Genesis 49: Jacob’s Farewell Prophecy to His Sons and Christ’s Kingly Reign

Genesis 49: Jacob’s Farewell Prophecy to His Sons and Christ’s Kingly Reign

Jun 26, 2024 | Eschatology, Uncategorized

The continuity of the Bible is mind blowing. Sixty-six different books written by 40 or so different authors over 1500 years in Hebrew and Greek, with a little Aramaic thrown in, and yet it is one consistent message. The entirety of redemptive history is found in microcosm in the account of the fall in Genesis 3, and God’s curse on the serpent, and His promise to fix it:

15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.

From there the story plays out in a very crooked line directly toward ultimate victory to Revelation 22 and the total consummation of all things.

This continuity and consistency is a powerful reason I believe the Bible could not have been made up, mere human invention, fiction to one degree or another. Remember, for 300 years, the Bible’s critics have asserted not only could it be made up, but in fact was and could easily be so, and Christians have been on the defensive ever since. Both they and we act as if we’re the only ones who have the burden of proof. Not true. Since they think it would be a piece of cake to make it all up, let them provide evidence it was. Reading or listening to such critics, we’ll quickly realize all they have are assertions based on question-begging anti-supernatural bias, conclusions assumed with questionable justification. The mental gymnastics and pretzel logic they have used over the years is truly impressive. And that people bought it uncritically, pun intended, is quite the feat. For many reasons, secular critical scholars don’t have the credibility they once did, and they never again will, but the bias and assertions remain.

Recently reading Genesis 49 I was reminded of this continuity and consistency. Jacob is about to die and tells his sons what is to come. In verse 1 he says, “Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come.” Most English translations say, “days to come,” but the Hebrew literally says last days, the after-part or end. The phrase last days is a common one to Christians. We see it in a variety of verses in the Old and New Testaments, always referring to the Messianic period after Christ. He speaks to all 12, and here is what Jacob says to Judah:

8 “Judah, your brothers will praise you;
your hand will be on the neck of your enemies;
your father’s sons will bow down to you.
9 You are a lion’s cub, Judah;
you return from the prey, my son.
Like a lion he crouches and lies down,
like a lioness—who dares to rouse him?
10 The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until he to whom it belongs shall come
and the obedience of the nations shall be his.
11 He will tether his donkey to a vine,
his colt to the choicest branch;
he will wash his garments in wine,
his robes in the blood of grapes.
12 His eyes will be darker than wine,
his teeth whiter than milk.

The picture is one of complete dominance and flourishing of the descendent of Judah.

Remember, what we’re reading here is something that took place 400 years before the Exodus, and it will be a very long time before any descendent of Jacob’s will be anything other than slaves. It will be probably another 700 or 800 years before the nation of Israel will even have a land of its own, let alone any power over other nations. As I often say, God is never in a hurry. But think about how crazy this must have sounded. For hundreds of years Hebrew slaves were told this first official biblical prophecy coming through a man and nothing ever changed. God’s word often sounded crazy to God’s people, and often still does, but His track record is pretty good, so we are compelled to trust Him. Why we can trust Him is specifically because of this dominance and flourishing Jacob predicts, as we’ll explore below.

The Lion of the Tribe of Judah
First, though, I want to look more carefully at the metaphor of Jesus as a lion. As a messianic declaration it is specifically speaking to his divinity. In Isaiah 31:4, the lion metaphor speaks of Yahweh as the warrior for His people:

This is what the Lord says to me: “As a lion growls, a great lion over its prey— and though a whole band of shepherds is called together against it, it is not frightened by their shouts or disturbed by their clamor— so the Lord Almighty will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and on its heights.

In Jeremiah 50, Yahweh is like a lion doing battle for Israel against Babylon, and there are four different references to Yahweh as a lion doing battle for His people in Hosea. There are several other such references in other prophets as well, so in New Testament hindsight, we can conclude the lion Jacob refers to is Yahweh is Jesus the Messiah. The most well-known of phrases related to Jesus as lion comes from Revelation 5 where Jesus is referred to as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. The context is significantly related to Jacob’s prophecy about this descendent of Judah.

He who sits on the throne is holding in his right hand “a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals.” John weeps because no one is found worthy to open it, but an elder tells him this Lion of the Tribe of Judah is worthy. In a counter intuitive move, the Lion becomes like a Lamb who was slain, and he takes the scroll, and all of heaven breaks into joyous worship, singing a “new song”:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10 You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”

We will see how this relates to Jacob’s prophecy of over 1500 years before, but this lion as slain lamb’s victory is attained through his slaughter, the shedding of his blood to literally buy the people he will turn into a kingdom and servants of God. And not only is this connected to Jacob’s prophecy, but it goes directly back the Genesis 3 and God’s promise that the woman’s seed would strike the serpent’s head, but he only the heel of the seed. But victory in this cosmic spiritual war came in a way nobody could predict until it happened. The very absurdity of it makes it profoundly compelling as the truth.

At the very moment when the forces of darkness were convinced they had defeated Almighty God, He mocks them. Peter tells us in Acts 4 that Psalm 2 is a picture of the crucifixion and resurrection:

4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
5 He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 “I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”

7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.
8 Ask me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You will break them with a rod of iron;
you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

The resurrection was when the lion of the tribe of Judah started his reign on earth. God had defeated his foe, and Satan was now bound and cast down no longer with any ultimate power to deceive the nations. He would now be slowly defeated as God’s kingdom had come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. After 2000 years Jacob’s prophecy was finally fulfilled, and he to whom the scepter belongs had arrived.

Jacob’s Prophecy: For Now or Only for the Life to Come?
At this point, how we view “end times,” or our eschatology, will determine how we interpret Jacob’s prophecy. Unlike for much of Christian history, today most Christians believe the obedience of the nations and Jesus receiving the nations as his inheritance will only happen when he returns, at his Second Coming or Advent. The Great Commission in this understanding is primarily witnessing and seeing the gospel preached. The results of that preaching are not the primary point, though fervently wished for. Most Christians, unfortunately, have not thought through their eschatology in any depth, but if you ask them they will likely say any fundamental transformation of this world will only happen when Jesus returns. Prior to that things would inevitably get worse until Jesus finally comes back to clean up the mess once and for all. This is exactly what I believed until about a year and eight months ago when I embraced postmillennialism.

I hadn’t thought through this in any depth either, but I guess I saw the Great Commission as there being Christian conversions in every nation, and once that happened maybe that means the nations had been discipled. In this view, the making of disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded them is severely constricted to individuals. The effects on the culture and society are byproducts of what happens in the church and in the individual lives as Christians. We are the best Christians we can be and some way this leaks out to the rest of the society, and a Christian nation or Christian culture is the result. As a Christian culture warrior I didn’t even believe this, but I hadn’t thought through it enough to have any firm convictions.

