I don't know.

That doesn't make any sense.

Dr. Jonathan Pennington, thank you so much for joining me today.

It's a joy, thank you.

This is Dr. Jonathan Pennington. He holds a PhD in New Testament studies from the University of St. Andrews, is professor

of New Testament interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and as an associate

pastor at Sojourn East in Louisville, Kentucky.

All right, let's hear our kid question. We were reading John 3 and had a question.

What is the difference between entering the kingdom of God and having eternal life?

How does this relate to the sermon on the mount where it says that the poor and spirit are blessed because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them?

Wow, I mean, this is a kid who is learning and reading and thinking

big thoughts. What is your just initial reaction to this question when you hear that?

My initial reaction is that kid's way ahead of me. It took me until about maybe 10 years ago

to ask myself that question, really from teaching through the Gospels, I began to see, of course, that in Matthew,

Mark and Luke, it's all about the kingdom of God. But then in John, maybe more familiar to us,

at least in the past, is this language of eternal life. And so I love that question of,

what is the relationship of those things to each other? So glad to talk about that.

Yeah, it's a really good one. I think before we get into what is the relationship, I think most people listening have heard people talk about the kingdom of God.

But to your point just now, maybe they've never sat down and gone, okay, it's used in a bunch of places.

Maybe I've even heard kingdom of God, but I've also heard other kingdom language.

So just to start us off, like for someone

who wasn't like this very smart kid just reading in John 3 about this and having this question,

...