Religion, Chapter XVII, 1

OF GOD’S KINGDOM UNDER THE NEW COVENANT

1 The prophecies of Christ’s dignity. 2. The prophecies of his humility and suffering. 3. That Jesus was the Christ. 4. That God’s kingdom under the new covenant was Christ’s kingdom not as Christ but as God. 5. That the kingdom under the new covenant is heavenly and will begin on the day of judgment. 6. That Christ’s government in this world was not sovereignty but counsel, a government through teaching and persuasion. 7. The promises made on both sides of the new covenant. 8. That Christ added no laws besides the institution of the sacraments. 9. That “Repent,” “Be baptized,” “Keep the commandments,” and similar expressions are not laws. 10. That defining the sin of injustice belongs to the civil authority. 11. That defining what promotes the peace and defense of the city belongs to the civil authority. 12. That judging, when necessary, which definitions and inferences are true belongs to the civil authority. 13. That Christ’s office is to teach morality not as speculation but as law, to forgive sins, and to teach all things of which there is no science properly so called. 14. The distinction between temporal and spiritual things. 15. The several senses in which “the word of God” may be understood. 16. That not everything in Holy Scripture belongs to the canon of Christian faith. 17. That the word of a lawful interpreter of Holy Scripture is the word of God. 18. That the authority to interpret Scripture is the same as the authority to settle controversies of faith. 19. The various meanings of “church.” 20. What kind of church possesses rights, performs actions, and has other personal capacities. 21. That a Christian city is the same as a Christian church. 22. That several cities do not form one church. 23. Who ecclesiastical persons are. 24. That the election of ecclesiastical persons belongs to the church, their consecration to pastors. 25. That the power to forgive the sins of the penitent and retain those of the impenitent belongs to pastors, but the judgment concerning repentance belongs to the church. 26. What excommunication is and to whom it cannot apply. 27. That the interpretation of Scripture depends on the city’s authority. 28. That a Christian city should interpret Scripture through ecclesiastical pastors.

CHAPTER XVI. OF GOD’S KINGDOM UNDER THE OLD COVENANT.

The prophecies of Christ’s dignity.

1 Many clear prophecies remain in the Old Testament concerning our Savior Jesus Christ, who was to restore God’s kingdom through a new covenant: some foretell his royal dignity, others his humility and suffering. Among the prophecies of his dignity are these. God, blessing Abraham, promises him his son Isaac, and adds (Gen. xvii. 16): “Kings of peoples shall come from him.” Jacob, blessing his son Judah, says (Gen. xlix. 10): “The scepter shall not depart from Judah.” God tells Moses (Deut. xviii. 18): “I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brothers, like you, and put my words in his mouth; he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.” Isaiah says (Isai. vii. 14): “The Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.” The same prophet says (Isaiah ix. 6): “To us a child is born, to us a son is given; the government shall rest on his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” And again (Isaiah xi. 1-5): “A shoot shall come forth from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow from his roots; the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,” and so forth; “He shall not judge by the sight of his eyes, nor decide by the hearing of his ears; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,” and so forth; “He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall slay the wicked.” Furthermore, almost all of the same Isaiah (chapters li. to lxii.) describes Christ’s coming and works. Jeremiah says (Jerem. xxxi. 31): “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” And Baruch (Bar. iii. 35-37): “This is our God,” and so forth. “Afterward he appeared on earth and lived among men.” Ezekiel says (Ezek. xxxiv. 23-25): “I will set one shepherd over them, who shall feed them, even my servant David. And I will make a covenant of peace with them,” and so forth. Daniel says (Dan. vii. 13-14): “I saw in the visions of the night: behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven and approached the ancient of days; they brought him before him; and dominion, glory, and a kingdom were given him, so that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion,” and so forth. Haggai says (Haggai ii. 6-7): “Yet once, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land; I will shake all nations; and the desire of all nations shall come.” Zechariah, under the figure of Joshua the high priest, says (Zach. iii. 8): “I will bring forth my servant the Branch,” and so forth. And again (Zach. vi. 12): “Behold the man whose name is the Branch.” And again (Zach. ix. 9): “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; shout, daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king comes to you; he is just and brings salvation.” Stirred by these and other prophecies, the Jews expected God to send Christ as their king, to redeem them and, beyond that, to rule over all nations. Indeed this prophecy had spread throughout the Roman empire; even Vespasian, though wrongly, interpreted it in favor of his own undertaking: that someone destined to rule would come from Judea.

