Danutz - in a nutshell - with the coming of the Spirit, believers are literally enabled to enter into personal communion with God, through the Spirit, in a way that had not been possible before. The Spirit has this vertical emphasis, as well as a horizontal emphasis, in being the means of drawing together the people of God in a true unity that is not possible through any other means, and an outward emphasis - in being the channel through which God dispenses his life in a variety of forms, ways and expressions today (I have in mind the love, healing, creativity, and actions which are motivated and energised by the Spirit). The Spirit is the means whereby we experience personally the intimate love of God, and intimacy of true community with each other.

The ‘reign’ of Jesus is a metaphor which draws together Jesus’s role and actions in making the gift of the Spirit possible. The Spirit provides the assurance of Jesus’s victory over our primary enemies: sin and death. The gift of the Spirit is so important because it is the means and content of God’s working in the world today. I do not deny that there are many actions and expressions which convey something of God’s intent and character in perhaps parallel ways. I am asserting that through the Spirit, God’s specific plans and purposes are brought into being for the world.

I do question the citing of Gandhi as an example of someone who promoted the purposes of Jesus without being specifically a Christian believer, and without entertaining the kinds of things I am asserting, because I don’t think that Gandhi brought about a state of affairs that Jesus would have put his name to (especially in the light of recent historical discoveries). In the end, he wanted independence for India, not the kingdom of God. I also question the citing of Tolstoy as an example of someone who practised the sermon on the mount in a similar way. He may have had high ideals, which may have influenced Gandhi, but his personal life and treatment of his own family totally contradicted his ideals. But I certainly don’t discount God using people who do not know him, sometimes maybe despite themselves, to achieve his purposes. That would be true before the coming of Jesus as much as afterwards.

Given that all language is metaphorical to some degree, this description is not non-metaphorical, but it is as free of deliberate metaphor as I can make it. In other words, I have not used language which self-consciously sets out to describe one thing explicitly in terms of another, although I think metaphor opens the window into seeing and understanding realities which God wants to make known to us. I just believe that there are realities behind the metaphor.