Our series during Ordinary time will explore the revelation of God’s Kingdom through his Son. We will look specifically how the incarnation—the ministry, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ—reveals the long-promised Kingdom of God breaking into human history demonstrating God’s love, destroying the powers that ravaged creation, and displaying the Messiah’s promise (to continue reading this essay, click on image above).
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YOUR KINGDOM COME
Pastoral Resources | 2025-26 Themes At-A-Glance
Week 14: Lent — Born Again through the King, John 3:1-17
In a conversation with Nicodemus, a teacher in Israel, Jesus clearly teaches that spiritual performance and moral effort will prove insufficient for spiritual salvation. Spiritual life does not begin with our human striving but with God’s initiative in his Son: God himself, through his Spirit, must birth us into his family. This teaching dismantles every confidence placed in religious practice and heritage, moral achievement, or theological expertise as a basis for standing before God. He offers eternal life because of regeneration alone. Only a new birth will suffice. By faith we can receive what we could never earn—eternal life, freely given through faith in God’s Son, Jesus, whom God sent into the world to save and not to condemn.
Our Focus Today
For God So Loved the World, John 3:16-17
Jesus provides a climactic declaration concerning the nature of salvation in his conversation with Nicodemus, that God gave his one and only Son out of love for the world, not to condemn it but to save it. Eternal life is a free gift rooted in the Father’s loving initiative received through faith, not by our works, religious devotion, or national privilege.
Invocation
Thank you, Father, for the revelation of your heart, a heart of love and grace that would allow you to sacrifice your only son on behalf of the entire world. It seems to be so great, so vast, so amazing that it’s hard to believe and yet it is true. I acknowledge this love this morning and desire to be a recipient of that love that I could not earn and cannot fully measure. You did not send your Son to weigh my failures but to bear them, to save me from my sin. Open my heart to receive what you so freely gave; show me how to live in that love today. Amen.
Gloria Patri
Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son and to the Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning,
Is now, and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen, amen.
Chronological Scripture Readings for Today
These Scriptures allow us to read through the entire Bible in one year in chronological order.
Saturday: 1 Chron. 2.9-55; 4.1-23; 1 Sam. 1
Psalms and Proverb for Today
These Scriptures allow us to read through the Psalms and Proverbs each month.
Saturday: Psalm 7, 37, 67, 97, 127 and Proverbs 7
For God So Loved the World, John 3:16-17
Jesus provides a climactic declaration concerning the nature of salvation in his conversation with Nicodemus, that God gave his one and only Son out of love for the world, not to condemn it but to save it. Eternal life is a free gift rooted in the Father’s loving initiative received through faith, not by our works, religious devotion, or national privilege.
Reflection
Jesus summarizes his important theological discussion with Nicodemus by showing that love is at the center of the universe’s heart for humankind. Salvation is the overflow of divine love, not the result or reward of human striving. The Lord God gave to the world what we could never earn and offers what we could never deserve. The scope of that love shatters every boundary of national privilege, religious achievement, and moral self-sufficiency. It extends to all who will simply believe. We can approach God as those undeserving yet loved and provided for in the Son.
Engaging God’s Word Today
If the love declared in John 3:16 is truly as boundless, as freely given, and as entirely independent of your merit as Jesus describes, what specific fear, shame, or sense of unworthiness do you still harbor today that convinces you that you are the one exception to whom that love does not fully and freely apply? Explain it honestly to yourself.
Nicene Creed
We believe in one God, The Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.
We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Begotten Son of God,
Begotten of the Father before all ages,
God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God,
Begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father,
through Whom all things were made.
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and became human.
Who for us too, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried.
The third day He rose again according to the Scriptures, ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and His kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver,
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Who together with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified.
Who spoke by the prophets.
We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sin,
and we look for the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the age to come. Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever. Amen.
Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him all creatures here below;
Praise Him above ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Benediction
Eternal God, it goes without saying that no one can truly understand how great and powerful your love truly is. I stand in awe of it every day, even as I do right now. I go forward today amazed by your love and ask that you help me to live as one whom God has loved before I ever sought him and saved before I ever deserved him. Amazing as it may seem, in Christ I am not condemned — I am forgiven and I am called. You have cleansed and welcomed me. Show me how to walk in this world and live out my life as one who knows what true love is, and, at its deepest, what that love has already done for me. Thank you from my heart for your deep, deep love. Amen.
Scripture Memory for this season
Matt. 11:2-6 (ESV): The Messiah’s Healing of the Sick: The Kingdom’s Compassion
2 Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Scripture Engagement
As disciples of Jesus, the Churches of Christ the King strongly seek to engage the Scriptures to discover the centrality of Christ and his Kingdom in the prophetic and apostolic writings. You will find a rich treasure of resources on engaging Scripture at the Center for Scripture Engagement of Taylor University.
Books We Are Reading this Church Year, and When
• The Most Amazing Story Ever Told, Dr. Don Davis (during season of Advent)
• Get Your Pretense On, Dr. Don Davis (during season of Christmas)
• Destined for the Throne, Paul Billheimer (during season of Epiphany)
• The Presence of the Future, George Eldon Ladd (during seasons of Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Ascension)
• Thy Kingdom Come, Rev. Terry Cornett and Dr. Don Davis (during season of Ascension)
• Kingdom, Church and World, Howard Snyder (during seasons of the Coming of the Holy Spirit, Headship and Harvest)
• The Gospel of the Kingdom, George Eldon Ladd (during the seasons of Hope and Remembering the Saints, Exalting the King)
Book Reading Reflection: Destined for the Throne
(Reading “The Presence of the Future,” during season of Lent, Holy Week, and Resurrection)
“The bond that binds [the two Testaments] together is the dynamic concept of the rule of God.” So wrote John Bright in his study of the Kingdom of God, which dealt primarily with the Old Testament hope. If this is true, it should come as a surprise that few of our critical studies on the teachings of Jesus and the Kingdom of God make use of the dynamic concept of the rule of God as the integrating center for Jesus’ message and mission. This lack the present book attempts to supply.
Evangelical Christians have been so exercised with the eschatological or futuristic aspects of the Kingdom of God that it has often ceased to have immediate relevance to contemporary Christian life, except as a hope. Thus the very term, the “Kingdom of God,” to many Christians means first of all the millennial reign of Christ on earth. This, however, misplaces the emphasis of the Gospels. The distinctive characteristic about Jesus’ teaching is that in some real sense, the Kingdom of God has come in his person and mission (Matt. 12:28). The mystery of the Kingdom (Mark 4:11) is the secret of its unexpected irruption in history. This is not to minimize the futuristic aspect of the Kingdom. The Old Testament prophets constantly looked forward to the Day of the Lord when God would establish his reign in the earth. It is also clear in the Gospels that the Kingdom of God belongs to the age to come and is an eschatological blessing (Mark 10:23–30).”
~ Ladd, George. The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids: MI, 1974. Electronic Edition.
On Eagles Wings Prayer Focus: A Long Time Comin‘
The Messiah Provides Sight, John 9:1-41
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