The Presence of the Kingdom

The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism: The Interface Between Dispensational and Non-Dispensational Theology by  Robert Saucy · 2010

Along with the primary teaching of the epistles that the kingdom is future, there are a few statements that relate it to the present experience of believers. Some passages speak of spiritual characteristics of the kingdom that are already in operation through the Spirit. Paul’s teaching that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Ro 14:17) is plainly attempting to encourage these traits in the present church. But applying kingdom characteristics is not necessarily the same as declaring that the kingdom has come and is presently established. According to William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam, the “kingdom” here, in accord with Paul’s normal use, is the messianic kingdom, which is “the reward and goal of the Christian life.” The principles of that kingdom mentioned in this passage are, however, already exhibited in this world through the indwelling Spirit.(83) Viewing the kingdom Christologically, Cranfield, following Käsemann, says that “it is in the presence and activity of the Lord Jesus Christ, and only so, that the kingdom of God is experienced in the present.”(84)

Paul’s statement to the Corinthians that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power” (1Co 4:20) is another application of the kingdom to the present. Instead of arrogant human “talking,” the apostle sought the power of the kingdom—a reference, according to the context, to the power of God in the gospel that was manifest by the Spirit (cf. 1Co 1:18, 24; 2:4–5). While this teaches a present relation to the kingdom and the experience of its power, it hardly demonstrates a present established kingdom in distinction to the apostle’s general teaching of a future kingdom. As C. K. Barrett says, “It is always an eschatological concept (though sometimes brought forward into the present), and the power with which it works is the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom. xiv. 17), by which God’s purpose is put into effect and the future anticipated in the present.”(85)

The apostle has just chided the Corinthians for their boasting as if they had already attained the kingdom and were reigning as kings (cf. 4:8). He would hardly talk of a present kingdom just a few verses later.

The verse that most clearly expresses some kind of present position in the kingdom is Paul’s statement that the Father “has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves” (Col 1:13). Many scholars view this “kingdom of the Son” as a present spiritual kingdom of salvation that believers enter into at the moment of conversion.(86) For example, Peter T. O’Brien, concurring with C. F. D. Moule that the kingdom is “entirely moral and spiritual … for the disciples of Christ,” declares, “It is here an existing reality, a present possession.”(87) Curtis Vaughn pointedly states, “The ‘kingdom’ (rule) is not to be interpreted eschatologically. It was for the Colossians a present reality (cf. John 3:3–5).”(88)

The context, however, favors an eschatological meaning for the kingdom in this verse.(89) Immediately preceding this statement, the apostle wrote that the Father “has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light” (Col 1:12). Several terms in this statement point to the future. Werner Foerster says that the term inheritance (klēros) “is used to denote the eschatological portion assigned to man.”(90) In addition, according to O’Brien, to describe the inheritance as belonging to “the saints in the kingdom of light” means that it is “in the realm of the light of the age to come” and is the equivalent of the “hope laid up in heaven (v. 5; cf. 3:1–4).”(91) Therefore the saints are presently qualified (the Greek aorist tense) to share in the inheritance, but the reference is to a future blessing.

That this “inheritance … in the kingdom of light” (Col 1:12) is related to being “brought into the kingdom of the Son” (v. 13) is seen in the connection of “light” and “darkness” in these two verses. T. K. Abbott notes that the apostle spoke here of an inheritance in “light” rather than “in the heavenlies” because he wanted to represent the condition of natural mankind as “darkness” in verse 13.(92) To be qualified for “the kingdom of light” (v. 12) is therefore the equivalent of being “rescued … from the dominion of darkness and brought … into the kingdom of the Son” (v. 13).

If such is the case, then this reference to the kingdom, like many others in Paul’s writings, belongs to the eschatological category of an inheritance that is already assured. It is the equivalent of the saints’ having their “citizenship in heaven” (Php 3:20). This is the view of Charles A. Briggs, who acknowledges that he came to it after for many years holding the position that believers were already in a present kingdom.

Elsewhere in the Pauline epistles the kingdom has always had an eschatological reference and has been an inheritance, a kingdom of glory….My final study of it [Col. 1:13],in its connection with the Messianic conception of the Epistles of the Imprisonment, leads me to the opinion that the kingdom is eschatological here also. It is parallel with the inheritance in light. As the kingdom is elsewhere an inheritance, its parallelism with inheritance and its substitution for it in a common antithesis to authority of darkness favors that reference here. The only difficulty is in explaining how Christians may be said to be transferred into a kingdom which in its nature is eschatological. The solution of this difficulty is found in the parallelism with citizenship in heaven of the Epistle to the Philippians; and with the life hid with Christ of our Epistle [Col. 3:3].(93)

