In this essay we want to begin to identify what that life is like. To do this we can hardly do better than turning to the beatitudes, found in the first great sermon in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew contains a story section leading up to each of these five sermons, and the whole book is enclosed between the story of Jesus' birth and that of his death and resurrection. The emphasis on the kingdom is appropriate because the gospel that both John the Baptist and Jesus proclaimed was the good news that God's kingdom had arrived in the person of His incarnate son. While there is a perspective that says the kingdom was postponed because the Jews rejected Jesus and will come only in the millennium.
Salvation includes more than forgiveness.
It brings new life into us. The life of the kingdom of God, which is the human life worked out by Jesus in his time on earth and imparted to us by the Holy Spirit. But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom whose who believed in Him were to receive, for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. What the Spirit imparts to us and implants in us is the humanity of the Lord Jesus, worked out for our benefit in His life in ancient Israel. However, the old life with which we were born is still in us.