This perspective on the Christian life is the fruit of Pietism. I wrote about this previously, so I will not address it here, but the end result is that we see our faith as primarily personal. Another way to put it is that Jacob’s prophecy has nothing to do with life in this fallen world. It’s as if redemptive history after Christ ascended to heaven and the right hand of God only applied to individuals, and maybe church communities, but the rest of humanity is out of luck. I don’t see it that way anymore, and I’ll give a very brief glimpse here of why.

Now, I read passages like this in Genesis 49, and I’m off to the races! I see connections everywhere, and I could keep writing for a long time, but I’ll control myself. I no longer see Jacob’s prophecy as of passing interest because I believe it refers only to Christ coming to set all things right at the end of time. In other words, I don’t believe its relevance is primarily if not solely eschatological. Prior on a practical level, I saw Jesus as only king in the hearts of his people. He was obviously not king of this fallen world; isn’t that obvious? How could he be king if everyone isn’t obeying him and acknowledging him as king? Those are very good questions, but can’t be answered in any depth in a blog post. But I will answer them as best I can in the space I have remaining based on the passages above form Genesis 49, Revelation 5, and Psalm 2 via Acts 4.

The Obedience of the Nations Shall Be His Through His Body
The reality and idea of nations and God dealing with them as nations is common throughout Scripture. As post-Enlightenment secular Westerners (most Christians are secular, the opposite side of the coin of Pietism) we see the world through a personal and individual lens. Everything that happens is interpreted for how it affects individuals, not families, communities, groups, or nations, but God never deals with individuals apart from the larger context in which they live.

Think about your reading through the Old Testament. Early on God dealt with people groups like those spoken of in Genesis 15:19-21: “the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites . . . .” As time went on nations became more well defined by geographical boundaries, like the Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, and Babylonians, but nothing like the modern Westphalian nation-state with permanent boarders. For example, when God called Jonah to go preach his word of judgment to “the great city of Nineveh,” that city eventually repented and turned from their evil ways, God relented and didn’t bring his judgment on the city. The judgment or blessing was to fall on the entire nation. The purpose of God’s covenant to the Patriarchs is to bless the nations, not individuals.

This is clear from Jacob’s prophecy, and it’s direct connection via Acts 4 to Psalm 2. At the moment of the resurrection, Jesus was installed on God’s holy mountain, and the nations at that moment became his inheritance and possession. He did not have to wait until he returned at the end of time. When he ascended to the right hand of God to take all authority in heaven and on earth and sent his Holy Spirit at Pentecost, that actual slow, step-by-step process of taking possession of his nations to bless them per God’s covenant promises began. Too many Christians don’t seem to understand that God is never in a hurry. We’re 4,000 years into this thing, and we think it has to be close to over. What if it’s not? What if we’re not even half way through God extending Christ’s reign on earth and building his kingdom through expanding his church, His people?

We’re in this for the long haul, brothers and sisters. We need to stop this obsession among conservative Christians of whining about it being so bad Jesus must be coming back any day, and get to work building the kingdom. We’re his body, his hands and arms and legs, and this is how it is done, through us. When we read in Revelation that Christ purchased us “to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God” and that we “will reign on the earth,” we need to start acting like it. Doing nothing and cowering in fear as if the works of the devil and the power of sin is greater than our God and Christ and his righteousness, is dishonoring to Almighty God who so loved the world He gave himself up for it.

Secularism and Pietism: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Secularism and Pietism: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Apr 10, 2024 | Culture, Eschatology

As I’ve been thinking and reading about Christ’s reign being extended throughout the world and God’s kingdom advancing, I’ve realized that secularism and Pietism are two sides of the same coin. That might seem strange given the former is completely anti-religion and the latter is passionately religious, but both lead to the same thing: a secular society devoid of Christian influence. The realization I’ve had, and learned from others who’ve thought through these things for a lot longer than I have, is that because of the influence of Pietism, secularism triumphed as Christianity became primarily inward and personal.

Secularists love Christianity as long as it stays inside the four walls of the church or home, in the proverbial closet. Religion cannot be allowed to mar the sacred secular public space. I use the word sacred purposefully and ironically because secularism is a religion, another form of paganism whose gods just look different. The problem is that Christians who effectively embrace Pietism, as do most Evangelical Christians in our day, believe their faith belongs within those four walls and not in public. Therefore, secularism has free reign to dominate society and culture just as it has since World Word II in the once Christian West.

I’ve been thinking along these lines since my “conversion” to postmillennialism. The critical component of this optimistic eschatology is that it teaches us from Scripture, not speculation, that Christ did not come only to save our souls so when we die we go to heaven, nor to add personal holiness to that. His mission was far more expansive and far reaching. Specifically, he came to address the curse of sin for his fallen people, and the effects of sin on, in, and through us. For me, that latter preposition was what I didn’t get or discounted my entire Christian life until my “conversion” a year and a half ago. I heard a young Christian Twitter friend of mine, Joshua Haymes, say becoming postmillennial was like a drop of ink in a clear glass of water. It looks pretty cool and psychedelic for a bit, then in due course it colors every drop of water. Postmillennialism is like that; it colors everything I see because Christ came to win, here, now, in this life in this fallen world.

Christ’s Victory Over the Devil
Just as he frustrated the devil in the wilderness (Matt. 4), Jesus has been frustrating him for 2,000 years through His people whom he came to save (Matt. 1:21). I never knew that Isaac Watts’ Christmas hymn, Joy to the World was postmillennial:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found.

There is a lot of wonderful theology in those words! Just as the curse is ubiquitous, so are the blessings that flow through us to overcome the effects of the curse. Every square inch of reality is Christ’s, and he has commissioned us to take it back from the devil.

We sell Jesus’ victory over Satan and evil short when we think it is solely for the consummated state when he comes again to judge the living and the dead. I used to believe Satan and evil had the upper hand down here in this fallen world. I thought, isn’t it obvious? But it’s not obvious at all for those with eyes to see beyond the obvious. I use that word three times to highlight how easily we interpret reality by what we see and feel, rather than by the word of God. For example, we’re told Jesus came to reign and rule until he has put all his enemies under his feet (I Cor. 15:25), the last enemy being death which will happen at the resurrection. Who and what are his enemies prior to the resurrection? Anything that is contrary to the law-word of God. That’s happening whether you think you can see it or not, and in due course it will become obvious too. We’re playing the long game here, pushing back the curse not just for now, but for generations to come.

