> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.the-unpreached-bible.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Did Jesus Inherit the Kingdom of God? - URL: https://www.the-unpreached-bible.com/did-jesus-inherit-the-kingdom/ - Published: 2026-08-23T21:02:16.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-26T11:08:08.000Z - Description: The kingdom is not his. One gospel says four separate times that he has to be given it, and nobody in the bible ever heard the owner say so. - Author: Isacc Johnson - Tags: The Kingdom He was supposed to. That’s the part that doesn’t get said out loud — the kingdom isn’t his. Somebody has to hand it over. Here’s my logic, up front, so you know where this is going. One gospel says four separate times that the kingdom is something Jesus receives. That means there’s an owner. And if there’s an owner, then the owner’s word is the one that settles it — which turns out to be a problem, because nobody in the bible ever heard the owner say it. Start with the criminal. ## The request Two men were executed next to Jesus. One of them mocked him. The other didn’t. > One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” > > *— Luke 23:39–43, NRSVue* Look at what the criminal actually asks for. He doesn’t ask to be saved. He doesn’t ask to be forgiven. He asks to be remembered later, at a point in the future, when Jesus has something he doesn’t have yet. Your bible may word that request differently. You could check three translations and find three slightly different sentences. It doesn’t matter which one you’re holding. Every one of them puts the kingdom in the future, and every one of them puts Jesus outside it at the moment he’s asked. ## Where the kingdom comes from Luke has already told you. Three times, before the criminal ever opens his mouth. **At the beginning of the gospel**, when Gabriel tells Mary what her son is going to be: > He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. > > *— Luke 1:32–33, NRSVue* *The Lord God will give to him.* The throne is a gift, from a giver, and at the moment the sentence is spoken it hasn’t been given yet. **Four chapters before the crucifixion**, Jesus tells a parable, and Luke tells you exactly why he told it: > As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. So he said, “A nobleman went to a distant region to receive royal power for himself and then return.” > > *— Luke 19:11–12, NRSVue* And when the man comes back: > When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves to whom he had given the money to be summoned... > > *— Luke 19:15, NRSVue* Now read that against the criminal’s request. In the parable, a man travels to a distant place, receives royal power from somebody who already has it, and returns holding it. On the cross, a dying man asks Jesus to remember him when he comes in his kingdom — when he comes back with the thing he went away to get. Luke wrote both. The parable is Luke’s own picture of what the criminal is asking about, and Luke says out loud that he included it because the people around Jesus had the timing wrong. **On the last night**, Jesus says it without a story attached: > and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, > > *— Luke 22:29, NRSVue* Conferred on him. Not held by him. And notice the construction — the same action, in the same sentence, describes what Jesus is doing for the disciples and what the father did for Jesus. Nobody thinks the disciples had a kingdom of their own that they brought with them. That’s the whole point of the comparison. So that’s one gospel, saying the same thing at the beginning, in the middle, on the last night, and on the cross. The kingdom is something Jesus receives. The rest of the New Testament doesn’t waver on it. The risen Jesus says it about himself: > All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. > > *— Matthew 28:18, NRSVue* > even as I also received authority from my Father. > > *— Revelation 2:28, NRSVue* Hebrews says it in the language of estates: > whom he appointed heir of all things... having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. > > *— Hebrews 1:2, 4, NRSVue* *Appointed heir. Inherited.* Somebody appointed him, and an inheritance is by definition a thing you receive from someone else, at some point in time, because they had it first. And Paul says he gives it back: > Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. > > *— 1 Corinthians 15:24, NRSVue* A kingdom you hand over at the end is a kingdom you were holding for somebody. ## Nobody has heard this from the owner Here’s something worth noticing, and it took me a while to notice it. Every statement that Jesus is going to receive the kingdom comes from one of three places: something Jesus said about himself, something a character says inside a story, or something a writer asserts decades later. **Not one of them is god saying it.** Go looking. Gabriel says it, in a private conversation with a young woman with nobody else present, written down by an author who wasn’t there. Jesus says it about himself, more than once. Hebrews asserts it. Paul asserts it. That’s the whole list. God speaks out loud in the gospels exactly twice — at the baptism and on the mountain — and both times he says the same thing: > This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased. > > *— Matthew 3:17, NRSVue* No throne. No kingdom. No authority. No transfer. He identifies a son and expresses approval, and that’s all. And there is exactly one man in the entire bible who claims he personally heard god’s voice say something about Jesus: > For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. > > *— 2 Peter 1:16–18, NRSVue* He’s insisting he isn’t repeating a story. He was there, he heard it himself, and here’s what was said. And what was said is the same sentence — a son, and approval. Nothing about a kingdom. Paul claims a direct encounter with the risen Jesus that changed his life, and writes more about the kingdom than anyone. He never reports being told by god that the kingdom would be handed over. So the only person in the bible who claims to have it direct from god that he would receive the kingdom is the man who would receive it. I’m not saying he lied. I’m saying that’s the state of the evidence, and you should look at it the way you’d look at any other transfer of property. If somebody told you an estate was coming to him, you’d want to hear it from the person who owns the estate. What you have here is the heir’s word, a private conversation nobody else witnessed, and several people writing long afterward who all learned it from each other. ## The nearest thing to the owner speaking There’s one place where god speaks in the first person and hands over territory. It’s an old coronation psalm that the New Testament writers went back and picked up: > I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill... I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. > > *— Psalm 2:6–8, NRSVue* Read what it actually is. A king is reporting what god said to him on the day he was crowned. *Today* I have begotten you — the sonship is dated to an event, which is what a coronation is. The man being addressed is a king in Jerusalem. Nothing in the psalm is about Jesus, and nothing in it points forward to him. New Testament writers applied it to Jesus anyway. That’s their move, not the psalm’s. And it’s worth sitting with, because of what they chose. When they wanted a text to establish who Jesus was, they reached for a ceremony in which a man is made a king on a particular day by somebody who outranks him. **The one verse a believer will bring you**, and it’s a fair one: > But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom.” > > *— Hebrews 1:8, NRSVue* An everlasting throne, addressed to the son, called his. That’s the strongest thing there is on that side. Now read the next sentence, which is still inside the same quotation: > You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. > > *— Hebrews 1:9, NRSVue* *Therefore.* Somebody anointed him, and did it because of how he behaved. Everlasting is not the same as unoriginated. Gabriel says both in a single breath: god will give him the throne, and his kingdom will never end. A thing can start and never stop. That’s exactly what an inheritance is. ## What the text will not support It will not support the idea that the kingdom was always his. Every text that says anything about how it came to be his says it was given, conferred, appointed, inherited, or received. Not one says he had it to begin with. And it will not support the idea that you have this from god. You have it from an angel in a conversation nobody else witnessed, from several men writing decades later who learned it from each other, and from the man who stands to receive it. Those are your sources. If somebody told you an estate was coming to him, that is not the paperwork you’d accept before signing anything. There’s a second problem, and it’s larger than this one. The owner published a standard for what can and cannot inherit his kingdom. He put it in writing, and he listed no exceptions. Jesus doesn’t meet it. [That’s the next post.](https://www.the-unpreached-bible.com/flesh-and-blood-cannot-inherit-the-kingdom/) --- *I write about what’s actually in the Bible, as opposed to what people are told is in it.* [*The free guide*](https://the-unpreached-bible.kit.com/twelve-verses?ref=the-unpreached-bible.com) *below covers twelve verses that are in your Bible and were never in the sermon.* *There’s a novel too —* [*The War Against the End of Days*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX32PBBS?ref=the-unpreached-bible.com)*, an apocalyptic reimagining of Revelation.*