Kingdom Culture, Part One
In the ancient world, papyrus wasn’t cheap. That’s the first thing you need to know when you sit down to study the Bible. Though we can now hold in our hands the collected library of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, printed on high quality, acid-free paper, and bound in a variety of luxurious leathers, the original books of the Bible were written on papyrus, an ancient kind of paper made by pressing dried reeds together. And it was very expensive.
Why does the price of papyrus matter?
Because the Bible contains no throwaway lines. Every last word and phrase is important. None of the biblical writers were adding fluff to their works to meet some artificial word count. They included everything that was good and right and necessary, and nothing that could be considered filler.
Of course, since the entire Bible was inspired and orchestrated by the Holy Spirit, this is what we should expect—the price of ancient paper not withstanding—and yet there are still some Bible readers, even Bible scholars, who come to a strange turn of phrase or a weird detail in a familiar passage of Scripture and simply shrug it off. They move on without ever giving those “extra” words a second thought. But some of the Bible’s greatest treasures are buried beneath such words.
Take, for example, Mark 10:42–43:
Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”
Read these verses and you’ve already got the kernel of a Sunday morning sermon ready to pop. Jesus calls us to serve one another, to grow in humility, and to see our love for other people as the measure of kingdom greatness. All true. And I’ve heard that sermon about a thousand times.
But here’s what jumps out at me when I read this passage. Jesus didn’t say, “You know that those who are rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them.” He said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them.” Do you see the difference? Jesus is actually saying something about the kings and emperors of this world. They are only “regarded” as being in charge. He’s strongly implying that they are not really the ones in control.
It sounds crazy, right? The stuff of conspiracy theories and grifter YouTube journalism. If this were an isolated passage, I might agree. But the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, provides clues that the rulers of this world are not running things on their own but are instead being influenced and preyed upon by dark spiritual forces.
Perhaps the most famous passage that points to this unseen reality is from the pen of the apostle Paul. Writing to persecuted Christians in Ephesus and beyond, he wrote:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:10–12)
Paul told his readers that it wasn’t really the governmental authorities making their lives difficult; it was the “the powers of this dark world and… the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” When he wrote this, he wasn’t postulating some new way of looking at life. As a former Pharisee and a student of the Hebrew Bible—what we know today as the Old Testament—Paul was merely reminding his readers of what God had already revealed about the world in which we live.
More than six hundred years before Paul wrote his letters, the prophet Daniel came face-to-face with this spiritual reality when an angel dispatched from heaven by God told him this:
“Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.” (Daniel 10:12–13)
For three weeks, this angel struggled against the “prince of the Persian kingdom,” a celestial being who was apparently hostile to God, and needed help from the archangel Michael. This brief description tears wide open the veil between the natural world and the supernatural realm. Maybe what’s most shocking of all is how spiritual beings affect life here on earth.
The prince of Persia is a territorial spirit, operating with authority over the land of Persia. In extrabiblical texts, Michael is regarded as Israel’s designated angel. And as we’ve already seen, Paul wrote about a vast hierarchy of spiritual forces with titles normally reserved for localized authorities.
At the time Daniel received his angelic visitor, Cyrus was the king of Persia, and yet he was not ruling Persia on his own. There was another ruler—a “prince”—influencing him from the unseen realm. That, of course, doesn’t mean that Cyrus had no autonomy. After all, he was the king who allowed the Jewish people to begin returning to Judea and to commence reconstruction of the temple (see Ezra 1). But the fact remains that his rule was subject to a dark spiritual force who deceived him and pulled him (and the people of his land) away from the truth.
With all this in mind, let’s head back to Jesus and what He said to His disciples in Mark’s Gospel. James and John had just asked for the seats to the right and left of His throne, and Jesus told them that the seating arrangements are up to His Father. He also told them that in the kingdom the path to greatness is a road filled with suffering.
The other disciples heard about James and John’s audacious request and were livid—possibly in the “Why didn’t I think of that?” vein. That’s when Jesus pulled everyone aside and spoke the words that got our trek through Scripture started:
“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. But it is not so among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave to all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42–45)
Here, Jesus is contrasting the behavior of those rulers who are having their strings pulled by evil spiritual forces with those disciples of His who wish to be great in His kingdom. The big difference is that one type of person behaves like a tyrant and the other like a servant. One will destroy what gets in his way, and the other will give up his life for the good of humanity. One exists to lift himself up, and the other to lift everyone else.
Leadership is a deeply spiritual issue. It’s not simply a matter of style or situation. Instead, it can be the difference between becoming a pawn of Satan and his minions or following the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s why I believe that the church’s ongoing obsession with leadership methods culled from the world constitutes one of the most dangerous developments in recent church history.
In the next post, we’ll consider the power of these evil spirits who influence rulers and authorities in our world, but for now let’s remember that the kingdom of God is unlike any other institution that has ever existed, and therefore Jesus’ followers should be unlike any people this world has ever known.
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Check out my latest books:
The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein (The TimeFall Trilogy, Part 1)
Pages of Joy // John Greco 
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