The Kingdom of Grace

"For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." (John 1: 17.)

The kingdom of God developed by laws and ordinances under the Mosaic system, but by grace and truth under the system that evolves in and through Christ. Hence the Messianic principle represents in this unfolding of God's kingdom, the real elements by which the everlasting kingdom will be governed. The laws and ordinances shape the kingdom's formation or outline its regulations as a kingdom, but grace and truth indicate or manifest the ruling influence by which the ruling class, as well as the people of that kingdom, will be governed.

The word grace represents mercy, and as a characteristic of kingly rule, it means a preferred favor exercised by the executive —favor instead of stringent law. The word truth signifies the plain fact—a thing as real and plain as it naturally is; nothing added to, but instead, established principles entirely free from anything that hides or misrepresents them.

The Messianic development, called the kingdom of the heavens, which unfolds itself in and by Christ, represents grace and truth. Its evolutionary force, by which it fills out all the types set by the Mosaic system, carries out its demonstrative work by grace and truth. It invites the family of man into the favor of God through Christ, where it becomes moulded into the real kingdom of God at the closing up of the development of the kingdom of the heavens. The kingdom of the heavens is not the real kingdom of God, but is a foregoing or preparatory unfolding of it. The king­dom of the heavens, like the Mosaic kingdom, develops candidates for the real kingdom of God.

In the development of the kingdom of grace, Christ represents the Messianic principle and unfolds it in all its elementary forms until it has brought about the new creation whereby the kingdom of God shall be established forever. Hence he, like Moses, has a position similar to God in connection with the unfolding of the Messianic principle as long as he continues to unravel the plan of the Almighty. But as soon as he has completed that, and the new creation with its glorious kingdom has become an established fact, God himself will step in as the great source from which all the power and glory has sprung forth. It is this Paul has ref­erence to when he says:

"But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he 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. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. 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."

(1 Cor. 15: 23-28.)