When will things get better?
When will God intervene?
When will the kingdom come?
These questions echo through religious history. People have waited for divine rescue, for cosmic transformation, for the moment when everything changes. Some have set dates. Some have sold their possessions. Some have spent their lives watching the sky.
The Gospel of Thomas records a different answer.
The disciples asked Jesus: “When will the kingdom come?”
His response:
“It will not come by watching for it. They will not say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘Look, there it is.’ Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.”
The kingdom isn’t coming. It’s already here. The problem isn’t its absence. The problem is your failure to see it.
Three Sayings That Change Everything
The Gospel of Thomas contains three sayings that, taken together, constitute one of the most radical spiritual teachings ever recorded.
Saying 113 (quoted above): The kingdom is spread out upon the earth, but people don’t see it.
Saying 51: The disciples ask, “When will the rest for the dead take place, and when will the new world come?” Jesus answers: “What you are looking for has come, but you do not recognize it.”
Saying 3: “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds will arrive there before you. If they say, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father.”
Put these together:
The kingdom is already spread upon the earth. What you’re waiting for has already arrived. The kingdom is simultaneously within you and all around you. The key to seeing it is self-knowledge.
This isn’t future hope. It’s present reality.
Why We Keep Missing It
If the kingdom is already here, why don’t we experience it?
The Gospel of Thomas suggests several obstacles:
We’re looking in the wrong places.
When spiritual teachers point to the sky or to some future event, they’re directing attention away from what’s actually available. The kingdom isn’t located somewhere you need to travel to. It’s not arriving on a date you need to calculate. It’s here, now, in this moment.
Looking for it “out there” guarantees you won’t find it.
We’re waiting instead of seeing.
Waiting is a posture that keeps the desired thing perpetually in the future. As long as you’re waiting for the kingdom, you’re not recognizing its presence.
Saying 51 is almost comically pointed about this. The disciples ask when the rest will come, when the new world will arrive. Jesus says: what you’re looking for has already come. You just don’t recognize it.
They’re waiting for something they’re standing in.
We don’t know ourselves.
Saying 3 ties the whole thing together. The kingdom is inside you and outside you. Access comes through self-knowledge. “When you know yourselves, then you will be known.”
Without self-knowledge, you remain blind to what’s always present. You can’t see the kingdom outside because you haven’t discovered it inside. The internal and external recognitions are connected.
We’re caught in distraction and forgetfulness.
Other sayings in Thomas describe the world as “drunk” and “asleep.” People are too intoxicated with immediate concerns to notice what’s actually happening. The kingdom is subtle. It doesn’t compete with the loud demands of ordinary life. If you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it.
What Does “Kingdom” Even Mean Here?
In mainstream Christianity, the kingdom of God often refers to a future state: God’s reign fully established, justice prevailing, evil defeated. The Lord’s Prayer includes “Thy kingdom come,” implying it hasn’t fully arrived yet.
The Gospel of Thomas means something different.
Here, the kingdom isn’t a political arrangement or a cosmic event. It’s a dimension of reality that’s always present but usually unrecognized. Scholar Elaine Pagels suggests that Thomas presents the kingdom “not as a final destination but a state of self-discovery.”
The kingdom is what you find when you wake up from the trance of ordinary consciousness.
It’s what’s left when illusion is stripped away.
It’s the ground of reality, always present, waiting for you to notice.
This explains why self-knowledge is the key. You’re not discovering something foreign. You’re recognizing what you already are and what you’ve always been surrounded by.
The Radical Implication
If the kingdom is already here, everything changes.
You can stop waiting.
The endless deferral of satisfaction can end. You don’t need to wait for better circumstances, for the right teacher, for the cosmic moment. Whatever you’re seeking is available now.
This doesn’t mean nothing needs to change. But it means the fundamental reality you’re seeking isn’t absent. The changes you need are in perception, not in cosmic timing.
The present moment becomes sufficient.
Most spiritual seeking is tinged with dissatisfaction. This isn’t it. I haven’t arrived yet. The real thing is somewhere else, somewhen else.
But if the kingdom is spread upon the earth right now, then this moment contains everything necessary. Not in some abstract theological sense, but actually. The sacred isn’t waiting in the future. It’s present in the ordinary.
Self-knowledge becomes urgent.
If the obstacle to the kingdom is failure to recognize it, and if self-knowledge is the key to recognition, then knowing yourself becomes the most important work you can do.
Not knowing about yourself. Knowing yourself. Direct acquaintance with what you actually are beneath the stories and identities you’ve accumulated.
This is why the Gnostic traditions emphasized gnosis: not information but direct knowing, not belief about God but acquaintance with the divine within.
Practical Implications
How do you begin to see what’s already here?
Stop watching for it to arrive.
Notice your mental posture. Are you waiting for something? Expecting the important thing to happen later? That waiting itself is the problem.
Try this: for one hour, operate as if everything you need is already present. Don’t look for it. Don’t wait for it. Assume it’s here and pay attention.
Look where you are, not where you aren’t.
The kingdom is spread upon the earth. It’s in the ordinary, not in the extraordinary. It’s in the mundane moments, not just the peak experiences.
Saying 77 from Thomas says: “Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.” The divine presence isn’t hidden in special places. It’s in the wood and the stone, in the daily and the simple.
Practice noticing the sacred in the ordinary. Not as a belief, but as an experiment. What if the divine were present in this conversation, this meal, this breath?
Cultivate self-knowledge.
Saying 3 is clear: “When you know yourselves, then you will be known.”
Self-knowledge doesn’t mean analyzing your personality or reviewing your history. It means direct awareness of what you are beneath the personality and history.
Who is aware of your thoughts? What is it that observes your experience? What remains constant while everything else changes?
These questions point toward the self-knowledge that unlocks recognition of the kingdom.
Practice presence instead of anticipation.
Waiting is a future orientation. Presence is a now orientation. The kingdom is available now, so presence is the appropriate posture.
When you catch yourself projecting into the future, come back. When you notice you’re waiting for something to complete your experience, stop and ask: what if this moment were already complete?
Not Passive, But Awake
This teaching isn’t about giving up or accepting whatever happens. It’s about changing what you’re looking for and where you’re looking.
The kingdom isn’t passive acceptance of suffering. It’s recognition that the deepest reality is already present, even amid suffering. It’s not resignation. It’s awakening.
When you stop waiting for the kingdom to arrive, you can actually start living in it. You can act from the recognition of its presence rather than striving toward its future appearance.
The work remains. The challenges remain. But the fundamental orientation shifts. You’re not working toward something absent. You’re expressing something present.
The Children of the Living Father
Saying 3 ends with a promise: “When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father.”
The kingdom isn’t just a place or a state. It’s a relationship. It’s recognition of your origin and identity. You are a child of the living Father. You belong to the source of life. This is what you discover when you stop waiting and start seeing.
The disciples asked: when will the kingdom come?
Jesus answered: it’s already here, spread upon the earth, closer than your own breath, waiting only for you to recognize it.
What you’re looking for has come.
You just haven’t recognized it yet.
The Gospel of Thomas is available in translation in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (Marvin Meyer, ed.) and at various online repositories. For scholarly context, see the work of Elaine Pagels, April DeConick, and Earl Richard.