The distinction between the kingdom inaugurated and the kingdom consummated was most famously illustrated by a theologian named Oscar Cullmann. He compared Christ’s First Advent to the D-Day landing at Normandy Beach. For all intents and purposes, that successful mission spelled the end of the Axis Powers in World War II. Of course the war did not officially end until the following year, as the Allied Powers reached Berlin. In the same way, Christ’s kingdom “landed” and decisively defeated the kingdom of darkness at the First Advent, and is “marching onward” to consolidate that victory at the Second Coming. 

Two Advents

The kingdom of God was inaugurated in the First Advent of Christ. If this defies categories of modern eschatologies, know that it defied the first century Jewish expectation long before. Bavinck chronicles the literal reading of the coming kingdom centered in Palestine.1 In the Old Testament, “Salvation is expected on earth, not in heaven. In this connection Old Testament prophecy knows only of one coming of the Messiah.”2

N. T. Wright explained the basic Jewish expectation in the first century:

“If Pilate was still governing Judea, then the kingdom had not come. If the Temple was not rebuilt, the the kingdom had not come. If the Messiah had not arrived, then the kingdom had not come. If Israel was not observing the Torah properly (however one might define that), then the kingdom has not come. If the pagans were not defeated and/or flocking to Zion for instruction, then the kingdom has not come. These tangilble, this-worldly points of reference … are all-important.”3

Carnal misunderstandings aside, Jesus would be extending the people of God from Israel out to the nations. As such, God would be gathering to Himself a people group so vast that the season of mercy would be extended. Jesus would come once to announce judgment and mercy. He will come a second time to make its final execution.

According to some very clear New Testament texts, we must consider the kingdom to have come in some way.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk. 1:15).

“But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Mat. 12:28).

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’” (Mat. 28:18). 

“he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3; cf. 10:12).

Now this is going to be a problem mostly for consistent Dispensationalists who want to restrict “the kingdom” to the ethnic Jewish nation in the future. Progressive Dispensationalists will admit that Christ’s kingdom was inaugurated in some way at the First Advent, but still hold out the distinction between the church and Israel by distancing this inauguration from the promised Davidic kingdom. But what we need to see here is that Peter’s words in Acts 2 immediately obliterate any such division of reigns.

“Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool”’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:30-36).

With this comes a clearer antithesis between God’s kingdom and that of this world.

Overlapping ages implies overlapping and warring worlds. Two “worlds” or “ages” are simultaneously coexisting; but unlike the popular meaning of the call to “co-exist” today, this convergence of worlds is more like two old naval vessels at sea, crashed into each other, engaging in a battle to the death. With the Incarnation, Christ smashed the more real world onto the shores of the shadow world, so that the kingdom was first realized in His Person and Work, even down to His words and miraculous signs. The first thing to see, however, is the antithesis.

“He said to them, ‘You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world’” (Jn. 8:23).

“If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (Jn. 15:19).

The growth of the church across this world ever since is like the advancement of the “circle” of that real and lasting world across the now deadening, darkening, and cracking shadow world.

We can view these “worlds” not only in terms of what was, and then, what is versus what will be, but in terms of what ought to be. What else do we mean by the line of the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mat. 6:10). Some may say that this is purely and simply a prayer anticipating the Second Coming. But would most Christians say that?

The earliest rounds of scholarship in the rise of modern eschatology lines up on two extreme opposite positions. Hoekema summarizes, “Ritschl, Harnack, and C. H. Dodd thought of the kingdom in Jesus’ teaching as exclusively present, whereas men like Weiss, Schweitzer, and Moltmann taught that the kingdom was exclusively future.”4 According to Ladd, “There is a growing consensus in New Testament scholarship that the kingdom of God is in some sense both present and future.”5

It is at the Second Advent that the kingdom will be fully consummated—meaning all things consolidated. There will be peace between God and the cursed cosmos: “and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20). It also mean that all enemies will be conquered. Though it is distasteful to many, there will be an entirely just forced homage on the Last Day:

“so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phi. 2:10-11).

The cursed world and its sinful fruit will be excluded from that consummated kingdom: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mat. 7:21); or at the end of the Bible we read, “Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Rev. 22:15).

Two States

These refer to the humiliation of Christ and the exaltation of Christ. Unlike so many other doctrines of the faith, this one has a prooftext that summarizes the whole with such clarity that hardly another verse is needed to establish it. It comes from Paul’s words that,

“Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phi. 2:5-11).

How should we describe the humiliation of Christ?

The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q.27, asks: Wherein did Christ’s humiliation consist? Answer: “Christ’s humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.”

Now clearly this state corresponds to Christ’s First Advent. This was the stage of the kingdom’s development where the King “landed in disguise,” to use an expression of C. S. Lewis. But there are eschatological implications of Christ’s humiliation.

Christ’s humiliation became a pattern for the church in between inauguration and consummation. It will be debated as to how this relates to concepts such as dominion. However one resolves that, it cannot be denied that the Christian is called to be and do, during this age, as Jesus Himself was and did during His time on earth.

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21).

“and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:17).

Is all of that trouble in the world to the exclusion of any benefits of Christ’s exaltation? What is the nature of Christ’s exaltation?

Again, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q.28, asks: Wherein consisteth Christ’s exaltation? Answer: “Christ’s exaltation consisteth in his rising again from the dead on the third day, in ascending up into heaven, in sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and in coming to judge the world at the last day.”

Note that the exaltation of Christ refers to a state of His human nature, not divine. As divine He is immutably and eternally exalted above the heavens. This exaltation is that glory which Christ anticipated by the promise of God, for example, “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool” (Ps. 110:1).