Unfortunately, we give far too much credit to sin and the devil. God told us in Genesis 3 that the seed of the woman would strike or bruise the serpent’s head. We may think the devil is a formidable foe, but every scheme he can conjure up in that head of his will fail. Jesus (through his church, us) is in fact frustrating him; he cannot frustrate Jesus. And no matter where the curse is found Jesus is conquering it, pushing it back, transforming what the devil intends for evil into good. If we think this process of conquering evil is only for the church, or only to be done inside the church or our houses, we are missing the mission of God in Christ, why he came: to redeem and restore all creation by the nations being discipled. That indeed is a Great Commission!

I recently relistened to the James White sermon that initially cracked open my closed mind to postmillennialism in August of 2022. In it he said there are far more professing Christians alive today than people living on earth in the first century. Could anyone alive then have imagined such a thing? Now we need to help more of these Christians escape from the clutches of Pietism and bring King Jesus to every area of their lives to disciple their own nations.

Why Pietism Came to Dominate the Modern Church
As with any movement among peoples and cultures there are a variety of complex factors that cannot be neatly packaged as a cause. The same is true with these two isms, and it is important to realize how they grew symbiotically together as a poisonous weed in Christian Western culture.

Initially, Pietism was a response to a type of dry scholasticism that grew out of the Middle Ages tending to make faith a merely intellectual exercise. The early Reformers were products of that scholastic culture, and as such were profoundly intellectual. The Reformation was built on those intellectual efforts, but over time some saw those efforts as tending toward a dry formalism. Pietists were specifically looking for a more dynamic, experiential faith, and built a contrasting, non-intellectual version of Christianity. This developed initially among German Lutherans in the early 17th century. In due course through some strains of Puritanism and the First and Second Great Awakenings, it made its way into American fundamentalism, and became the default faith of modern Evangelicalism.

Needless to say, God made us in his image, therefore our intellect is not in any way opposed to or contrary to our feelings or emotions. God made us so our emotions primarily flow from our thinking, and our thinking not dominated by our emotions. This orientation of the rightly ordered man started to change in Western culture as the two isms made their way into the modern world. An excellent explanation of what this means is in C.S. Lewis’s classic book, The Abolition of Man. He starts with a withering assessment of a book intended for, “boys and girls in the upper forms of schools.” Keep in mind the book was written in 1943, some three hundred years after the two isms had come to dominance in Western culture, but not enough to dominate. That would come in what we affectionally call, “The ‘60s.” The authors of the textbook are addressing a work by English poet and literary critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). The authors address a depiction of two tourists discussing a waterfall. Lewis quotes from the textbook:

“When the man said, That is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall. . . . Actually . . . he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word ‘Sublime,’ or shortly, I have sublime feelings.’ Here are a good many deep questions settled in a pretty summary fashion. But the authors are not yet finished. They add: “This confusion is continually present in language as we appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our feelings.”

Lewis then shreds this perversion of thinking in his own indomitable way, but it doesn’t take having the towering intellect of C.S Lewis to realize what a disaster this shift entails. Here’s my take: Feelings are what count, what is important, and sublimity or beauty doesn’t exist objectively in God’s created world. The saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder became absolute. As the 20th century showed us, ugliness could now be proclaimed beautiful.

Lewis called such people, “men without chests.” That is the title Lewis gives to the third section of his little book. In the classical understanding of anthropology, human beings are made up of three parts, the head, the chest, and the bowels. The head is the seat of the rational, the bowels the emotional, and the chest negotiates between the two. If the head through knowledge and faith doesn’t train the chest to manage the bowels, you get, well, the modern world, which is a feminized world where feelings and emotions through empathy dominate rather than rational calculations of the tradeoffs necessary to living in a fallen world more common to men. God created man, male and female he created them, that their two natures would compliment each other toward true human flourishing, or in biblical terms, blessing.

How do We Escape the Two Isms?
This is the question confronting every Christian in our time. It’s not difficult to convince Christians they need to escape secularism, but if you tell them they need to escape Pietism, they’ll wonder what you’ve been drinking. Unfortunately, most Christians are as ignorant of history as most Americans, so they will think Pietism just means being pious. They need to be educated about the 17th century German Lutheran movement of the name, and its influence on how they live out their faith in the modern world.

The fundamental fact Christians must learn is that Pietism has made their faith irrelevant to the culture in which they live. The church effectively has zero impact on Western culture, and that must change because it is that to which we have been called. The Great Commission and the Lord’s Prayer make it abundantly clear the “culture wars” are not an option. Some Christian leaders think they are, and worse, are a distraction. I’ve heard more than one say, being involved in the “culture wars” is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. And we wonder why American culture is such a hell hole.

Few people understand the culture is simply a people’s religion externalized. Because secularism is the dominant religion of the West, we have a secularized culture that treats Christianity as a threat to societal order. Aaron Renn says we are now in “negative world.” In an influential January 2022 article in First Things called, “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism,” Renn argues that we’ve come to negative world through positive and neutral world. Prior to the 1990s, Christianity was seen in American culture as a positive thing. In the 1990s that changed, and the culture treated Christianity as neutral, neither good nor bad. Now, our cultural elites see Christianity as a threat to all that is decent and good, like abortion, homosexual “marriage,” and transgenderism.

I believe the issue is theological, specifically eschatological. What we think about how things will end determines what we see as our mission as Christians today. That is, we are his body to bring everything in submission to his kingship, including the nations. From the very beginning, God’s covenant promises of salvation were to the nations, a word used well over 600 times in the Bible. In the Old Testament, it is clear he blesses nations as nations who honor and obey him, and curses, even destroys, those that don’t. America was blessed because as founded its leaders and most of its people believed their success as a nation depended on honoring God as a people, as a nation. And Jesus said plainly, nations are to be discipled. I will end with a verse, 2 Chronicles 7:14, that applies to every nation on earth:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

The context is the dedication of the temple by Solomon and the people of Israel. God’s people now inhabit every nation on earth, and we are called to pray for God to heal our lands. The temple no longer resides in Israel and belongs to one people, but Jesus is now the living temple of God as we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. This promise of God healing our land if we pray, seek him, and walk in his ways, is to us! It is why I pray most mornings for our land, America, what I call “the four R’s”: for Revival that will lead to Renewal to Restoration and finally Reformation. The goal isn’t just saved souls, but transformed people who will transform everything they put their hands to.

 

What Does “the gates of hell” Mean?

What Does “the gates of hell” Mean?

Mar 20, 2024 | Eschatology

All my Christian life, now north of 45 years, I misunderstood the phrase “gates of hell.” What comes into your mind when you read Jesus’ resounding declaration:

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades (hell) will not prevail against it.

