And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son … be subject.
Christ subjecting Himself
I. Christ reigning. Our text speaks of the time when 1 Corinthians 15:25 shall be accomplished.
1. Christ’s kingdom is to exist till all things are subjugated to it. It is set up to bring to obedience those who are rebels to God’s government.
(1) It virtually began with the first human rebel; when the promise was made that “the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.”
(2) After Christ’s dearth and resurrection, His kingdom was actually established, and His “ambassadors” have ever since been “beseeching men in Christ’s stead to be reconciled to God.”
(3) Christ’s kingdom is remedial rather than judicial, and He seeks to rule by constraint rather than restraint.
2. This kingdom will eventually be universal. Here is no uncertainty, no speculation. “The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” “I have sworn by myself,… that unto Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.”
II. Christ subjecting himself.
1. Humanly speaking, Christ subjected Himself to the Father when He assumed our nature, and submitted to the death of the Cross. His present exaltation is the reward of that submission (Philippians 2:1-30), and consists of a relative dominion which will come to an end when Christ has finished the peculiar work for which it was established.
2. The relative subjection of the incarnation was voluntarily and not derogatory to His Divinity. Christ was God manifested in the flesh.
3. Nor will it be derogatory to Christ’s Divinity to “subject Himself” by yielding up the lordship of the mediatorial kingdom. His glory and dominion will be the same, it will merely be a change in the form of administration.
III. God as “all in all.”
1. This does not mean that God the Son shall be lost in the Father, for Christ is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This expression is also used of Christ. He is spoken of as “the fulness of Him that filleth all things,” and as “all, and in all.” God the Father is not “all in all” to the exclusion of the Son, but with the Son, and with the Holy Ghost.
2. It is the Triune God that is here spoken of as “all in all.” The mediatorial kingdom having come to an end, the relative position of Christ being no longer required, there is seen only the Divine absoluteness in the never divided Trinity.
3. The Triune God “all in all” means that the Divine will be supreme by a universal, voluntary, glad consent. When God is absolutely our “all in all” we shall have secured the highest happiness we are capable of. (Homiletic Magazine.)
The final submission of the Son to the Father
That from the moment of His final triumph the Son will bow to the Father in a sense in which He does not now, must be expounded in harmony with Luke 1:33. “Of His kingdom there will be no end”; and with Revelation 11:15, “The kingdom of the world has become our Lord’s and His Christ’s: and He will reign for ever and ever.” In this latter passage the united reign of the Father and Son is described by the remarkable words, “He will reign.” Perhaps the following imperfect human comparison may help to harmonise these apparently contradictory assertions. Conceive a king who never leaves his palace, but commits all public acts of royalty to his son, who performs them in the name, and at the bidding and according to the will, of his father, whose will his son always approves. Such a son we might call a sharer of his father’s throne; and, in another sense, the sole ruler of his father’s realm. Conceive now that a province is in rebellion, and that, to bring it into submission, the king invests his son, for the time of the rebellion, with full royal authority. The son begins in person the war against the rebels; but before its completion he returns to the capital in which his father reigns and directs thence the war until order is completely restored. Even in the presence of his father he exercises the full regal authority given to him for the suppression of the revolt. While the rebellion lasts he seems to be an independent ruler; though really ruling only at the bidding, and to work out the will, and restore the authority of his father. But when order is restored, the son gives back to the father this delegated royalty: and even the apparent independence of the son’s rule ceases. Henceforth the father reigns with undisputed sway. The difference between the special authority delegated to the Son for the suppression of the revolt and afterwards laid down and the abiding authority of the Son as the Father’s representative, I cannot define. Probably it is connected with the fact that in consequence of sin the Son did what the Father never did, viz., became man and died. May it not be that in consequence of this He exercises now an authority which is specially His own, and which will continue only for a time? (Prof. Beet.)
