Rearranging the furniture in a burning house. Sure, why not? If you have to live there while its burning, I guess you can make it more comfortable for yourself. But is it the primary duty of a person to paint the walls and organize the house that will be in ashes not a few minutes later? Probably not. I would think the person should realize that the house is burning and try and save/preserve as many people as he can from the house. If he can do both, fine. But more often than not, one becomes exclusive to the other because like anything we are finite and can only fix our minds and purposes on one thing at a time. The question really becomes whether Christ wants us to rearrange the furniture or save those in the house so that they may live in a better, rebuilt house. After all, what good is rearranging furniture if there is no one left to sit in it?
It may seem holy to cultivate the environment. It certainly is. But if in cultivating the environment we get distracted from being procreational, we will end up like the world represented by the line of Cain, preserving an environment with very few people to live in it. Much of this debate stems from the idea that the Lord's prayer, specifically the phrases, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven," reference Christ's current rule over the earth as its mediatorial king, and therefore, carry an ethic that we also should take this current world, its governments, its cultures, etc., and place them under Christ's feet. I'm going to argue that the premise that Christ rules this world mediatorially is false, and therefore, the conclusion that this is what He wants us to do is false. Instead, I will argue that Christ has been given the world to come, so that there is nothing more for us to do but join Him in what He is doing now, which is filling up the world to come with people He has redeemed. We do this through procreation, literally via procreative sexual unions in permanent marriages and spiritually via the gospel. Just like in Genesis, God accomplishes the preservation Himself so that those who pit the two against one another and so focus on preservation have no excuse that they neglected procreation. (Note: I am talking about focus as opposed to the devil's holy distractions with what would otherwise be good things. Of course one is to create environments that are preserving of life, but this is not the primary problem with the world. It is that men's minds are wicked even from their youth, and therefore, they must be not only born but born again. This procreative emphasis is due to Jesus filling up His world to come.)
One of the many texts that teach that Christ's kingdom is not universal until His coming (e.g., the cycles in Daniel and Revelation) is Hebrews 2:5-8. It reads,
For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere,
“What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.”
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.
We note a couple things here. 1. That, at present, everything is not subject to Christ in this world, and 2. God has not subjected this world to Christ but rather has subjected the world to come to Him.
Yet, we are told that Christ is exalted above all things and is seated at the right hand of God the Father. Eph 1:19-21 states:
. . . when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Now, universal kingdom advocates have a problem here. Either Christ reigns over everything right now or He doesn't; and by "everything" I mean, not just in an imperial capacity but also as a mediatorial king. Think of the Roman Empire (or any empire for that matter). The Emperor rules over the empire but he is only the mediatorial ruler of Rome, which is the seat from which He oversees the rest of the empire. Now, think of not the cities that are under Rome, but the nations that are in rebellion against Rome but are within its domain. Perhaps a better analogy is one I've given many times before and that is the contrast between David and Saul. Saul has reign over all of Israel but David is anointed/messiahed as king of Israel. Saul still rules Israel. David is waiting for the time when Saul's rule will come to an end even though he is anointed as king long before that time. In the meantime, David is simply overseeing the kingdom from the outskirts. It is not a stretch to see Saul as the Satanic figure in the story and far less a stretch to see David as Christ.
Those who do not claim that Christ is ruling over all things as a mediatorial king can explain both of these texts. Christ is the rightful ruler of heaven and earth and has been exalted as such at His resurrection and ascension. He is seated on the Father's throne, which is the throne of the Emperor/King of Kings and Lord of Lords, where He rules over all the earth sovereignly but only over Israel mediatorially (Deut 32:7-14) until the time the Father has appointed for Christ to return upon which that sovereign role of the Father is handed back to Him and Christ takes the earthly mediatorial role over Israel/the Church that rules the entire world (1 Cor 15:23-28) as the city of Rome becomes the Roman Empire when all of the nations are subject to it. This is the vision in Daniel 2 and 7. It is not that Christ rules over separate empires but that one empire/kingdom/peoples are left upon the earth for Him to rule and all other authorities and powers, including Saul/the devil, no longer have any mediatorial rule upon the earth.
In fact, this seems to be exactly what Ephesians 1 is saying. He is exalted to the Father's throne which is above every name and every thing. But then it says that He made Him head/leader/ruler of the Church. What a weird thing to say if He was already the ruler over everything in a mediatorial sense. Then He's head of every nation, not just the Church, but this clearly indicates a distinction between the sovereign reign and the mediatorial reign Christ is given now. As the Auctor says, we do not presently see all things subject to Him because God has subjected, not this world, but the world to come to Him.
So God has both subjected all things under His feet in one sense (i.e., the imperial one) but not all things yet under His feet in another (i.e., the mediatorial sense). This is why God has exalted Him. "For He must rule until He has put all of His enemies under His feet" (1 Cor 15:25). And this subjection of His enemies in terms of the other powers and authorities in the heavenly places, the devil being the emperor over those entities, is not a continual one, but one that happens at the resurrection, at the end, as 1 Cor 15:23-28 states.
But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
Nor is it the case that this is a rule that just continues on into eternity as Christ's sovereign rule is handed back over the Father, at which time the Son subjects Himself, as the mediatorial ruler of the world, to the Father, the sovereign emperor of the universe. That seat, although Christ is on it for the sake of preserving and gathering His Church/the kingdom, for the world to come, is the Father's throne (Rev 2:26-27; 3:21). Hence, Christ's eternal throne is different than the Father's.
This is why it can be said that God has both exalted Him above all rule and authority and yet Christ must abolish all contrary rule and authority at His coming and is therefore now only head/ruler over the Church/new covenant Israel, which at that time will be resurrected and rule over all the earth with Him.
All of this to say, the phrase in the Lord's prayer, "Thy Kingdom come" carries all of this theology. It notes that the kingdom in terms of its universal mediatorial rule upon the earth has not yet come. That God's will is not yet done in the earth as it is in heaven because God rules sovereignly from heaven but only mediatorially over Israel/the Church. The prayer is a cry to God to bring the world to come, to send Jesus back so that God's will is done in the earth as it is in heaven. It is the cry that John gives at the end of the Apocalypse, "Come, Lord Jesus," and the longing of every orthodox believer who has loved his appearing. The theology above is the only theology that makes sense of this prayer. Otherwise, it would say, thanks for bringing in your kingdom and that your will is done already in heaven and earth. That's not what it says. It tells us the same thing that all of these texts tell us, which is that we wait for the blessed hope of the world to come, not a reorganization of this world, a rearranging of the furniture in a burning house, into yet another shadow of what is to come.
Hence, we do the work of Christ and it is an eternal work that moth and rust do not destroy because even if those in Christ die, they will return to fill up the world to come. Not so with the wood, hay and straw of rearranging the furniture in a burning house. What can be destroyed in this world will not last in the world to come. Only what is connected to Christ will remain, and so this, not the obtainment of land and title, is our work in the world.
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