You’ll remember the scene from Matthew 16. Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” After they tell him what others think, he asks the most important question in the history of the world: “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” And Peter gives the right answer: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replies that it is not flesh and blood that has revealed this to him, but his Father in heaven, and declares to them (and us) this immortal phrase about the gates of hell.

Catholics and Protestants disagree on what Jesus intended when he used the word rock, and specifically what this rock is. For Catholics the answer is who, Peter himself. They argue that when Jesus changed his name from Simon to Cephas, which in Aramaic means rock (the Greek translation being Peter), so the rock is Peter. We Protestants, by contrast, do not believe Christ’s church (his called out ones in Greek) would ever be built on a sinful human being. Rather, believing God’s word inscripturated in our Bibles as our ultimate authority, Sola Scripture in the Reformation phrase, we take Jesus to mean the rock is Peter’s declaration itself, that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

On the gates of hell, however, almost all Christians of whatever theological persuasion agree. Down here in this fallen world, Satan is on the offensive, and we Christians and the church are on the defensive. I know I always believed this without ever giving it a second thought. Of course Satan is on the offense and we’re on defense. I mean look around you. Isn’t it obvious? Satan clearly has the upper hand in this spiritual war on earth. Well, that depends on what our eyes see. But before I get there, last year I read a book about postmillennialism, and the author pointed out something that seems so obvious to me now that it shocks me I never thought about it, or ever heard anyone else in over four decades as a Christian mention it. And what is that?

In the ancient world gates were defensive mechanisms.

It’s that simple. Because the divine Son of God came to redeem the world from sin, and accomplished it, Satan is the one now on the defensive. As we’ll see, he is bound. We no longer have to assume he has the upper hand and he is winning. Christ won, and He is now exercising that victory through his body, the church. The problem is, it doesn’t seem we are victorious, sometimes in our personal lives, but most definitely not on a societal level. Our misunderstanding is primarily a theological one.

Christology, The Key to Understanding Eschatology
I consistently make the following point, and it will determine whether you can ever embrace postmillennialism, an eschatology of victory and hope. I’ll put it in the form of a question: Why did Jesus come to earth? I used to believe, like most Christians, that Jesus came to save my soul so that when I die I go to heaven. That was his primary mission, along with my personal holiness. We also believe because of Scripture that God so loved the world that he came to save it, but any real and substantive change in this fallen world of sin would have to wait until Jesus returns and completes redemption in a new heavens and earth. This will happen at the resurrection of the dead and the end of time as we know it. I believed our hope is primarily in the future, and not for the here and now. Sin is a force that can be incrementally defeated in our personal lives, and even somewhat further out, but on a societal level we are powerless to defeat it.

When I was younger and naïve, I thought it could “change the world.” In fact, it was not too many years ago, in 2010 to be exact, the year of my 50th birthday when I was obviously still naïve, that I read a book by sociologist James Davison Hunter called, To Change the World. I got something I wasn’t expecting, frustration; I should have taken seriously his subtitle. The dude clearly didn’t believe we could change the world. How dare he! Now I understand why, which I’ll get to shortly. Over time as I saw the world clearly not changing, or so I thought, I realized thinking I could change the world was ridiculous, a fool’s errand. I could and did, as all Christians do, push back against “the dark force,” but it was clear to me we are powerless to change the basic direction of the sinful fallenness all around us.

What Hunter, and I at the time, didn’t have was the theological categories to believe we could in fact change the world. Which brings me back to the question of why Jesus came to earth, and the topic of Christology, or the doctrine of the person of Christ, his being and mission. Did he come so we could go to heaven when we die, and work on personal holiness while putting up with the tragedy of this fallen world? I would suggest it’s far more than this, and much grander in its implications. It isn’t for nothing that God’s promises to Abraham and the Patriarchs are to the nations and not just individuals. When we learn from Scripture that Christ came to save the world, that says something about who he is as Savior and Redeemer. He came, as we’re told, to reconcile to himself all things, not just some things. Paul tells us this in Colossians 1:

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. 

All of this is mediated through individuals, then families, then communities, then nations. This reconciliation touches all things human beings do, and while the ultimate fulfillment will happen at his second advent, it started at his first. He specifically said he came to bring the kingdom of God or heaven to earth. As he was fully God and fully man, he had absolute authority over his creation. He indicated this during his earthly ministry in his power over his creation in healing and nature, but fully brought its reality through his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God to the position of ultimate authority in the universe. It is in these last days that he is exercising this authority through his people, his church, his body. We see how this is done in a parable of how this spiritual power is lived out among Christians every day.

The Binding the Strong Man
Jesus and the Pharisees had a problematic relationship. Jesus always seemed to be picking fights with them because their conceptions of Judaism were diametrically opposed to his. This wouldn’t become fully apparent until Jesus rose from the dead, and his followers learned the entire Old Testament and history of Israel were about him, their Messiah as God himself come in human flesh to save them from their sins. As I argue in Uninvented, first century Jews do not make up a Messiah like Jesus because he was completely unexpected. As I call him in the book, the conundrum that was Jesus. Nobody expected a divine, healing Messiah. In fact, one of the few Old Testament prophets who did miracles, Elijah, was supposed to introduce the Messiah (Malachi 4) who would conquer their enemies, specifically the Romans. But all Jesus seemed to do was heal people and preach, then get himself killed.

Which brings us to the parable of the binding of the strong man. I didn’t realize the episode in which Jesus tells it had far more to do with his kingdom rule than just casting out demons during his ministry. The kingdom of God or heaven is a debated topic in eschatology. When John was introducing Jesus’ ministry to the Jews, he declared:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near! (Matt. 3)

Matthew then quotes Isaiah saying John was one crying out in the wilderness to make way for the Lord. Nobody could conceive the Messiah being Yahweh himself, Israel’s God. In other words, the bringing of the Kingdom wouldn’t be just a messenger for Yahweh, as everyone thought, but the eternal Creator God Himself personally bringing his kingdom reign and influence into the fallen earth. John was saying, literally, everything was about to change. Jesus in Matthew 4 after having endured the temptations in the desert of the then current king, Satan, echoed the Baptist:

17 From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!”

Both say, “come near,” because the kingdom won’t arrive until Jesus completes his mission and is seated at the right hand of God after his ascension. He isn’t until he sends his Holy Spirit at Pentecost that the King through his church, his body, will reign and destroy the works of the devil. When Christ completed his mission, Satan was no longer king of this world; he lost his authority to call the shots over the nations. Remember, prior to the gospel there was only one tiny obscure nation in the world that worshiped the true God, and even they were slaves to Roman power. After Christ the nations as nations could now be discipled.

