Forgiveness of sins is one of the gospel's precious promises. But a www.livingintheoverlap.com, Steve Schaefer has a great free downloadable chart reminding us that there are no less than eighteen dimensions of what the Old Testaments prophesied that the coming of the Kingdom of God would mean. Steve's book, Living in the Overlap, goes into helpful detail on each dimension. It's worth summarizing Steve's work here just to get a taste of the electricity that coursed through the room each time Jesus proclaimed, "The Kingdom of God is at hand!"

• The Kingdom means the Messiah will rule (p. 5), and he'll do so with justice, righteousness, and love (p. 6).
• The Kingdom means the wicked-the enemies of God who bring suffering to his people-will be destroyed (p. 6), and those who have been hurt will be healed by God himself.
• The Kingdom means a new covenant and intimacy with God (p. 8). It won't be about us and our sinful hearts trying to "be good" and "do the right thing," trying our hardest to obey external rules that God sets up for us...and still falling short. Instead, God will place a new heart within us-his own, in fact-a heart that does good by nature. And he will guide us personally and gently in every decision we face.
• The Kingdom means forgiveness of sins and newness (p. 9). Schaefer quotes theologian William J. Dumbrell on what that really means and why it's so important:

God thus "remembered" Noah and caused the waters to abate (Genesis 8:1). God also "remembered" Hannah (1 Samuel 1:19), and the promise of a son became an actuality....In Jeremiah 31:34, for God not to remember means that no action in the new age will need to be taken against sin. The forgiveness of which this verse speaks is so comprehensive that sin has finally been dealt with in the experience of the nation and the individual believer.

• The Kingdom means God's Spirit would be poured out "on all kinds of people regardless of gender, age, or station in life" (p. 10).
• The Kingdom means that "all nations would stream to the mountain of the Lord and the temple would be a house of prayer for all nations" (p. 11).
• The Kingdom means peace, physical wholeness, and safety and security-not only for humans but for all of creation (p. 12).
• The Kingdom means abundant provision and joy (p. 13).
• The Kingdom means death would be destroyed.

Perhaps as you've read the New Testament you may have thought of Jesus as traveling from place to place doing random acts of kindness--getting kittens down from trees, helping old ladies cross the street, not cursing when he hits his thumb with his carpenter's hammer. But now that you've heard about the eighteen ways in which the Kingdom of God would rock the world off its hinges...do you see that in his ministry Jesus was carefully following a meticulously laid out plan to embody every one of these eighteen ways?

And this leads to a crucial insight:

When we proclaim the gospel, we often focus only on the personal forgiveness of sins and individual destiny after death of our hearer because we ourselves are slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

Jesus' words, not mine, by the way. Which of the eighteen dimensions of the gospel is the one most likely to escape your notice-and perhaps even the practical day to day application of your faith-these days?