We must learn to take Scripture seriously when it speaks of our reigning over the earth. By telling ourselves that we mustn't interpret Scripture literally, often we end up rejecting its plain meaning. Our assumptions generally dictate our interpretations. If we imagine, for example, that the eternal Heaven is disembodied and unearthly, then concepts of government, culture, social structures, and delegated tasks will naturally strike us as naive, if not bizarre. But if we understand the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and the reality of the New Earth, these concepts make perfect sense.
Others may perceive that the New Earth will need no government or that differing levels of authority (e.g., some ruling over ten cities while others rule over five or one or none) are inherently corrupt or unfair. But the need for government didn't come about as a result of sin. God governed the universe before Satan fell. Likewise, he created mankind as his image-bearers, with the capacity for ruling, and before Adam and Eve sinned, God specifically commanded them to rule the earth. Ruling isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing. God has called us to it and has equipped us for it—to rule the earth, rule it well, and find pleasure in ruling it. Because we're sinners, power tends to corrupt us. But on the New Earth there will be no sin. Therefore, all ruling will be just and benevolent, devoid of abuse, corruption, or lust for power.
Some Christians err by demeaning and ignoring politics, thereby failing to exercise their God-given stewardship. Others put too much confidence in politics, failing to understand God's insistence that he alone will establish a perfect government on Earth. When have we ever experienced the "peace on Earth" promised at Christ's birth? We haven't yet, but we will (Zechariah 9:910; Ezekiel 37:26-28; Isaiah 42:1-4; Matthew 12:18-21). Meanwhile, God calls us to cultural reform and development. Christians should be involved in the political process, and we can do much good, but we should never forget that the only government that will succeed in global reform is Christ's government.
Jesus said, "I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22:29-30).
This is an astounding statement, one that should cause us to pause in wonder. Christ is conferring to us a kingdom? A kingdom? To us}
God's purpose and plan will not fully be achieved until Christ confers upon us the Kingdom he has won. This will take place after our bodily resurrection, when we will eat and drink at a table with the resurrected Christ on a resurrected Earth. (Some scholars limit this reign to the Millennium, but parallel passages indicate an eternal reign.) That this is an actual rule on a physical, earthly kingdom, not a "spiritual" rule in a disembodied state, is demonstrated by the references to our eating and drinking at a table with Christ.
LOOKING FORWARD TO WHAT GOD HAS FOR US
The Master will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master" (Matthew 25:23, ESV).
Commenting on this passage, Dallas Willard writes, "That 'joy' is, of course, the creation and care of what is good, in all its dimensions. A place in God's creative order has been reserved for each one of us from before the beginnings of cosmic existence. His plan is for us to develop, as apprentices to Jesus, to the point where we can take our place in the ongoing creativity of the universe."168
The idea of entering into the Master's joy is a telling picture of Heaven. It's not simply that being with the Master produces joy in us, though certainly it will. Rather, it's that our Master himself is joyful. He takes joy in himself, in his children, and in his creation. His joy is contagious. Once we're liberated from the sin that blocks us from God's joy and our own, we'll enter into his joy. Joy will be the very air we breathe. The Lord is inexhaustible—therefore his joy is inexhaustible.
God is grooming us for leadership. He's watching to see how we demonstrate our faithfulness. He does that through his apprenticeship program, one that prepares us for Heaven. Christ is not simply preparing a place for us; he is preparing us for that place.
We all have dreams but often don't see them realized. We become discouraged and lose hope. But as Christ's apprentices, we must learn certain disciplines. Apprentices in training must work hard and study hard to prepare for the next test or challenge. Apprentices may wish for three weeks of vacation or more pay to pursue outside interests. But the Master may see that these would not lead to success. He may override his apprentices' desires in order that they might learn perspective and patience, which will serve them well in the future. While the young apprentices experience the death of their dreams, the Master is shaping them to dream greater dreams that they will one day live out on the New Earth with enhanced wisdom, skill, appreciation, and joy.
Through the challenges you now face, what dreams might God be preparing you to live out on the New Earth?
CHAPTER 22
HOW WILL WE RULE GOD'S KINGDOM?
Our liveliness in all duties, our enduring of tribulation, our honoring of God, the vigor of our love, thankfulness, and all our graces, yea, the very being of our religion and Christianity, depend on the believing, serious thoughts of our rest [heaven].
Richard Baxter
When we read that God promises us "an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1:4), we may think of this inheritance as Heaven or its pleasures. But God not only gives pleasures to his heirs, he also gives us power—positions of authority in his eternal Kingdom. Our vested interest in the New Earth couldn't be greater. It was purchased on the cross by the blood of God's Son. The New Earth isn't a blissful realm that we'll merely visit, as vacationers go to a theme park. Rather, it's a realm we'll joyfully rule with Jesus, exercising dominion as God's image-bearers.