The prophecies of Christ’s humility and suffering.

2 Among the prophecies of Christ’s humility and suffering are these (Isaiah liii. 4): “He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we considered him stricken, struck by God, and afflicted.” And shortly afterward (verse 7): “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet did not open his mouth; he is led like a lamb to slaughter, and like a sheep silent before her shearer, so he did not open his mouth,” and so forth. Again (verse 8): “He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was he stricken,” and so forth. (Verse 12): “Therefore I will assign him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, was numbered with transgressors, bore the sin of many, and made intercession for transgressors.” And Zechariah says (Zach. ix. 9): “He is humble, riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.”

That Jesus was the Christ.

3 During the reign of Tiberius Caesar, our Savior Jesus, a Galilean and supposedly Joseph’s son, began to preach. He declared to the Jewish people that the kingdom of God they awaited had now come and that he himself was a king, that is, the Christ. He explained the law and chose twelve apostles and seventy disciples for the ministry, after the pattern of Moses and the number of the tribal princes and seventy elders. Through himself and them he taught the way of salvation; he cleansed the temple, performed great signs, and fulfilled everything the prophets had foretold of the coming Christ. The evangelists show that this man was the true Christ and king promised by God, sent by his Father to renew the covenant between God and them. The Pharisees hated him because he had rebuked their false teaching and hypocritical holiness; through their influence the people accused him of unlawfully seeking the kingdom, and he was crucified. The evangelists demonstrate who he was by describing his genealogy, birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection; and all Christians agree by comparing his deeds with what had been foretold of him.

That God’s kingdom under the new covenant was Christ’s kingdom not as Christ but as God.

4 Since Christ was sent by God his Father to establish a covenant between him and the people, it is plain that, although Christ was equal to his Father in nature, he was subordinate in the right of kingship. Strictly speaking, his office was not a king’s but a viceroy’s, as Moses’ government was: the kingdom was his Father’s, not his own. Christ indicated this when he was baptized as a subject and professed it openly when he taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father, your kingdom come,” and so forth; and when he said (Matth. xxvi. 29): “I will not drink the fruit of the vine until the day I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.” St. Paul also says (1 Cor. xv. 22-24): “As all die in Adam, so shall all be made alive in Christ; but each in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward those who are Christ’s, who believed in his coming; then comes the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even his Father.” Nevertheless, this same kingdom is also called Christ’s kingdom. The mother of Zebedee’s sons petitioned Christ (Matth. xx. 21): “Grant that these two sons of mine may sit, one at your right hand and the other at your left, in your kingdom.” The thief on the cross said (Luke xxiii. 42): “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” St. Paul says (Ephes. v. 5): “Know this: no fornicator,” and so forth, “shall enter the kingdom of God and of Christ”; and elsewhere (2 Tim. iv. 1): “I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom,” and so forth; (verse 18): “The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for his heavenly kingdom.” It is no wonder the same kingdom is attributed to both: Father and Son are the same God, and the new covenant concerning God’s kingdom is proposed not in the Father’s name alone, but in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as one God.

That God’s kingdom under the new covenant is heavenly and begins on the day of judgment.

