Christ’s Kingdom, the Church’s
Corporate Sonship, and the Glory to Come
A. Z. Adams · Virginia, 2022
- —The Text That Puzzles Us
- IGlory of God or Image of the Beast
- IIWhy the Redeemer Had to Be a Man
- IIICorporate Sonship in Scripture
- IVChrist’s Dominion Through the Church
- VThe Reign Until — Why It Will End
- VIChrist in You, the Hope of Glory
- VIIFinding Your Place in the Body
- —The Restoration of All Things
The Text That Puzzles Us
But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at his coming. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death… When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself also will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all.
1 Corinthians 15:20–28
This passage should puzzle us. Scripture elsewhere insists that Christ’s kingdom has no end. Isaiah declares, “Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end” (Isaiah 9:7). Daniel sees a kingdom that “shall never be destroyed… it shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44; 7:14). Gabriel tells Mary, “Of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33).
Yet Paul says, “He shall reign until…” Until what? Until he hands the kingdom over to the Father. Until all rule, authority, and power has been abolished. Until God is all in all.
Something profound is being described — a transition so significant that the very structures of Christ’s present reign give way to something else. To understand it, we must trace several threads through Scripture: the contrast between God’s glory and the image of the beast, the necessity of a human Redeemer, the corporate dimension of sonship, the church’s present participation in Christ’s reign, and the consummation toward which all of this moves.
Glory of God or Image of the Beast
From the beginning, two trajectories have stood before humanity. The first was God’s original design: man made in God’s image, crowned with glory and honor, ruling the earth as God’s son and representative. The second was the shortcut offered by the serpent — “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5) — a path that promised divinity but delivered something else entirely.
The great irony of Scripture is that the devil’s promise of godlikeness ends not in glory but in the image of a beast.
Consider Nebuchadnezzar, a man who pursued raw power and dominion as few others. His end was that “his hair grew like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws” (Daniel 4:33). He ate grass like an ox. The pursuit of glory through brute force reduced him to a beast.
Daniel’s visions depict the kingdoms of this world as beasts (Daniel 7). Revelation shows the climax of that trajectory: a hybrid creature rising from the abyss, a cobbled-together monstrosity that the world, persuaded by the false prophet, will not merely tolerate but worship (Revelation 13). Out of God’s valley of dry bones comes resurrection life (Ezekiel 37). Out of the abyss of human ambition comes a beast.
The serpent’s promise: you will be like God.
The serpent’s delivery: you will be reduced to be like me
— a creature on its belly, having lost even its legs.
Look at our cultural moment. Entertainment, media, and digital life increasingly capitalize on the resemblances between humans and animals — reproduction, violence over territory, the worship of appetite. These are the themes that dominate. We are being shaped, day by day, into something less than human.
The gospel moves us in the opposite direction:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
Glory comes when spirit unites with human flesh. When the Word takes up residence in mortal flesh, glory is revealed. This is the alternative trajectory — not the beast that humanity becomes by grasping, but the glory of God that humanity reflects by surrendering.
Why the Redeemer Had to Be a Man
If we are to understand 1 Corinthians 15, we must answer a foundational question: Why did God send a man to save us? Why not an angel?
The answer is found at creation:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth.”
Genesis 1:26
This was not an experiment. It was a forever choice. God created the universe, set the earth in its place, planted a garden — and then placed everything under the dominion of man. The psalmist confirms it:
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.
Psalm 8:4–6
The heavens are the Lord‘s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man.
Psalm 115:16
Then comes Paul’s principle: “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable“ (Romans 11:29). God does not give a gift and then take it back when the recipient mismanages it. By eternal decree, he has placed the earth under the dominion of man.
Which means this: if the earth is to be redeemed, it must be redeemed by a man — a human being who is heir to the original promise of dominion given at creation. Jesus could not be an angel. He had to be a man.
Paul makes the point in Romans 8:
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Romans 8:20–21
God subjected creation to humanity’s stewardship — even knowing what would happen — but he subjected it in hope. Hope that one day, dominion would be exercised in love rather than violence. Hope that the groaning would end. Hope that man would walk with God again in the cool of the day.
So the Son of God became the Son of Man. Notice how Scripture emphasizes Jesus’s humanity at the very points where his authority is asserted:
- For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. John 5:26–27
- But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins… Matthew 9:6
- For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. John 5:22
- For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1 Timothy 2:5
- He is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. Acts 10:42
The great debate of Jesus’s day was not whether he was divine — his miracles testified to that. The harder claim was that this true man was the one through whom God would restore his dominion to the world.
Jesus came as the second Adam, fulfilling the dominion task the first Adam abandoned. Where the first Adam yielded to the serpent’s shortcut and dragged beastly power into the world, Jesus, on the mount of temptation, refused the same offer: “All these kingdoms and their glory I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). And Jesus said no.
