Christ’s Kingdom, Over All and Without End
Part 6 of a Study in the Nicene Creed
“and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.”
“Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.”
1 Corinthians 15:24-28
This passage is midstream in Paul’s great doctrine of the resurrection, which was unpacked to that Corinthian church because of an error that had crept in. The exact nature of that error has been debated by commentators, but a cluster of things that required correction are made plain by the Apostle. One of them was the simple, practical question: Why? Why a resurrected body? And Paul’s first doctrinal answer is covenantal and representative. Backing up to verse 21, it is because,
As by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ (vv. 21-23).
The First Man, Adam, sinned and brought death upon his human race. So God raised up a Last Man, a Second Adam, as the Head of a new race. God placed the whole world under a man, and that man killed that old world. Then God started a new world and raised it up under another chosen Man. Adam was King of Eden, but Eden fell to the Serpent’s forces. A new King has been set on Zion. Zion is “the Greater than Eden.” It is so much more than a “Plan B.” Rather the beginning was programmed with the end. The whole drama was eschatological. And bodies would be required, so that the Incarnation was the Seed of a whole new and greater world, where “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9).
So Paul desired to let these new citizens of the kingdom in on part of the secret of Christ’s present and future reign. And one part of the secret of the kingdom is that, if they would only look with spiritual eyes, they were already in it. Notice that there is a reign to come (the End) in verse 24, but then it says, ‘he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet’ (25). Two phases are implied of this kingdom that had come. Otherwise, how could Christ be reigning “until” anything that opposes that reign is put away? Such a reign would not be ultimate. Theologians call these two phases of Christ’s kingdom “inauguration” and “consummation.”
Kingdom Inaugurated: The Spiritual Reign of Christ Over All through the Church
Kingdom Consummated: The Total Reign of Christ Evermore through all the world
Kingdom Inaugurated: The spiritual reign of Christ over all through the church
1. To the eyes of the flesh, Jesus did not resemble a king. As Paul said, “None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). But then again Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (Jn. 18:36). So the first thing that the ascension is about is lifting our perspective from the natural to the spiritual. Even as the disciples “were gazing into heaven as he went” (Acts 1:10), so we are all called to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1). How do we do that? The very first way is to have our mind transformed to know and understand that doctrine of the ascension of Christ. What was the ascension, but the ascension to his throne? And yet—irony of ironies—only the Amillennial view takes this fact literally.
2. This is what it means that he ‘sits on the right hand of the Father.’ That is an ancient expression. The one who the King permitted to sit at his right hand, on a throne next to his, was symbolically shown to have a share in the rule, a portion of the kingdom. I am fascinated by all people’s doctrine of last things (eschatology) spinning their wheels and filling out their prophecy charts with things obscure and sensational and frankly unimportant to know. When all the while that which is most clear came the first time Jesus was here. He ascended to his throne. His kingdom started then. What else needs to be said in resolving the debate about the millennial reign? Peter preached his coronation ceremony on earth below, at Pentecost. He speaks of David’s words about Christ to come.
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).
3. The clearest starting point to New Testament eschatology is that the kingdom reign of Christ was inaugurated at the ascension. This spiritual reign is not a less real reign. It is more real reign than a merely earthly throne. Now it will become total, both in heaven and on earth, at the consummation. But the inauguration of the millennial reign spoken of in Revelation 20 coincides, John writes, with the First Resurrection (v. 5). So all who come to life in the power of Christ’s resurrection during the church age are said to “reign with him for a thousand years” (v. 6).
Kingdom Consummated: The total reign of Christ evermore through all the world
1. The first thing consummation means here is finality. That all opposition is brought to nothing, in one magnificent blast of divine punishment. The Creed says, ‘He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead.’ The Scriptures speak of “the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev. 6:16). The Psalmist warns all the little petty tyrants on earth: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled” (Ps. 2:12). It is fitting that judgment has been handed over to the Son (Jn. 5:27). A man represented both covenants. But Christ is both Servant and Lord of the covenant, not only the representative who performed in the place of his people, but the rightful Judge of all those who would not have him and who opposed him.
