1 Corinthians 15:28 And when all things shall be subdued to him, then shall the Son also himself be subject to him that put all things under him… That from the moment of His final triumph the Son will bow to the Father in a sense in which He does not now, must be expounded in harmony with Luke 1:33. "Of His kingdom there will be no end"; and with Revelation 11:15, "The kingdom of the world has become our Lord's and His Christ's: and He will reign for ever and ever." In this latter passage the united reign of the Father and Son is described by the remarkable words, "He will reign." Perhaps the following imperfect human comparison may help to harmonise these apparently contradictory assertions. Conceive a king who never leaves his palace, but commits all public acts of royalty to his son, who performs them in the name, and at the bidding and according to the will, of his father, whose will his son always approves. Such a son we might call a sharer of his father's throne; and, in another sense, the sole ruler of his father's realm. Conceive now that a province is in rebellion, and that, to bring it into submission, the king invests his son, for the time of the rebellion, with full royal authority. The son begins in person the war against the rebels; but before its completion he returns to the capital in which his father reigns and directs thence the war until order is completely restored. Even in the presence of his father he exercises the full regal authority given to him for the suppression of the revolt. While the rebellion lasts he seems to be an independent ruler; though really ruling only at the bidding, and to work out the will, and restore the authority of his father. But when order is restored, the son gives back to the father this delegated royalty: and even the apparent independence of the son's rule ceases. Henceforth the father reigns with undisputed sway. The difference between the special authority delegated to the Son for the suppression of the revolt and afterwards laid down and the abiding authority of the Son as the Father's representative, I cannot define. Probably it is connected with the fact that in consequence of sin the Son did what the Father never did, viz., became man and died. May it not be that in consequence of this He exercises now an authority which is specially His own, and which will continue only for a time? (Prof. Beet.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. |
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