What sort of ring does eschatology have for you? Do you dismiss it as one of those technical words that theologians use – or as part of the jargon that pastors throw around when you get too many of them together? Or does it perhaps bring to mind biblical teaching about Christ's return and your hope as a believer – teaching that you find interesting and encouraging, but which seems to have little bearing on the concerns of day-to-day living?

Such reactions, although common enough among Christians, stem from the fact that most teachers down through, the years in the church have applied the word eschatology – which literally means "talk about last things" – solely to what will happen when Jesus returns (and when we die). A further tendency has been to consider this great future in detached fashion like a spectator. In books on Christian doctrine, the chapter on eschatology is usually at the end, with little or no connection to the preceding chapters.

But such an approach, though it has served the church well, misses a vital and quite practical aspect of biblical teaching. In the Bible, especially the New Testament, eschatology is about the present as well as the more or less distant future. In fact, the gospel message itself, with its implications, is eschatology. So even if you've never heard the word before, nothing is more basic to who you are as a Christian and to making sense of your life, including its sometimes perplexing and often apparently insignificant details. Surely this is worth exploring.

Eschatology and Christ⤒🔗

The Bible teaches us to define eschatology with an eye to Christ's first, as well as his second, coming – to include what God has already done, along with what he has not yet done in Christ.

During his entire time on earth, Jesus preached "the good news of the kingdom" (Matthew 4:23). This proclamation of the kingdom of heaven/God (Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15) was not just another way of saying that God has ruled over the creation from its beginning. What Jesus announced to his hearers was startling and unprecedented: God's kingdom, which had not previously existed, was finally present; the exercise of God's lordship, which until then had only been promised and hoped for, had finally arrived.

This was so because of Jesus – who he was and what he was doing. When his disciples heard his teaching and saw his miracles, they were granted a knowledge of "the secrets of the kingdom." This knowledge was experiential (their eyes and ears were "blessed"), and in this respect they were privileged above the "many prophets and righteous men who longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it" (Matthew 13:11, 16-17). "All the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John [the Baptist]," the last in the long line to prepare the way for Jesus as the Messiah. Since then, however, "the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing" (Matthew 11:12-13). The kingdom that arrived with Jesus – and which will be fully realized when he returns – fulfills all God's promises to his covenant people. In a word, it is the eschatological kingdom.

A major concern of the New Testament writers is to explain this gospel of the kingdom and draw out its many implications. At the heart of that gospel ("of first importance") are the death and resurrection of Christ in fulfillment of Scripture (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Those events, they are concerned to show, are eschatological events.

The writer of Hebrews makes that especially clear. He begins by declaring that God has spoken in his Son "in these last days" (1:2). Specifically, Christ's death has taken place "at the end of the ages" (9:26). According to Peter, Christ appeared "in these last times" as our flawless sacrifice (1 Peter 1:19-20). And John is emphatic that opposition to Christ – the present as well as the future activity of Antichrist(s) – shows that "the last hour" is here (1 John 2:18).

We must resist the apparently persisting tendency in the church to tone down and relativize these and similar statements. They mean that God's self-revelation in Christ is final – not only because of who he is as God's Son, but also in the sense that this revelation brings history to an end and inaugurates God's new and final order for the creation.

According to Galatians 4:4, God sent his Son to be our redeemer "when the time had fully come" (see also Ephesians 1:10). Here Paul is not saying that Christ came at a particularly strategic time in history, when religious and sociopolitical conditions in the first-century Mediterranean world were just right (although that is true). Rather, he means what he says: time has been filled up, made full in an absolute sense. With Christ's coming, history has come to an end, really and truly, even though it still continues until he returns. God's eschatological kingdom, as Jesus taught, is both present and future.

This profound truth is difficult for us to grasp and is contrary to how we ordinarily look at history. The way Paul pictures Christ's resurrection helps us. In 1 Corinthians 15 he deals with our great eschatological hope as believers – the resurrection of the body. Verse 20 expresses the idea that controls much of what this magnificent chapter teaches: the resurrected Christ is "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."

First fruits are the initial part of a harvest, inseparable from the rest. Christ's resurrection, Paul Is saying, is not an isolated event in the past; it belongs to the future. It is nothing less than the beginning of the resurrection-harvest that comes at the end of history. Believers can be assured of their resurrection because the eschatological harvest has already begun. In Christ's own resurrection, the end of history has in part become actual and visible in history.

