Want to be someone in the kingdom of God ?

[Colonel]

I'm not talking about your standing on some platform before the masses. Everyone cannot do that and it may or may not be what God has for you. I'm talking about being able to affect one's surroundings with and also without that platform.

There is only one approach that works, to be a revolutionary. There are very many men and women who have tried to be that throughout history and by employing all kinds of approaches. Including the 20th century scourge of Communism. Being a revolutionary for the wrong kind of stuff may produce some sort of a revolution and it will be as carnal as the carnality that the revolutionary cannot escape from, irrespective of the ideals he holds to and the corresponding vision he has of and for himself.

Jesus was and is a revolutionary. The first revolution was in the fact that God came to the world in the shape of a man. That changed everything. Unless they could kill him, which they couldn't. They tried but all they accomplished was to make him immortal, still in the shape of a man. Not only physically but in terms of his actual nature. His revolution was immortalized and his victory was thereby secured for eternity.

But what was he trying to accomplish ? The immortalization of himself ? Turning the tide on those who opposed him, even the tide of physical death ? No, there would be no point. He was trying to accomplish the salvation of the world. Satan didn't like that so he tried hard to have him invoke his powers as the Son of God so that he would fail to remain the revolutionary, God having become a man - a man who would die then rise again. In the garden of Gethsemane Satan tempted him again until he sweated blood. When he was subsequently arrested he demonstrated his power and it threw them to the ground but he didn't go further than that. He commented that he could have had a legion of angels come and rescue him. But then he would have ceased being the revolutionary. Which is what he came for. If not, then he would have simply rounded us up instead, judged us and then left us to spend eternity separated from God. He didn't need to come here as a man to do that.

He lives in us. Paul went as far as declaring himself dead and his life amounting to Christ living in him. Gal 2:20. Which means that the revolutionary was living in and through Paul. Which meant that Paul was a revolutionary. Not someone who had sold himself to some or other version of revolution according to some or other principle or doctrine. No, it was more fundamental than that. He was dead and the reason why was that his attitude was the same as that of Jesus, his interest was in promoting the salvation of the world. He even declared that he wished he could be accursed from Christ for his brethren to be saved instead. That is a very personal statement but it reveals his attitude.

What does a man do who is dead ? He can do only two things. Resurrect back to life, which is what every other revolutionary does who attempts to kill him- or herself for his or her revolution and they are back to a carnal version of their ideals and it doesn't work. Or allow the true revolutionary who won over death itself to resurrect in them and be their life. That was Paul's attitude. He declares in Phil 3 that he had not reached his goal of being only that but it was his consecration. Beyond his consecration, it was a process.

So what are the rewards ? Paul didn't care. Not about his rewards in this life. There is nothing in the epistles that indicate that he cared about any of that. His statement about seeking the salvation of his brethren even to the hypothetical exclusion of himself stands. Did he have any rewards in this life, beyond seeing the fruit of his labors in terms of people getting saved, healed, delivered etc ? Yes, he does talk about having plenty at times, of having rest and tranquility. That seems to be his default experience when persecution didn't pull him down temporarily. And even in that the realities of the kingdom of God in terms of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit were working in him to overpower his experience. As such God's blessings were with him and upon him throughout, according to his being consecrated in all things.

Paul's life and the way he presents the side of it that involved being persecuted, and at times heavily, speaks into the lives of Christians today that experience being persecuted. It does not imply that those who walk in his footsteps and according to the same consecration will necessarily face the same level of persecution. It does mean that there is a consecration for the possibility of facing the same ordeals involved. The life of a revolutionary may well be one of mostly experiencing plenty, of having rest and tranquility and having the realities of the kingdom of God in terms of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit in the midst of that.