All things in subjection under his feet

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. - 1 Corinthians 15.24-26

Christ has been raised from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is now reigning at the right hand of the Father. When he returns, he will hand the kingdom to the Father. But he will only hand the kingdom over after everything has been put in subjection to him, death included. This subjection of all things, the last of which is death is a process that takes place while Christ reigns before he returns and hand the kingdom back to the Father. I take it therefore, in this time after the ascension of Christ, that we can assume that to an increasing extent, Christ’s enemies will be conquered, so that by the time he returns, all his enemies will have been conquered (then the last enemy, death, is destroyed and the kingdom is handed over to the Father).

I warmly recommend Doug Wilson’s sermon on the Ascension, which I think is a great exposition of Philippians 3.20-21. Because of the ascension, earth has a new capital city, heaven. ‘Our citizenship is in heaven’ doesn’t mean that we’re just passing through this world and then we’ll go to heaven for all eternity. It means that the church is a colony of heaven, that is, ruled by heaven and intended to spread the rule and influence of heaven around it (just as Philippi was a Roman colony, and that didn’t mean that everyone would retire from Philippi to Rome). Bishop Tom Wright makes the same point in his in many ways excellent book Surprised by Hope. We do not live in a gnostic two-storey universe in which we’re waiting to be saved from this terrible world to go to heaven where everything will be nice. When we go to heaven, it will be appropriate to ask, “How long before we get to go home?”. When we die, we visit the capital city temporarily, before Christ returns and renews the earth. In the meantime, we look forward to his coming, when all things will be subject to him. We can expect that before his coming, most things (death excepted) will be subject to him. This will be achieved by the preaching of the gospel. The fact that the earth will be transformed rather than thrown away means that our labours in the Lord now are not in vain, even if the labours of the world’s empires are (where is Assyria now? Babylon? The Medes? The Persians?). We should start Christian businesses and schools with the hope that they will pass from one generation to another and still be there in a few hundred years’ time. God behaves inappropriately towards us. He shows us grace and mercy in redeeming us, sending his Son to die for our sins, which we don’t deserve.

A Crooked and Twisted Generation

There are such striking parallels between Philippians 2.14-15 and Deuteronomy 32.5 that Paul must have been thinking of Moses’ song when he was writing:

“They have dealt corruptly with him [God];
they are no longer his children because they are blemished;
they are a crooked and twisted generation.” - Deuteronomy 32.5

“Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innoent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.” - Philippians 2.14-15

Of course, grumbling and questioning was exactly what the people of Israel did:

“And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’ - Exodus 15.24

“And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.” - Exodus 16.2

This grumbling of course reaches its climax in Numbers 15-16 when the spies return from Canaan and say that conquest is hopeless and the people grumble against God, with the result that the present generation, excepting Caleb and Joshua, will perish in the wilderness.

I wonder if Paul’s thought here is that the Christian church is the new Israel (cf. Philippians 3.3) whose journey in the wilderness to the promised land of the heavenly city (Philippians 3.20) is fraught with danger and who must therefore not complain against God lest they too face his judgment. This becomes all the more significant when we see that the ‘crooked and twisted generation’ in which they live consists at least in part Jews who are rejecting God’s purpose and insisting on works-righteousness (Philippians 3.2-9), people whose ‘god is their belly’ (Philippians 3.19), just as the Israelites rebelled against God, craved for meat and bread in the desert, and earned for themselves the title ‘crooked and twisted generation’ in the past. In remaining content, the Philippians will fulfil their calling to be ‘lights in the world’, brightly shining in the benighted world around them. Is this not what our Lord taught: ‘You are the light of the world [same words in the Geek]…let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.’ - Matthew 5.14, 16.