Luke 17:20

And being asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God cometh, he answered them, and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of God is within you.

Being asked by the Pharisees ... Some have made it out that these were sincere questioners; but all of the evidence is against it. "Their question amounted to a request for a `sign from heaven'."[28] Ash also saw this as "a rejection of the `signs' Jesus had already performed, and of what he had (already) said upon the subject."[29] Geldenhuys thought the Pharisees might have been sincere; but the view here is that these old enemies of Jesus were up to their old tricks. "The question was probably a mocking one, `When is this kingdom of God of which thou sayest so much, and of which thou claimest to be King, visibly to appear?'"[30]

Cometh not with observation ... means that the kingdom would not visibly appear at all. There would be no proclamation of a king, in the political sense, no definition of boundaries, no setting up of any kind of material state at all. Hobbs noted that the word here translated "observation" is from the vocabulary of Greek medical writers (Luke being a physician), and that the word meant "closely watching the symptoms of heart disease."[31]

The kingdom of God is within you ... Special attention is due this statement, because of the error that is associated with it in popular thought. Summers declared: "One thing only can be derived from this ... Jesus' emphasis of the kingdom as internal and spiritual, not external and material."[32] There is an element of truth in such a comment; but it must not be understood as teaching that the kingdom is simply something that gets into men. Summers appears to have had something like that in mind, basing his conclusion upon the fact that the word here translated "within" occurs only twice in the New Testament, the other instance being Matthew 23:26 where "the word refers to the inside of a cup or a dish." This, however, is not the whole story. The word in Matthew (used with an article) is a noun, and here it is an adverb; and W. E. Vine particularly stressed that, in Luke 17:21, "The English Revised Version margin, "in the midst of," is to be preferred. The kingdom of God was not in the hearts of the Pharisees!"[33]

Geldenhuys has an especially pertinent comment on this, thus:

The contention of some critics that the Saviour by these words taught that the kingdom of God is merely an inner, spiritual condition in the human heart, must very definitely be rejected. Such a condition may qualify for entrance into the kingdom, but it is not itself the kingdom ... It is not ... a state of mind ... nor a disposition of men. The kingdom of God is a fact of history, not psychology ... Jesus speaks everywhere of men entering the kingdom, not of the kingdom entering men!"[34]

Lo here ... lo there ... In the next paragraph (Luke 17:22-37), Jesus explained that the external, visible "signs" so desired by the Pharisees were to be seen, not during the forthcoming church phase of the kingdom of God, but at the Second Advent. We agree with Barclay that " Luke 17:22-27 speak of the Second Coming of Jesus."[35] That there are, in the very nature of such a passage, difficulties that we cannot fully understand should not deter us. The things here prophesied shall surely come to pass.

[28] E. J. Tinsley, The Gospel according to Luke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 166.

[29] Anthony Lee Ash, op. cit., p. 80.

[30] J. R. Dummelow, op. cit., p. 762.

[31] Herschel H. Hobbs, op. cit., p. 251.

[32] Ray Summers, op. cit., p. 202.

[33] W. E. Vine, Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1962), p. 224.

[34] Norval Geldenhuys, op. cit., pp. 443-444.

[35] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 229.