Covenant Connections in Paul (Part 7)

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When Christ Delivers Up the Kingdom to the Father

There is a strategic passage in 1 Corinthians which bears upon both the eschatology and teleology of the Bible. That text is found in 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and requires a little time to think through, although I will confess at the outset that the passage may act as an exemplar of the influence of theological predispositions in hermeneutics.¹ Because the thought is condensed it is easy to jump to conclusions about what each verse means. It starts with a theological preamble:

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:20-22)

Paul tells us that the resurrected Christ is only the first to rise among a host of others who have met death, euphemistically termed “fallen asleep.” The OT idea of “firstfruits” was the first and best of the crop which was given to God the Provider. It signaled the quality and abundance of what was to come. Death is linked to Adam while resurrection life is linked to Jesus. All that are in Adam will die and remain in death. All who are counted in Christ will be “made alive.” A saint may be connected physically to Adam and the curse, but because they are counted righteous in Christ death cannot keep them. It is crucial to the Christian Gospel as well as to the whole Creation Project that the resurrection of the dead, procured as it is by the sufferings on Calvary’s cross, be accomplished by a man. Jesus was and is the Christ, but the Christ is a man for men. Despite His eternal provenance and His spectacular accomplishments, which go far beyond anything done by Abraham or Moses or David or Elijah, this Man died cruelly, detested by the powerful, misunderstood or else feared or even ignored by the majority, yet by Him (and Him only) comes the resurrection of the dead. I shall look more deeply into the cosmic implications of the resurrection further on, but I want to note here how death through a man (Adam) is reversed and augmented (by glorification) through a Man.

But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. (1 Corinthians 15:23)

Paul speaks about a resurrection order (tagma).² Jesus Christ is first and His resurrection, although it happened many centuries ago, prefigures ours. The OT concept of the “firstfruits” of the crop is used by the apostle here. The firstfruits is, “the first sheaf of the harvest which guarantees that there will be more to come.”³ Thus, the health of the firstfruits signals the health of the whole crop to come.

As Paul will go on to elaborate at the end of the chapter, the glory that comes to the saints upon their resurrection reflects directly upon the glory that was Christ’s when He was raised.⁴ This translates into the sort of status befitting sons of God (however unworthy). Paul declares, “we shall…bear (phoreo) the image of the heavenly Man” (1 Cor. 15:49). This “bearing” refers to a new way of existence, the eschatological real us! The complete saint!

Then we get a mention of the “end” which is qualified by the way of instrumentation:

Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. (1 Corinthians 15:24-25)

Christ’s giving up the kingdom to His Father occurs after He has reigned and “put all enemies under His feet.” I take this to include not only Death, but the great archenemy of God, Satan.

Now the real question is about the kingdom. Is Paul saying that Jesus is ruling now? That is the interpretation of most exegetes. In fact, Fee dogmatically claims the passage proves that Christ is reigning now.⁵ But is such confidence justified? Verse 25 says “He must reign till.” There is an imperative here. It is essential for Christ to reign. The reason Paul gives here is that He must bring all His enemies (here actual persons or beings) into submission. The allusion is to Psalm 110:1-2:

The LORD said to my Lord, sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool. The LORD shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies!

Notice how the Psalm locates the place of Christ’s rule: “Zion” or Jerusalem. This ought to cause us to pause and ask some questions:

1. Can “Zion” mean the right hand of God in Heaven?
2. Does the OT indicate that Christ will rule in the midst of His enemies and does Paul negate it?
3. What kind of reign is Christ involved in now if the world is just as evil and messed up as ever, with none of His enemies being defeated for two millennia?

The majority of commentators teach that Christ is indeed reigning in heaven right now and has done since His ascension.⁶ As so often in amillennial and postmillennial interpretation, the little details are brushed aside. “Zion” on earth cannot be the place of His rule even though numerous prophecies tell us quite the opposite (e.g., Psa. 2:6, 48:1-14, 50:2, 102:13-21; Isa. 2:3, 12:6; Joel 3:16-21; Mic. 4:1-7). “Zion” does not appear to be a synonym for Heaven. Furthermore, the “reign” of Christ in Heaven as envisaged by those who believe He is ruling now is of a rather unusual variety. It is very unlike the reign predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures, or indeed asked about by the disciples in Acts 1:6. In fact, it seems to differ imperceptibly from God’s ongoing providential care of creation.