This relationship to the future kingdom, however, does carry with it a present blessing. Believers whose citizenship has been transferred into Christ’s kingdom are now free from “the dominion of darkness,” by which the apostle means the “satanic or demonic powers,”(94) whose slaves they had formerly been and over whom Christ had triumphed. But this deliverance is not yet all-encompassing. It relates to the believer’s inner personal or spiritual freedom from the domination of the evil powers, but not yet deliverance from outward evil.(95) The present effect of belonging to Christ’s kingdom is elaborated in the following verse: “… we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:14). According to Thomas Sappington, Paul in this verse, which by construction is intimately related to verse 13, “reminds his readers what they possess because of redemption ‘in Christ.’”(96)

Being presently “brought into the kingdom of the Son,” therefore, signifies not a kingdom reign, but spiritual salvation through a relationship with the coming King (cf. “in whom,” Col 1:14), even as we saw previously concerning the present relationship to the kingdom in the teaching of Jesus. The same essential truth is expressed by Paul in relation to his commission. Christ had sent him to the Gentiles “to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Ac 26:18). According to the Colossians passage, that place among the sanctified means heirship in “the kingdom of light” and citizenship in “the kingdom of the Son”—which is presently in heaven but will come to earth with Christ.

The teaching of the early church, therefore, yields the same picture of the kingdom as that found in the Gospels. The establishment of the kingdom on earth is still future. The believer is related to this kingdom through faith in the King and is therefore an heir and already a citizen of the coming kingdom. The King has already bestowed some of the blessings of the kingdom on its citizens, so it is possible to speak of the presence of the kingdom now. This presence is described in terms of righteousness, peace, and joy (Rom 14:17), the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:13–14), and power (1Co 4:20), but never in terms of a present “reign.”

Footnotes

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83 William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902), 391–92. Charles A. Briggs says of this verse, “It is not clear whether the kingdom of God here is the kingdom of glory, or the kingdom of the Church in this world. Paul thus far has always used it of the kingdom of glory. The presumption is that it has the same reference here. Eating and drinking are not the characteristics of that kingdom of glory. Eating and drinking are not the preparation for it. But its characteristics are righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. These things are to be sought for. Only those who have them will inherit the kingdom” (The Messiah of the Apostles [Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1895], 172–73).

84 C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1979), 2:718.

85 C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 118. Compare also H. A. W. Meyer’s comment on this verse: “The βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, again, is not here, as it never is elsewhere . . ., and in particular never in Paul’s writings (neither in this passage nor in Rom. xiv. 7; Col. 1:13, iv. 11 . . .), the church, or the kingdom of God in the ethical sense . . ., but the Messianic kingdom” (Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Epistles to the Corinthians, 2 vols. [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1877–79], 104).

86 Some scholars distinguish “the kingdom of Christ” from the “kingdom of God,” seeing the former as the present reign of Christ and the latter as a future event occurring after Christ hands over the kingdom to the Father (1Co 15:24; cf. F. F. Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 45 [Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1982], 37; Eduard Lohse, A Commentary on the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971], 37–38; Gerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953], 259). Vos does acknowledge, however, that this distinction is not uniform in Paul.

Such a radical distinction does not appear to be valid. In various passages there is reference to “the kingdom of God and of Christ” (cf. Eph 5:5). Particularly telling against this distinction is the statement associated with the coming of Christ: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev 11:15). Even in the eternal state the throne is “of God and of the Lamb” (Rev 22:1). Bertold Klappert first shows that the “kingdom of God” is bound up with the person and work of Jesus both in the Gospels and the epistles; then he rightly concludes that “the kingdom of Jesus Christ is in the NT view the same as the kingdom of God” (“King, Kingdom,” in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 2:386–89); cf. also Schmidt, “βασιλεία,” in TDNT, 1:581, 588–89.

87 Peter T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 44 (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1982), 28. C. F. D. Moule further adds the very questionable negative statement that “there is no trace of a nationalistic Messianism in the N. T. conception” (The Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon, The Cambridge Greek Testament [Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1962], 58).

88 Curtis Vaughn, “Colossians,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 11, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), 180.

89 According to Per Beskow, all of the New Testament references to the kingdom of “the Son of Man or of Christ” are “distinctly eschatological in character” (Rex Gloriae, 44).

90 Werner Foerster, “κλῆρος,” in TDNT, 3:763.

91 O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, 27; similarly, T. K. Abbott, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, n.d.), 207.

92 Abbott, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, 207.

93 Charles A. Briggs, The Messiah of the Apostles (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1895), 211–12.

94 Ralph Martin, “Reconciliation and Forgiveness in Colossians,” in Reconciliation and Hope, ed. Robert Banks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 107.

95 The present limitation of freedom from the “dominion of darkness” is evident in that the apostle’s language has an Old Testament—Qumranic background. Ralph P. Martin points to one Qumran reference to this evil “dominion” as that “which inflicts persecution on the children of righteousness (1 QS iii.22f.).” The continuing persecution of the New Testament church thus made it evident that complete deliverance was not yet the believer’s experience (Martin, Reconciliation and Hope).

96 Thomas J. Sappington, Revelation and Redemption at Colossae, Journal for the Study of the New