Our relations to Christ in the future life
That Christ is to be in some sense eternal, and the eternal joy of all believers, we cannot willingly doubt. What kind of personal relation to Christ we are to hope for and hold, as our authorised and fixed expectations for the future life? Among those who hold the Trinity more lightly, or in a more nearly Sabellian way, as a dramatising of God to serve the occasional uses of redemption, it is common to assume the discontinuance of it, when the uses of redemption no longer require it. But there is a fatal want of depth in this conception. If there was a necessity of the Three to carry on the redemption of the world, as this partly Sabellian view supposes, it was not a necessity of sin, but of mind--finite mind, all finite mind; existing therefore ab aeterno in aeternum. We have now a great first point established, viz., that when the Son is spoken of as finally to be made subject, or so far discontinued as to let God be all in all, it cannot be meant that the Son is to be taken away, or disappear, in any sense that modifies at all the fact of Trinity. If God is to be all in all, it must be as Trinity and not otherwise. How then shall we understand the apostle when he testifies that the “Son” shall be subject or retired from the view? He is speaking plainly of the Son as incarnate, or externalised in the flesh, visible outwardly in the man-form and known as the Son of Mary. He it is that, after having--as a king outwardly regnant--put all things under His feet, is in turn to become subject also Himself, that God may be all in all, and the machineries hitherto conspicuous be for ever taken back as before the advent. The only objection I perceive to this construction is, that the word Son here appears to be used in connection with the word Father--“delivered up the kingdom to God even the Father,”--“then shall the Son also”--as if it were intended to say that the Son as in Trinity is to give place to the Father as in Trinity, and He to be henceforth sole Deity. But there is a two-fold relationship of Father and Son appearing and reappearing constantly; viz., that of the Father to the incarnate Son and that of the Father to the pre-incarnate Son; that which gives Him earthly Fatherhood and that which gives Him celestial, ante-mudane Fatherhood. The apostle was not careful here to put a guard for the saving of the eternal Sonship, because he did not imagine the need of saving that, any more than of saving Deity itself. He was only thinking of the mortal Sonship, and giving us to see the essentially temporal date of its continuance. Trinity then as He conceives will remain, but the mortal Sonship, the man, will disappear and be no more visible. And let us not too hastily recoil from this. It may be that we have been promising ourselves a felicity in the future world, made up almost wholly of the fact that we shall be with Christ in His humanly personal form, and have used this hope to feed our longings, quite apart from all higher relations to His Eternal Sonship. Their word is Jesus, always Jesus, never the Christ; and if they can see Jesus in the world to come, they do not specially look for anything more. Heaven is fully made up, to their low type of expectation, if they can but apprehend the Man and be with Him. Religion reaches after God, and God is Trinity, and all the gospel does, or can do, by the name and human person of Jesus, is to bring us in and up to a God who is eternally above that name. Our relations to Christ, then, in the future life, are to be relations to God in Christ, and never to the Jesus in Christ. There is, I know, a conception of our gospel which has its blessedness in Jesus, because it meets God in Him, and is specially drawn to His humanity, because it even finds the fulness of God bowed low in His person. This so far is genuine gospel. And it would not be strange if a disciple thus wonted in God should imagine that the joy of his faith is conditioned for ever by the human person at whose ministry or from whose love it began. What, then, is the future glory, he will ask, if he does not bring him in, where he can see the very Man of the Cross? And who is this but Him that you seek? Surely He is somehow here, and this is somehow He. You missed Him, perchance, because you were looking too low down, out of the range of Deity, to find Him; whereas now you find Him throned in God, hymned in God, as the everlasting Son of the Father--and yet He is somehow Son of Mary still, even as He is the Lamb that was slain. (H. Bushnell.)