5 But God’s kingdom, which Christ was sent by God his Father to restore, does not begin before his second coming: it begins on the day of judgment, when he comes in majesty accompanied by his angel. For the apostles are promised that in God’s kingdom they shall judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matth. xix. 28): “You who have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, shall also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” This will not happen until the day of judgment. Christ therefore does not yet sit on his majestic throne; nor is the period when Christ lived here in the world called a kingdom, but a regeneration—that is, a renewal or restoration of God’s kingdom, and a summoning of those who were later to be received into it. And where it is said (Matth. xxv. 31-32): “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he shall sit on his glorious throne, and all nations shall be gathered before him; he shall separate them from one another as a shepherd separates sheep from goats,” we may clearly infer that God’s subjects will not be separated by place from his enemies, but will live among them until Christ’s second coming. This is confirmed by the comparison of the kingdom of heaven to wheat mixed with darnel and to a net containing fish of every kind. But a multitude of enemies and subjects living together indiscriminately cannot properly be called a kingdom. Besides, when the apostles asked our Savior whether he would restore the kingdom to Israel at the time of his ascension into heaven, they openly testified that, when Christ ascended, they thought God’s kingdom had not yet come. Moreover, Christ’s words, “My kingdom is not of this world”; “I will not drink,” and so forth, “until the kingdom of God comes”; “God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him”; “If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I came not to judge the world, but to save it”; and “Man, who appointed me a judge or arbiter between you?”—even the very name “kingdom of heaven”—testify to the same point. We can also gather it from the prophet Jeremiah’s words on God’s kingdom under the new covenant (Jer. xxxi. 34): “No longer shall each man teach his neighbor, saying, ‘Know the Lord’; for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest, says the Lord.” This cannot describe a kingdom in the present world. God’s kingdom, then, which Christ came into the world to restore, which the prophets foretold, and for which we pray, “Your kingdom come,” if it is to have subjects separated by place from its enemies, judicial authority, and majesty as foretold, will begin when God separates sheep from goats, when the apostles judge Israel’s twelve tribes, when Christ comes in majesty and glory, and, finally, when all people know God so well that they need no instruction: that is, at Christ’s second coming, the day of judgment. But if God’s kingdom were already restored, no reason could be given why Christ should come again after completing the work for which he was sent, or why we should pray, “Your kingdom come.”

ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD UNDER THE NEW COVENANT

1 Prophecies about Christ’s high rank. 2. Prophecies about his humility and suffering. 3. Jesus was the Christ. 4. Under the new covenant, the kingdom of God was Christ’s kingdom as God, not as Christ. 5. The kingdom under the new covenant is heavenly and will begin on the day of judgment. 6. Christ’s government in this world was not sovereign rule. It was guidance through teaching and persuasion. 7. What each side promises in the new covenant. 8. Christ added no laws except the institution of the sacraments. 9. Expressions such as “Repent,” “Be baptized,” and “Keep the commandments” are not laws. 10. Defining the sin of injustice belongs to the civil authority. 11. Defining what promotes the city’s peace and defense belongs to the civil authority. 12. Judging, when necessary, which definitions and conclusions are true belongs to the civil authority. 13. Christ’s office is to teach moral conduct as law rather than speculation, to forgive sins, and to teach everything about which there is no science in the strict sense. 14. The distinction between temporal and spiritual things. 15. The different meanings of “the word of God.” 16. Not everything in Holy Scripture belongs to the canon of Christian faith. 17. The word of a lawful interpreter of Holy Scripture is the word of God. 18. The authority to interpret Scripture is the same as the authority to decide disputes of faith. 19. Different meanings of “church.” 20. What a church is when we attribute rights, actions, and other powers of a person to it. 21. A Christian city and a Christian church are the same thing. 22. Several cities do not form one church. 23. Who ecclesiastical persons are. 24. Choosing ecclesiastical persons belongs to the church; consecrating them belongs to pastors. 25. Pastors have the power to forgive the sins of people who repent and retain the sins of those who do not. The church judges whether people have repented. 26. What excommunication is and whom it cannot affect. 27. The authority of the city governs the interpretation of Scripture. 28. A Christian city ought to interpret Scripture through ecclesiastical pastors.

CHAPTER XVI. ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD UNDER THE OLD COVENANT.

Prophecies about Christ’s high rank.

