CHRIST SUBJECT TO GOD

All citations are to the New International Version, UK edition

(NIV-UK)

Question: Explain 1 Corinthians 15: 24:

Then the end will come, when he [Christ] hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.

Answer: This verse needs to be set in the context of verses 25 -28:

25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

27 For he [God] ‘has put everything under his feet’.

Now when it says that ‘everything’ has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ.

28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

The Apostle Paul has in view the earthly phase of the Kingdom of God. This will be under the rulership of Christ, God’s appointed king. During this period all elements contrary to the rule of righteousness will be done away with. This includes all aspects of the Adamic curse (dying and the resultant state of death), which will be revoked by the resurrection and restoration of mankind; and the ‘second death’ Christ’s judicial sentence meted out on the incorrigibly disobedient during the Kingdom. From the second death there will be no resurrection.

After Christ has thus subjugated all these ‘enemies’, He will step down as Ruler and revert to His traditional, secondary position, subject to God, His Father. In so doing, Christ will direct the praise and honour for the world’s salvation to God, the Author of the Plan of the Ages.

This scene, so eloquently expressed, is in line with the Biblical teachings that Jesus Christ is not God, that He is beneath God, and that God is separate from and above all others.

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