The termination of the mediatorial kingdom
There are two great truths presented by this verse and its context--the one, that Christ is now vested with a kingly authority which He must hereafter resign; the other, that, as a consequence on this resignation, God Himself will become all in all to the universe. We begin by observing the importance of carefully distinguishing between what the Scriptures affirm of the attributes, and what of the offices, of the persons in the Trinity in regard of the attributes, you will find that the employed language marks perfect equality; the Father, Son, and Spirit being alike spoken of as Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent. But in regard of the offices, there can be no dispute that the language indicates inequality, and that both the Son and Spirit are represented as inferior to the Father. This may readily be accounted for from the nature of the plan of redemption. This plan demanded that the Son should humble Himself, and assume our nature; and that the Spirit should condescend to be sent as a renovating agent; whilst the Father was to remain in the sublimity and happiness of Godhead. And it is only by thus distinguishing between the attributes and the offices that we can satisfactorily explain our text and its context. The apostle expressly declares of Christ, that He is to deliver up His kingdom to the Father, and to become Himself subject to the Father. And the question naturally proposes itself, how are statements such as these to be reconciled with other portions of Scripture, which speak of Christ as an everlasting King, and declare His dominion to be that which shall not be destroyed? There is no difficulty in reconciling these apparently conflicting assertions if we consider Christ as spoken of in the one case as God, in the other as Mediator. And you cannot be acquainted with the scheme of our redemption and not know that the office of the Mediator warrants our supposing a kingdom which will be finally surrendered. The grand design of redemption has all along been the exterminating evil from the universe, and the restoring harmony throughout God’s disorganised empire. He was not indeed fully and visibly invested with the kingly office until after His death and resurrection: for then it was that He declared to His disciples, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and earth.” Nevertheless the mediatorial kingdom had commenced with the commencement of human guilt and misery. But when, through death, He had destroyed “Him that had the power of death,” the Mediator became emphatically a King. He “ascended up on high, and led captivity captive,” in that very nature in which He had “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” He sat down at the right hand of God the very person that had been made a curse for us. It is certainly the representation of Scripture, that Christ has been exalted to a throne, in recompense of His humiliation and suffering; and that, seated on this throne, He governs all things in heaven and earth. And we call this throne the mediatorial throne, because it was only as Mediator that Christ could be exalted. The great object for which the kingdom has been erected, is, that He who occupies the throne may subdue those principalities and powers which have set themselves against the government of God. And when this noble result is brought round, and the whole globe mantled with righteousness, there will yet remain much to be done ere the mediatorial work is complete. The throne must set for judgment; the enactments of a retributive economy take effect; the dead be raised, and all men receive the things done in the body. Then will evil be finally expelled form the universe, and God may again look forth on His unlimited empire, and declare it not defiled by a solitary stain. Now it has been our object, up to this point, to prove to you, on scriptural authority, that the Mediator is a King, and that Christ, as God-man, is invested with a dominion not to be confounded with that which belongs to Him as God. You are now therefore prepared for the question, whether Christ has not a kingdom which must be ultimately resigned. We think it evident that, as Mediator, Christ has certain functions to discharge, which, from their very nature, cannot be eternal. When the last of God’s elect family shall have been gathered in, there will be none to need the blood of sprinkling, none to require the intercession of “an advocate with the Father.” Then shall all that sovereignty which, for magnificent but temporary purposes, has been wielded by and through the humanity of Christ, pass again to the Godhead whence it was derived. Then shall the Creator, acting no longer through the instrumentality of a Mediator, assume visibly, amid the worshippings of the whole intelligent creation, the dominion over His infinite and now purified empire, and administer its every concern without the intervention of one “found in fashion as a man.” “God shall henceforwards be all in all.” Now it is upon this latter expression, indicative as it is of what we may call the universal diffusion of Deity, that we design to employ the remainder of our time. We wish to examine into the truths involved in the assertion that God is to be finally all in all. It is an assertion which, the more it is pondered, the more comprehensive will it appear. You may remember that the same expression is used of Christ in the Epistle to the Colossians--“Christ is all and in all.” There is no disagreement between the assertions. In the Epistle to the Colossians St. Paul speaks of what takes place under the mediatorial kingdom; whereas in that to the Corinthians he describes what will occur when that kingdom shall have terminated. We learn, then, from the expression in question, however unable we may be to explain the amazing transition, that there is to be a removal of the apparatus constructed for allowing us communications with Godhead; and that we shall not need those offices of an Intercessor, without which there could now be no access to our Maker. There is something very grand and animating in this announcement. If we were unfallen creatures, we should need no Mediator. The mediatorial office, independently on which we must have been everlastingly outcasts, is evidence, throughout the whole of its continuance, that the human race does not yet occupy the place whence it fell. But with the termination of this office shall be the admission of man into all the privileges of direct access to his Maker. In ceasing to have a Mediator the last barrier is taken down; and man, who has thrown himself to an unmeasured distance from God, passes into those direct associations with Him “that inhabiteth eternity,” which can be granted to none but those who never fell, or who, having fallen, have been recovered from every consequence of apostacy. And therefore it is not that we depreciate, or undervalue, the blessedness of that condition in which Christ is all in all to His Church. We