1 The Old Testament contains many clear prophecies about our Savior Jesus Christ. He was to restore God’s kingdom through a new covenant. Some predict his royal rank; others predict his humility and suffering. Here are some about his rank. When God blesses Abraham, he promises him Isaac as a son and adds (Gen. xvii. 16): “Kings of peoples will come from him.” When Jacob blesses his son Judah, he says (Gen. xlix. 10): “The scepter will not leave Judah.” God says to Moses (Deut. xviii. 18): “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. Anyone who does not listen to my words, which he speaks in my name, will answer to me.” Isaiah says (Isai. vii. 14): “The Lord himself will give you a sign: a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and will call him Emmanuel.” The same prophet says (Isaiah ix. 6): “A child is born to us, a son is given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” He says again (Isaiah xi. 1-5): “A shoot will come from the stem of Jesse, and a branch will grow from his roots. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him,” and so forth. “He will not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear. He will judge the poor fairly,” and so forth. “He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and kill the wicked with the breath of his lips.” Moreover, almost all of the same prophet’s chapters li. to lxii. describe Christ’s arrival and deeds. Jeremiah says (Jerem. xxxi. 31): “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” Baruch says (Bar. iii. 35-37): “This is our God,” and so forth. “Afterward he appeared on earth and lived among human beings.” Ezekiel says (Ezek. xxxiv. 23-25): “I will put one shepherd over them to feed them: my servant David. And I will make a covenant of peace with them,” and so forth. Daniel says (Dan. vii. 13-14): “In my visions at night I saw someone like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the ancient of days, and they brought him before him. He was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom, so that all peoples, nations, and languages would serve him. His dominion is everlasting,” and so forth. Haggai says (Haggai ii. 6-7): “In a little while, once again I will shake heaven and earth, sea and dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations will come.” Zachariah speaks through the figure of Joshua the high priest (Zach. iii. 8): “I will bring forth my servant the branch,” and so forth. And again (Zach. vi. 12): “Look at the man whose name is the Branch.” And again (Zach. ix. 9): “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; shout, daughter of Jerusalem. Look, your king comes to you. He is just and brings salvation.” These and other prophecies led the Jews to expect God to send Christ as their king. They expected him to redeem them and also to rule all nations. Indeed, this prophecy spread throughout the Roman empire. Vespasian, too, wrongly applied it to his own plans: someone who would rule was to come from Judea.

Prophecies about Christ’s humility and suffering.

2 Among the prophecies about Christ’s humility and suffering are these (Isaiah liii. 4): “He has carried our griefs and borne our sorrows. Yet we thought him stricken, struck by God, and afflicted.” Shortly after that (verse 7): “He was oppressed and afflicted, but did not open his mouth. He is led like a lamb to slaughter, and like a sheep silent before the shearer, he did not open his mouth,” and so forth. Again (verse 8): “He was cut off from the land of the living. He was stricken for my people’s transgression,” and so forth. And (verse 12): “So I will give him a share with the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong. For he poured out his life to death, was counted among transgressors, bore the sin of many, and interceded for transgressors.” There is also this from Zachariah (Zach. ix. 9): “He is humble and rides on a donkey, on a colt, the offspring of a donkey.”

Jesus was the Christ.

3 During the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, our Savior Jesus, a Galilean, began preaching. People supposed he was Joseph’s son. He told the Jewish people that the kingdom of God they expected had now come, and that he himself was a king, that is, the Christ. He explained the law and chose twelve apostles and seventy disciples to serve him, following Moses’ model and the numbers of the tribal princes and the seventy elders. He and they taught the way to salvation. He cleared the temple, performed great signs, and fulfilled all that the prophets had foretold about the coming Christ. He rebuked the Pharisees for their false teaching and hypocritical claims to holiness, so they hated him. Through their influence, the people accused him of unlawfully seeking the kingdom, and he was crucified. Yet he was the true Christ and king whom God had promised and sent from his Father to renew the covenant between God and them. The evangelists show this by describing his ancestry, birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection. All Christians also agree when they compare what he did with what was foretold of him.

