A never-ending angelic choir concert: This was the scene that played in my little brother\u2019s mind when he heard the words \u201ceternity with Christ.\u201d Far from being an enticing prospect, this was actually closer to his greatest nightmare. In his short life, he had become an obedient yet reluctant regular at choral events, and he knew from personal experience that they were a recipe for long-suffering restlessness. Just as my brother submitted to choir concerts out of love for his mezzo-soprano-singing only sister, he would endure that angelic choir out of love for Jesus. But it understandably put a damper on his anticipation of Christ\u2019s return.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for him, my brother\u2019s pop-culture vision of eternity was not a biblically accurate one.<\/p>\n
While we can be tempted to write eschatology off as irrelevant, what we believe about our future with Christ matters \u2014 not just because it shapes our anticipation (or dread) of His coming, but because an accurate understanding of His kingdom has an underlying power to shape how we approach each element of our lives in the here and now. A biblical vision of the eternal kingdom of God has the inherent potential to unify the church, transform our homes, give meaning to our vocations, and drive our community interactions.<\/p>\n
\u201cKingdom come\u201d is about the manifestation of the ultimate glorification of God in Christ. To live our lives soli Deo gloria<\/em> \u2014 to the glory of God alone \u2014 in the present is to remember how He has been glorified in the past, and act out our anticipation of how He will be glorified in the eternal future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When we consider the picture that the Old Testament prophets paint of what is often referred to as the millennial kingdom of God, we characterize it by the manifest presence of God, work, and the absence of all curses. According to J. Dwight Pentecost in Thy Kingdom Come<\/em>, it will be a physical place marked by joy, peace, glory, holiness, comfort, no sorrow, justice, knowledge, instruction, abundance, no sickness, and freedom from oppression. In its entirety, this new creation will be a physical place, where heaven intersects with earth.<\/p>\n This vision of a new earth did not originate as a result of God\u2019s desire to save humanity from the curse of sin. Rather, it is a redeemed and glorified vision of the original intent of creation.<\/p>\n When God planted the Garden of Eden, He never designed it to function as merely a home for humanity. As long as human beings imaged God in how they ruled Eden, this garden was a physical intersection of heaven and earth \u2014 a place where God felt at home to take walks with them in the cool of the day. As we read Genesis 1-2, we catch a glimpse of God\u2019s eternal vision: generations of men and women working alongside one another to fill and rule over the entire earth in a way that reflects and glorifies our Creator. In this way, Eden, the paradisiacal intersection of heaven and earth, would eventually expand to cover earth in its entirely.<\/p>\n The same partnership that God established with humanity in the beginning is what He envisioned for the end. However, this isn\u2019t just a partnership reserved for the bookends of time. In The Day the Revolution Began<\/em>, theologian N. T. Wright refers to this ongoing partnership between God and humanity as a covenant of vocation, explaining,<\/p>\n The main task of this vocation is \u201cimage-bearing,\u201d reflecting the Creator\u2019s wise stewardship into the world and reflecting the praises of all creation back to its maker. Those who do so are the \u201croyal priesthood,\u201d the \u201ckingdom of priests,\u201d the people who are called to stand at the dangerous but exhilarating point where heaven and earth meet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n All things in heaven and earth are unified in the body of Christ. Just as He is the firstborn of this new creation, we are new creations in Him. The old has gone, the new has come, and, in Christ, He invites us to partner with Him as He renews all of creation (Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 5:17).<\/p>\n When we turn the rule of our lives back over to God through Christ, we become\u00a0reconciled to the\u00a0imago dei \u2014 <\/em>the image of God \u2014 and\u00a0are re-created as\u00a0leaders after the pattern of the first man and woman.\u00a0Together, we are to\u00a0care for and lead\u00a0the\u00a0rest of creation as appointed\u00a0representatives of\u00a0the Creator until the consummation of the end and the fullness of creation is ultimately reconciled to Him.<\/p>\n As a church, we embody in global, regional, and local communities what it looks like to live and interact in the freedom of Christ\u2019s victory over sin. When we lead with the end in mind, we increasingly reflect the glory of the future into the present reality of each sphere of life.<\/p>\n Thus, our homes become holy workshops of reconciliation where we continually practice making peace with one another, comfort sorrow, and instruct one another in the ways of Christ. Our work becomes the means of embedding Christ\u2019s ways into the fabric of our culture. Our interactions within civic communities model our stewardship of Christ\u2019s resources. And our places of worship resonate with the sounds of cursed shackles falling to the ground as Christ is affirmed as King.<\/p>\n Yet, this is only a fragment of the light that Christ allows us to reflect into His world. In standing at \u201cthe dangerous but exhilarating point where heaven and earth meet,\u201d it is our privilege and pleasure to serve as witnesses of what is to come, imaging God into the world around us and partnering with Him in cultivating the new creation that He began in Christ. Thus we discover more as each day passes that to live soli Deo gloria<\/em> is to live with the end in mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A never-ending angelic choir concert: This was the scene that played in my little brother\u2019s mind when he heard the words \u201ceternity with Christ.\u201d Far from being an enticing prospect, this was actually closer to his greatest nightmare. In his short life, he had become an obedient yet reluctant regular at choral events, and he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":236,"featured_media":4312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBeginning with the end<\/h2>\n
Leading in the present<\/h2>\n