by Arthur W. Pink
by Arthur W. Pink
Philologos Religious Online Books
Philologos.org
by Arthur W. Pink
February, 1938
THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST.
Another article seems to be required for the further elucidation and amplification of what has already been advanced in our exposition of 1 Corinthians 15:22-28, the more so as we have yet said nothing upon the last two verses. We have endeavoured to show that the contents of this passage introduce nothing that is not strictly pertinent to the theme which the Apostle is discussing in this chapter, both before verse 22 and after verse 28—namely, the resurrection of the saints. Instead, as we have seen, it supplies a striking and valuable contribution to that important subject, by furnishing proof that there is no possibility of any enemy of Christ and His people being able to prevent that glorious event. Furthermore, it has been shown that the whole passage is one connected and consistent whole, and not a number of individual statements having little or nothing in common.
In verse 22 the assertion is made that “in Christ shall all be made alive.” This at once intimates that the elect only are in view, for the non-elect never were and never will be in Christ—compare verses 45-47, where further contrasts between the first and last Adam are in view. In verse 23 the statement made in the second half of verse 22 is particularized: “But every man (every one) in his own order.” The Head and His members are not made alive simultaneously. No, in this, as in all things, Christ has the pre-eminence, consequently there is an interval between “Christ the firstfruits”—which not only denotes precedence, but pledge of the future harvest. “Afterward (Greek, “then”) they which are Christ's (again showing that only the holy dead are here in view) at His coming.” But will there not be the raising of other believers at a still later period: no, for “then the end”—the promise in verse 22 is now completely made good.
Two important questions are naturally raised by the contents of verses 22, 23: how and when shall Christ bring this to pass? Each is answered in what follows. “For He (God) hath put all things under His (Christ's) feet” (v. 27). This is only another way of saying that God has exalted the crucified but risen Redeemer to the place of supreme authority and power—carefully compare Ephesians 1:19-23 and observe the same words in verse 22. God has not only entrusted unto the Mediator the saving of His own people, but the subduing of all His enemies—note the double claim He makes in John 17:2. This is the answer to His prayer, “Father, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee” (John 17:1). In the new creation, from beginning to end, “all things” are of the Father, yet “all things” are by Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 8:6).
How glorious is the Christ of God! What dignity, majesty, and might are His! Alas, how vastly different is that wretched caricature presented from the modern pulpit, wherein Christ is referred to as needing the help of His puny creatures in order to bring His work to a successful conclusion. How perversely man inverses the Divine order: it is we who are in sore need of His help, and not He of ours. Christ has received commission from the Father, to “destroy the works of the Devil” (1 John 3:8): not only to bring good out of all the evil which sin has created, but also to bring to an end all the confusion and dishonour to God which Satan has brought into the universe. Therefore, “He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. 15:25).
“When He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father”—that is, the kingdom which Satan has usurped, the kingdom of darkness—“when He shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power”—which explains the previous clause, meaning when He shall have subdued every creature and force which is hostile to God; “the last enemy shall be destroyed—death.” Thus the two “whens” of verse 24 correspond to the two “thens” of verse 23—we showed last month that the closing clause of verse 24 (in the A.V.) completes verse 23, while the destruction of death answers to, confirms the fact, that “the end” (of the resurrection of the saints) has come. If any shadow of doubt remains upon this point of our interpretation, verse 54 completely removes it: “So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory,” for “death” is “destroyed.”
What has just been pointed out not only refutes the Pre-millennial interpretation of this particular passage, but it seems to completely overthrow their entire position. Their contention is, first, that Christ does not receive the kingdom until His second advent—arguing that He is now seated on the Father's throne (Rev. 3:21), and that He will not occupy His own throne (Matt. 25:31) until the beginning of the Millennium. Second, that instead of all God's enemies being completely and finally subdued at the time of Christ's coming, this will not occur till after the Millennium is over—appealing to Revelation 20:7-10 to bolster up their theory. Third, most of them insist that the coming of Christ and His raising the Church take place before the “tribulation period,” and that it is not until several years later He makes alive those who were slain by “the antichrist.” A worse turning of things upside down could scarcely be imagined—alas that in the past we ourselves have been guilty of it.
As we have shown, so far from the second advent of Christ being the time when His kingdom is inaugurated and that the putting forth of His mighty power for the subduing of His enemies is commenced, it is then that He delivers up the kingdom to the Father because every foe has been reduced to a state of utter impotency—it is quite clear from Luke 19:13 that Christ went to Heaven “to receive for Himself a kingdom and to return,” and not to return and then receive a kingdom! Again—so far from Christ's subjugation of His enemies taking place at a date long after His second coming, our passage places it before, or at least makes it to synchronize with, the destruction of death, the last enemy—note the same order in Matthew 13:1, 41-43. And the emphatic and unequivocal statements at the close of 1 Corinthians 15:24, “then cometh the end” entirely excludes all idea of any saints being raised after Christ's coming.
