Chapter 3: All in All – God’s Desired End
April 16, 2021
God’s Word provides a detailed description of the true reality of his creation. Yet pretentious men and women, under the influence of the spirit of the world, have repeatedly attempted to create anti-realities for their own purposes. The world’s economic systems support this observation.
But before evaluating economic systems, it is helpful to consider God’s ultimate goal for his people who have entered his kingdom.
We first approach this question by jumping ahead to the end of this age. By means of the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, God reveals his ultimate goal for human beings and his kingdom under Christ:
Then the end will come, when [Christ] hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For [Christ] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet…. 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 (1 Cor. 15:24-28).
John Calvin sums up Paul’s statement as meaning, “All things will be brought back to God, as their alone beginning and end, that they may be closely bound to him.”1
What does it mean to be “closely bound” to God? The concept certainly includes the true freedom to live in the one reality for which we were created. To be bound closely to the Lord is to be unbound from the absurd yet prevailing desire to remake the world in one’s own image. The Lord frees us to become as fully human as we were designed to be. We are empowered by the Lord’s spirit to loose the chains that bind and reject the oppressive self-corruption that destroys our humanity.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor. 3:17 NKJV).
The Lord’s “all in all” draws us into his kingdom, yet guarantees that each distinctive human personality is not swallowed up into some impersonal collective. In other words, we are drawn out of an artificial, coercive unity into a community of unique individuals. Our destiny is to be distinct members of a family, each with a name, and a Father who knows and loves each of us as his own.
C.S. Lewis described God’s plan for us as perfect love: “God turns tools into servants and servants into sons, so that they may be at last reunited to Him in the perfect freedom of a love offered from the height of the utter individualities which he has liberated them to be.” (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters)2
The Lord’s Spirit emanates from his presence and flows out towards his creation:3 indwelling and empowering all who welcome him – giving life and healing to all in all.
Key Points:
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Binding ourselves to God sets us free from the powers of darkness and the oppressive self-corruption that destroys our humanity.
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Our destiny is to be distinct human personalities, not to be swallowed up and absorbed into the dark abyss of impersonal existence.
Practical Application:
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To live in the fear and admonition of the Lord is to be guided by God’s reality, as revealed in his Word, and not by how one “feels” or what one “thinks”.