In Romans 8:16-17, Paul writes, "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." While we're on Earth, we serve Jesus, rejecting Earth's value system, but not because we despise the earth or have no interest in it. On the contrary, we reject much of what this fallen Earth offers us precisely because we want all of what God offers us on the redeemed Earth. We will forever please our Father by ruling over the earth that he'll refashion for us to live on forever. As co-rulers with Christ, we'll share in the glory of the sovereign ruler himself.
Some might protest, "How dare we imagine such a future for ourselves!" Certainly it would be blasphemous for fallen humans to claim a share of God's throne if it was our idea. But again, it's not our idea; it's God's idea. It's his sovereign plan, laid out before the foundation of the world, which he has gone to sacrificial lengths to implement. If we reject the idea that God has called us to rule the earth, then we reject his explicitly stated plan and his sovereignly orchestrated purpose. How dare we?
It's in the context of our being heirs and co-heirs with Christ, heirs and future rulers of the earth, that Paul writes of all creation groaning as it waits to be "liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). In this same context, Paul offers us perspective on how to view the hardships of life in a fallen world: "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).
WHY GOD CREATED MANKIND AND THE EARTH
In The End for which God Created the WW*/, Jonathan Edwards writes, "God has a disposition to communicate himself, to spread abroad his own fullness. His purpose was for his goodness to over-spill his own Being, as it were. He chose to create the heavens and the earth so that his glory could come pouring out from himself in abundance. He brought a physical reality into existence in order that it might experience his glory and be filled with it and reflect it—every atom, every second, every part and moment of creation. He made human bei
ngs in his own image to reflect his glory, and he placed them in a perfect environment which also reflected it."169
Earth exists for the same reason that mankind and everything else exists: to glorify God. God is glorified when we take our rightful, intended place in his creation and exercise the dominion that he bestowed on us. God appointed human beings to rule the earth: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth'" (Genesis 1:26-28, NKJV).
God's intention for humans was that we would occupy the whole Earth and reign over it. This dominion would produce God-exalting societies in which we would exercise the creativity, imagination, intellect, and skills befitting beings created in God's image, thereby manifesting his attributes. To be made in God's image involves a communicative mandate: that through our creative industry as God's subcreators, we should together make the invisible God visible, thus glorifying him in the sight of all creation.
Culture encompasses commerce, the arts, sciences, athletics—anything and everything that God-empowered, creative human minds can conceive and strong human bodies can implement. In The King of the Earth, theologian Erich Sauer writes of the phrase in Genesis 1:26 "let them have dominion": "These words plainly declare the vocation of the human race to rule. They also call him to progressive growth in culture. Far from being something in conflict with God, cultural achievements are an essential attribute of the nobility of man as he possessed it in Paradise. Inventions and discoveries, the sciences and the arts, refinement and ennobling, in short, the advance of the human mind, are throughout the will of God. They are the taking possession of the earth by the royal human race (Genesis 1:28), the performance of a commission, imposed by the Creator, by God's ennobled servants, a God-appointed ruler's service for the blessing of this earthly realm."170
This reigning, expanding, culture-enriching purpose of God for mankind on Earth was never revoked or abandoned. It has only been interrupted and twisted by the Fall. But neither Satan nor sin is able to thwart God's purposes. Christ's redemptive work will ultimately restore, enhance, and expand God's original plan.
John, the same apostle who writes, "Do not love the world or anything in the world" (1 John 2:15), also writes, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son" (John 3:16). Because God hates sin, he rejects the sinful world that fallen humanity tries to create: "the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does" (1 John 2:16). But God loves the world he created, and he'll restore it as part of his grand plan for humanity's redemption.
"Don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God" (James 4:4). How do we understand passages such as this? Consider the predicament of decent German citizens under the Nazi regime. Did they love their homeland, Germany, or did they hate it? Both, simultaneously. They hated the Nazi government, the arrogance, depravity, bigotry, brutality, and persecution. Yet they knew there was a better Germany, even though it was buried beneath the prevailing tide of fascism. They were loyal to that better Germany, and they could still see signs of it in the beautiful countryside, a concerto, the eyes of a kind neighbor, Germans jailed for resisting the Nazis, and faithful citizens quietly intervening to save Jews. Paradoxically, it was their very love for Germany that fueled their opposition to Nazi Germany. Likewise, our love for God's Earth fuels our opposition to fallen Earth.
