What did Jesus mean when he said, "The kingdom of God is within you"?Luke 17:21. Was he talking abstractly? Or did he say this to appease someone? Either thought would be inconsistent with what we know of Christ Jesus. He was more direct than that. He must, then, have meant that the kingdom of God does reign within man. Let us explore what this powerful healing thought means or might mean to us today.
Surely Jesus did not mean that the kingdom of God is within mortal, material man. This would be pantheistic; it would imply that God's creation is matter and the material world. Pantheism would not only make a reality of disaster but would make God responsible for chaos as well as order, discord as well as harmony. Was not Jesus indicating that the kingdom of God is in the true man that is depicted in the first chapter of Genesis, the man formed in God's image and likeness?
The real body of God's man, as Christian Science explains, is the perfect expression of God's nature, including every quality of His—qualities that must be spiritual, not material, qualities that come solely from God. These qualities forever characterize the image of God. Each individual quality must be in harmony with every other quality, because the image of God is entirely under His continual governance.
