The Kingdom and the Church: Similarities and Differences
I. Similarities
The king of the kingdom is the head of the church (Colossians 1:13, 18).
Only one kingdom (Revelation 1:6) was established, and only one church was built (Matthew 16:18).
One set of keys opens the door both to the kingdom and to the church (Matthew 16:19; Acts 2:1-47, KJV; 5:11).
One seed, “the word of God,” produces both the kingdom and the church (Luke 8:11; Acts 2:41, 47, KJV; 5:11).
Baptism, a birth “of water and Spirit” (John 3:5; 1 Corinthians 12:13), puts one into the kingdom (Colossians 1:13; 2:12) and into the church (1 Corinthians 12:13, 20).
The Lord’s Supper is in both the kingdom and in the church (Luke 22:29-30; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 10:16).
Both the kingdom and the church are indestructible (Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 3:21; Hebrews 12:28).
II. Differences
That which is “born again” (John 3:7), entering the kingdom through the teaching of the Spirit (Colossians 1:13), is an invisible human spirit (John 3:3, 6). That which is “born again” of “water,” entering the church, is a visible human body (1 Corinthians 12:13, 20).
The kingdom “comes not with observation” (Luke 17:20), but the church is observable people (Acts 18:8).
The kingdom is “within” (entos, Luke 17:21) human bodies, but not the church.
When a person is “poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3), recognizing his utter helplessness to save himself (John 3:17; 1 Timothy 1:15-16), then he is rich, possessing “the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3), but he does not own the church. Sadly, there are people who have been baptized, and may have become church leaders (as Diotrephes, 3 John 9-11), who are proud in spirit, but theirs is not the “kingdom of heaven.” “Pride leads to calamity, and a haughty spirit to a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).
When a person has been “persecuted for being righteous” (Matthew 5:10), as Polycarp (burned to death on a stake in Smyrna in 155 A.D.), as William Tyndale (strangled and burned to death in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1536), his is “the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10), but he does not own the church.
The kingdom is internal (“righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”), while the church is both internal (“righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”) and external “eating and drinking” (Romans 14:17).
The kingdom deals with “the inward man” (2 Corinthians 4:16; 1 Peter 1:16), while the church deals with both “the inward man” and the “outward man” (1 Corinthians 6:20; Philippians 4:8).
