The Goal of God. (I Cor. xv. 28).- (5)

by Charles H. Welch

No.5. “That God may be all in all” (I Cor. xv. 28). 

Continuing our study of I Cor. xv., we give the structure of verses 24-28: 

A | xv. 24-. The end. 

   B | a | -24-. WHEN He delivers up the kingdom. 

          b | -24. WHEN He abolishes all rule. 

            c | 25-. FOR He must reign. 

             d | -25. Till all enemies under His feet. 

 That 

             d | 26. The last enemy; death abolished. 

            c | 27-. FOR He hath put all things under His                     feet. 

          b | -27. WHEN The one exception. 

         a | 28-. WHEN The Son Himself subjected. 

A | -28. That God may be all in all. 

The goal is nothing less than that God may be all in all. 

We were warned that the words “Then cometh the end” meant sequence, ‘afterwards’, not immediacy, and now we see that there are certain things that must be accomplished before the end is reached.

The reader will discover that there is a background of war in connection with every phase of the kingdom in the Scriptures. Passing a mass of detail concerning the kingdom of Israel, we find that “an enemy” is present in the record of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven (Matt. xiii. 25, 39), the preaching of the kingdom of God was associated with authority over the power of the enemy (Luke x. 9, 19), and the translation of the Church of the One Body from the authority of darkness “into the Kingdom of His dear Son” (Col. i. 13) shows that the Mystery itself is no exception to the rule. The reign of Christ must continue until “all enemies” are completely subdued, and when this is achieved, the purpose of His reign and of His kingdom is attained. To perpetuate that aspect of kingship would be undispensational in the first degree, for it is evident from the teaching of Scripture that just as neither Priesthood, Temple, Altar or Sacrifice would ever have been introduced had there been no sin, so Kingship, Crown, Throne and Scepter would have found no place in the present creation had there been no enemy in view. The kingdom that will be delivered up at the end of the ages, will be the Mediatorial kingdom of the great King-Priest after the order of Melchisedec, Who, it should be noted, appears on the page of Scripture when Abraham was returning “from the slaughter of the kings” (Heb. vii. 1), a comment that is as inspired as the rest of the epistle, and intentionally links this King-Priest with war. Such is one aspect of the goal of the ages, the bringing in of perfect peace, by the subjugation of every man, that God may be all in all (I Cor. xv. 28).

We must remember the fact that when the kingdom is delivered up, it is delivered up by the SON to the FATHER, but the goal is not that the FATHER may be all in all, but that GOD may be. The same Scriptures that reveal that the Father is God, reveal that the Word was God, and if the monstrous translation “A God” be offered at John i. 1, it must equally be used in verses 6 and 18, and we shall then read “there was a man . . . . . sent from A God” and “No man hath seen A God at any time”, which translations of truth are enough to throw grave suspicion on any who perpetrate this evidence of ignorance. It should be remembered that while there is no definite article “the” in these three passages, neither is there the indefinite ‘a’ that is added by the translator on his own responsibility. The Son is definitely called “God” in Heb. i. 8, and was acknowledged as such by Thomas with acceptance and without rebuke, while the doxology of Rom. ix. 5, after all the attacks of the enemy, remains impregnable as a testimony to the deity of Christ, the Son. With reference to this passage Wardlaw writes, in his book The Socinian Controversy:

“This seems abundantly plain, so plain and so decisive, that if there were not another text in the Bible directly affirming this great truth, I know not how I should satisfy myself in rejecting its explicit testimony. It has accordingly been put upon the rack, to make it speak by dint of torture a different language. It might, perhaps, be enough to say, respecting this passage, that according to the order of the original words, the received translation is the most direct and natural rendering. This, so far as I know, no one has ventured to deny. All that has been affirmed is that it is capable of bearing a different sense. And this has accordingly been attempted in no fewer than five different ways:

Of whom, by natural descent Christ came. God, Who is over all, be blessed for ever.
Whose are the fathers, and of whom the Christ came, Who is above them all (viz. the fathers). God be blessed for ever.
Of Whom Christ came, Who is over all things. God be blessed for ever.
Of Whom Christ came, Who is as God, over all, blessed for ever.
Of whom the Christ came (and) whose, or of whom, is the supreme God, blessed for ever.”

In the earlier part of this same epistle to the Romans, we find a passage which is in some respects parallel with Rom. ix. 5: 

“Who worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, Who is blessed for ever. Amen” (Rom. i. 25).

It is the consistent testimony of the N.T. that all things were created “by Him and for Him”—i.e. Christ (Col. i. 16), and the ascriptions of praise in Rom. ix. 5 and in xi. 36 are both offered to the same God. In Rom. ix. 5 He is over ‘all things’ (panton) without reservation, evil as well as good. In Rom. xi. 36 out of Him, and through Him, and unto Him are “the all things” (ta panta), certain specific ‘all things’, which do not include that which is evil. This important distinction we must discuss when we reach Rom. xi. 36 in the course of our exposition. 

