Two Moments of the Coming Kingdom

In my last post we saw that the coming of the Kingdom of God is the central event of redemptive history. Kevin DeYoung, in an article entitled “Thinking About the Kingdom” defines it saying, “The kingdom of God is the age to come breaking in to the present age.”

The coming of the Kingdom of God involves two great moments. The first is a fulfillment within history with Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection. The second is the consummation of the Kingdom at the end of history with the second coming of Christ.

George Ladd writes that God’s plan “was not to bring the evil Age to its end and inaugurate the Age to Come. It was rather to bring the powers of the future Age to men in the midst of the present evil Age.”

Ladd further describes the mysterious nature of this age in his book, The Presence of The Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism,

The “mystery of the kingdom” is the key to the understanding of the unique element in Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom. He announced that the Kingdom of God had come near; in fact, he affirmed that it had actually come upon men (Mt. 12:28)… There was something about it which could be understood only by revelation. This meant that while the presence of the Kingdom was a fulfillment of the OT expectation, it was a fulfillment in different terms from those which one might expect from the prophets. Before the end of the age and the coming of the Kingdom in glorious power, it was God’s purpose that the powers of that eschatological Kingdom should enter into human history to accomplish a defeat of Satan’s kingdom, and to set at work the dynamic power of God’s redemptive reign among men [cf. II Cor. 5:17]. This new manifestation of God’s Kingdom was taking place on the level of human history and centered in one man—Jesus Christ.

We live in a unique time in redemptive history between the first and second advent and as we will see it has great implication on our work.

Question: Does knowing that we are already living in the Kingdom of God change your perspective on your every-day routines?

Hugh Whelchel

Hugh Whelchel was the founder of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics and author of How Then Should We Work? Rediscovering the Biblical Doctrine of Work. Hugh earned a Master of Arts in Religion and had over 30 years of diverse business experience. He passed away on Good Friday in 2024, four years after being diagnosed with ALS.