I think that most of us would agree that we, as Christians, are going through a time of some discouragement with the alarming moral decline in our nation. There can be no doubt that the enemies of biblical morality are in the ascendancy. There is a note of triumphalism among them. The latest issue of The Freethinker, the monthly magazine of the National Secular Society, opens with the words, ‘Despite poll after poll showing that Christianity in the UK is heading for extinction...’, and goes on to criticise Conservative efforts to maintain that Great Britain is still a Christian country. We know that these opening words are a gross exaggeration, but they hurt and they discourage the Christian. It is true that in a few short years the common perception of Christianity in Great Britain has plummeted from a position of something good and wholesome to a position of something bad and even degrading; and Bible-believing Christianity is now considered the very worst and the most dangerous kind of Christianity.

More and more legislation is being passed with high sounding buzz-words, such as equality, diversity and anti-discrimination, but which have the actual effect of curbing freedom of speech. These curbs will more and more affect the free preaching of the gospel.

Now, friends, I could go further down that road and add to the discouragement and depression, looking at the black side of things, but you will be glad to hear I am not going to do that. Rather I want to look at the bright side of things, though, in the process, I must of necessity refer to the black side. For the Christian there is a bright side of which we must never lose sight, especially at this time. There is the glorious and certain triumph of Christ over all His and our enemies. The future held out to us in the Word of God is bright beyond words; it is certain. In order for us to absorb something of this, I wish to consider with you 1 Corinthians 15:23-26:

But every man in his own order; Christ the first fruits; afterwards they that are Christ’s at His coming. Then cometh the end, when He (that is, Christ) shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

The context is, of course, the resurrection. In verse 23 this is divided into two parts; the ‘first-fruits’, and what must necessarily follow. The ‘first-fruits’ is Christ Himself when He rose from the dead. Without the ‘first-fruits’ there would be no harvest; but because there is a ‘first-fruits’, a harvest must follow, namely the resurrection of all believers at Christ’s second coming: raised to be with Him and enjoy Him for all eternity: what Jesus Himself calls in John 5:29 ‘the resurrection of life’, in contrast to the resurrection of those who will be raised to ‘the resurrection of damnation’. Every human being that ever lived will be in one group or the other. There will not be any ‘middle’ group. Let us now move on to v 24.

Thankfully the commentators are more or less of one mind as to the exposition of this verse, although few go as far as we would like them to go. ‘Then cometh the end’. The end of what? Surely it is already the end. Not quite. Still to come is the end of Christ’s Mediatorial reign. What is Christ’s Mediatorial reign? It is that reign which began when He ascended into heaven, and was welcomed in by the angels: that moment described to us prophetically in Psalm 24, ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in...’ His work of atonement of course was finished and could not be added to, when He ‘offered Himself without spot to God’ (Hebrews 9:14). This was His great High Priestly offering of Himself. He now ‘reigns’ as the Mediatorial King, with all power given to Him in heaven and in earth, to bring the history of the world to a perfect God-glorifying conclusion. Now, let us be clear. His work of atonement was of a totally different nature to His work as the Mediatorial King. The former was done in humiliation, the latter is done in His state of exaltation, as the crowned Mediatorial King, crowned with glory and honour, and given a name above every name.

As He said after His resurrection, before His ascension, when He gave the great commission in Matthew 28:19-20: ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore...’ Perhaps the most wonderful exercise of this power (as far as we presently are concerned), soon after the beginning of this reign, was to send the Holy Spirit into the world as ‘another Comforter’ for His people in His own place. He, the Holy Spirit, would apply the benefits of Christ’s atonement on a world-wide scale to those whom the Father had given Him, and sanctify them in preparation for their heavenly inheritance. Christ now exercises His Kingly power to bring the whole of history to a full, final, God-glorifying and God-justifying conclusion.

We have a picture before us which is extremely encouraging. Let us grasp it, and let us be of good courage. Let us learn this picture, and let us use it in the present dark times to lift us up when the enemies of the gospel seem to triumph. The sure fact is this: that every single person and army whom Satan has been allowed to use to oppress us and discourage us, will be put down.

Notice ‘put down’, not destroyed or annihilated, but put down: disempowered, and permanently and irreversibly humiliated. We shall look at this putting down later, but for the moment we note that all His enemies will find themselves under the feet of the One whom they vilified, and denigrated to the limit of their abilities and with unbridled tongues. The order of this present world which they loved, and looked on as permanent and even inevitably strengthening with time, will be completely upended. They will find themselves in a position of humiliation that they could never have imagined: under the feet of Jesus Christ. Their whole attitude and demeanour had dripped with a confident pride, based on an assumption that one day they would have the final victory over Christ and His church. Now they are under Christ’s feet.