The reason this could happen is that Satan was bound and his power limited by the authority Christ had been given because of the success of his mission. We read of this binding in the Synoptic gospels. In Matthew 12, Jesus had been casting out demons, and the Pharisees said it was because of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that he was able to do this. He basically says it would be absurd for Satan to drive out Satan because a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Then he tells them:

28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

And then addresses the strong man:

29 Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.

Satan is the strong man, and he has now been bound because the kingdom of God has come. Since the resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost, we are in the plundering phase of history. John tells us as much in Revelation 20 when he says:

2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

Those who are amillennial and postmillennial believe the thousand years is not a literal number of years, as premillennialists do, but the period of time known as the last days, the period between Jesus’ first and second coming. It is the time, as Jesus taught us to pray that the kingdom of God would come and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Do We Live by Faith or by Sight?
For most of my Christian life when it came to how I interpreted life in this fallen world, I lived by sight. It sure seemed like Satan wasn’t bound at all. Yet Scripture told me he was. So I had to decide, was I going to believe God or my lyin’ eyes. Going back to the gates of hell, if I believe God, then Satan’s kingdom is the kingdom on the defensive. Prior to embracing postmillennialism that was impossible for me to believe. In fact, it never even occurred to me! What’s so exciting about my new optimistic eschatology is that it is rooted in reality. We’re in a war! A spiritual war to be exact, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12.  But the context of the war is Ephesians 1:18-23, and Christ having all authority over every power that exists in the spiritual and material realms, in this life as well as the life to come.

As in any war, people have different roles, privates, sergeants, Lieutenants, generals; there is also army, navy, Airforce, marines; there are victories, there are defeats. As in any war there are strategies and tactics. But one thing is certain: the superior force is primarily on the offensive, and the weaker on the defensive. Over time it becomes apparent which is which. Sometimes the grunts just have to trust the generals even when it looks really bad. The superior force will always win in the end, and we as followers of the King of the universe are the superior force! We win, and not just in the end, at Christ’s second coming, but here, now. We are part of the King’s army establishing his rule on earth, daily assaulting the gates of hell with the fruit of the Spirit against which the gates of hell don’t have a chance.

 

 

 

The Civilizational Implications of The Fruit of the Spirit vs. The Acts of the Flesh

The Civilizational Implications of The Fruit of the Spirit vs. The Acts of the Flesh

Mar 13, 2024 | Eschatology, Uncategorized

One of the great contributions, of many, of the Apostle Paul to Christian Western civilization is laying out in Galatians 5 the juxtaposition between those who live by the Spirit and those who live by the flesh. Paul calls it the fruit of the Spirit and the acts of the flesh. The reason I extend the comparison to a civilizational level is because the consequences of these two kind of lives go well beyond the merely personal; nothing we do is merely personal or interpersonal. The modern libertarian mindset is tragically mistaken because it makes personal choice a sacred right as if our choices only affected us, or at most a few people around us—they do not.

Paul uses a word in this context that is also tragically misunderstood, freedom. Because of the poison of secularism, people intuitively think of freedom as “doing whatever we want.” No, that’s not freedom, that’s slavery! Here is what Paul says freedom is actually for: 

13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.

Salvation from sin allows us to no longer be curved in on ourselves so we are now free to fulfill the law in serving others. Just think about Paul’s assertion about the entire law being fulfilled in that one command. Even as I’m thinking and trying to write about it at this moment, I’m mesmerized by the implications. Everything I do in relation to God is done in relation to loving other human beings. We are fundamentally relational because the Triune God, our Creator is. And just as John says He is love, so we are called to love. 

This has massive societal implications most Christians today are unfortunately unaware of or ignore. Because of two isms, Pietism and secularism, we have a bifurcated sense of reality. That word simply means to cause to divide into two branches or parts. Because of those isms, in our minds those parts are isolated, the branches don’t touch. One is our personal life and all that entails, and the other is “out there,” public life and all that entails. We tend to think the former has no bearing on the latter, when in fact the relationship is unavoidable and symbiotic; each depends on and influences the other, personal affects societal, societal affects personal. 

Because of the first Great Awakening and the profound influence of Calvinism in that era, America’s founding generation understood freedom as responsibility. Liberty would never be an excuse for license, or doing whatever we want. True freedom is the ability to do what we ought, to fulfill our responsibility to others. In this sense, Jesus says losing our life means we will find it.

The Implications of Two Ways of Life
We might think there are infinite shades of gray in how people choose to live, but that’s not the case. Certain ways of acting cause harmony, and other ways cause chaos. The line between those two is actually very thin. Let’s look at how Paul describes these two kinds of life: 

19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 

Over the years when I would read this passage I would think how lefties and liberals despise Christianity, but what is it about the fruit of the Spirit they have a problem with? Imagine a society in which everyone exhibited such fruit. What’s not to like? In fact, as you can see from Paul’s statement about law, the fruit of the Spirit is the foundation of political liberty. The more self-governing a people are, the less need there is for law. Where the acts of the flesh reign, law is required to keep some semblance of peace. As we can see all around us, the further we get away from being a Christian nation, the further we get away from peace. The big cities in blue states make the case.

These implications are why America’s founders believed the American experiment would have been impossible without Christianity and the Bible. We could quote them all day long to prove that, but John Adams, not an orthodox Christian, is a good example. One of his more famous quotations makes this clear:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

This was affirmed by Congress six months before the Constitution was passed in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. In Article 3 it states:

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

The Founders believed it was the Christian religion and Christian morality of a providentially ordaining God that made the American experiment possible. They knew the “acts of the flesh” would destroy it, and they were right.

Why America Must be a Christian Nation
Because of Pietism and secularism, Christians look at this passage and only see the implications for themselves and those they know personally, family and friends. Since World War II it’s gotten so bad that many Christians mock the very idea of a Christian nation; they’ll often use the supposed epithet, Christian nationalism. But what, dear reader, is the option? If a nation isn’t Christian what is it? I’ll tell you: it’s a pagan nation. We might call America (and Western countries in general) “secular,” but that is just another word for pagan. Since the progressive movement got under way in America in the early 20th century, the illusion grew that a secular society would mean freedom from the conflict religion creates in a society. America was supposedly going to be a pluralistic nirvana where all faiths and worldviews would be equal and have a seat at the secular public table. Secularism, however, is also a faith, and it refuses to allow Christianity any say in the public square. When Christians try, secularists scream, separation of church and state!  

This is evidence that there are in fact only two societal realities. We learn this from God’s call of Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

Then the Lord promises to bless him, and through him all the nations of the earth. This is how God started to make a people for Himself, a people set apart from the pagan nations. For the next 2,000 years God slowly built an alternative culture and view of reality to paganism, and in Christ that was fulfilled. Now God’s promise to Abram to bless the nations through His people to the entire earth would begin, taking His God-Heaven life and spreading through the entire earth. How does this happen and what does it look like?

