Every Knee Shall Bow by J Kirk Richards

Does it really matter what we think about the end of the age? I think it does, because how we imagine the future shapes how we live in the present.

Scripture consistently holds together a tension we tend to lose hold of in one way or another. Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God is in your midst, yet he also taught us to pray, “your kingdom come.” This same tension appears in John’s Gospel where Jesus said: “the hour is coming, and is now here.” The New Testament does not resolve this tension; it teaches us to live within it.

When we ignore this and lean too far in one direction, or the other, both our reading of Scripture and our way of life are diminished.

If we collapse everything into the future, we risk sidelining the present reality of the God’s reign. The teachings of Jesus about life now can lose their urgency, replaced by speculation about what comes next. Passages that speak of the kingdom already at work are overshadowed. In practice, this can lead to disengagement, as though faithfulness today matters less than escape tomorrow.

But if we collapse everything into the past or present, we risk leaving people without hope for the future. The promises of renewal, resurrection, and the restoration of all things are downplayed or reinterpreted into what has already been fulfilled or what can be achieved now. In practice, this can lead to burnout, as the weight of present faithfulness is carried without the sustaining horizon of future renewal. Endurance begins to falter when obedience is no longer drawn forward by promise, but only sustained by what is already given.

Both moves are, in their own ways, biblically weaker. They struggle to account for the full witness of Scripture, which insists both that something decisive has already happened in Jesus and that something still remains ahead. When we resolve the tension too quickly, we oversimplify Scripture, diminishing it.

By contrast, holding the “already” and the “not yet” together is more faithful and more fruitful.

It is more faithful because it allows each strand of the biblical witness to speak: the age to come has been inaugurated through Christ, yet this present age still remains; the victory has been won, yet it is still awaited.

And it is more fruitful because it forms a distinctive way of life. We endure suffering with real hope, because the story is not finished. We pursue faithfulness in the present, because the kingdom is already at work among us. We resist both anxious prediction and resignation, learning instead to live with trust, expectancy, and perseverance.

This tension is not a problem to solve. It is a reality to inhabit.

Curious Christian

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