Under the new covenant, the kingdom of God was Christ’s kingdom as God, not as Christ.

4 Christ was sent by God his Father to make a covenant between God and the people. It follows clearly that, though Christ was equal to his Father in nature, his position in the kingdom was subordinate. Strictly speaking, his office was not that of a king but of a viceroy, like Moses in his government. The kingdom belonged not to him but to his Father. Christ showed this by being baptized as a subject. He said it openly when he taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father, may your kingdom come,” and so forth. He also said (Matth. xxvi. 29): “I will not drink the fruit of the vine until the day I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.” St. Paul says (1 Cor. xv. 22-24): “As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward those who belong to Christ, who believed in his coming; then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God his Father.” Nevertheless, this same kingdom is also called Christ’s kingdom. The mother of Zebedee’s sons asked Christ (Matth. xx. 21): “Grant that these two sons of mine may sit, one on your right and the other on your left, in your kingdom.” The thief on the cross said (Luke xxiii. 42): “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” St. Paul says (Ephes. v. 5): “Know this: no sexually immoral person,” and so forth, “will enter the kingdom of God and of Christ.” Elsewhere he says (2 Tim. iv. 1): “I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearance and in his kingdom,” and so forth. And (verse 18): “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and preserve me for his heavenly kingdom.” There is nothing surprising about attributing the same kingdom to both Father and Son. Father and Son are the same God. The new covenant concerning God’s kingdom is offered not in the Father’s name alone, but in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as one God.

Under the new covenant, the kingdom of God is heavenly and begins on the day of judgment.

5 God the Father sent Christ to restore the kingdom of God. But that kingdom does not begin before Christ’s second coming: it begins on the day of judgment, when he will come in majesty with his angel. The apostles are promised that in God’s kingdom they will judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matth. xix. 28): “You who have followed me in the regeneration: when the Son of man sits on his glorious throne, you too will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” That will not happen until the day of judgment. So Christ is not yet on his majestic throne. Nor is the time he spent in this world called a kingdom. It is called a regeneration: a renewal or restoration of God’s kingdom and a call to those who would later be admitted to it. Another passage says (Matth. xxv. 31-32): “When the Son of man comes in his glory with all the holy angels, he will sit on his glorious throne. All nations will gather before him, and he will separate them from one another as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.” This clearly shows that God’s subjects will not be separated from his enemies in different places. They will live together until Christ comes again. The same point is confirmed when the kingdom of heaven is compared to wheat mixed with darnell, and to a net holding every kind of fish. But a mixed population of enemies and subjects living together cannot properly be called a kingdom. Also, when the apostles asked our Savior whether he would restore the kingdom to Israel at the time of his ascent to heaven, they showed plainly that they thought God’s kingdom had not yet come. The same is shown by Christ’s words: “My kingdom is not of this world”; “I will not drink,” and so forth, “until God’s kingdom comes”; “God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but to save the world through him”; “If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him. I came not to judge the world but to save it”; and “Man, who appointed me a judge or divider between you?” Even its name, the kingdom of heaven, shows this. We can reach the same conclusion from Jeremiah’s words about God’s kingdom under the new covenant (Jer. xxxi. 34): “No one will teach his neighbor any longer, saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ They will all know me, from the least to the greatest, says the Lord.” This cannot describe a kingdom in this world. Therefore, God’s kingdom, which Christ came into the world to restore, which the prophets foretold, and for which we pray when we say “May your kingdom come,” will begin only at a certain time, if it is to have subjects physically separated from enemies, courts of judgment, and the majesty foretold. That time is when God separates the sheep from the goats, when the apostles judge the twelve tribes of Israel, when Christ comes in majesty and glory, and when all people know God so well that they need no instruction. In other words, it is Christ’s second coming, the day of judgment. But if God’s kingdom had already been restored, there would be no reason for Christ to come again after finishing the work he was sent to do, or for us to pray, “May your kingdom come.”