The Son Hands Over the Kingdom

…of his coming among us, that is, those who lived after he became man, and who have fallen asleep in faith. For there were, admittedly, saints from time to time in Israel, while the life under the law was praised and still held sway. But those in Christ are better: they have been justified through faith, have become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), and have been made rich with the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15). They have also been called by grace into brotherhood with him who is Son by nature and in truth. Among those under the law there was a spirit of slavery, but we cry, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). So, as I said, those in Christ are better than those of older times.

That is why he says that they will be the first to come to life again, following, as it were, in the footsteps of him who is the beginning of all, because they are closer to him and for this reason have been honored above the others. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself also hints at something of this kind in the parables of the Gospel. For he said that the one who hired the workers for the vineyard (he was the master of the house), “when evening came, said to his steward, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning from the last up to the first’” (Matthew 20:8).

“Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has destroyed every rule and every authority and power” (1 Corinthians 15:24). He says that the kingdom will be handed over by the Son to God the Father when every rule of the unclean spirits has been destroyed and death itself is at last wholly idle.

“When all things have been subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Since some try, as far as lies with them, to belittle the Son, saying that he hands over the kingdom to the Father and is subject to him as to one greater, we must say that the Son underwent the voluntary self-emptying when he became like us, and humbled himself, as it were, from the heights, though he was of the same form as the Father and equal to him (compare Philippians 2:6–8). Now seated at the right hand of the Father, he is hidden in God (compare Colossians 3:3), but he will be revealed in glory at the time of the end of the present age.

If he is brought down from the honor he now has, does he then undergo a second self-emptying? And if he also hands over the kingdom, how does he come “with the holy angels in the glory of his Father” (Mark 8:38)? So it would be unwelcome to the Son that “his enemies should be put under his feet” (1 Corinthians 15:25), if now he reigns with the Father but then falls from the kingdom. Yet even if the Son is subject to the Father, he is not for that reason less than the Father. For subjection is not a defining mark of nature and essence; it points rather to a way of acting. Even among us, when it happens, it does not show that we are of different essence from one another. How so? A son is subject to a father, a slave to a master, a pupil to a teacher, and one of those under a ruler’s hand and yoke to the ruler. Yet in none of these cases is the principle of sameness of essence harmed; for they are of one kind with one another, even if they stand in this relation, yielding to one another and being subject, and not counting it a dishonor, for the sake of what is beneficial.

How then can they make an argument that is weak even in our case hold good in the case of God? For if, as they say, being subject is a property or measure of nature in the Son, then his not being subject is the property of another nature in him, a nature perhaps better than that one, if subjection belongs to lesser beings. For he is subject by way of the dispensation, for our sake.

The sense of the words is this. Since man sinned and came under corruption, and through the devil and the demons fell away from him who is God by nature, the Only-begotten became man for our sake and destroyed the power of death; he also removed sin, the root of death, and cast out the ruler of this age (compare John 12:31). Having done all this, when the whole dispensation has been brought to completion, he hands over, that is, he will present, to the Father the kingdom that had long ago been plundered and had passed under the power of others…