The LORD Reigns
August 14, 2022
Isaiah 52 places peace, good news, salvation, and “Your God reigns,” in parallel, suggesting that all four are related to one another. Peace is good news! Peace results from salvation, which is itself the result of the reign of God. The good news (the gospel) is that God reigns!
This is also the central claim of the New Testament—God is reigning through his Son, Jesus, whom God has made Christ (in Hebrew, Messiah, or just king)—“Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified,” (Acts 2.36).
There’s a small hiccup—in the Old Testament, the reign of the Messiah is supposed to be accompanied by things like justice filling the earth, the land being bountiful, God’s people being prosperous, joy and gladness everywhere, judgment/destruction of the wicked, and the undoing of death. In short, when God reigns, all of creation is supposed to run the way God wants it to (Isa. 11.1-10; 25.1-12; Isa. 34-35; 61; 65.17-25; 66.10-24). If Jesus is the Messiah, and he is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, with all authority on heaven and on earth given to him, then why is the world not filled with peace?
This is the uncomfortable situation God’s people have almost always been in. God’s made grand promises, but they haven’t come about quite yet. This is Abraham and Sarah, in possession of a covenant, but without a son. This is Israel in the wilderness in the presence of God, but without a land. This is Judah in exile with God’s covenant with David, but without a king, or a throne, or a temple. God’s people have often had to sit and wait, holding fast to God’s promises in faith, living as if God will be faithful, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
God sent prophets to his people in exile, to encourage them to remain faithful and endure, promising that God’s salvation would come soon. God has given us the Scriptures. In Scripture we find Mary in a garden (think Eden), on Sunday morning (think day one of Creation), questioning a gardener (think God), only to find out it is the resurrected Jesus (think day one of New Creation, when God is beginning to make all things new). In Scripture, Paul writes that if we are in Christ (meaning we have submitted to the reign of God), we are “new creation” (2Cor. 5.17). The image of this submission is baptism, where we die and are raised to “walk in newness of life,” being “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6.4, 11). God has given us the Scriptures to encourage us to remain faithful and endure—we have a foretaste of God’s salvation now, we have new creation now, as a sure sign of God’s coming salvation.
Much has been neglected here. How can I talk of new creation without mention of the Holy Spirit? I shouldn’t, but I have. And what does this actually look like in practice? That will have to wait for next week.
—John Coffey
