Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.
In Luke 9:27 Jesus said that some of those standing with him would see the kingdom of God before they died. Some people believe Jesus was simply mistaken when he said this. But they fail to realize that the kingdom of God is not only something coming gloriously in the future. It is also the reign of God present on earth in the ministry of Jesus, in his death and resurrection, and in our lives as we live under God’s authority and for God’s purposes. We can see the kingdom of God right now, even as we look forward to seeing the glorious kingdom in the future.
In today’s passage from Luke, Jesus speaks of the coming of the Son of Man in glory (Luke 9:26). Then he adds, “But truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27). This is a particular saying of Jesus, to say the least. It seems to assert that his glorious coming, what Christians refer to as the second coming of Christ, would be something that some of those who were with him at that time would see with their own eyes before they died. This wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that we’re still awaiting the glorious second coming of Christ, and all of those who were with Jesus in this scene from Luke 9 died almost two millennia ago.
I remember worrying about this saying of Jesus. My theology said Jesus wouldn’t have been mistaken in what he said, but I could not figure out how else to make sense of that episode in the gospels. Then I took a Bible class. There I learned that some scholars solved the riddle of Jesus’s curious statement by claiming that he did in fact believe his second coming was imminent. In this belief, they argued, Jesus was just plain wrong. He didn’t understand God’s timetable for his future. This was presented in class as if it were the only reasonable explanation for Luke 9:27.
That was deeply concerning to me. It didn’t fit my view of Jesus’s nature as one who was both fully God and fully human. Nor did it support my belief that Jesus always spoke the truth. Yet, what I was reading for my class seemed on the surface to be right.
Back in 1976, when I was struggling with the content of my Bible class, I started doing research into how people understood the perplexing claim of Jesus that some of those standing with him would not taste death before they saw the kingdom of God. I learned that there was no scholarly consensus about how to understand what Jesus had said. What I learned in class was one of many possible explanations. Other options included: the kingdom of God was revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus; the kingdom of God was present in the ministry of Jesus; a preliminary glimpse of the kingdom of God would be seen in the next story in Luke, the so-called Transfiguration.
Today, I’m not distressed by Jesus’s statement in Luke 9:27. I have not decided which explanation is the best. I’m quite sure Jesus was not mistaken in what he said, however. For him, the kingdom of God was not only something coming gloriously in the future. It was also something present in his messianic ministry (see Luke 17:21, for example). Plus it would be seen, paradoxically, in his death on the cross, followed by his resurrection (see John 12:23ff). And, as many scholars have claimed, some of those with Jesus as he spoke was also there when he was transfigured. The transfiguration revealed for a moment the future glory of Jesus and the kingdom of God (see Luke 9:28-36).
The main point I wish to make here, aside from the fact that Jesus was not mistaken, is that the kingdom of God is not one simple thing. Yes, it is God’s reign, sovereignty, and power. But the reign of God is both present and future. It is revealed through the death and resurrection of Jesus, which leads to the defeat of sin, death, and Satan. The kingdom of God is something we look forward to in the future, and it is something we can experience each day as we live with God as our king, or, as we often say, with Jesus as our Lord.
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