When the fall happened in Genesis 3, God told the serpent:

15 I will put hostility between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.

This told us life in a fallen world would be hostility between two forces, one represented by the serpent, paganism, the other represented by the seed of the woman, Jesus. There is no in between; we are on one side or the other. The serpent could do some damage, as we’ve seen for thousands of years, but the seed of the woman has the upper hand because he will strike the serpent’s head. In a word, God was promising victory to His people in the battle for reality in a fallen world. Unfortunately, most Christians don’t believe that because they live by sight and not faith in God’s promised victory, one reiterated throughout both Testaments.

On a practical level this looks like the fruit of the Spirit, and government exists to create the environment where that fruit can flourish. We call that liberty and justice. This requires government to be limited but also strong with very specific tasks toward public justice and peace. It very much looks like the United States of America as founded. This doesn’t mean other forms of government cannot fulfill these tasks, but only as Christ is acknowledged as King and ultimate authority can that happen. 

Isaiah 2, Fruit of the Spirit, and Christ’s Body
This chapter is a Messianic declaration of the victory God promised to Adam and Eve in the garden. It starts thus:

2 In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
    and all nations will stream to it.

3 Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
    so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.

Not too long ago I saw this as a prophecy of the consummated heavens and earth when Christ returns in his glory at the resurrection to judge the living and the dead, but that is not accurate. Rather, this is a declaration of the power of the gospel to transform not only people but nations. We are in the last days which started when Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sent His Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Clearly this mountain Isaiah speaks of is metaphorical, and the temple is not a literal temple (the temple that did exist was destroyed in 70 AD); Jesus is the temple. God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit by His word now teaches us his ways that we might “walk in his paths.” In other words, that we might exhibit the fruit of the Spirit.

Zion and Jerusalem are also metaphors; God’s law mediated through the gospel will go out from his eternal throne to the entire earth. Verse 4, however, is a problem for many Christians because they can’t see this happening in our fallen world because there are still disputes and wars. Isaiah is clearly saying, though, that judgment between nations and disputes of many people will still exist, meaning this prophecy is for the fallen world now after the Messiah came and accomplished redemption. We learn here that these are the implications of the gospel on an international level between nations. Unfortunately, because of those isms I mentioned above, most Christians can’t conceive Christianity could be applicable to anything beyond our personal lives. God begs to differ.

Let’s ask some questions. Why does war and conflict exist? Sin. And what did the gospel come to remedy? Sin. And how does the gospel do that? Through people, specifically Christian people who have been redeemed and live in obedience to God reflecting the fruit of the Spirit. If you look back at that passage in Genesis 3, the seed is Christ, and we are his body, his church, striking the serpent’s head. It isn’t we ourselves who claim victory over the devil and his works, the “acts of the flesh,” but Christ working through us as his body on earth.

I recently read a beautiful example of Christ’s body working in The Voice of the Martyrs magazine. A North Korean defector to South Korea was staying at a resettlement center and was encouraged to explore different religions. He went to meet people, and eventually went to a Christian worship service. In his words:

At first I just went to the church because I was lonely, but through the serving and love of the Christian people, then I became curious about the Jesus they believed in. As I learned more about Jesus, then I met Jesus.

That is how it works! How God’s kingdom spreads on earth and permeates the nations. In due course not only will there be an absence of war, but the instruments of war will be transformed into instruments of peace and production for flourishing in God’s created order. Prior to Christ and the gospel, the nations such as they were only knew one value: the will to power. The stronger survived, the weaker were conquered in a never ending cycle of war and conquest. That slowly changed with the coming of Christendom, but much of the world rejected Christianity and suffered for it. The 20th century is evidence of that. We have a long way to go as we continue to fight the fall and pray and work for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

 

Paul Ends Romans with a Postmillennial Exhortation

Paul Ends Romans with a Postmillennial Exhortation

Mar 6, 2024 | Eschatology, Uncategorized

It had been quite a while since I read through Romans, and whenever that was, I was most definitely not a postmillennialist. For much of my Christian life I was a “pan-millennialist,” because eschatology all seemed like worthless speculation and the Bible was all too confusing about it. I concluded it will all pan out in the end, so why bother. Then in 2014 I was presented with an in depth biblical case for amillennialism, or so it seemed, and I embraced it. Then in August of 2022 something completely unexpected happened; I embraced postmillennialism. Unexpected as in earthquake unexpected; you find it hard to believe the earth is moving under your feet, but you can see it and feel it. My “conversion” to postmillennialism was like that.

Other than knowing absolutely nothing about it, I had never had any kind of coherent presentation of exactly what it means. When I finally did, and it was not something I was looking for, I was shocked that it seemed to make biblical sense. What most impressed me was that the case being made for it was primarily exegetical, meaning coming out of the text of Scripture. It wasn’t relying on speculation of any kind. The other thing that impressed me, and quickly won me over, was that unlike the other two options, a-mill and pre-mill, it was an optimistic eschatology, an eschatology of hope for the here and now, not just for the eternal by and by, the next life. Christ came to push back the fall, as the Christmas hymn says, as far as the curse is found. That means the blessings promised to us by God through Abraham, are not just for our personal or interpersonal lives, but for our lives lived in community, including the communities of cities and counties and states and nations, wherever the curse of sin rears its ugly head.

The Gospel to the Nations
For our discussion, we can view the gospel primarily two ways. The way most Christians view it is solely or mostly in personal terms; it’s about going to heaven when we die, and personal holiness on earth. At best its influence extends to our closest interpersonal relationships. By contrast, the way postmillennialists view the gospel is that the personal effects are like ripples in a glass still lake; once the gospel rock hits the surface of our lives, it transforms everything we touch, literally; ripples that never end. The gospel’s purpose in the world is fundamentally transformational. This transformation happens the instant we are saved, brought from spiritual death to glorious spiritual life in Christ. The veil is lifted, and like the man born blind Jesus healed in John 9, we cry out, “I was blind but now I see!” Think of it like gospel glasses we put on and everything comes into focus. And when I say everything I mean every single thing. We go from secular blindness thinking we’re lucky dirt, to a God drenched reality where each molecule is His, every tree and rock, every apple and egg, every word, thought, and idea, all brought captive “to make it obedient to Christ.”     

