Pronounced a-nee-yeem and ah-nee respectively.
3. Probably miskene’. |
|
|
poor’. The Hebrew word that was customarily translated by hoi ptochoi in Jesus’ day was ’anîyîm, the plural form of ’anî (Note 2), so we can take it as a near certainty that Jesus would have used the Aramaic equivalent of that word (Note 3). And it is a word that would have been rich in meaning to those who heard him utter it.
It was, at first, used in the Old Testament to signify people who were destitute solely in economic terms. Moses tells the Israelites: ‘I command you to be open-handed towards your brothers and towards the poor and needy in your land’ (Deuteronomy 15.11). But it did not remain a word that merely
|
Note 4
In English, too, the term ‘poor’ often conveys the idea of affliction rather than economic destitution. We say: ‘Poor John. He’s broken his leg and has had to cancel his holiday’. |
|
|
described material poverty. It began to take up a sense of the oppression and affliction that often accompanied such poverty (Note 4), and it began to take up another element too.
‘You evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor, but the Lord is their refuge’ (Psalms 14.6). ‘My whole being will exclaim, “Who is like you, O Lord? You rescue the poor from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them”’ (Psalms 35.10).
The word ‘poor’ in those verses is exhibiting a spiritual connotation. The destitute and afflicted could react to their plight in one of two ways. They could become cynical about the blessing of God, blame him for their misfortune and rebel against him, or they could pin their faith in him and look for a wider outcome to his blessing than mere economic prosperity. The word ‘poor’ came to be used as a term to describe those second kind of people; the ones who, because they had nothing, had learned to put all their trust in God. ‘This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles’ (Psalms 34.6). ‘The poor will see and be glad — you who seek God, may your hearts live!’ (Psalms 69.32). ‘Yet I am poor and needy; come quickly to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay (Psalms 70.5).
Commenting on the term, ’anî, in Psalm 18.27 (where the NIV has, ‘You save the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty’), Derek Kidner says: ‘These are the under-dogs, who meet us
|
Note 5
Psalms 1-72, Derek Kidner (1973, Inter-Varsity Press), p 94. His references are to the RSV. The companion word he mentions, ’anaw (pronounced a-now), more often means ‘meek’ and is dealt with in depth in Chapter 4. |
|
|
frequently in the Psalms, not only as the ‘humble’ (here), but translated better as ‘the poor’ (eg 10.2), ‘the afflicted’ (eg 22.24), ‘the weak’ (35.10), and ‘the needy’ (68.10). They correspond to the ‘poor’ in the first Beatitude, as being those who are in need and know it. A companion word, ’anaw is also translated in most of these ways ...’ (Note 5).
In the prophets, this use of the term is widespread:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him — the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord — and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked (Isaiah 11.1-4).
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion — to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isaiah 61.1-3).
Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?’ — skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat. The Lord has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: ‘I will never forget anything they have done’ (Amos 8:4-7).
On that day you will not be put to shame for all the wrongs you have done to me, because I will remove from this city those who rejoice in their pride. Never again will you be haughty on my holy hill. But I will leave within you the meek [literally: ‘poor’] and humble, who trust in the name of the LORD. The remnant of Israel will do no wrong; they will speak no lies, nor will deceit be found in their mouths. They will eat and lie down and no-one will make them afraid (Zephaniah 3.11-13).
There can be no doubt that the Greek expression, hoi ptôchoi, that we find in the first Beatitude obtains much of its meaning from texts such as these.
|
Notes 6, 7 and 8
6. New Testament Theology, Volume 1, 1971, SCM Press Ltd, p 112.
7. This more often means ‘meek’ and is dealt with in depth in Chapter 4.
8. New Testament Theology, Volume 1, 1971, SCM Press Ltd, p 113. |
|
|
Joachim Jeremias says: ‘hoi ptôchoi means the humble, those who are poor before God, who stand before God as beggars, with empty hands, conscious of their spiritual poverty’ (Note 6). And referring to the Hebrew term ’anî and the closely-related term ’anaw (Note 7), Professor Jeremias goes on to say: ‘Originally a designation for the desolate, in the prophets the word embraces the oppressed and the poor who know that they are thrown completely on God’s help. Jesus used “the poor” in this wide sense that the term had acquired in the prophets’ (Note 8).
If we wish to know what this quality of spirit looks like when it is present in flesh and blood humanity, we need look no further than Moses and David.
