The Work Will Be Done

1 Corinthians 15:24-28 Then the end will come, when he hands over the Kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 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 “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.
 
FROM Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 24-25, we have learned God ordained great distress to be in the world between Jesus’ resurrection and his return. As Jesus reigns in Heaven at God’s right hand now, he is working to defeat the enemy Satan’s dominion, authority and power. The one man Adam unleashed this evil in the Garden of Eden. And now the one man, Jesus Christ risen and ascended Son of God, will one day bind Satan into the fiery pit. Christ will claim his victory. Death will be no more.
   Paul then clarified Jesus’ rule will not be above the Father’s. “Everything” does not include God the Father. This seems a strange comment regarding the Trinity. Who would think the Son would rule the Father? But remember, all types of lies and deceptions enter the human mind. Paul was teaching into a culture dominated with mythologies of gods having sons and daughters who warred against each other. When we teach Jesus’ truth, we are constantly at war with cultural mindsets that will reshape Jesus’ words into people’s own ways of thinking. An unbelieving mindset is impossible to change without the Holy Spirit’s renewing force. Jesus will defeat evil. He will give the keys of the Kingdom to the Father as he fulfills the Father’s will.
   This also speaks to the nature of the Trinity. As the Bible often tells us, each person of the Trinity has a role in mankind’s redemptive history and future. God’s authority rests through the work each has done. God the Father sent the Son through the Spirit. The Spirit empowered the Son to his work as a man and raised him from the dead. The Son completed the mission on earth and is now working to complete his mission to defeat evil. One day the work will be done. Mankind will be redeemed, and the Son will return us to the Father.
   One day the world will live in the perfection of Paul’s words of Ephesians 4:4 There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope when you were called – 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.  
   This is how God created the world. He will recreate it to fit his perfect image.