Far more serious is the view taken by many of the closing portion of our passage. Those who have regarded the “Then (cometh) the end” as referring to the end of time, the termination of this world, consider verses 27, 28 as illustrative of Christ's then delivering of the kingdom to the Father, following which the Son is to become in some new way subject to the Father—thus does one error logically involve and lead up to another. Whatever be the meaning of verse 28 we may rest fully assured that there is nothing in it which in anywise clashes with the plain teaching of other Scriptures, and therefore no interpretation of it can be valid which supposes that Christ will yet suffer a second humiliation, or cease to be an Object of worship. Most certainly there is nothing in it which casts the slightest cloud upon the Godhead of the Redeemer, or intimates that the second Person in the Trinity is inferior to the First. Equally certain is it that there can be nothing in the verse which signifies Christ will ever abdicate His mediatorial throne.
Obviously, we must turn to the context for a right understanding of verses 27, 28. Nor does that present the slightest difficulty so far as the ascertaining of its leading thought be concerned: the man Christ Jesus possesses such authority and power that nothing can possibly prevent His raising in Glory the whole of His people: the risen Christ has been invested with such majesty and might that no hostile power can stand before Him. The dominion of Christ is a supreme, universal, and uncontrollable one, so far as creatures are concerned; yet it is a subordinate one so far as essential Deity is concerned. Now the purpose and purport of verses 27, 28 is to illustrate the delegated character of that dominion and authority, in the exercise of which the Son brings back the kingdom to the Father by putting down all opposing rule. This brings before us a subject of no small importance.
The expression “when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father” implies that, in some sense, the kingdom has departed from the Father. But there is a real sense in which the kingdom never has departed, and never can depart, from the Father. His right to reign and His power to assert that right, are indubitable and infinite, immutable and eternal. There is no being, and there is no event, that is or can be beyond His control; ay, there is no being nor event which shall not be made ultimately to subserve the purpose of His wise and righteous government. Yet it is an undeniable fact that a considerable portion of His creatures have renounced their allegiance, and have individually, and collectively, set themselves in opposition to Him, refusing to obey His holy, righteous, and good laws, and to yield their co-operation in working out the wise and- benevolent designs of His administration. To this rebel portion of God's subjects belong the whole of the fallen angels, and the whole too of fallen men, with the exception of those who are reclaimed by the Son.
“An important portion of God's dominions is in a state of revolt. The standard of rebellion, first erected on the very battlements of Heaven, has since been erected on earth; and for nearly six thousand years its inhabitants almost with one consent, have rallied around it, scornfully rejecting the claims of their Maker, and obstinately refusing to return to their allegiance, and acknowledge Him as their rightful King. Earth and Hell are leagued in one grand conspiracy against the throne of the Most High. Christ is exalted to the throne to put down these enemies and opposing powers, and thus recover the kingdom from the usurpers” (Van Valkenburgh).
Now the way in which this usurped kingdom is restored to the Father is Christ's putting down of all opposing rule and power. All power, whether diabolical or human, exercised by individuals, or embodied in institutions, or order of things, must be overthrown, so that this kingdom will be brought back to Him whose absolute right it is to reign in and over us. The “rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph. 6:12) must be dethroned—stripped of their power to deceive and destroy. Everything inimical must be destroyed by the God-man in His administration of that kingdom entrusted to Him by the Father. True, these all “make war with the Lamb,” but “the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings” (Rev. 17:14). He will “break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel” (Psa. 2:9). Satan with his rebel hosts, and those of our race who clung to his dominion, shall be cast into the Lake of Fire.
The object of verses 27, 28 is to show us that the power Christ wields over His enemies is a delegated one. Christ's authority is not distinct from the Divine: rather is it the exercise of that power which is common to the Father and the Son as Divine Persons; just like, “As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself” (John 5:26). It is as though the Apostle said, in referring to Psalm 110, I stated that Christ must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet (1 Cor. 15:25), yet let me now remind you it is Jehovah who secures this, as the first verse of that Psalm affirms. “For He hath put all things under His feet” (v. 27) is a quotation from Psalm 8:6, as a further corroboration of the truth that it is Jehovah who gave the Mediator dominion over all His creatures.