These final things are not listed for us in our text in chronological order, but the tenses used give us the chronological order and it is in this order that we will look at them, in order to accommodate our time-bound minds.

There is a very slight difficulty of translation, but the translation we have in the King James Bible is, I believe, the best. It agrees with other Scriptural references and even with most of the modern translations, so we will not go into the matter further at this time, in case we lose our focus. It is on the final things in His reign as Mediator that we wish to concentrate. This is for our encouragement, and here there is great encouragement indeed for ourselves in the day we live in, as Christians in today’s Great Britain.

Let us now look at the things that will be put down — all rule and all authority and power. These are the things that the enemies of Christ have wielded against the church. Now there is much overlapping between these three things, but I believe that we can with profit look at them separately in order to understand better what is going on in the world. Of course the reference is not to rule, authority and power in the abstract, but to the persons who are in positions to wield these things. Jesus did not say to His disciples when He sent them out, ‘Beware of devils’, but, ‘Beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake’ (Matthew 10:17, 18). Let us then look at the concluding things in Christ’s Mediatorial reign, things that will take place at the end of the world.

Firstly, the Putting Down of All Rule⤒🔗

This includes all human government and all its tentacles, including the judiciary. I group the judiciary with government, because the two are now working together, especially against the Bible-believing church. The independence of the judiciary is now, at least, open to question. At the end of the world, all human rule will melt away before the authority of Christ, the Mediatorial King. All those leaders who used their position of rule to marginalize and isolate Christians will be put down. We value the freedoms we still have, but true democracy, which takes into account the will of the people, has been paralysed in Great Britain for a number of years. Recently we saw the sinister picture of the leaders of all the main political parties, who in all other circumstances would be fighting against one another, and so keeping a check on one another, totally united in promoting the most ungodly piece of legislation in history, the re-definition of God’s holy ordinance of marriage, to change it, and to mix it with the most abominable of practices, defiling what the Word of God has declared to be undefiled, the marriage bed. This reminds us of the two enemies, Herod and Pontius Pilate, being made friends at the trial of Christ. This is the united rage of the heathen against the Lord and His Anointed (Psalm 2). Even public opinion did not matter. It was just swept aside. It was all so evil, so unjust, so anti-God and anti-Christ. The oppression and frustration we felt was intense and crushing. We were so powerless: but, the David Camerons, the Nick Cleggs, the Ed Milibands, the Alex Salmonds of this world will be put down, unless they repent. Yes, we should be praying that God would bring them to repentance, and that He would do all that is necessary to bring that about. But in the absence of repentance we must pray for their downfall; for their removal; and for a hastening of the day when they will be put under the feet of Christ. If we know our Psalms, then we will have no problems with praying for the removal of the enemies of God. We should be filled with a holy jealousy for the glory of the Lord our God, burning with a zeal for Him. One thing is sure, we will see our triumphant King, with His enemies under His feet. It will happen. ‘He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet’. It is a certainty. It must happen. Take courage, my friend.

Secondly, the Putting Down of All Authority←⤒🔗

Authority is a crucially important matter in this life. The ultimate authority is God speaking through His Word. He has given us His Word as the ultimate authority in all situations. Happy is the nation that is ruled by the Word of God. Sadly in our nation the authority of God has been usurped by human reason as the ultimate authority. We have sold out to unbelieving humanism. Our so-called ‘progress’ is driven forward by the twin engines of secular humanism or atheism, and unbelieving science. The scientific establishment is now founded on unbelief. This is the kind of science that gets all the publicity, gets exposure in the newspapers and gets on to TV programmes, especially the BBC. I would exclude from this the many sincere and diligent scientists who have done much to break the frontiers of our knowledge in useful ways. The problem with establishment science is that it will not entertain anything that is not material. It excludes the spiritual world, and any evidence of anything immaterial or spiritual. This has had a disastrous effect on science. It stunts its thought, narrows its horizons, and distorts its conclusions. It puts it into a restricted ‘corridor’ where certain conclusions are disallowed before the research begins. The walls of this corridor are restrictions disallowing any thought beyond the material, no matter what the evidence says. Any thought that breaches these walls will be condemned as nonsense by the establishment if it ever reaches the end of the corridor. This is hardly the free enquiry which should characterise true science. The conclusions are restricted from the beginning. The effect of this on our children’s education is disastrous. This science demands that it be listened to as the ultimate authority. It demands that God be excluded. It is proud and arrogant and takes to itself the place of God as the ultimate authority in all things. God is not in all its thoughts; nor is humility, that greatest of all ornaments found among men. This proud and arrogant science will not countenance any balanced examination of evidence if there is a possibility that that evidence might point to a Designer in nature. Their grip over the educational system is such that they decree that Intelligent Design must not be examined side by side with evolution, and must be restricted to religious education classes. They do not trust our children to examine the evidence and come to their own conclusions. Again we feel oppressed. It is all so unjust. It is called science, but it is all so fundamentally unscientific. But they do have massive authority in Great Britain today; and they are proud.