cannot compute this blessedness, and we feel that the best praises fall far short of its deserts; and yet we can believe of this blessedness, that it is only preparatory to a richer and a higher. To tell me that I should need a Mediator through eternity, were to tell me that I should be in danger of death, and at a distance from God. There is, however, no reason for supposing that the human race alone will be affected by the resignation of the mediatorial kingdom. We may not believe that it is only over ourselves that Christ Jesus has been invested with sovereignty. It would rather appear, since all power has been given Him in heaven and earth, that the mediatorial kingdom embraces different worlds, and different orders of intelligence; and that the chief affairs of the universe are administered by Christ in His glorified humanity. It is therefore possible that even unto angels the Godhead does not now immediately manifest itself; but that these glorious creatures are governed, like ourselves, through the instrumentality of the Mediator. Hence it will be a great transition to the whole intelligent creation, and not merely to an inconsiderable fraction, when the Son shall give up the kingdom to the Father. It will be the visible enthronement of Deity. The Creator will come forth from His sublime solitude, and assume the sceptre of His boundless empire. And it is not, we think, possible to give a finer description of universal harmony and happiness than is contained in the sentence, “God all in all,” when supposed to have reference to every rank in creation. Let us consider for a moment what the sentence implies. It implies that there shall be but one mind, and that the Divine mind, throughout the universe. Every creature shall be so actuated by Deity, that the Creator shall have only to will, and the whole mass of intelligent being will be conscious of the same wish, and the same purpose. It is not merely that every creature will be under the government of the Creator, as a subject is under that of his prince. It is more than all this. It is that there shall be such fibres of association between the Creator and the creatures, that every other will shall move simultaneously with the Divine, and the resolve of Deity be instantly felt as one mighty impulse pervading the vast expansion of mind. God all in all--it is that from the highest order to the lowest, archangel, and angel, and man, and principality, and power, there shall be but one desire, one object. This is making God more than the universal Ruler: it is making Him the universal Actuator. But if the expression mark the harmony, it marks also the happiness of eternity. It is undeniable that, even whilst on earth, we find things more beautiful and precious in proportion as we are accustomed to find God in them, to view them as gifts, and to love them for the sake of the giver. It is not the poet, nor the naturalist, who has the richest enjoyment when surveying the landscape, or tracing the manifestations of creative power and contrivance. It is the Christian, who recognises a Father’s hand in the glorious development of mountain and valley, and discovers the loving-kindness of an ever-watchful guardian in each example of the adaptation of the earth to its inhabitants. What will it be when God shall be literally all in all? It were little to tell us, that, admitted into the heavenly Jerusalem, we should worship in a temple magnificent in architecture, and bow down at a shrine whence flashed the effulgence and issued the voice of Jehovah. The mighty and overwhelming thing is that, according to the vision of St. John, there shall be no temple there; but that so actually shall God be all, that Deity itself will be our sanctuary, and our adorations be rendered in the sublime recesses of the Omnipotent Himself. And if we think on future intercourse with beings of our own race, or of loftier ranks, then only are the anticipations rapturous and inspiriting, when Deity seems blended with every association. The child may be again loved and embraced. But the emotions will have none of that selfishness into which the purest and deepest of our feelings may now be too much resolved: it will be God that the child loves in the parent, and it will be God that the parent loves in the child; and the gladness with which the heart of each swells, as they recognise one the other in the celestial city, will be a gladness of which Deity is the spring, a gladness of which Deity is the object. Thus shall it be also in regard of every element which can be supposed to enter into future happiness. It is certain, that, if God be all in all, there will be excited in us no wish which we shall be required to repress, none which shall not be gratified so soon as formed. Having God in ourselves, we shall have capacities of enjoyment immeasurably larger than at present; having God in all around us, we shall find everywhere material of enjoyment commensurate with our amplified powers. Let us put from us confused and indeterminate notions of happiness, and the simple description, that God shall be all in all, sets before us the very perfection of felicity. The only sound definition of happiness is that every faculty has its proper object. And we believe of man, that God endowed him with various capacities, intending to be Himself their supply. Thus, at present, we make little or no approach towards knowing God as He is, because God hath not yet made Himself all in all to His creatures. But let there once come this universal diffusion of Deity, and we may find in God Himself the objects which answer to our matured and spiritualised faculties. We profess not to be competent to the understanding the mysterious change which is thus indicated as passing on the universe. But we can perceive it to be a change which shall be full of glory, full of happiness. Thus we look forward to the termination of the mediatorial kingdom as the event with which stands associated our reaching the summit of our felicity. There is then to be a removal of all that is now intermediate in our communications with Deity, and the substitution of God Himself for the objects which He has now adapted to the giving us delight. God Himself will be an object to our faculties; God Himself will be our happiness. We can only add that it becomes us to examine whether we are now subjects of the mediatorial kingdom, or whether we are of those who will not that Christ should reign over them. If God is hereafter to be all in all, it behoves us to inquire what He is to us now. Can we say with the Psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee?” How vain must be our hope of entering into heaven if we have no present delight in what are said to be its joys! Again we say, that, if it be heaven towards which we journey, it will be holiness in which we delight: for if we cannot now rejoice in having God for our portion, where is our meetness for a world in which God is to be all in all for ever and for ever? (H. Melvill, B.D.)
