Jesus and the Kingdom of God
The Gospel of Thomas is unlike any other scripture written about Jesus. It is a collection of Jesus' secret sayings that only someone who actually knew him, like his "twin", would be able to recount. Jesus, in the Gospel of Thomas, is a teacher that points his followers in the direction of the Kingdom of Heaven. He explains that the kingdom is a place with no poverty, where all is revealed and that it is already inside and around them but they must learn how to find it. The Kingdom of Heaven, according to Thomas' Jesus, is within each one of us. This concept of god and the kingdom being a part of everyone is a common theme throughout the Bible (Lk 17:21). In the third saying, Jesus tells his followers that the way to gain access to this Kingdom inside us is to learn about ourselves. The knowledge that we came from the Kingdom (GTh 49), that we are "sons of the living father" (GTh 3), and that are human bodies and lives are not worth anything (GTh 87) are the keys to the Kingdom. If we do not know ourselves then we will not enter the kingdom and we will be in poverty forever (GTh 3). He also says that once we get back into the Kingdom there is nothing that we will not understand (GTh 6b).
He describes it as a pearl that a merchant found and did all he could do to buy it so that he could cherish it for the rest of his life (GTh 76). It is almost as if the future and past are combined and that time is irrelevant. In this gospel, he is just a teacher. Jesus explains that the Kingdom of the Father is a treasure that lasts forever. The first two men never found the Kingdom of Heaven because they did not look within their own land or themselves but the third man does a little digging and finds this eternal treasure. Eden was a place of innocence and to become like a child would be to become innocent. In this saying, the Kingdom is like a man who plants good seed but another man puts bad seed in with the good seed. In saying 37, the disciples ask when he will be revealed to them and he answers when they can be naked without shame and jump on their clothes like children. However, there is a contraction because saying 57 gives us the idea that there will be a final judgment day. In most stories about the Kingdom of Heaven, there is a sense that it will happen in the future but, in this Gospel, Jesus gives of the impression that the Kingdom is here now. Jesus, in this gospel, is different from how he is in other books. He said, "What you look for has come, but you do not know it" (GTh 51).
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Acceptance Essays
