Reign of God Bible Study

The reign of God through Christ is a present reality but also an unfolding one. Heaven overlaps with earth. God’s reign is complete. Jesus is Lord. These are irrefutable, nonnegotiable, universal truths. But they are truths we perceive only partially. Their full reality is still mysterious to us. One day, “at the regeneration of all things” as Jesus tells us,3 the reign of God will be understood completely, utterly, unquestioningly. Until that day, we are to participate with God in the mysterious and wonderful work of fashioning foretastes of this world to come. So what exactly might that entail in real terms? In his books Simply Christian and Surprised by Hope, N. T. Wright suggests three broad elements of this here-and-still-coming reign of God. They are an excellent shorthand way of thinking about how to participate in the coming kingdom, or how to fashion foretastes of the reign of God through Christ.

Michael Frost, The Road to Missional: Journey to the Center of the Church, ed. Alan Hirsch, The Shapevine Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011), 103.