This means that when God told Abram nations would be blessed through him, he meant it. Here are some of those declarations. In Genesis 12 God tells Abram that he will bless him and that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him. The Hebrew word used for peoples means clan, an ancient way to say nation. In Genesis 18 as the Lord is considering destroying Sodom he again mentions blessing:

17 Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

Here a different word is used meaning nation or people. This passage in Genesis 22 is especially powerful. After God tested Abraham with Isaac and he passed the test by trusting the Lord in obedience, the Lord says:

16 “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Here the blessing is again to Abraham. His descendants will literally be innumerable, but it isn’t just the numbers that are important, but what these people do and where they do it.

Not Just Testifying but Transforming
This is a critical point in the never ending debate about eschatology. In the a-mill and pre-mill understanding, the Great Commission (Matt. 28) is focused on individuals, and ignores the nations part, but the gospel is transformational of everything it touches, including nations. The following quotations are from Lorraine Boettner’s book, Millennialism. The first is about this transformational character of the gospel:

The changed character of individuals will be reflected in an uplifted social, economic, political, and cultural life of mankind.

My response is, how can it not! Unfortunately, most Christians retreat behind a Pietism that doesn’t see the purpose of the gospel as transformational of all things. It isn’t so much that secularism took over the once Christian West, as it was Christians surrendered it to them.

The other is about Jesus using the word “disciples” in the Great Commission:

Christ Himself assures us He is present and is even now with us in our work . . . To reduce this great commission to the premillenarian program to preach the gospel as a witness to a world that is to grow worse and worse until it plunges into its doom in destruction is to emasculate the gospel of Christ and wither it into pitiful impotency. This is to send the gospel out into the world as a futile thing, foreordained to failure from the start. No, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and Jesus Christ, marching in the greatness of his strength, sends us on no empty errand of uttering a message that will die away in the air on an unheeding and hostile world, gathering only a few out of its innumerable multitudes and consigning the fast majority to destruction, but He sends us to “make disciples of all nations” and thereby win the world itself.

I don’t see how you read that paragraph and not become postmillennial on the spot! It gives me chills.

The last thing I will address before I get to Paul’s post-mill passage, is Ephesians 2 and Revelation 5 about Christians reigning with Christ. In Ephesians, Paul is speaking about our God making us alive in Christ “when we were dead in transgressions.” Then he blows our minds with this:

6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Do you know where Christ is seated this very moment? At the right hand of the Father, as Paul says in chapter 1, “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be named, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” This is happening in the present age! Now, today, at this moment. The reason Jesus could give us the Great Commission was because “All authority in heaven and on earth” had been given to him, therefore, he says go. And we can tie together the Ephesians passage about where we are seated, and what we are doing there, with this passage in Revelation 5:

9 And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
    and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
    and with your blood you purchased for God
    people from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10 You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
    and they will reign on the earth.”

We are saved to reign on earth, not in heaven! We are reigning with Christ on this fallen earth to bring the kingdom of heaven to overcome the works and the wiles of the devil.

The Gospel: The Obedience of Faith
Which brings me to Paul’s declaration in the final words of Romans and how we do this:

 25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— 27 to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.

Our gospel job is not only to preach personal salvation to the nations, but to preach and teach Christ as Lord and king not only over our own lives and the lives of our families, but over the nations. The objective of every Christian is to bring “all nations” to “the obedience of faith.” This was Jesus’ command in the Great Commission:

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

The command is specifically given to what we now consider nations, not merely to individuals, but to individuals in every position in society and culture. The obedience of faith means taking seriously what Jesus said about obeying “everything” he commanded them, whether that applies to business, economics, law, governing, family life, art, architecture, science, all aspects of culture; it is complete all encompassing.

What happened in what we used to call Christendom was the disaster of Pietism, a 17th century German Lutheran movement that turned Christianity from a centrifugal movement, something that moves away from a central point or axis, to a centripetal one, a force that brings things toward the center. Over time, through the First and Second Great Awakening in the 18th and 19th centuries, to fundamentalism in the 20th, secularism took over Western culture because Christians narrowed the focus of Christianity to going to heaven when we die and personal holiness. What that did was completely enervate the gospel for any kind of cultural influence, and we are now living with the consequences. That must change if we are to bring ourselves and the nations “to the obedience of faith.”

That means we begin to learn about Christianity as a profoundly powerful centrifugal force. Fortunately, we live in incredibly exciting times because there is a revival not just of postmillennialism, but of Christians whatever their eschatology realizing that their faith applies to all of life, including politics and culture. The beauty and power of postmillennialism, though, is that it gives us the theological framework for optimism, or in the title of a book I’m currently reading, it is “An Eschatology of Victory.” Christ did not become a man, suffer and die and rise again, then ascend to the right hand of God to lose! We can count on his words in our prayers and actions, that His kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

 

The Kingdom of God is Not Identical to the Church

The Kingdom of God is Not Identical to the Church

Nov 13, 2023 | Eschatology

For all of my Christian life (over four decades), I tended to see the kingdom of God and the church as the same thing. In my mind there was no differentiation between the two. When Jesus prayed “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” I thought he was referring exclusively to the church because that is where kingdom values could grow and flourish among God’s redeemed, covenant people. Outside of that, not so much. The kingdom to me was something specifically “spiritual,” something that really couldn’t happen outside of the confines of God’s people. Out there was God’s common grace, as Jesus says, the sun shines and it rains on the just and the unjust. In my mind the “spiritual” kingdom of God had nothing to do with this fallen world which is passing away. I was wrong, but more on that in a minute.

I look back at this with a sense of irony because ever since I discovered Francis Schaeffer in college, I’ve been a big Christian worldview guy. I believed the Christian faith applied to all of life, and rejected any kind of sacred/secular distinction. As the great Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper said, and I believed, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” Yet there was a bifurcation in my mind, a fork in the road where God’s kingdom and the church went off in one direction, and the fallen world inevitably in the opposite direction. I now believe this is not the biblical understanding of the kingdom of God, the church, or the world. This goes back to my eschatological epiphany of a year ago August that entirely changed my perspective on what it is God is doing in history.

This is a big topic requiring far more space than a blog post can adequately address, but we can briefly focus on the first three chapters of Genesis to make the point. The entirety of redemptive history is found in these three chapters, creation, fall, and redemption, and they will help us see why the kingdom and the church are distinctive entities in God’s economy.

Creation and Fall
When God created the heavens and the earth he emphasized its goodness, that it was for His glory and the flourishing of man who was to exercise dominion over it. We call this the cultural or dominion mandate. We read His charge to Adam and Eve in Gen. 1:28 (KJV):

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

First let’s notice God’s desire for humanity, the apex of his creation: He wants them to be fruitful. When we look at a tree and see fruit on it, what do we think? There should be many things Christians think, but one is that bearing fruit is what trees do, it’s what they are made for, their telos or purpose. When God made man, male and female he created them, it was to bear fruit, it is what they were made for. It is critical to understand, though, that this is not solely referring to creating little humans, but bearing fruit in every area of our lives. God, as the book of Genesis makes very clear, wants to bless us, as I wrote about here recently. The word is used over 60 times in the book, the first of which is in this verse. Contrary to the devil’s lie, God is no big meany out to keep all the goodies for himself and make us miserable. Sinners easily believe that, but it’s not true. 

