Teachings of Jesus
“And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.”
Definition
The teachings of Jesus center on his announcement that “the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15), taught chiefly through parables and extended ethical instruction such as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’s kingdom proclamation was religious and ethical rather than political: present already in repentance, faith, and new birth, and still to come in full as an eschatological reality.1
Biblical Basis
Jesus’s own summary of his message was “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). He taught that God’s kingly rule and God’s fatherhood reinforce rather than compete with each other (Matt. 5:35; 6:9), that the kingdom must both be sought (Matt. 6:33) and received as a gift (Luke 12:32), and that its content is “forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28), “righteousness” (Matt. 6:33), and “eternal life” (Mark 9:43).1 Those who heard him “were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:28-29).
Objections and Responses
Jesus’s kingdom teaching was only about a future, apocalyptic event, not anything present in his own ministry. Bavinck names this reading (associated with scholars like Schmoller and Weiss) a mistake: Jesus does take over the eschatological expectation of God’s coming kingdom, but treats it as already breaking in through his own ministry of repentance, faith, and forgiveness, not only as a future arrival. The “one idea” of the kingdom Israel’s prophets expected as a single coming, Jesus’s arrival divides into two: a first coming for salvation and a second, still future, for judgment and completion.1