A question of Kingship

There is a primary drama in the inscripturated story of Israel. It begins when Adam, the first head of mankind and of creation, proved treacherous. He and his administration were therefore cast out of the family household; estranged from God the Father. The major question posed as a result is this: who will lead the way back to the Garden? Who will heal the divorce? Who will replace the fallen king and lead the way back from exile?

The drama quickly devolves upon Israel, given a new land and a new identity as God’s people under a national charter of laws called Torah. It seems there is hope in her, that she will be the light to the world, salt of the nations. But, in the manner of great epics, Israel is plagued by failure. She is unfaithful and unfaithful again.

By the time of the second temple, under Herod’s reign, Israel’s land was occupied by the gentile Romans. Subject to the principalities and powers of estrangement no less than any other exilic nation, she used Torah as merely another weapon of nationalistic struggle. Yet in her midst, without any sense of what it might mean to be the light of the world, nonetheless the light of creation was born.

Extraordinarily, this child - after being crucified by her occupying powers - was declared to be the King. His apostles proclaimed him to Jew and Gentile, declaring that YHWH had appointed him Kyrios, the Lord, explicit rival to Ceasar and the great replacement for Adam.

The drama thus begins to revolve around Israel’s fate. As the appointed light of the Adamic world, she represented Adam’s line and held the first claim to Kingship status. But she had failed at her task; suffering foreign occupation, she was clearly under public judgment. Furthermore, one had been born of her line, crucified, and resurrected. With power this one was therefore declared to be the true Israel, the one in whom Adam’s expulsion from the Garden and subsequent descent to the dust was definitely undone. In the Christ, the new king, exile was over.

Thus, the apostles called Israel to repent. But she would not. While Gentiles came streaming in, the salt of their nations, Israel as the proud representative of Adam’s age (having Moses, of course) continued in exile, ignoring the newness of the renewal in Christ. When he therefore destroyed her, razing Jerusalem and Temple with the Roman armies, all of creation knew the true King, and was transferred from orginal Adam’s dominion to that of the Christ. The primary question had been answered: Jesus came to lead humanity back from exile and renew all creation in its relationship to God.

I do not think our ways of speaking about and dealing with our age take this past event into sufficient consideration. In part this is because, being individualised me-and-my-personal-destiny-in-heaven Christians, we do not recognise the primary drama of scripture: a truly cosmic affair.

So, it is not wrong to say that the major eschatalogical event has already occurred, even as we acknowledge that its working-out is still incomplete. Why are we so often oriented wholly to the future, as if the major part of God’s work is yet to happen: as if the cross, ascension and removal of exile’s representative in Israel is of no real effect?

On the contrary, the entire scriptural drama, the proclamation of the gospel, and renewal of creation rests on what has already happened. And thank God this is so. Through the faithfulness and Kingship of Christ God has proved Himself trustworthy. Worthy of our allegiance, a sure foundation for our hope, and the compassionate and loving ruler of this world: Himself dying to lead us back from exile. And we are called to be His images.