“The kingdom of His beloved Son”: On the Non-dualist Reality of the Kingdom

“For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, …” Colossians 1:13

Do you see how this is not a dualistic scheme—like light versus darkness, good versus evil? Christianity does not operate in a dualistic frame of reference. It presents the world and the church with the fact that everything in relation to God in Christ is asymmetrical; and asymmetrical in a way where there is no comparison between who He has offered for Himself in the eternal Son become flesh in Jesus Christ, and every other thing in this world that is contingent (indeed upon the sustenance of His Word, Jesus Christ). There is no us versus them in the city of Man vis-à-vis the kingdom of His beloved Son. There is no contest; there is no competition between God and fallen humanity—which the incarnation of God in Christ ought to make eminently clear to all of us. God is God and nobody else is. We aren’t in a Greek drama where humanity simply replicates the battles of the gods in the pantheon above; the “good gods” versus the “evil gods.” We inhabit and participate in a world, in the life of God, where God is God without any competitors. As we have bowed the knee confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, we have been transferred into an economy of God’s triune Life that is seated high above all the principalities and powers of this earth (with their demonic dragon breath behind them). We are the Victors because Christ was first victorious for us, that we might live in His victoriously resurrected and ascended life for us at the Right Hand of the Father. Don’t let this world fret you into thinking otherwise.

Athanasian Reformed

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