“The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come.”

“Christ-followers are called, in the present, to live the future ethic of the coming Kingdom. Love is the currency of the coming Kingdom of Heaven.”

“...we must never confuse the positive things that America does with the kingdom of God, for the kingdom of God is not centered on being morally, politically, or socially positive *relative* to other versions of the kingdom of the world. Rather, the kingdom of God is centered on being *beautiful*, as defined by Jesus Christ dying on a cross for those who crucified him.”

“God desires that we be like living signs of the kingdom, to provide visual aids of what life will look like one day when the kingdom is here fully. We will not bring the Kingdom or build the kingdom, but our privilege is to live out previews of “coming attractions,” revealing what this Kingdom will look like.”

“Participants in the kingdom of the world trust the power of the sword to control behavior; participants of the kingdom of God trust the power of self-sacrificial love to transform hearts. The kingdom of the world is concerned with preserving law and order by force; the kingdom of God is concerned with establishing the rule of God through love. The kingdom of the world is centrally concerned with what people do; the kingdom of God is centrally concerned with how people are and what they can become.The kingdom of the world is characterized by judgment; the kingdom of God is characterized by outrageous, even scandalous, grace.”

“In the early Middle Ages the dominant form of political organization in Western Europe was the Germanic kingdom, and the German kingdom was in some ways the complete antithesis of the modern state. (p. 13)”