Richard Dawkins has become the face of unbelieving science in this country. He claims that his motive in his science is ‘disinterested enquiry’. Yet his books and articles drip with bias and pride. Even his own colleagues have raised grave doubts about his arguments in his book, The God Delusion. The problem is that he is so looked up to that multitudes believe everything he says, even though he is an enemy of Christ. He is the authority in Britain today, not just on scientific things, but on the relevance of religion. Again we feel so powerless, so frustrated, so oppressed, so jealous for God. Again we must pray that God will bring him to repentance, and if not, that God would remove Him. One thing is sure, if he does not repent we shall see him under the feet of Christ: For Christ must reign till He has put all His enemies under His feet. It will happen. It is certain. Take courage. There is a bright side; let us keep it before us.

Thirdly, He will Put Down All Power←⤒🔗

What is the most powerful influence in our nation today? There can surely be no doubt: it is not government, it is not science — it is television. Not that the medium itself is evil. It is not. The problem is that most of the producers and presenters have an anti-Christian bias. They subvert our society and our children. They use their undoubted creative skill to promote immorality and perversions even in some children’s programmes. It is a gross abuse of power, frequently used against Bible-believing Christians and the things they love. This comes out in subversive comments and innuendo, which subtly shape the minds of the people. We feel powerless, oppressed, grieved to the depths of our being. But let them just wait. Unless they repent Christ will put them down. Their power will suddenly melt away; it will disappear. Television producers and presenters and all those who have used their power in this world to vilify Christ and Christians will be put down. They will be under the feet of the One they mocked and vilified.

Let us then rejoice and be glad, ‘Christ must reign, until He hath put all enemies under his feet’. For all these groups, as they lie under the feet of Christ, their loud mouths will be stopped; stopped by the realisation that they stand before The Ultimate Authority, and His perfect justice, and that they have been fools. Their humiliation will be most painful for them, and they will be silent. They will have no defence, nothing to say. They who rejected any possibility of a day of reckoning are dumbfounded. The Christians whom they laughed at are now vindicated while they themselves are put down; weighed in God’s balances, and found wanting. But this leaves one enemy, death.

Fourthly, Death Destroyed←⤒🔗

Let us then jump forward a little to v 26: ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’. This is not ‘putting down’, but destruction. It does not specifically say that Christ will do this. However it is often a good exercise to leave out the italics, as it brings us a little closer to the original. If we do that here, it is of some help: ‘The last enemy will be destroyed, death’. The first three enemies are put down, but the last enemy, death, will be destroyed — a very important difference. The destruction, rather than the one who does it, is what distinguishes the fate of Death from that of the other three. Death will be destroyed. All human beings that have ever existed, the whole human race will have been raised from the dead. Revelation 20:12, ‘And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God’. They are all standing, they are alive. No one is left in any kind of grave, no matter what the nature of the final disposal of the body has been. After this there shall be no more death ever — for anyone. No human being will ever die again. Bodies and souls now reunited will never be separated again. Death is abolished. But how is it the last enemy? It is the believer’s last enemy, because until the resurrection it was what prevented their bodies from being united to their souls in the full enjoyment of Christ.

Let us look at the consequences of this first of all for the believer. He will be with Christ forever. He will enjoy Him forever. There will never be an end to it. While in this world there was always that point ahead which stood between us and ultimate blessedness, death. But no more. There was always that parting with loved ones ahead. But no more. Death is abolished, there will be no end point. We will be with Christ forever.

