The first thing Jesus does in Mark’s Gospel is open his mouth and announce that the kingdom of God has come near. It’s the line that summarizes everything that follows. And the Greek word standing under kingdom is βασιλεία (basileia) — a word that, in English translation, has quietly misled generations of readers.

In English, kingdom sounds like a place. A territory, a realm, somewhere with borders and a capital and subjects living inside it. We hear the kingdom of God and picture either a future heaven we’re trying to enter or a spiritual space that exists somewhere else. But basileia means, primarily and first, not a territory but a reign. Not a place but an activity — the rank, authority, and sovereignty exercised by a king. It’s what a king does. The exercising of rule, the carrying out of authority.

The biblical scholar George Eldon Ladd, of Fuller Theological Seminary, put it about as plainly as anyone: the primary meaning of the Greek basileia in the New Testament — and of the Hebrew malkuth underneath it — is the rank, authority, and sovereignty exercised by a king. A basileia can be the territory a king rules and the people he rules over, but those are secondary and derived. First of all, a kingdom is the king-ing. The reigning. The act of being in charge.

That single shift reframes much of the Gospels. The kingdom of God stops being a destination we’re trying to reach and becomes the active, real-time ruling of God — his being in charge, what happens when God is actually running things. And the verb attached to it does more than English suggests. When Jesus says the kingdom has come near, the Greek is in the perfect tense, which describes an action that has happened and whose effects continue into the present. The phrase means has drawn near and is now here — not is about to arrive. The reign has broken in.

This is the seedbed of the phrase scholars now use everywhere: already and not yet. The basileia Jesus announces is already present — at work through his healings, his meals with sinners, his forgiveness of sins. And it is not yet fully here — wrong still wins, death is still in the world, and the full reign is still coming. So the next time you read about the kingdom of God, try hearing reign or active kingship in place of place. Seek first the reign of God. The reign of God is like a mustard seed. The verses sit differently — and you start to hear why it’s something we pray to come, not just somewhere we hope to go.