When we hear the word eschatology, then, what should first come to mind is Christ's death and resurrection.

Eschatology and the Christian Life←⤒🔗

This eschatological understanding of the gospel, not surprisingly, determines how the New Testament looks at becoming and living as a Christian.

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV modified

The translation "new creature" (K.IV, NASB) almost certainly narrows what Paul intends here. If I am united to Christ by faith, "old things" are gone for me, but it is more than just my individual past as an unbeliever that is gone; I now belong to the new and final order for creation that has arrived in Christ's death and resurrection.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.Romans 8:1

This grand truth does not exist in a vacuum. Nor is Paul saying that believers are exempted from the final judgment (Romans 2:5-16; 2 Corinthians 5:10). Rather, the verdict that properly belongs in the future, at that final judgment, has already been pronounced on the believer. Our "open acquittal" (Shorter Catechism, 38) on that final day is certain; it will simply bring to light what is already true of us. Our justification by faith is an eschatological event!

Again, what the New Testament teaches about the resurrection helps us. Jesus is emphatic ("I tell you the truth"): the one who believes has "eternal life that is, eschatological life"; he has already "crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24). Because Jesus is "the resurrection and the life," the one who believes in him "will live, even though he dies." But it is also true that he "will never die" (John 11:25-26)! Resurrection life is not only a future hope, but a present reality.

Paul's teaching in places like Romans 6:2-13, Ephesians 2:1-10, Colossians 2:12-13, and 3:1-4 is built on the truth that believers have already died, been raised, and ascended with Christ. Speaking for every believer, he says:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.Galatians 2:20

How often we memorize or recite this arresting statement, but hardly grasp what it means. Our place in the great end-time harvest of resurrection is a present as well as a future reality – already, but not yet. Look at it this way. If you are a Christian, at the core of your being (what Scripture calls your "heart" or "inner man"), you will never be more resurrected than you already are! But, you may object, that can't possibly be true! When I look in the mirror, I see someone who all too evidently is anything but resurrected, and my sinful attitudes and actions are hardly those of someone who already shares in Christ's resurrection.

On balance, Romans 6:12-13 captures the Christian life in a nutshell: we have been "brought from death to life" and yet remain "in the mortal body." The "body" here is not just the material part of me, but the total psychophysical being that I am. Not yet resurrected, the body remains the way by which temptation gains access to me and entices me to sin, for which I am fully responsible. But, by faith, there's more to me than I can see in the mirror. At the same time, and deeper than all my functioning, the power and necessity of sinning has been broken in my life:

Christ was raised from the dead … [so that] we too may live a new life (vs. 4).

Paul illumines this scenario with two metaphors that he uses for the Holy Spirit. Taken from the agricultural and commercial life of his day, they express the truly eschatological character of the present activity of the Spirit in believers. He is the "deposit" on our inheritance (Ephesians 1:14), and the "deposit" and the "firstfruits" looking forward to our bodily resurrection (2 Corinthians 5:5; Romans 8:23). In God's eschatological installment plan, the Spirit is the down payment. In the gift of the Spirit, we have a piece of the future now. The Spirit presently indwelling believers is nothing less than the power of resurrection (see Romans 8:11).

Colossians 3 captures something of the full range of the resurrection life that the Christian life is (and is to be). There, addressing those of us who have been raised with Christ, Paul commands us to "set your hearts on things above," where the resurrected and ascended Christ is (vs. 1). He then goes on to spell out what this means concretely: being done with specific sinful practices of our unbelieving past (vss. 5-11), we are to manifest the grace of God within the church in relation to other believers and in worship (vss. 12-17), in our marriages and family life (vss. 18-21), and in our jobs (3:22-4:1). Setting your mind "on things above, not on earthly things" (3:2), it turns out, is something very much "down to earth"! Here there is no monastic detachment or "religion" that is distinct from the rest of life. Being raised with Christ works itself out in time everyday, often mundane details of life's basic relationships and responsibilities.

Put another way, the overall challenge to the church is this:

Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.Romans 6:11

This reckoning has nothing to do with pick-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps "power of positive thinking," or with Crystal-Cathedral optimism and self-esteem. Rather, it means calculating and esteeming, by faith, who we are in Christ, because of his death and resurrection, and in the power of his Spirit.

So, then, I hope you will agree, eschatology is not only concerned with the future. It also has everything to do with the present and what we already are in Christ.