The triumph is then proclaimed everywhere:
- God has put all things in subjection under his feet. 1 Corinthians 15:27
- And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church. Ephesians 1:22
- You have put everything in subjection under his feet. Hebrews 2:8
The image of the feet is not incidental. In the ancient world, when a defeated rebel surrendered absolutely, he prostrated himself before the conqueror’s feet — the lowest, dustiest part of the sovereign’s body, the part that scuffled through the dirt. To be under someone’s feet was to be in total subjection. This is the language Scripture uses for Christ’s victory.
Corporate Sonship in Scripture
We have established the link between Son, Man, and Dominion. Adam was the first son (Luke 3:38). Jesus is the second Adam, the firstborn Son of the new creation. But Scripture goes further: sonship can be corporate.
When Moses confronted Pharaoh, God’s words were striking:
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me.’ If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.”
Exodus 4:22–23
We remember the refrain “Let my people go,” but God’s actual phrasing was, “Let my son go.” Over a million slaves — God called them, collectively, his firstborn son.
Jeremiah continues the theme:
Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 31:20
And Isaiah, addressing the nation as a single person:
Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I am the one who helps you, declares the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
Isaiah 41:14
Paul brings this corporate identity forward into the church age:
For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.
Galatians 6:15–16
The most striking corporate-sonship text may be in Hebrews 12. Read it carefully:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Hebrews 12:22–24
Notice the phrase: the assembly of the firstborn. Jesus is the firstborn (Colossians 1:15, 18). But there is also a congregation of the firstborn — a corporate sharing in his firstborn status.
And notice the tense: the writer does not say “you will come” but “you have come.” This is the present reality of the church. We are not approaching this gathering — we have arrived. The fulfillment of the prophetic promise that “the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them” (Revelation 21:3) is already breaking in.
Christ’s Dominion Through the Church
If sonship can be corporate, and if sonship is linked to dominion, then we must ask: does the church share in the dominion of Christ?
Listen to the Great Commission with this question in mind:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:18–20
Jesus does not say, “All authority has been given to me, therefore I will personally do everything that needs to be done.” He says, “All authority has been given to me — therefore you go.” The dominion he has received is exercised through his body.
Paul makes the connection explicit:
…according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion… And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Ephesians 1:19–23
The headship of Christ is exercised in and through the church. The dominion does not bypass the body; it operates through it.
This is why Paul can write to the Corinthians with such striking authority in a discipline matter:
For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan…
1 Corinthians 5:3–5
This is not Paul claiming personal authority over a man’s life. This is the apostle expressing the sonship-authority of Christ through the assembled church, with “the power of our Lord Jesus” present in their midst. It is exactly what Jesus authorized:
Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Matthew 18:18
Paul writes elsewhere: “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?… Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:2–3). This is the same judgment Jesus spoke of — not condemnatory judgmentalism, but the judgment of light shining in darkness (John 3:19). The same judgment Cain suffered from Abel: a righteous life that exposes unrighteousness simply by being itself.
When the risen Christ confronted Saul on the road to Damascus, the words were unforgettable: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). But Saul had been persecuting the church, not Jesus directly. Yet Jesus identified with his body so completely that to touch one was to touch the other.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”
This is why Paul could later write to the Galatians: “You received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus himself” (Galatians 4:14). Not because Paul replaced Christ, but because Paul, as a member of the body, carried the presence of Christ to them. And to the Thessalonians: “When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).
The Lord’s Prayer is the seminal mission statement of the church: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). When God’s will is done, his dominion has come. And that dominion is being expressed through a people.
The Reign Until — Why It Will End
We have seen that Christ’s reign is currently exercised through the church. We can now return to the puzzle of 1 Corinthians 15: why does Paul say Christ will reign until?
The answer is this: the present form of Christ’s reign — exercised through structures of authority, submission, and order — is necessary only because we live in a world where the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
Children obey their parents (Ephesians 6:1). Wives honor their husbands (Ephesians 5:22). The body submits to its leaders, and leaders submit to one another (Hebrews 13:17; Ephesians 5:21). None of these commands will exist in heaven. They exist now because redeemed people are still being transformed and still need order.
Paul tells the Corinthians that he is “ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete“ (2 Corinthians 10:6). The structure of rule, authority, and dominion serves the goal of bringing every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). When that work is finished — when the body has come into full submission and full conformity to Christ — the temporary structures of dominion will no longer be needed.
In a mature relationship between brothers and sisters in Christ, the awareness of hierarchy fades. There is still order — there is always order — but the experience is not of ranks and titles. It is of the body of Christ moving fluidly under the direction of its head, like an orchestra responding to its conductor. These are foretastes of what eternity will be: not rank but love, not command but communion.
