Two Kingdoms

“For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son,” Colossians 1:13

Webster defines darkness as the absence of light. So even though darkness is a noun (a person, place or thing) it’s not really a thing at all. It’s the absence of a thing, and that thing is light. As children of God, we were once citizens of the kingdom of darkness - a realm void of light, but Colossians tells us that God has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness. 

I would venture to say that most of us didn’t even know we needed rescuing. I know that I certainly did not. I was an upstanding citizen of the kingdom of darkness. I went to church. I was kind to my fellow man. I obeyed the law of the land. I contributed to society. But there was a prevailing darkness in my life that I couldn’t explain. And I needed rescuing. 

One Sunday morning I heard the good news of Jesus Christ. For the first time, I stepped out of the shadows of the only kingdom I had ever known and was transferred into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son. The light had overcome the darkness.

As children of God, we live in two worlds. We live in an imperfect world that will remain dark and broken until Jesus returns. But our citizenship is not of this world. God has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred our citizenship into the Kingdom of light, the Kingdom of his dear Son, a kingdom in which the darkness can never prevail.