Two Kingdoms

The Bible and all of creation declares that God is the Sovereign creator and ruler over everything, everywhere, always and forever, including everything that happens on the earth. The Bible is also clear, (and it is observable), that all people who have ever lived on the earth, now and in the past, are born sinful.

Throughout Scripture, the Bible teaches that there are two categories of sinful people, described in various ways:

• Forgiven sinners or unforgiven sinners
• Saved or unsaved
• Redeemed or unredeemed
• Spiritually alive or spiritually dead
• Regenerate or unregenerate
• Having hope or having no hope
• Citizens of the Kingdom of Light or of the Kingdom of Darkness

In his greeting to the Colossian church, Paul reminded the saved people there what God the Father has mercifully and miraculously done for all true believers:

“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Colossians 1:13 (ESV)

The Kingdom of Light

In other places in Scripture these two kingdoms are referred to using different words. The “Kingdom of Light” is also called “The Kingdom of Heaven,” and “The Kingdom of God.” Bible prophets and Apostles have have also written about what Jesus referred to as an eventual physical “Kingdom of God.”

For now, beginning with Jesus’ birth and until His return to the earth, His Kingdom of followers is the spiritual Kingdom of God. The spiritual Kingdom of God is no less real than the coming earthly, physical kingdom. It is the true, fully functional, everlasting Kingdom of Jesus’ followers, who, by God’s grace, through faith in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, have been redeemed from death and sin and are now citizens of the Kingdom of God over which Jesus Christ is King. They belong to Jesus and are no longer of the family of Adam (in Adam), but are reborn out of eternal death to eternal life in the family of God, (in Christ.)

The Kingdom of Darkness

The Kingdom of Darkness is also referred to in Scripture as “The Kingdom of the World.”

Those who are citizens of the Kingdom of God may still be IN the world but they are no longer OF the world. They are the people OF God. The unforgiven, unsaved people who are not believing followers of Jesus, are both IN the world and OF the world. This brings us back to the truth that every person is either a citizen of the Kingdom of God (Light) or a citizen of the Kingdom of Darkness (world).

Although the term ‘darkness’ is mainly associated with evil, evil is the consequence. The real issue in the term ‘darkness’ is that of blind deception. There is no human knowledge, spiritual quest, intellect, human virtue, good intention or religious ritual that can transfer any person to the Kingdom of God from the Kingdom of Darkness. The lie perpetuated throughout human history that there is such a possibility is a foundational deception that began with the fall of man because of sin as described in Genesis.

The following passages of Scripture further describe the spiritual and mental condition of people who are the unsaved citizens of the Kingdom of Darkness:

“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles* do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” Ephesians 4:17-19 (ESV)

(*In Scripture, the term “Gentiles” often refers to all unsaved people who are pagan and do not know God.)

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” 1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)

When Nicodemus, one of the Jewish rulers privately questioned Jesus about His identity, Jesus gave the following explanations:

“This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him,”Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3 (ESV)

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.” John 3:19-20 (ESV)

Jesus described the inability to see or understand anything but the deception of the world as blindness and deafness
, belonging to the family of the devil, being a sheep of another shepherd…

“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 (ESV)

“And you (now believers) were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Ephesians 2:1-3 (ESV)

In the final words to His followers in John 14-17, Jesus referred to the condition of being in or of the world and what would take place for His followers once He was no longer physically in the world with them.(ESV)

“new verse here (ESV)