2. The second thing consummation means is fruition. This is the consummation of the Lord’s Prayer, “on earth and it is in heaven” (Mat. 6:10). So when we point to the words of this Creed as describing one, continuous reign of Christ, and a FUTURIST (such as a Premillennialist would be) says, “Oh, but here it is speaking of that kingdom that has NO END,” we distinguish. The consummated kingdom is a different state of the kingdom, but surely it is not a different King, nor a different right to rule. It is the same essential kingdom coming to fruition throughout, as 1 Corinthians 15:26-28 demands.
3. The third thing consummation means is forever. “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end” (Isa. 9:7). This is a guarantee of the gospel, that “so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17). One wonders what sort of comfort it brought to the rulers of the new Rome in Constantinople. It has been speculated by some historians that one motivating factor for the creeping Arianism among the sons of Constantine was that a full notion of God-Man would have surely had royal implications. Perhaps the patriarch of all things secular and sacred stood in a line with that first King, Christ, but then the rest of the line is his vicar? Who knows?
From this we can summarize the two main issues that divide Christians on eschatology: the nature of the millennium and the sense of interpreting prophecies, especially of Revelation. Keith Mathison simplifies the “millennial maze” very well:
The prefixes pre- and post- before the word millennium have to do with the timing of the second coming of Christ in relationship to the millennium itself. The term premillennialism refers to the belief that the Second Coming will occur before the millennium. The term postmillennialism refers to the belief that the second coming will occur after the millennium. Strictly speaking, amillennialism is a version of postmillennialism in this sense because amillennialists believe Christ's second coming will occur after the millennium. There are other differences that distinguish amillennialists from postmillennialists.1
Now when it comes to the models of interpreting Revelation, and other related prophecies, there are said to be four views, and then a fifth (called “eclectic”) that blends elements of the four. Actually, there shouldn't be a blending view of the four because there shouldn’t be four to begin with. Let me explain it in this way. I want you to try to imagine these four views as four “points” on a kind of narrative clock. On the far left is Preterism (9:00), at the other end on the right is Futurism (3:00). At the very top (12:00) in Idealism and at the bottom (6:00) is Historicism. Now I will let Cornelis Venema summarize what the four labels mean and then I’ll barge back in with my clock.
Preterism, as its name implies (deriving from a Latin root for “past”), takes the opposite tack of futurism. In this approach, the book of Revelation primarily refers to events that occurred in the past, either in the period prior to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70 or in the early Christian centuries leading up to the destruction of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD.
The futurist approach to the book of Revelation regards the visions of chapters 4–22 as referring to events that lie in the future, events that will occur immediately prior to Christ’s second coming and the end of history. Many, though not all, futurists are premillennialists and dispensationalists.
The historicist approach reads the book of Revelation as a visionary symbolization of the sequence of events that will occur throughout the course of the history of the church, from Christ’s first coming until His second coming at the end of the present age. Historicist interpreters of the book typically read its visions as a presentation in chronological order of the most significant developments in the history of redemption, from the time of its writing until the second coming, the millennium, the last judgment, and the final state.
The idealist approach differs from the first three approaches in its reluctance to identify any particular historical events, institutions, or people with the visions of the book of Revelation. Sometimes called “iterism,” this approach views the visions of Revelation as a portrayal of the church’s struggle throughout the entire period between the first and second comings of Christ.2
Now, the fact that all four of these are saying something true strongly suggests that the Ideal, that is the spiritual essence, is what is being exemplified on the timeline of past, present, and future. This is why there can be types to the left, antitypes to the right, archetypes above, and ectypes below. What I am driving at is a kind of Augustinian eschatology in which the supposed four “models” are really fractured visions of what ought to have been one. It will be charged with “Platonism” no doubt. Defending it is the business of another day.
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1. Keith Mathison, “The Millennial Maze”
2. Cornelius Venema, “Interpreting Revelation”