The secret to true happiness is found in this verse. The first is to have babies, if you are married and can. God is clear throughout Scripture, more babies, more happiness. It is our telos! One of the ways to unlock this secret is to become both less self-absorbed and self-obsessed, and marriage and babies will most certainly do that. 

Then, we are to subdue and have dominion, i.e., rule. What does that mean? A lot! God uses two different words for a reason. Subdue according to Strong’s means to “bring into bondage, force, keep under, subdue, bring into subjection.” Unlike Rousseau thought and his current secular leftist followers think, “nature” is not our friend. It must be brought into subjection—we call that civilization. Dominion or rule is more positional, in that it gives us the authority over creation to act as its rulers as God’s vice regents, His image bearers. We are Christ’s body on earth, so it is our responsibility to exercise dominion in his place, as he exercises it over all rulers and authorities and powers, both spiritual and temporal. The fall didn’t change God’s charge to man made in his image.

When Adam and Eve decided to trust the serpent rather than God, the creation with man fell into sin and death. At that moment, the creation didn’t transfer ownership to the devil. Psalm 124:1 tells us, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” All he could do was pervert and distort what God created good, but he could not change the fundamental goodness of creation, of material reality. Modern Christians tend to think the dominion mandate doesn’t apply to us anymore, but it most definitely does. When you wake up every morning and fight to put bread on your table and a roof over your head, you are exercising the dominion mandate as God’s image bearer, and more importantly as a Christian.

Redemption
Jesus as the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45-49) fulfilled the covenant that Adam could not. What Adam lost, a world blessed by God without sin, Jesus came to redeem, and not just individual sinners, but the earth, creation itself. Thinking Christianity is primarily about dying and going to heaven misses the larger point, as Paul says in Romans 8:

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

In eternity, God promised the Son that this fallen creation, including man, would be given to him to redeem and restore (the covenant of redemption). This promise is given to God’s people in Genesis 3:14-15, where we learn the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head. There is nothing subtle or nuanced about crushing—it is total, it is absolute. Jesus accomplished this crushing by his life, death, resurrection, ascension, and reign at the right hand of the Father. This is already done; working it out is just details, of which you and I get to be intimately involved. We are, to put it bluntly in redemptive terms, in the crushing business! 

Sadly, most Christians don’t believe this, thus the salvation is dying and going to heaven focus. We think on a practical level that Jesus came to redeem our souls, and not so much the earth, creation, this material fallen world. Of course we know how it ends; Revelation 21 and 22 make that perfectly clear. But we are under the impression that the new heavens and earth comes down out of heaven as a one-time event, a complete rupture in the space-time continuum, old fallen earth out, new redeemed earth in. As I used to see it, the devil has the upper hand “down here” and basically wins the world war of material reality in a fallen world. When Jesus returns he cleans up the mess, puts the furniture back where it belongs, and we live happily ever after. The only problem with my previous perspective is that it was utterly wrong.

Christology as the Key to Church and Kingdom
The study of Christ, Christology, is seeking to understand his nature, who he is, and his mission, what he came to earth to accomplish. As we delve into him more deeply, we’ll see that we’ve been constricting his mission to a narrow sphere of existence we call “spirituality.” Modern Christians tend to live a dualistic existence, upstairs-downstairs, where the spiritual, eternal next-life stuff is more important than the mundane, material everyday this-life stuff. It is not. This is the bifurcation I mentioned above. 

Let’s say we do our morning Scripture reading and prayer, the “spiritual” part of our day, that’s one road, the most important road, by far. Then we go down the other road where the fork is, and it has a sign that says, “The Rest of Life,” and that’s what we do every day after our worship time with the Lord. Mind you I did not think this at all. I knew everything I did was “unto the Lord,” but my theology missed the mission of the Messiah, the Christ, Jesus now seated reigning at God’s right hand. Or course I knew he is there and interceding for me before the Father, wretched sinner that I am, but that’s just it. It was for me! What about the rest of creation? That, my friends, is a huge question, and our answer will determine how we look at life. The answer will broadly fall one of two ways: victory or defeat.  

I believed creation, the earth, will be redeemed at the end, but I missed that Jesus started redeeming and transforming it when he ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This redemption Jesus accomplished and the Holy Spirit is applying, is a package deal, his people and his earth. Remember the crushing? That started 2,000 years ago. Adam lost his ability to rule, to exercise dominion, and Jesus gave it back. He is now exercising the dominion Adam forfeited through us! Does that sound strange to you? Not too long ago, it sure sounded strange to me. How does this actually work? We read about the authority Jesus was given when he was coronated as King at the ascension in several passages, including Ephesians 1:15-23, and Daniel 7:9-14. We further read that his reign is not only over the hearts of Christians, his people, but over his enemies and is happening now and until they are all defeated. We learn this in I Corinthians 15:25, and Psalm 110 says the same thing: 

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

These enemies are not just in our hearts and in our struggle to overcome sin, they are everything and everywhere in a fallen world. Keep in mind, Jesus is conquering his enemies through us his church until the final enemy, death, is destroyed at his second coming. The church is the staging ground, and from there  we are daily sent into the world to transform it.  It is a gradual thing, not a one-time cataclysmic event like I used to believe. And we’re only 2000 years into it, so we’re just getting started!

John the Baptist got the ball rolling when he declared: Repent, “for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus started his ministry with the exact same words. It is instructive to note the word kingdom, basileia- βασιλεία in Greek, is used over a hundred times in the gospels. The word church, by contrast, ekklésia- ἐκκλησία, is used three times in two verses in Matthew. You can come to your own conclusions, but something tells me we’ve ignored the kingdom of heaven and of God to the church’s and societies’  detriment. The ἐκκλησία was the assembly of citizens in the city-states of ancient Greece, those who helped govern and rule the Greek polis (i.e., city). In the same way, the church, this spiritual assembly, is to participate in the reign of Christ over the earth. The church has the authority to minister the word and the sacraments, and Christians go into the world extending Christ’s reign, advancing this kingdom of heavenly and Godly values, and building his church. Through His word and our words, not swords and violence, we bring the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control, and justice. In Hebrew this is called Shalom.

The devil doesn’t stand a chance. He’s already been crushed.

Next time you sing the Christmas carol, Joy to the World, think about the Lord is come, the Savior reigns:

3 No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found.