Certainly, there has been a marked absence of anything that might resemble what normally would count for a kingly reign: the crushing of the weak under the heel of the ungodly mighty, the elevation of pride and vanity, the suffering of God’s people, and the fact that Satan is still styled “the god of this world” in 2 Corinthians 4:4, who “walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8)! Let us be frank, if Jesus is reigning over the world, and has been for nigh on two thousand years, it has been a singularly ineffective “hands-off” approach!

Added to all this is the way Psalm 110 is employed in other places in the NT. Michael Vlach notes that,

In reference to Psalm 110:1, the author of Hebrews says Jesus is “waiting” at the right hand of the Father (see Heb. 10:12-13). When the heavenly session is over, God installs His Messiah on the earth to reign over it. From our current historical perspective, Jesus is currently at the right hand of God the Father, but this will be followed by a reign upon the earth. Thus, Jesus “must” reign from earth because Psalm 110 says this must happen. In Acts 3:21, Peter also uses “must” in regard to Jesus and His heavenly session before He returns to earth to restore everything.⁷

And he adds,

Jesus the Son and Messiah must have a sustained reign in the realm where the first Adam failed (see Gen. 1:26, 28; 1 Cor. 15:45).⁸

The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:26)

Satan is not the last enemy, Death is. We know that the future reign of Christ will have death in it, for Isaiah 65:20b says,

For the child shall die one hundred years old, but the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed.

If it is allowed to stand without being manipulated via typology or spiritualization, Zechariah 14:16-19 speaks of Yahweh meeting out punishments against nations who refuse to honor Him in Jerusalem. And Zechariah 8:3-5 should be recalled because it refers to old and young in the streets of Zion at a time when “Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth” (Zech. 8:3).

These facts, uncomfortable as they are for amillennialists and postmillennialists alike, demand either that we morph these OT texts to fit the way we think they ought to be, or we leave space in our systems for the insertion of a future kingdom where Jesus Christ will reign, but where sin and death are still present, and where He must rule with a rod of iron (Psa. 2:6-9; Rev. 2:27, 12:5, 19:15).

So, 1 Corinthians 15:24-25 fit with the view that the new heavens and earth, where Christ delivers up the kingdom to His Father, and wherein there shall be no more curse (Rev. 22:3), will be preceded by a “millennial kingdom” where Christ must reign until He has dealt with every enemy, Death being the last one.

For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. (1 Corinthians 15:27)

It must not be forgotten that Jesus in both His first and second advents, not to mention His coming rule, is the Servant of Yahweh.⁹ The whole Creation Project is predicated on His willingness to humble Himself and come into His own creation to suffer and die in it and to bring it under His dominion. Here the apostle quotes from Psalm 8 and lends it a Christological interpretation, one that it does not appear to support in its original setting. But the interpretive move is justified on account of the Incarnation. The man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5) is the key to the Creation Project, and I have tried to show that He accomplishes it covenantally.

Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:28)

If I understand this right, Paul teaches here that Jesus cannot assume the role of absolute Sovereign of creation until He has delivered everything up to the Father. But is Paul saying that the Son will forever be subject to the Father? I think we must tread carefully here. This cannot be an ontological submission of the Son to the Father, since that would mean there is an eternal ontic superiority within the Trinity. The only way an eternal hierarchical order within the Godhead is possible is in the loving relationship between the three Persons—something that cannot be exactly duplicated in human relationships, but which the best Father-Son relationships represent.

How might I summarize my understanding of 1 Corinthians 15:20-28? If I have caught the gist of the great apostle’s mind here, the verses express the marvelous truth that the resurrection of Jesus on behalf of His saints is the first installment in the full reconciliation of all things to God (cf. Col. 1:19-20). This process is drawn out over several thousand years. Christ rose and ascended two thousand years ago and His return will begin (not continue) His reign on this earth, an earth that has relentlessly gone its own way in defiance of God. Christ’s initial rule (which I believe will last a thousand years – Rev. 20), is for the purpose of bringing His creatures to heel and to order and beautify the world so that it is fit to be presented back to His Father as fallen yet redeemed. It will also justify God’s righteous dealing with fallen man because, as we shall see, given the most perfect political situation in a serene environment, and with Satan under lock and key, humanity will still chafe under the beneficent rule of King Jesus, and will finally rejoin the briefly emancipated Satan to seek His overthrow. If I may supplement this portrait with more NT data, the rationale for the dissolution of the present heaven and earth and the bringing into being the New Heavens and Earth is that only in the new Creation will there be no more sin (Rev. 22:3), and hence no more Death.