The Incarnation is already the beginning of the coming of Christ's Kingdom, which includes, but is not ideentical with, the Kingdom of Heaven or of God. The preaching of the “Gospel of the Kingdom” therefore opens with the same good news announced by the Forerunner and by Christ: “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” The Kingdom of Heaven (= the Kingdom of God)
simultaneously has immanent, transcendent, and historical aspects. In its immanent aspect, it is spiritual and religious;
it is the life in God: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
(Mat 5:3).
The Kingdom is taken “by force”
(11:12),
and its crowning is “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”
(Rom 14:17).
In its transcendent aspect, the Kingdom of God arrives through God's action in the world and upon the world: “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”
(Mat 25:34).
It also has a historical and apocalyptic aspect: It is the one-thousand-year reign of the saints with Christ, His coming in glory. The concept of the Kingdom of God is many-sided;
it does not even fit within the frame of Christology but spills over into pneumatology (as well as into general triadology). However, the coming of the Kingdom of God into the world begins with and is essentially connected with Christ's
enthronement.
… We must first distinguish two forms of His enthronement or His royal ministry (which are the same thing):
before
and
after
His glorification in the Resurrection and the Ascension.
… The irresistible nature of the figure of Christ and of His words is that unique power by which He is enthroned in souls;
and only by this power was He, the meek King, enthroned in the Holy City during those brief hours when He was the King in Jerusalem. He renounced the
other
power, however, the power of this world, which power was for Him the final temptation from the prince of this world, who acted through the instruments obedient to him:
"If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him"
(Matt. 27:42;
cf.
Mark 15:32;
Luke 23:37).
But He remained defenseless in the hands of His enemies, drinking the cup given to Him by the Father.
This obedience was His victory over the world, His enthronement over the world, which was attested by the inscription on the cross:
"King of the Jews."
This refers not to the reign of God in the world and over the world as the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, but to the Divine-Human reign instituted on the earth by the feat of the God-Man. …