Dual Citizens: Worship and Life Between the Already and the Not Yet

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New covenant believers live between “the already” and “not yet,” a point in redemptive history between the partial and complete fulfillment of God’s promises. This means they are exiles and pilgrims in the divinely ordained overlap of the ages. As Rev. Jason J. Stellman argues in his book Dual Citizens: Worship and Life Between the Already and the Not Yet, this biblical motif shapes the identity of Christians at every turn and affects their every activity in both the sacred and secular realms. Stellman explores the Christian pilgrimage with deep biblical insight, humor, and relevance to our contemporary context, revealing how Christians are to think of themselves and their role this side of heaven.

Retail $18.00 | Ligonier’s Price $14.40
Hardcover 6.25 x 9.25 | 193 Pages
ISBN 1-56769-119-6 | Released August 2009

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Table of Contents and Sample Chapter
High-Res Image: Front Cover | Back Cover

(HT: Ligonier Ministries)

Filed under: Already Not Yet, Biblical exposition, Discipleship, Doctrine, The Christian Life, Theology

Living for the Future

by Sinclair B. Ferguson

Posted by Chris Larson at Ligonier Blog.
(Quoted in John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine & Doxology, p. 40-41)

It is commonplace today in Reformed theology to recognize that the Christian lives “between the times” — already we are in Christ, but a yet more glorious future awaits us in the final consummation. There is, therefore, a “not yet” about our present Christian experience. Calvin well understood this, and he never dissolved the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” But he also stressed the importance for the present of a life-focus on the future.

Calvin sought, personally, to develop a balance of contempt for the present life with a deep gratitude for the blessings of God and a love and longing for the heavenly kingdom. The sense that the Lord would come and issue His final assessment on all and bring His elect to glory was a dominant motif for him. This, the theme of his chapter “Meditation on the Future Life,” was a major element in the energy with which he lived in the face of the “not yet” of his own ailments and weakness. When he was seriously ill and confined to bed, his friends urged him to take some rest, but he replied, “Would you that the Lord, when He comes, should find me idle?” By living in the light of the return of Christ and the coming judgment, Calvin became deeply conscious of the brevity of time and the length of eternity.

This sense of eternity overflowed from his life into his work. It was so characteristic of him that it flowed out naturally in his prayers at the conclusion of his lectures. Here we see the wonderful harmony of his biblical exposition, his understanding of the gospel, his concern to teach young men how to live for God’s glory, and his personal piety. A fragment of one of these prayers, chosen almost randomly, fittingly summarizes this all-too-brief reflection on the heart of God that Calvin expressed in his learning and leadership:

May we be prepared, whatever happens,
rather to undergo a hundred deaths
than to turn aside from the profession of true piety,
in which we know our safety to be laid up.
And may we so glorify thy name
as to be partakers of that glory which
has been acquired for us
through the blood of thine only-begotten Son. Amen.

Filed under: Already Not Yet, Discipleship, Gospel-centred, John Calvin, Second Coming, Sinclair Ferguson, The Consummation

These Last Days

Kim Riddlebarger writes the following in A Case for Amillennialism.

It is clear throughout the New Testament that the “last days” commenced with the coming of Christ and his triumphant resurrection(Acts 2.17; Heb 1.2). These last days are also the time of salvation (2 Cor 6.2), for with the coming christ, the new creation began. The old had gone, and the new had come (2 Cor 5.17). Paul said that certain blessings of “the age to come,” including reconciliation, were won for us by Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection (Rom 4.25; 1 Cor 15.20-28). Paul spoke of these blessings as the present possession of those in union with Christ, for they no longer belong to “the old,” that is, this present evil age. And yet it is equally true that these blessings are not fully realized until the consummation, when creation itself is finally released from bondage (Rom 8.18-25) and when the earthly at last puts on the heavenly (1 Cor 15.53). Paul said, “If we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently” (Rom 8.25). It is the possession of the blessings of the eschatological “not yet” in this evil age that gives Christians hope until these things become a visible reality at the end of the age. In fact, Paul said, God has given us his Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, which is not a temporal victory in this age but our ultimate redemption (Eph 1.13-14). It is this eschatological dimension that gave Paul a theological basis for the hope Christians need in the face of suffering until this present evil age comes to an end – “the fellowship of sharing in his [Christ's] sufferings” (Phil 3.10). Indeed, we may be, as Paul said, crushed but not perplexed. We are not abandoned or destroyed, though we may be stricken down by our enemies. As Christians, we are to “carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4.7-12).

(HT: Rick Ianniello)

Filed under: Already Not Yet, Amillennialism, Doctrine, Eschatology, Jesus Christ, The word of God

Carson on the Kingdom

This months issue of Evangelicals Now carries an excellent article by DA Carson on the dangers to avoid when seeking to understand the nature of the Kingdom of God. He lists 6 common errors, including a failure to appreciate the tension of the Already Not Yet of Kingdom come and coming. You can read the whole essay here. I reproduce this point for obvious reasons!

Already, but not yet

Indeed, that is the third arena where errors about the kingdom are not uncommon: tensions between the biblical descriptions of inaugurated eschatology (the kingdom has come) and futurist eschatology (the kingdom comes at the end). On the one hand, Jesus tells certain parables of the kingdom in order to get across that the expected ‘big bang’ is not yet. For instance (if I may use the formula much loved by the rabbis when they told their parables, and used by Jesus himself), it is the case with the kingdom as with the soils: there is varying receptivity to the word that is sown, and varying degrees of fruitfulness. The kingdom did not come in instantaneous and utterly effective division. It came slowly, with varying responses. Elsewhere we are told that this side of Jesus’s resurrection and exaltation, all authority in heaven and on earth is his: in other words, Jesus Christ reigns, even though we do not see everything and everyone cheerfully submitted to him.

To use the language of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus must reign until he has destroyed all his enemies, the last of those enemies being death itself. So all of the Father’s royal authority is now mediated through Christ: he reigns, even though his reign must be contested until the last enemy is destroyed. All of these images and passages (and there are many more) conjure up a picture of a kingdom already here, already operating, already inaugurated, still contested.

On the other hand, the seer John foresees a time when ‘[t]he kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever’ (Revelation 11.15), when the hosts of darkness face crushing defeat (Revelation 19.11-21); Paul announces a time when every knee will bow (Philippians 2.10-11). Many passages picture believers ‘inheriting’ the kingdom at the end.

There are pastoral implications to this running tension between the ‘already’-reigning kingdom and the ‘not yet’ kingdom. It has been plausibly argued that Corinthian believers were tempted by an over-realised eschatology: already they think of themselves as kings beginning their reign (1 Corinthians 4.8), and thus they have overlooked the call to suffer exemplified by the apostles themselves. By contrast, it appears that some Thessalonians, insufficiently grateful for the gospel blessings they had already received, and eagerly anticipating the coming of the future kingdom which they thought to be right around the corner, could stint on mundane responsibilities, don ascension robes, sit on a hill in California and sing Advent songs. There are negative repercussions to getting the balance of Scripture wrong.

Filed under: Already Not Yet, Christian Ministry, Church, DA Carson, Discipleship, Eschatology, Evangelical, Hermeneutics, Jesus Christ, Second Coming, Suffering, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God, Theology