We need to think carefully when we read Scriptures that talk about "the world." I recommend adding the words as it is now, under the Curse, to keep the biblical distinctions clear in our minds:
Friendship with the world [as it is now, under the Curse] is hatred toward God. (James 4:4)
Do not be conformed to this world [as it is now, under the Curse]. (Romans 12:2, NKjv)
The wisdom of this world [as it is now, under the Curse] is foolishness with God. (1 Corinthians 3:19, NKjv)
The world as it was, and the world as it will be, is exceedingly good. The world as it is now, inhabited by humanity as we are now, is twisted. But this is a temporary condition, with an eternal remedy: Christ's redemptive work.
Paul says that Christ "gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age" (Galatians 1:4). Not all worlds and all ages are evil, but only this world in this present age. When Jesus calls Satan "the prince of this world" (John 14:30; 16:11) and Paul calls Satan "the god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4), it's a relative and temporary designation. God is still God over the universe, still sovereign over Earth and over Satan. But the devil is the usurper who has tried to steal Earth's throne from man, God's delegated king of the earth. In his time, God will take back the throne, as the God-man Jesus Christ, at last restoring and raising Earth.
Paul encourages us not to become engrossed in the world as it is because "this world in its present form is passing away" (1 Corinthians 7:31). God will not bring an end to the earth—rather, he will bring to an end this temporary rebellion. He will transform Earth into a realm of unsurpassed magnificence, for his glory and for our good.
GOD'S KINGDOM . . . AND OURS
In Daniel 7 we're given a prophetic revelation of four earthly kingdoms, beginning with Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, that will one day be forever replaced by a fifth kingdom. "There before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed" (Daniel 7:13-14).
Because the four pagan kingdoms are on Earth, the implication is that the fifth kingdom—God's eternal Kingdom—will also be on Earth.
Daniel said of the four earthly kingdoms, "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea" (Daniel 7:2). These nations might appear to rise to power arbitrarily, but their emergence is orchestrated by Heaven, and their ruling authority is granted by God for they are "given authority to rule" (v. 6), and later "their dominion was taken away" (v. 12, ESV).
In contrast to the tenuous and temporary rule of the nations, we're told that the Messiah's dominion—in context, a kingdom on Earth—will be "everlasting" and "will not pass away" and "will never be destroyed" (v. 14).
Notice the continuity between the ultimate earthly kingdom of the Messiah and the previous earthly kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, from which eventually comes the kingdom of the Antichrist. The kingdom with the everlasting dominion is not a dominion over a different realm but over the same realm—Earth. In speaking of these kingdoms, God is not comparing apples (Earth) with oranges (a spirit realm), but apples with apples. Christ will not merely destroy the earth where fallen kings once ruled. Rather, he will rule over the same Earth, transformed and new.
At Daniel's request, an angel provides an interpretation of his vision: "The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise from the earth" (v. 17). Then the angel makes an extraordinary statement: "But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever" (v. 18). This statement makes clear both the kingdom's location (Earth) and its duration (eternal).
Heaven, as the eternal home of the divine Man and of all the redeemed members of the human race, must necessarily be thoroughly human in its structure, conditions, and activitie
s. Its joys and activities must all be rational, moral, emotional, voluntary and active. There must be the exercise of all the faculties, the gratification of all tastes, the development of all talent capacities, the realization of all ideals.... Heaven will prove the consummate flower and fruit of the whole creation and of all the history of the universe.
A.A.HODGE
Some theologians reduce Daniel 7 to a promise that God's saints will reign with Christ during the Millennium. But the text couldn't be clearer—it says "for ever and ever," not a thousand years. Many other passages also affirm an earthly reign that will last forever (e.g., Joshua 14:9; 2 Samuel 7:16; Isaiah 34:17; 60:21; Jeremiah 17:25; Micah 4:7; Revelation 22:5). The angel Gabriel told Mary that Christ "will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end" (Luke 1:33). Regardless of whether one believes in a literal Millennium, passages such as the ones cited here shouldn't be understood as millennial references. They refer instead to an everlasting Kingdom.
But where is that eternal Kingdom located? If the other four kingdoms, spanning centuries, rose "from the earth," and if the Antichrist will rule on the earth, where will God's Kingdom be in order to replace those kingdoms? On the earth
Under God's covenant with Israel, the people never looked for the Messiah to reign in Heaven. That would be nothing new, because God already reigns in Heaven. Establishing God's Kingdom was never about an immaterial spirit realm. It always concerned the one place in the universe made for mankind, the one place where God's reign has been disputed: Earth