That God may be all in all--
God all in all
I. In the shifting scenes of the world’s life. When we look out upon the tangled web of history, the rise and the fall of mighty empires, the changing dynasties, the successive forms of government and social life, the instability of all things, the recurring cycle of events, the growth which ends only in decay, the constant ebb and flow of political life, our heart will sometimes ask, Is there any thread which strings together this chaotic mass, is there any design which is growing towards maturity by these accumulations of the ages? Are we to believe in the world’s progressive life, or are we to resign ourselves to despair, looking out upon the present and the past as an ever-varying kaleidoscope, in which the combinations seem to follow one another at random, and with no fixed law? In the text we read the answer. Beyond and above the busy turmoil of earth, the blessed Trinity lives and loves, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. A Divine purpose runs throughout the ages, and under the ever-changing forms of life, God is fulfilling Himself in many ways.
II. In the destinies of the Church. If at times we feel anxious as we think of her conflicts; if at certain eras Christ seems to sleep within the tempest-tossed barque; if she no longer goes forth as in her early days, in the freshness of her strength and joy, to convert the world to the obedience of the faith, yet we know that she ceases not to be the bride of her unchanging Spouse; the eternal Trinity is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed; God is working where we can see nothing but the perversity and the strivings of man; He is all in all.
III. In our temporal life. Looking at life from one point of view, how baffling, how meaningless does it appear! What mean the complaints which reach us in so many forms, not so much of life’s deep sorrows, as of its inconsistencies and apparent aimlessness, its want of harmony and completeness of any kind? Purposes unfulfilled, aspirations unrealised, emotions wasted, paths which seem to lead nowhither, these lie a heavy weight upon the heart of humanity. Where is to be found the note which shall simplify this complex life of ours? how shall we be enabled to look back upon it with quietness and confidence, and feel that all has been working together for our final perfection and happiness? If we have been in any degree cherishing the spiritual life within us, such a power is to be found in the thought of Him, who has done all things well, who, behind the restless, ceaseless changes of life, has been carrying out His eternal purposes concerning us, has been step by step training our soul for its everlasting home--who out of the unchangeableness of His own eternity has seen the end from the beginning, and been Himself the real but unseen agent in all that has befallen us.
IV. In our spiritual life. This also is full of change and variety; it needs to be reduced to some principle of unity. There is the varied atmosphere of the inner life, times of joy and refreshment, times of fears and misgivings--there is the oft-renewed struggle with some besetting sin, the consciousness of God’s grace working within us to its weakening or overthrow. There is an element of restlessness even in our deepest, truest life. But God is working within us to will and to do of His good pleasure; He is Himself the Way, by which we travel to Himself the end; Himself the Life in whom alone we live; Himself the prize when all our warfare is accomplished. God is our all in all. Conclusion: Thus we find that all centres at last in God; all existence stands at length in relation to Him, who is the Fount of all being. The life of nations as well as that of individuals springs out of the exhaustless depths of His eternal counsels. Life is indeed many-sided and discordant when we look at it out of our own human weakness and imperfection, but as we view it in the light of God we learn to believe that all is well. Apart from Him its greatest achievements appear poor and unsatisfactory: when referred to Him its smallest details are dignified and ennobled. (S. W. Skeffington, M.A.)