There are also eschatological implications of Christ’s exaltation. One is built into the answer and obvious—in coming to judge the world at the last day. However, what of the ascension to the Father’s right hand? If you are wondering, the Larger Catechism (which much more descriptive in Questions 53 and 54) doesn’t take a position on how the rule of Christ over all things translates into the church’s exercising of that reign on earth.

Two Reigns

Now notice, as we summarize these attributes of the King and kingdom, that these will become an angle on the four models of preterism, futurism, historicism, and idealism. The kingdom having come is the preterist element. The kingdom still to come is the futurist element. The King exalted and acting from on high is the idealist element. His kingdom being manifested through and to its citizens is the historicist element.

When the Bible speaks of Christ’s “inheriting” a reign, this does not contradict the sense in which he already owns all things as God. The Reformed make a distinction between the (1) essential (or natural) reign of Christ, by which, as the eternal Son, he is Lord over all things at all times and places; and (2) the mediatorial (or economical) reign of Christ, by which, as the anointed Messiah, he is Head of the church. The latter is also called “economical” because of the “economy of grace” in the covenant of grace in time. 

What is the nature of the essential reign of Christ?

As the eternal Son of God, He rules over all, just as do the Father and Holy Spirit—“The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1).

There is distinction regarding the senses of worlds or realms. While there is only one created reality, given the abdication of Adam as God’s earthly representative (image), Satan usurped that position, so that the Scriptures will speak of the devil as “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), or “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2), or “the ruler of this world” (Jn. 12:31; cf. 14:30; 16:11).

Even before the blow dealt to the devil in the First Advent, we are reminded of the devil’s subservient status, as when God summoned “the Satan” (ha satan) into his courts to instigate the trial of Job. Twice when the devil was asked from where he came, the reply is: “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it” (1:7; cf. 2:2). Even in fuller charge of the nations, the devil remained, as Luther said, “God’s devil.”

There are also different biblical words associated with the “worlds” over which God reigns. Whereas in the Old Testament, the Hebrew ‘olam—itself a diverse word (e.g. age, world, universe, eternity, everlasting)—was a choice word, in the Greek of the New Testament, one sees a separation of the coming aion from the kosmos, so that the latter for “world” is almost always expressive of the dark world from which we are redeemed.

“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mk. 8:36).

“Do not love the world or the things in the world … And the world is passing away along with its desires” (1 Jn. 2:15, 17).

This matters for relating the two reigns of Christ because, even if we grant that His reign over the church encompasses His ongoing conquest of earthly powers in history, that conquest is neither depending on nature nor rehabilitating that which is intrinsically opposed to Him.

Now what about the mediatorial reign of Christ?

Turretin divides the mediatorial reign under four heads, namely, by how it is to be exercised: “(1) in the calling and gathering of the church; (2) the conservation and government of the same; (3) the protection and defense of it against all its enemies; (4) the full and perfect glorification of it, to be made on the last day.”6

That this reign must be spiritual-not-earthly can be taken to refer to its “root” in the heavenly City of God—not that it will not consolidate all things, including earth. Thus Turretin lays out six reasons why it must be primarily heavenly. Interestingly he poses this view against the Jewish view of the Messiah, but it may equally be against the Dispensationalist view today. So he lists, 

“First, from the prophecies of the Old Testament (e.g. Gen. 49:10; Dan. 9:26) … Second, the kingdom of Christ was adumbrated [typified] by various earthly kingdoms … The figure must be inferior to the thing figured by it; the shadow to the substance … Third, all that pertains to this kingdom is spiritual … Fourth, the Messiah was to come for the purpose of abolishing the tyrannical kingdom of Satan … to expiate sin and to bring in everlasting righteousness (Dan. 9:24) … Fifth, the Messiah’s kingdom is [called] the kingdom of heaven (e.g. Mat. 3:2; Rom. 14:17) … Sixth, the kingdom of Christ is not of this world (Jn. 18:36). Christ does not deny that his kingdom is in this world, for he was appointed by God to rule in the midst of his enemies (Ps. 110:2); but he does deny that it is ‘of this world.’”7

We can speak of the “consolidation” of the two arenas (not reigns) into one. These two realms come together without opposition at the Second Coming and in the eternal state (Phi. 2:10-11, Rev.  21:5-6).

That said, the two reigns remain distinct, just as the two natures of Christ remain distinct. Turretin asks, “Is the mediatorial kingdom of Christ to continue forever? We affirm.” And then he adds, “concerning which we have a controversy with the Socinians. In order to impair the dignity and divinity of our Mediator, they maintain that this kingdom will come to an end on the last day and its ultimate act will be the judgment of the whole world; then his kingdom and regal authority will be given up to the Father.”8 Clearly they are leaning on 1 Corinthians 15:26-28; and yet it does not follow that the delivery of the kingdom to the Father is a relinquishing of his own place in it! 

The Scriptures themselves claim that this reign is “forever” (2 Sam. 7:13; Lk. 1:33); and, “his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away” (Dan. 7:14). The only debate among the Reformed is the sense in which the spiritual reign of Christ has authority over all things in this age (Mat. 28:18).

Hoekema is agreeable to the idea of optimism regarding the cause of Christ in spreading His gospel through the world; but there is another dimension that he is keen to recognize, namely, that there are implications for our part.

“It will be evident, therefore, that the kingdom of God, as described in the New Testament, is not a state of affairs brought about by human achievement, nor is it the culmination of strenuous human effort. The kingdom is established by God’s sovereign grace, and its blessings are to be received as gifts of that grace.”9

_____________________

1. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, IV:648-653.

2. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, IV:654

3. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 223.

4. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, 41.

5. Ladd, The Presence of the Future, 3.

6. Turretin, Institutes, II.14.16.5.

7. Turretin, Institutes, II.14.16.7-12.

8. Turretin, Institutes, II.14.17.1.

9. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, 45.