The kingdom of God is in your midst.- Luke 17:21


I heard an argument this week (on Steve Gregg's 1-20 The Narrow Path) regarding this verse, Luke 17:21.  The King James translation and others that follow it have this statement as, "the kingdom of God is within you."  Forty-one translations at BibleGateway have "within you", while eighteen have "in the midst of you", or "in your midst"; and sixteen have "among you".

One of the problems with "within you", is that Jesus is addressing unbelieving Pharisees:

Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Luke 17:21-22 (NKJV)

I can read this and make the interpretation that the kingdom was not within the Pharisees, because they were in unbelief.  

Before I talk about the word 'entos' that is translated both literally and misleadingly, 'within' in the KJV and many others; I want to point out that the word 'is', is in the present tense in the Greek, which means the kingdom is now available rather than something to be watched for and waited for, and the word 'you' is plural.  "Within you", singular implies that there is a spiritual reign within (individual) people, and this runs counter to everything the Bible says about the kingdom of God which is external, among and in the midst of people.

I looked up the Greek word 'entos' in the BDAG Greek Lexicon and here are my notes:

entos pertains to a specific area inside something, inside, within, within the limits...  (In) Luke 17:21 among you, in your midst, either now or suddenly in the near future.

The individual phone call question/debate was posted on YouTube.


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