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‘And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, He said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.’
Mar_12:34
I. The Kingdom.—Our Lord speaks of that Kingdom as a definite reality. It is a distinct sphere or region with a frontier line marking it off from all else. Between the law which the scribe professed and the Gospel which Christ was offering, there was a sharp, intelligible boundary, which he must cross if he would pass from one to the other.
II. Near to the Kingdom.—Christ recognises, welcomes, and rewards every approach towards that Kingdom. He does not look on all as equally distant from God until they have obeyed His call and enrolled themselves as His disciples. That which attracted our Lord in the character of the scribe was the pure instinct of natural goodness. The man had risen out of mere legalism to a rare conception of spiritual truth. Nevertheless there was a higher state for him to reach; he was on the verge of the Kingdom; he was still outside it. Why? Because, though he understood the necessity of love, he had not yet learned to love; because, though he knew how he ought to walk and to please God, he did not know himself; he had as yet no sense of his own weakness, no real perception of the evil which taints all men’s service, no consciousness of that hopeless insufficiency which can be met only from without—by a Divine Deliverer. And, more than this, he had no idea as yet of his own relation to Christ.
III. Where are we?—The Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you, and to every one of us. Christ has addressed to us that question of questions, of which no lapse of time abates the interest, and before which it has been truly said every other fades and shrinks away: What think ye of Christ? About many things we may safely remain in suspense; but about this we cannot. We must settle it with ourselves, what He is to us, whether He is only what He was to the scribe, a human Teacher of rare greatness, or whether we do accept Him for what He claims to be.
Rev. Canon Duckworth.
Illustration‘Some seem beyond the possibility of moving to a decision. They are like an Indian who fell asleep in his canoe above the waters of the foaming cataract above Woodstock on the John River. Another saw him go by, shouted, but roused him not. The canoe touched a rock, and the onlooker said, “That will awaken him.” No; on he drifted, until he found his canoe leaping and tossing in the rapids; then he stood up and in vain sought to pull away from danger, but it was too late. He was swept over the falls. So some men sleep away their chance of heaven.’
WHY WAS HE NEAR?
I. He spoke practically and sensibly, and without prejudice, as Christ expresses it, ‘discreetly.’ And the Evangelist gives this as the very reason for our Saviour’s judgment about him. The Gospel, is, indeed, the highest reason; and if a man will but cast away pre-conceived ideas, and come to the study of the subject with a free mind, and bring to bear upon it his best powers of sense and intellect, we believe that that man will always be approximating to the kingdom of truth.
II. He saw, before his age and generation, the true, relative value of the types of the Jewish church.—He recognised them as entirely inferior to the great principles of truth and love. It was a rising from the material to the spiritual. It was the seeing the invisible substances in the visible shadows. It was making way for the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a process towards the higher fields of faith.
III. His mind had travelled so far as to see that the sum and substance of all religion is love—first to God, and then, growing out of it, to man.
IV. He had been attracted to the Person of Christ.—‘The Kingdom of God’ is Christ, and Christ is ‘the Kingdom of God’; and we are all in or out of that Kingdom, or ‘near’ or ‘far’ from it, just according to what Christ is to us—absolutely in Himself, and personally to ourselves.
V. Shall we leave it an open question as to whether we are in the Kingdom or not? Did Christ leave it an open question as to whether He would save us? How did He treat the penitent thief? Had St. Paul reason to fear lest he should be a castaway, and have we none? Shall we be content to see others pass up to heaven’s gate, and pass within, while we have to stand outside? Shall we see the light of the celestial city streaming up from behind its battlemented walls, making our darkness, solitude, and despair more intense? Shall it be an open question still? If we knew we had only another month, week, day to live, would it be an open question? Decide it now—go in.
Illustration
‘Not far, not far from the Kingdom,
Yet in the shadow of sin;
How many are coming and going,
How few are entering in!
Not far from the golden gateway,
Where voices whisper and wait;
Fearing to enter in boldly,
So lingering still at the gate,
Catching the strains of the music
Floating so sweetly along;
Knowing the song they are singing,
Yet joining not in the song.
Seeing the warmth and the beauty,
The infinite love, and the light;
Yet weary, and lonely, and waiting
Out in the desolate night.
Out in the dark and the danger,
Out in the night, and the cold,
Though He is longing to lead them
Tenderly into the fold.
Not far, not far from the Kingdom,
’Tis only a little space;
But it may be at last, and for ever,
Out of the resting-place.
A ship came sailing and sailing
Over a murmuring sea,
And just in sight of the haven,
Down in the waves went she.
And the spars and the broken timbers
Were cast on a storm-beat strand,
And a cry went up in the darkness,
Not far, not far from the land!’