So Paul writes:
He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet… When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
1 Corinthians 15:25, 28
The Son does not disappear. The Son is not diminished. But the dominion-structure — the exercise of authority over a creation still being redeemed — comes to an end. There is no more “us and them,” no more rebel and ruler. There is only God all in all.
This is the destiny of the church: to be brought into such union with Christ, and through Christ with the Father, that the present categories of authority dissolve into pure communion.
Christ in You, the Hope of Glory
How does this consummation come about? How does the body move toward this end?
Jesus prayed:
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
John 17:22–23
Notice what Jesus says about the Father’s love. At the baptism and at the transfiguration, the Father had spoken from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17; 17:5). And now Jesus says, “You have loved them even as you have loved me.“ The same love. The same delight. The same sonship.
Glory enables oneness.
We do not produce glory by becoming one;
we become one when glory comes upon us.
Glory is the presence of God incarnating in human flesh. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory” (John 1:14). The same dynamic that operated in Jesus is meant to operate, by extension, in his body.
This is the mystery Paul announces:
To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Colossians 1:27
…having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints…
Ephesians 1:18
The riches of glory are found in the saints. The inheritance is not merely for the saints — it is in them. The glory of God is being revealed in a people.
Peter writes:
But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
1 Peter 4:13–14
The Spirit of glory rests upon the church even now. We are not yet glorified in body — that awaits the resurrection (Romans 8:23; 1 Corinthians 15:51–52). But the glory of God’s indwelling presence is meant to be experienced now, in the gathered body, by the power of the Spirit. The Old Testament tabernacle and temple, when built exactly according to design, were filled with a glory so weighty that no flesh could enter (Exodus 40:34–35; 1 Kings 8:10–11). These were shadows of a greater reality: the body of Christ, built of living stones (1 Peter 2:5), filled with the glory of God’s Spirit.
When an unbeliever encounters a community where the Spirit of glory rests — where there is real love, real oneness, and the manifest presence of God — that person can suddenly believe what would otherwise be unbelievable: that God once became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. Because they have just seen, in living color, that God still takes up residence in human flesh.
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh…
1 Timothy 3:16
Finding Your Place in the Body
What does this mean for us, practically?
It means that personal Christianity, however earnest, is incomplete. The apostle John warns that the “spirit of antichrist” is a spirit of deception (1 John 4:1–6), and the protection against that spirit is hearing God with the body: “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us“ (1 John 4:6). The antichrist spirit is not the belief that God still incarnates himself in a corporate people — that belief is precisely the protection against deception. The antichrist spirit is the suggestion that we can have Christ privately, apart from his body.
It means that finding your place in the body is not optional.
Imagine a finished guitar neck — frets carefully fitted, tuners installed, fingerboard polished — hanging on a wall in a culture that has never seen a guitar. People pick it up. They wonder what it is for. They turn the tuning pegs and find no music. Only when it comes into the workshop of a master luthier and is fitted to a body does it become what it was made to be. With two twists of a screwdriver, music becomes possible.
This is what believers are like apart from the body of Christ. The gifts are real. The calling is real. But the gifts hang on a wall, beautiful and strange, until they find the workshop of the Master and are fitted into something larger than themselves.
Peter is the great example. Through the Gospels, Peter is always distinguishing himself: “Though they all fall away, I will not” (Matthew 26:33). He runs ahead of John to the tomb. He speaks first, defines himself against the others. But Acts records something remarkable about the day of Pentecost:
But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them…
Acts 2:14
He stood with the eleven. For perhaps the first time in his life, Peter wanted to be part of something larger than Peter. The Spirit had come, the body had been born, and Peter took his stand with the rest.
This is the invitation. To lay down our crowns. To stop distinguishing ourselves. To find the body of Christ and to submit to the sonship-dominion of God exercised through it. To trust that the inheritance of glory is found in the saints — not in any one of us alone.
The Restoration of All Things
When Peter preached just days after Pentecost, with the wind of the Spirit still fresh in his sails, he said something easy to miss:
Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.
Acts 3:19–21
Even in the explosion of Pentecost, Peter saw that something more was coming. Heaven would hold Jesus until the restoration. The maturity of the apostolic age was real, but it was not the final word. The early church saw the maturity of its gifts and doctrine and love, but the global, coordinated expression of Christ’s body — the temple risen up upon the earth — had not yet come into view.
Paul caught the same vision:
…a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Ephesians 1:10
This is what God has been doing. Across continents, across generations, across years of suffering and pruning and waiting, God has been preparing the pieces of his temple offsite — separately, in workshops scattered across the earth. The chisel-strokes and hammer-blows that have shaped his people were not random. They were not punishment. They were preparation. And in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he is bringing together everything that is in Christ.