Jesus believed there would be levels of reward in the coming Kingdom of God, as I began to show in my previous post. Could there be any problems, though? Any unruliness? Any need for discipline and judgment for people who did something illicit or harmful? Could or would people sin in the Kingdom of God?
These are tricky questions that Jesus never addresses directly in the canonical Gospels. I never even thought about them or realized they could be problems until, well, something like two weeks ago. My assumption since I became a sentient human being has always been that the afterlife for the saved would be perfect in every way, that there would be no pain, misery, suffering of any kind, no harm done to anyone, no sin or disobedience. A realm of perfection.
This indeed is what most people think about heaven today. But as I’ve repeatedly emphasized, Jesus had a different understanding than his modern day followers about the “Kingdom of God.” For him it was not
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