Until he was forty years old, Moses had a life of privilege and luxury as a prince of the household of Pharaoh; but then he threw it all away by slaying an Egyptian in an attempt to help his own people. He fled to Midian, married Zipporah, the daughter of a priest, and, for the next forty years, lived a life of obscurity and hardship, tending the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, in the wilderness of Sinai and Midian. Then, when God finally called him at the age of eighty to lead his people to freedom, his response was: ‘Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? ... I am slow of speech and tongue ... O Lord, please send someone else to do it’ (Exodus 3.11; 4.10, 13). Some say that Moses was being cowardly, but he was not; he was displaying the poverty in spirit that his exile in Midian had wrought in him. He had been given much time to reflect upon, and reject, the spirit of self-sufficiency that had led him to strike down that Egyptian and to think that he, in his own strength, could resolve the problems of his own people. So now he comes before God with empty hands: ‘Who am I ...?’
That is what it means to be poor in spirit. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews says: ‘By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be ill-treated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward (Hebrews 11.24-26). He was rich towards God.
Another example of poverty of spirit is given in David. Though he went out against Goliath with a sling, he went out trusting wholly in the Lord, with hands that were empty before him. He told Saul: ‘The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine’ (1 Samuel 17.37). And he told Goliath: ‘You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied’ (1 Samuel 17.45).
Whereas, in economic terms, David travelled in the opposite direction to Moses, going from shepherd to king, his rise to fame and fortune never diminished his sense of destitution before God. When the ark of the Lord was being brought to Jerusalem, David did not watch from the window with Michal, the daughter of Saul, as would have befitted a king, but, dressed only in a linen shift, ‘danced before the Lord with all his might’ (2 Samuel 6.14). And when Michal reproached him, he replied that he was not dancing for her eyes: ‘It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel — I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes’ (2 Samuel 6.21-22).
Then, later, when the prophet, Nathan, delivered to him the Lord’s message: ‘Your house and your kingdom shall endure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever’ (2 Samuel 7.16), David went in and sat before the Lord, and he said:
Who am I, O Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign Lord, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign Lord? What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Sovereign Lord. For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant. How great you are, O Sovereign Lord! There is no-one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears (2 Samuel 7.18-22).
His opening words were an echo of those spoken by Moses, and were spoken out of the same poverty of spirit. Indeed, although David was economically the wealthiest man in Israel, ‘living in a palace of cedar’ (2 Samuel 7.2), he could, in his prayers, do no more than plead his destitution before God. ‘Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay’ (Psalms 40.17 — ‘Of David’). ‘Hear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy’ (Psalms 86.1 — ‘A prayer of David’). ‘For I am poor and needy’ (Psalm 109.22 — ‘Of David’). No wonder God called him ‘a man after my own heart’ (Acts 13.22).
It is tempting to continue this explanation of the term ‘poor’ by looking at a second strand of meaning that became woven into it during the time of the Seleucid rule in Palestine in the inter-Testamental period, but it would not be right to do so here. The reason is this. That second strand of meaning is aptly summarised in the phrase ‘those who are persecuted because of righteousness’ which Jesus holds forth as a separate and distinct ground of blessing in the eighth of his Beatitudes. It should be noted that the outcome of the blessing specified there is identical with the outcome of the blessing specified here in the first beatitude — ‘theirs is the kingdom of heaven’, and the reason is this. Those who were recognised by Jesus and the people of his day as ‘the poor in the land’ were those who had acquired that epithet not only by being poor in spirit but also by their willingness to be persecuted because of righteousness.
In crafting and structuring his Beatitudes, then, Jesus seized upon the two chief characteristics of this class of humble, faithful souls who formed the true heart of Israel, and he used those characteristics to bracket and hold in place the six other characteristics which all of God’s kingdom people should possess — characteristics which, as Jesus saw it perhaps, ‘the poor of the
|
Note 9
’Jesus’ Beatitudes ... are a summons and a promise. Who are those that are addressed? The first beatitude names them and includes in itself all that follows: "Blessed are you poor ..."’ Jesus of Nazareth, Gunther Bornkamm, 1960, Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, p 75. |
|
|
land’ already did possess in some measure, along with their poverty of spirit and their readiness to face persecution because of righteousness (Note 9).