Let it be remarked that this ancient oracle is again quoted by our Apostle in Hebrews 2. That which fills us with wonderment in Psalm 8 is that it is of man this is predicated. That Psalm begins by contemplating the ineffable majesty of Jehovah: “O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! Who hast set Thy glory above the heavens” (v. 1). Next he asks “What is man that THOU art mindful of him? . . . for Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels” (vv. 4, 5). Then he exclaims “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet” (v. 6). After quoting the whole of this passage, the Apostle says, “But now we see not yet all things put under him: but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour” (Heb. 2:8, 9)—thereby proving that the unlimited power Christ is now wielding is the power of God.
“But when He saith, All things are put under Him, it is manifest that He is excepted, which did put all things under Him” (1 Cor. 15:27). When in the 8th Psalm it is said that Jehovah subjected all things to man, it is very obvious that He who should subject them to Him—who gave supremacy to Him, sovereignty over them—does not, in so doing, denude Himself of His own power or authority: that power necessarily remains supreme. As the Apostle here declares, “it is manifest that He is excepted.” And how is it “manifest”? Why, because a delegated authority necessarily implies a supremacy in Him who confers it. The Father will be greater than the Mediator: Christ's kingdom, though in reference to creatures, supreme, is, in reference to essential Deity, delegated; and this statement is made that it may be obvious that all things are of God.
“And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shalt the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all” (v. 28). Yet let it be said very emphatically that this subjection of the Son to the Father is no new thing which exclusively characterizes that order of things which shalt obtain upon His restoring of the usurped kingdom. No, no—the Father's word to the Son, “Thy throne O God, is forever and ever” (Heb. 1:8) is not to be rescinded in the eternal state. The subjection of the Son to the Father marks the whole mediatorial economy. “That economy, throughout proceeds on the principle that, while essentially the Son and Spirit are equal with the Father, being one with Him in the economy of grace, They are subordinate to the Father, who sustains the majesty of Divinity. The Father is greater than They. He sends, They come; He appoints, and They execute. All things are of Him by Them” (John Brown).
The principal design of verse 28, then, is to teach us that the present subjection of the Mediator unto the Father will continue after the consummation of His glorious victory. It in nowise signifies that Christ's Divine Person shall withdraw from His humanity, or that as the God-man He will no longer be an Object of worship. On the other hand, the glorified humanity of Christ, notwithstanding all the honour and authority conferred upon it, is but a creature, and in the Eternal State this will be made evident. Let it he said emphatically that verse 28 must not be understood to mean that the Second Person in the Godhead, as such, will, throughout eternity, be under subjection to the First, for on the new earth there is “the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 22:1). Nevertheless, the man Christ Jesus will yet resign unto the Father His government of the wicked. Verse 28 refers to the re-assumption by God Himself of that power and authority delegated to the Mediator in connection with His rule over His enemies.
Before the ascension of Christ, God reigned as God; since that event, He reigns through the Mediator; when Christ has delivered up the usurped kingdom to the Father, then “God”—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—will be all in all. Yet even then Christ will still be the Head of His Church and reign upon His mediatorial throne. At the conclusion of his exposition of 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 the renowned Puritan, John Owen, said, “I declared that all the state of things which we have described shall then cease, and all things issue in the immediate enjoyment of God Himself. I would extend this no further than as unto that which concerneth the exercise of Christ's mediatory office with respect unto the Church here below and the enemies of it. But there are some things which belong to the essence of this state which shall continue unto all eternity, as, first, I do believe that the Person of Christ, in and by His human nature, shall be forever the immediate Head of the whole glorified creation. Second, that He shall be the means and way of communication between God and His glorified saints forever. Third, that the Person of Christ, and herein His human nature, shall be the eternal Object of Divine glory, praise and worship.”
As a concluding summary of what has been before us, we cannot do better than quote from John Brown's “The Resurrection of Life” (through which we have received much help in preparing these two articles) wherein he gives the following analysis of 1 Corinthians 15:24-28. “The passage, thus expounded, teaches us the following principles: first, that the risen Saviour is invested with unlimited power and authority: He 'reigns'—'all things are subjected to Him.' Second, the design of His being thus invested with unlimited power and authority is, that He may 'restore the kingdom to the Father.' Third, in restoring the kingdom to the Father, He will 'put down all opposing rule, and authority, and power.' Fourth, in the accomplishment of this, the destruction of death as an opposing power is necessarily involved. Fifth, all this is to be accomplished by Divine power, administered by the Son, that the whole glory of the bringing back of the kingdom may be seen to belong, and be ascribed, to Him, 'of whom are all things, and through whom are all things' and to whom, therefore, it is most meet that all things should be—whose glory ought to be the end, as His will is the cause and the law, of the universe.”— A.W.P.
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