The new covenant is the new relationship established in Jesus’ own experience between the blessed Trinity and broken, sinful humanity. In Jesus the Father, Son and Spirit have reached us in our traumatic darkness, and established a real relationship with us at our very worst. Our contribution was to crucify the Father’s Son. Dying in the arms of our bitter and cruel rejection, Jesus embraced us in our treachery—and he brought his Father and the Holy Spirit with him. This is the new covenant, the new relationship established in the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the incarnate Son. Jesus is the new relationship. He is the one in whom the blessed Trinity and broken humanity meet and are together.
To my mind, to speak of the kingdom of God is to speak of the same reality from another angle, or with a different emphasis. The kingdom of God is not about some kind of abstract rule of God, whereby he imposes his authority upon his creation from a distance by law, or even by grace. The kingdom is about the sheer life and joy, the peace and goodness, the shocking love and abounding fellowship and creativity of the Father, Son and Spirit setting up shop on earth in Jesus, and through the Spirit’s witness and work, the kingdom is about this very life in Jesus coming to full and abiding and personal expression in us, and in our lives, and in our relationships with one another, and in our relationship with the whole creation, until the earth and the cosmos become a vast burning bush alive with the trinitarian life of God. – Baxter Kruger
