The Kingdom Within

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. LUKE 17:21

The Franciscan friar who changed Madame Guyon’s life told her one thing: that she was seeking outside herself what she already had within. She spent the rest of her life saying the same thing to others. God is not only above us and around us; for the believer, He is within, and the soul must learn to turn inward to find Him. This is the teaching of the inward kingdom, and it runs under everything she wrote.

A turning from without to within

In A Short and Easy Method of Prayer she gives it a surprising name: perfect conversion. “Conversion is nothing else but a turning from the creature to God.” Most of us think of conversion as a single event, the turning from sin to grace. She agrees that this turning is necessary for salvation. But it is not, she says, complete. To be complete, conversion must also be a turning from without to within.

Turn ye unto him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted. ISAIAH 31:6

What does she mean? She means that many Christians who have truly turned from sin still live almost entirely on the surface of themselves. Their religion is a matter of outward acts, outward observances and outward thoughts. They have never learned to find God in the depths of the heart, where He has come to live. Her call is not to leave the outward life behind, but to discover its hidden centre.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 1 CORINTHIANS 3:16

The pull of the centre

She explains this turning with two pictures from the natural world, which her century loved.

The first is the sun drawing up a heavy mist. Without any effort on the part of the vapour except that of letting itself be drawn, the sun, by bringing it near, refines and purifies it. So, she says, God has an attracting power that draws the soul to Himself, and in drawing it, purifies it. The difference is that the vapour is drawn without choosing, while the soul follows freely.

The second is a falling stone. Every object, she says, tends towards its centre; a stone let go in the air falls to the earth by its own weight. So the soul, once turned towards God as its centre, is drawn to Him by the weight of love. The more it rests and lets itself be drawn, the faster it moves.

Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee. SONG OF SOLOMON 1:4

Whatever one makes of the physics, the spiritual point is precious. The Christian life is not first a matter of our climbing up to God by effort. It is a matter of God drawing us, and of our consenting to be drawn. The effort we must make is the effort to turn and to remain turned. The drawing is His.

Not a fortress but a kingdom

Out of this comes one of her loveliest sentences. “The heart is not a fortified place, which must be taken by cannonading and violence: it is a kingdom of peace, which is possessed by love.”

She is thinking of the way many devout people of her day approached the spiritual life: as a siege. The soul was to be conquered by relentless exercises, stern resolutions and constant self-examination. She did not think that was God’s way. God comes into the heart as a King comes into his own city, received with love, and He rules there in peace.

For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. ROMANS 14:17

She reads the Lord’s words about the kingdom within in two ways. First, the kingdom is set up when God is so completely master of us that nothing resists Him. Second, by possessing God, who is the sovereign Lord, we possess the kingdom, which is our highest happiness. As an old saying has it, to serve God is to reign.

That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. EPHESIANS 3:16–17

Guarding the inward way

There is great truth here, and there is also danger, and a faithful reader should see both.

First, the Greek words translated within you can also be rendered among you, and many interpreters think our Lord meant that the kingdom was present in Himself, standing among the Pharisees who asked about it. Either way, Scripture’s teaching on the kingdom is far wider than the inward life. The kingdom is also outward, visible in the church and in lives of justice and mercy, and it is also future, waiting for the King’s return. An inward kingdom that forgets the King’s coming, or the needs of the neighbour, has shrunk the gospel.

Second, turning inward is only safe because of who is there. For the believer, the One within is Christ by His Spirit. But the human heart, left to itself, is not a sanctuary; it is a tangle.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? JEREMIAH 17:9

The inward way must never become a search for the divine in the self, as if our own depths were God. Madame Guyon did not mean that, but some of her language about the centre of the soul has been read that way, then and since. We find God within because He has come in from outside, through the gospel, by faith.

To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. COLOSSIANS 1:27

Third, inwardness can become introspection. She herself warns against it, as we shall see: the soul is to look at God within, not at itself. A Christian who turns inward and finds only his own moods has turned the wrong way.

With these guards in place, her teaching is a great gift to an outward age. We are more distracted than she could have imagined, surrounded by noise and flattered by screens. Her call to turn from without to within, and to find there a King who reigns in peace, is more needed now than when she wrote it.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Consider whether your faith lives mostly on the surface — in outward acts and observances — or has a hidden centre with God.

2. Several times tomorrow, stop for a moment and turn your heart inward to Christ, who dwells there by faith.

3. When you find yourself trying to take your own heart by siege, stop, and ask the King to come in and reign in peace.

4. Guard against introspection: when you turn inward, look at Christ, not at your own feelings.

5. Let the inward kingdom send you outward: do one act of justice or mercy this week in the King’s name.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You have come to live in me by Your Spirit, and I have lived as though You were far away.

Turn me from without to within, and let me find You there, reigning in peace.

Draw me, and I will run after You; take my heart not by siege but by love.

And let Your kingdom within me show itself outwardly, in righteousness and peace and joy, until You come. Amen.