1 Corinthians 15:28

1 Corinthians 15:28

Our Relations to Christ in the Future Life.

I. Going forward into the future life, so much appears to be determined, that we shall there know God unalterably and for ever as trinity Father, Son, and Spirit. The Son, therefore, as discovered in trinity, is of course never to be merged, or passed out of sight, or in such a sense made subject. How, then, shall we understand the Apostle when he testifies that the Son shall be subject or retired from the view? He is speaking plainly of the Son as incarnate, or externalised in the flesh, visible outwardly and in the man form, and known as the Son of Mary. He it is that, after having as a king outwardly regnant put all things under His feet, is in turn to become subject also Himself, that God may be all in all, and the machineries hitherto conspicuous be for ever taken back as before the advent.

II. Trinity then, as Paul conceives, will remain, but the mortal Sonship, the man, will disappear, and be no more visible. And let us not too hastily recoil from this. It may be that we have been promising ourselves a felicity in the future world made up almost wholly of the fact that we shall be with Christ in His humanly personal form, and have used this hope to feed our longings, quite apart from all higher relations to His eternal Sonship. Our relations to Christ in the future life are to be relations to God in Christ and never to the Jesus in Christ. They centre in the triune Deity, and specially in the Eternal Word or Son, who is represented for a time in the person of Jesus. But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part will be taken away. Christ will remain because the Eternal Son is in Him, but the Jesus, the human part, will be made subject, or taken away, because all that He could do for us in the revelation of God is done. Back there under that veil is the Son of Mary, the Child of her manger, the Healer that came about on foot, and slept uncovered by the roads and on the mountains, He that was bowed to suffering, He that could be hated and die all this He is above, as characterised for us by what He was below, nowise exalted above it, but rather by it, for ever. Gone by as the Jesus, also as the Christ under time, He is yet the Eternal Son for ever Christed by His mortal story; so that we behold Him eternalised as our Christ, and hear Him saying as it were out of His humanity, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come." It is as if the Christ we loved were visible in all His dear humanities, though Trinity alone is left.

H. Bushnell, Sermons on Living Subjects,p. 442

References: 1 Corinthians 15:28. G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 182. 1 Corinthians 15:29. Homilist,3rd series, vol. vii., p. 278.