The Jews rejected Him as their King, and the Gentiles crucified Him. But God the Father raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory; and we are meanwhile being called, His friends, His brethren, and His joint-heirs. When the last one is called, the Father will give the word, and the Lord, after receiving them to Himself, will descend in flaming fire on all His foes and tread them down. After that He will inaugurate the reign of peace; and the spared, who submit, will be the willing subjects of the King of kings and Lord of lords. Every creature on the earth will share the blessing in peace; for the nations will learn war no more. Such will be the administration of the fullness of the seasons. What an absurdity to fancy that the time or state is yet come! “The whole creation groaneth together.” Why does it groan? Because it is not under Christ, revealed in power and glory. It is, travailing in pain together until now. Weakness, failure, and death are stamped upon every creature that has any kind of life. And things that have not life are habitually turned to a selfish purpose. Take gold and silver, precious stones, pearls, etc., what crimes do they not cause?
Think of the pride and vanity and misery to which the lust after these things leads! There is a time coming when everything will join in a chorus of praise to the glory of the Lord Jesus. O what a righteous, holy and beneficent change! He will bring it about: nothing but His coming in power, who once came to suffer for sins will avail. He who has preyed upon man ever since the fall in the garden of Eden, Satan, will be for a thousand years shut up. He will not be consigned to the lake of fire till after the millennium: but during the Lord's reign he is not allowed to deceive the nations. Now he is also the accuser of God's saints above. Now he does all possible mischief there and here. All that will cease during the millennium. Idolatry and evil in general will cease, righteousness will flourish during the reign of our Lord over the earth; and the new Jerusalem, metropolis of the universe, will be intimately connected with, but above, the rejoicing earth. The Jews will be the head, not only of Israel saved by God's mercy, but, of all the nations. It does not matter what the anti-Semites say. Israel is kept of God for this blessed time— “the restitution of all things whereof God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets since time began.” They will be the lowly and faithful servants of the Messiah in that day of gladness. But the Gentiles will also abandon their self-sufficiency and joyfully acknowledge their folly and God's goodness, and this glory of Jehovah will fill the earth as now the waters the bed of the sea. That is the unforced and explicit revelation of God. More than that, the very beasts of the earth will lay aside their fury that followed man's departure from God. Whatever may have existed before man, I speak only of the time since man was created. In contrast with the first man's fall, God means to honor the Second man. He is worthy to bring all creation, and the brutes as part of it, to the true center in the power which subdues all things to Christ. Bow universal and profound the evil when man fell! Reconciliation of all things prepares for the transfer to the risen Man who is also True God as truly as is the Father, to Christ the one Head of all things in the heavens no less than of all things on the earth. Then will Christ have come forth publicly, with all His glorified saints following Him; then will He take up the dispensation of the fullness of the seasons, establishing all the divinely given institutions which had broken down in man's feeble and faulty hand. But the saints are carefully distinguished from the inheritance. If the inheritance be given to us, we are the heirs, not the inheritance; and so it is distinctly stated in ver. 11, “in whom [Christ] we were also allotted, fore-determined according to purpose of him that works all things according to the counsel of his own will.” The heavenly Bridegroom shares His inheritance unreservedly with these who are constituted His bride; just as Eve the earthly bride shared all that Adam her bridegroom possessed as the gift of the Lord God to him.
In Christ's case, it was not only in virtue of creating all (John 1:33All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:3)). Another ground far more precious and unfailing was laid in His death. “Because all the fullness was pleased in him to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things unto him, having made peace through the blood of his cross—through him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens.” (Col. 1:19, 2019For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; 20And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. (Colossians 1:19‑20)). Here too the saints, the heirs, are beyond doubt discriminated, as in the counterpart Epistle, from the “all things,” the inheritance in versa 21, 22. “You” He reconciled now. Creation has to be reconciled by power as well as blood, and that will be when He is manifested in glory. But the saints already are reconciled, not by incarnation as is falsely held but, in the body of His flesh through death.
The church is neither all things in the heavens nor all things on the earth, still less both, which is a most egregious error, but believers out of both Jews and Gentiles, baptized by one Spirit into on body, Christ's body, from which all earthly distinction is blotted out. Impossible to fairly maintain the current traditional view, or to deny the truth, that the gathering of all the universe is the future stewardship for Christ's manifestation.
Christ's death is the ground for the saints now reconciled; but the reconciliation of the universe as a matter of fact awaits His appearing in power and glory. It is already applied to those who believe the gospel; and they are the heirs. But the deliverance of creation from the bondage of corruption will be into the liberty of the glory of the children of God (Rom. 8:2121Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Romans 8:21)), and cannot be before those already delivered by grace through faith are revealed to every eye as His sons in glory, What is here said, is but a simple reflection of God's— word. It declares with all plainness of speech that the heirs are reconciled; as the inheritance will be at Christ's manifestation. The heirs are those reconciled through the blood of Christ, as all creation also. But they believe the gospel of grace; with which the rest of creation, animate or inanimate has nothing to do. But they will answer fully to the revelation of Christ's power and glory. We must never confound the Christian's portion with Israel's. The chosen people were Jehovah's especial inheritance. We are united to Christ by the Spirit, not in any sense His inheritance, but heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If Christ is to have all things above and below we too by grace shall share all things.
Let us consider seriously a purpose so immense. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus was pleased so to purpose, and also to reveal it clearly to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Was it not to exercise a direct and intimate bearing on our souls? to lift our hearts to Christ in the heavenly places, as united to Him who is there for entirely like glory with Him? It is not only the bad things of the flesh and the world that present danger, the best things are perverted and falsified by spiritual wickedness in heavenly places to rob us of our highest privileges. We belong to Christ, for and in heaven; He is the, way, the truth and the life. If we give not, as a constant principle and practice, to Christ the first, place, we grievously wrong Him and to our own; irreparable loss as Christians. It is our privilege and our duty to make Christ the prime object?, of our souls in every question that comes before us. Satan ensnares by our own interests. We are only kept and guided aright by Christ's dwelling in our hearts through faith. What quiet comfort and confidence, if you are content to tell the Lord about it and are subject to His will and word! He gives entire deliverance from every wile of the enemy. His love entitles one to consult Him about little matters—nothing, it has been well said, is too great for us, nothing too small for Him, in His grace. Who that believes need wonder that, when dead in our offenses and sins, God quickened, us together with the Christ, and raised us together, and seated us together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God before prepared that we should walk in them.
The efficacious work is offered and accepted on high for all things in the heavens and on the earth. Yet spiritual wickedness is not even yet dislodged from the heavenlies. Still less is the field of the world cleared of all scandals and those that practice. lawlessness. Yes, the serpent's trail is still above; and those associated with in the heavenlies have brought deep dishonor on Him by their unbelief and worldliness, tampering on this side with superstition, on that with rationalism; bad enough in mere professors, far worse in members of His body. The heavenly things therefore needed to be purged by better sacrifices than Israel or any man ever offered. The inheritance, heavenly and earthly, remains yet to be delivered according to the energy of His power even to subdue the universe to Himself; and we shall share His most worthy exaltation, in that day for which we wait, suffering with Him and it may be for Him by grace meanwhile.
W.K.
(Concluded from p. 127)