Matthew 12:28 – “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has already overtaken you.’

Luke 11:20 – “If I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has already overtaken you.”

This saying has featured prominently in scholarly discussion about the kingdom of God.  If ephthasen is correctly translated as ‘has come’, as most scholars think, then the kingdom was to be regarded, in at least some important senses, as present.  The miracles of Jesus, and especially his power over demons, speaks of the arrival of God’s kingdom, even if its consummation is yet future.

Mounce says that ‘it is best to take it to mean that the kingdom has arrived but not necessarily in its fullness.’

C.C. Caragouinis (DJG), however, observes that this (and its parallel) is the only text in the Gospels where the kingdom is said to have already come.  It is more usual for the kingdom to be said to be ‘at hand’ (e.g. Mt 3:2).  There is a well-attested usage of the aorist tense to emphasise the certainty of an event that had not yet occurred (something similar crops up in modern colloquial English).  If this applies here, then the sense is that the kingdom of God, already close, has been brought even closer by Jesus’ miracles.  The expression eph˒ hymas (‘upon you’) then takes on the force of a warning: the miracles of Jesus show that the forces of the kingdom of God are at this very moment beginning to be arrayed against those of the kingdom of Satan.