That being so, I have not presumed to join together what God has put asunder, and I have deferred until the final chapter — Persecuted because of Righteousness — a detailed examination of this second strand of meaning that attaches to ‘the poor’. Here, instead, we must move on to consider the nature of the blessing which the poor in spirit receive.
At the dawn of Narnia, Aslan brings a London cabby and his wife into the new world and tells them: ‘You are to be the first King and Queen of Narnia ... You shall rule and name all these creatures, and do justice among them, and protect them from their enemies when enemies arise ...’
The cabby swallows hard two or three times then clears his throat and says: ‘Begging your pardon, sir, and thanking you very much I’m sure (which my Missus does the same) but I ain’t no sort of a chap for a job like that. I
|
Notes 10 and 11
10. The Magician’s Nephew, C S Lewis, 1963, Puffin Books, Chapter 11.
11. Matthew prefers to use the expression ‘the kingdom of heaven’ where Mark and Luke prefer to use the expression ‘the kingdom of God’ (eg Matthew 19.23-24=Mark 10.23-25=Luke 18.24-25). It is a circumlocution by which, as a pious Jew, he avoids the risk of taking the name of God in vain (cf Daniel 4.26). |
|
|
never ’ad much eddycation, you see’ (Note 10). What he fails to realise is that his poverty of spirit, his humility, is the very ground on which he is being given the kingdom.
On this earth, the blessing given to the poor in spirit is that ‘theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Note 11); and a number of questions immediately spring to mind. What is meant by ‘theirs’? Does it mean that the kingdom ‘belongs’ to the poor in spirit and, if so, what kind of belonging is in mind? Second, what is the force of the word ‘is’? To what extent is the kingdom a present possession of those to whom it belongs? To what extent does it remain future? And, finally, just what is ‘the kingdom of heaven’? Where is it? What did that expression mean to the disciples gathered around Jesus’ feet?
It will be best to consider these questions in reverse order. The word Jesus would have used for ‘kingdom’ would have been the Aramaic word, malkûta which is cognate with the Hebrew word, malkût. And the important thing about these words is that they rarely have a territorial, spatial or static significance but almost always carry a dynamic force. So although malkût is usually translated as ‘kingdom’ in the Old Testament, its more precise meaning is ‘kingly power, active reign, dynamic rule, dominion’. Psalm 145 underlines this significance of the word: ‘They will tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might, so that all men may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendour of your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations’ (Psalms 145.11-13). Here ‘kingdom’ is linked in synonymous parallelism first with ‘might’, then with ‘mighty acts’ and finally with ‘dominion’.
The expression, ‘kingdom of heaven’ — malkût shamayîm — is not one that ever appears in the Old Testament; though the author of another of the psalms came quite close to coining it: ‘The Lord has established his throne in heaven [shamayîm], and his kingdom [malkût] rules over all’ (Psalms 103.19). But what that verse and the verses from Psalm 145 show is that the people of Israel had a strongly-developed belief in the sovereignty of God long before Jesus spoke of it. However, we need to be clear what that belief was.
First, it was the recognition (given by those psalms) that God was, always had been and always would be, the one true king — not only of the Jews themselves but of the entire universe. His sovereignty was absolute, and he could do anything he wanted, anytime, anywhere, anyhow. But, to the bewilderment of his people — who declared his sovereignty by obeying his law — God, more often than not, showed no great inclination to do the things they wanted him to. He frequently declined to exercising his dominion and might. Instead, he sat on his throne in the heavens, allowing individuals, tribes and nations to do all manner of evil, even against his chosen race, and he rarely lifted a finger against them. What explanation could there be? Only that God was biding his time. Only that he had appointed a future ‘day’ when he would visit this earth in power and majesty — to right all wrongs, to restore Israel, to vanquish her enemies, to bring wholeness and healing and peace; a day when he would come here in the person of the ‘Son of David’ and, in accordance with the royal covenant, establish a house and a kingdom that would endure for ever (2 Samuel 7:16); a day when, in a fully realised sense: ‘The Lord will be king over the whole earth’ (Zechariah 14.9).
We see these two aspects of the ‘kingdom’ side by side in the book of Daniel. King Nebuchadrezzar says: ‘Then I praised the Most High; I honoured and glorified him who lives for ever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation’ (Daniel 4.34). But Nebuchadrezzar is talking there of the ongoing largely- unrealised rule of God. Earlier, Daniel has told him of kingdoms to come and of an end-time universal and fully-realised rule of God; a future time when ‘the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure for ever’ (Daniel 2.44). That is the kingdom which the heralds of Isaiah 52.7 announce to Zion with the words: ‘Your God reigns!’ And that is the kingdom of which Jesus spoke.