But what are the consequences to the unbeliever of no more death? They are indeed solemn. It means no relief from the torments of hell forever. We read about them in Revelation 9:6: ‘In those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them’. It is as if they are grasping for it, longing for it, but it is not there. It is never going to be there. To them death was like a strange kind of friend, an escape from any consequences. The hope of many was that death was the end of all human consciousness. Now it is not that death is there and they are denied it for some longer or shorter time. Death simply is not there. It is forever an impossibility. Their proud, confident arrogance will seem so ridiculous to them. Once so big and haughty, now reduced to misery. Now under the feet of Christ. But the thing that will make it most painful for them is that they will have nothing to say. Their mouths will be stopped. They will know that it is all perfect justice and righteousness. There is no unrighteousness with God at any point.

Christ’s triumph over His enemies will be consummately complete. He must reign until all this has been accomplished. ‘The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ’ (Rev 11:15). All that was promised to Him by the Father in eternity has now been fulfilled: ‘The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool’ (Psalm 110:1). We will indeed be, in the words of Romans 8:37, ‘more than conquerors through him that loved us’. We do not know what we may still have to suffer in this world at the hands of the enemies of Christ. It is unlikely to get easier; but even at its worst it will be ‘light affliction’ when we see Christ in His glory, and our eyes shall behold Him. Our greatest joy will be to see Him crowned with glory and honour. In the amazing words of Job, ‘In my flesh I shall see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another’.

Christ’s Mediatorial Reign←⤒🔗

There now remains the final act of Christ’s Mediatorial reign: ‘Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father’. This cannot just be passed over just because it is difficult to explain: difficult but not impossible. Charles Hodge in his Commentary on First Corinthians puts the matter very clearly: ‘It must be remembered, that the Scriptures speak of a threefold kingdom as belonging to Christ’. Let us summarise Hodge, and his explanation of Christ’s threefold kingdom:

1. His Kingly Divine rule over all His creatures. This can never change.
    
2. His Kingly rule as the God/man over all His redeemed people. This also can never change.
    
3. That Kingship to which he was exalted after his resurrection, when all power in heaven and earth was committed to his hands. This is the Mediatorial Kingdom, which he exercises as the God-man, only until the things we have been speaking about today have been accomplished. He will then deliver up this Kingdom to God and His Father.

But let us see if we can clarify the matter a little further. It helps somewhat if we keep in mind that the word translated ‘kingdom’ can also be translated ‘kingship’, or ‘rule’. Let us go back to the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son. There the Father gives to the Son those appointed to eternal life so that, in time, He might save them from their sins, in a consummately God-glorifying and God-justifying way, and secure them in union with Himself, free of all sin, free of all oppression, free of all threat, for all eternity.

This was the work which the Father gave Him to do. Now He is ruling over the final stages of that work from His throne in heaven. The final aim is that He will bring His people into a state of indestructible security, peace and blessedness. This necessitates this period of Mediatorial rule, the final stages of which are described in the verses we are looking at. Here He is seen to totally deprive all the enemies of His people of all the power and influence with which they abused God’s people while on earth. This is necessary as a demonstration of divine justice and righteousness, even though they will finally be cast into hell.

So this Mediatorial rule is now no longer needed; it is delivered up to God the Father; there are no longer any enemies with access to His people to rule over, because they are all put down or destroyed. But be clear on this. It does not mean His reign as King of His people and Head of His church will end. It never will. God ‘hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church’, (Eph. 1:22). The children of Zion will be joyful in their King (Psalm 149), for all eternity. We will always be united to Him, He will always be our Elder brother, our Head, our King, and our everlasting joy. ‘He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet’.

So now He delivers the Mediatorial Kingship to God and His Father. Let us go back to the eternal covenant. The Father gave the elect to His Son that He might save them, sanctify them, and make them eternally and irreversibly secure, all in a God-honouring and God-glorifying and God-justifying way. Now the Son presents the elect to the Father with all that He was to do for them perfectly completed and impregnably secure. So the Father is glorified in the Son and the Son is glorified in the Father. This whole matter of the Mediatorial kingdom and its delivery to the Father has its roots in eternity.

Friends, let us never be despondent. Let us never let a day pass without spending some time meditating on the triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ over His enemies and on the glory which shall be ours when we enter into His immediate presence and company, never more to be separated, never more to be oppressed. Let us then persevere unto the end. The last verse in this great chapter about the resurrection is:

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

Yes, we will have tribulation in this world; Jesus has told us so. But He also said, ‘Ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy’ (John 16:20). Our future rest is secure. Our future home is secure. ‘In thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore’ (Psalm 16:11).