Our Lord during His earthly ministry spoke frequently of the gospel of the kingdom. (Mt 9:35).  He often would speak of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 3:2; 4:17). After He was blasphemed, recorded in Matthew 12:24-31 (His miracles attributed to Satan), He spoke to His disciples privately in Matthew 13 about the mysteries of the kingdom. “To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God...” (Mk 4:11).

The cross is at the center of God’s plan of glory, rescue, and restoration. It is at the cross that the triumph of God’s Kingdom is accomplished. At the cross He battles the power of evil and gains the decisive victory (Col 2:11-15). His resurrection is the dawning of the first day of the new creation. The end of universal history that Jesus announced will finally arrive in fulness. The gospel of the Kingdom is an announcement about where God is moving the history of the whole world. Jesus employs a popular Old Testament image to drive this home: one day the world will be the Kingdom of God.

It is the premise of this article thatgenuine Christ-followers have ‘seen’ by faith the worth of the King and His Kingdom. Therefore, the spiritual sight of the Kingdom exerts a continuous controlling factor in their Christian walk; moving them to hope, holiness, love, and diligence. Thus, what God has done, and will do, through Christ in the inauguration the Kingdom of God is the pervasive mindset of a true disciple—we are calling this mindset, “kingdom consciousness.”

The premise of this article is that where the glory of Christ is central in the life of a local church, our Lord’s mandate of disciple-making will not require arm-twisting. By glory of Christ, we are not only referring to the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:34-36; Phil 2:9-11), but also to the entirety of Christ’s redemptive work including His glory in the church, His preeminence, majesty and centrality in heaven, His present intercession, and the glorious destiny of His church in His eternal presence (2 Thess 2:13-14).