What Jesus proclaimed was that, with his arrival in Palestine, that end-time kingdom had dawned. And the kingdom had dawned because he was the king (Matthew 2.2) and God’s dominion was being exercised through him. The disciples watched with awe as he stilled the Sea of Galilee and they whispered to each other: ‘Even the wind and the waves obey him!’ (Mark 4.41). And so did the powers of darkness. Jesus himself declared: ‘But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you’ (Matthew 12.28). What Jesus wanted people to understand was that every time a cripple walked, or a blind man received his sight, or a leper was cleansed, or a fever was dismissed, or a dead person was raised to life, or sins were forgiven, or bread and fishes were multiplied, or water was turned into wine — every time any of these things took place, the kingly rule of God was being exercised and the kingdom had, in some measure, come. Jesus said of his own activity: ‘From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing’ (Matthew 11:12). Paul would later say: ‘For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power’ (1 Corinthians 4.20).
When Jesus came to earth, he came to overthrow the kingdom of darkness. He himself said: ‘Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out’ (John 12.31). And John would later say: ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work’ (1 John 3:8).
It was true that the kingdom of darkness would not be fully obliterated and the kingdom of heaven would not be fully consummated until Jesus had returned in glory, but the day of obliteration and consummation had at least dawned. And Jesus wanted people to understand that it had dawned in him.
|
Notes 12, 13 and 14
12. In the Greek, ‘absolute Kingdom’ is autobasileia. Commentary on the Gospel According to Matthew, Book XIV, Chapter 7. Exposition Continued: The King and the Servants, Origen.
13. The Sayings of Jesus, T W Manson, 1949, SCM Press, p 345.
14. Power Evangelism, John Wimber and Kevin Springer, 1992, Hodder & Stoughton, p 30. |
|
|
The divine authority and might and dominion and power that he exercised was the kingdom and it emanated from him alone. ‘Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you”’ (Luke 17.20-21). Jesus was, in his own person, the kingdom of heaven, the sovereignty of God, the overthrow of Satan. Origen rightly says: ‘He is absolute Kingdom’ (Note 12). T W Manson calls him ‘the incarnation of the Kingdom of God’ and adds: ‘The ministry of Jesus is no mere prelude to the coming of the Kingdom, nor even a preparation for it: it is the Kingdom at work in the world’ (Note 13). John Wimber says: ‘Every miraculous act had a purpose: to confront people with his message that in him the kingdom had come’ (Note 14).
But the kingdom that had come in Jesus was not the nationalistic, worldly kingdom for which many Jews were looking. We are told that, after the feeding of the five thousand, ‘Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself’ (John 6.15). The irony was that he already was king — they could not ‘make him king’ — and his feeding of the multitude had been a demonstration of his kingly rule and authority. But that was not the kind of kingdom that the crowds were seeking. They wanted a kingdom that carried with it the overthrow of Rome, the settlement of old scores, territorial expansion, economic prosperity, political autocracy. In Biblical terms, they wanted the kingdom under which ‘Judah’s enemies’ would be ‘cut off’ and in which Jesus, the Root of Jesse, would ‘stand as a banner for the peoples ... to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people ... and gather the exiles of Israel’ (Isaiah 11.10-14). Even Jesus’ disciples had such thoughts. Cleopas and his companion told the unrecognised, risen Jesus who walked beside them on the Emmaus road: ‘We had hoped that he [Jesus] was the one who was going to redeem Israel’ (Luke 24.21). So, over the period of forty days following his resurrection, Jesus spoke to them ‘about the kingdom of God’(Acts 1.3), but, at the end, they were still asking him: ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ (Acts 1.6).
The answer was not a ‘No’ but it was a ‘Not yet’. Jesus had told Pilate: ‘You are right in saying I am a king’ (John 18.37), but he had also told him: ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place’ (John 18.36). The kingdom of Jesus originated with his Father, in heaven, not on earth; and, for the present, it had a heavenly, not an earthly, nature. The kingdom of Jesus was the rule of God on earth; nothing more, nothing less. Wherever God’s will was done, on earth as it was in heaven, there was the kingdom; and that meant that the kingdom was wherever Jesus was. He was ... and is ... the kingdom of heaven.
|