We joyfully acknowledge that which Israel in their blindness failed to see, that the Messiah Who came from themselves so far as the flesh was concerned, and Who, according to the Spirit, was declared to be the Son of God with power (Rom. i. 3, 4), was at the same time, “Over all, God blessed for ever”. To this the Apostle adds his solemn “Amen”. May all who read and believe, echo that “Amen” and rejoice to know that one day Israel shall look on Him Whom they pierced, the One, Who, even in the days of Isaiah, was named “The mighty God”, and shall at last say of Him: 


“Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us” (Isa. xxv. 9).

When the Son is made subject to the Father, the end is reached for which He, Who originally existed in the form of God, emptied Himself (Phil. ii. 6, 7). He emptied Himself of His glory by becoming man. He further humbled Himself by taking the form of a servant and stooped to the death of the cross. Because of this He has been exalted, and given the name which is above every name, and the goal of I Cor. xv. 28, as well as the goal of Phil. ii. 11, is that the supreme exaltation of the Son should be to the glory of God the Father. When this is achieved, the Son Who is both Creator and Redeemer ascends the throne of Deity, He re-assumes the glory that was His before the world began, and once more, as it was in the beginning, one God occupies the throne of the universe, all His Mediatorial titles Elohim, Jehovah, El Shaddai, Father, Son, Spirit, Comforter, being completely realized and fulfilled that God, such a God, the God of Creation, Providence, Purpose, Redemption, the God against Whom Satan dared to raise his hand, at last will be all in all. A great disservice has been rendered to the cause of truth by the quasi-philosophical employment of the word ‘persons’ when speaking of the Godhead. This word ‘person’ is the translation of the Greek word hypostasis, a word used three times in the epistle to the Hebrews. In chapter xi. no one could possibly translate the opening verse “Now faith is the person of things hoped for”, the word substance being derived from the Latin meaning ‘to stand under’ precisely as does the Greek hypostasis. Our acquaintance with the material world is mainly that of appearance; we do not get down to the underlying substance itself. So, in Heb. i. 3, we should read that Christ is “the Express Image of His substance”, that is, He was “God manifest”. The Latin version translated the Greek hypostasis ‘persona’, which has been misunderstood to the confusion of our conception of the Deity. The word person is derived from the Latin per=through and sono=to round, and means “A mask, especially one worn by play actors (Lloyd’s Encyclopedic Dictionary). 

“No man can long put on a person and act a part but his evil manners will peep through the corners of his white robe” (Jeremy Taylor).

If we would but keep in mind the idea of someone acting the part of some particular character and speaking the words of the part “through a mask” we should have the Scriptural symbol, as far as it can be revealed, of the One Invisible God, assuming at one time the office of Creator, at another, that of Redeemer and Comforter, without befogging the mind and virtually believing either in three Gods, or denying the Trinity of the Scriptures. In the ‘person’ of the Son, the humble God had played the part of Mediator, and when the glorious work of Mediator is accomplished, the ‘person’ i.e., the mask, will be laid aside. At the consummation “The Son” will not be all in all, “The Father” will not be all in all, but GOD will be all in all. 

All in all. Let us seek to understand this ultimate term of the ages. Two anticipatory passages should be considered as we approach this great end. One describes the peculiar honour which is placed upon the Church of the One Body, the other the peculiar position of Christ during this dispensation of the Mystery. The first passage is in Eph. i., and the fact that it follows a quotation from Psa. viii., proves that it is intentionally linked with the consummation of I Cor. xv. 

“And hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all things to the church which is His Body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph. i. 22, 23).

Christ at the moment has not been given Head over all things without restriction or limits. For that He is still ‘expecting’ till His foes be made His footstool. He has been given as Head over all things TO THE CHURCH, so that what He will be in the final and fullest sense, He is already in the more limited sense. The Church thus foreshadows the end. 


“The church . . . . . the Body . . . . . the fullness of Him.”

Here we read two titles of the Church of the present dispensation. During the period of its formation it is called “The Body”, but when every member has been called and quickened, its title changes; it will then be “the fullness of Him that filleth all in all”. Consequently the more we understand the constitution of this church, and its relation with the Head, the more we shall understand ‘the end’ or goal to which all redemptive processes move. In Col. ii. we are not taken back to Psa. viii. where all things were put under His feet, but to Adam who was created in the image of God. Inasmuch as Psa. viii. also looks back to Adam the first man, and forward to Christ as the second Man and the last Adam, the passage in Colossians falls into line with Eph. i. 22, 23. 

“And have put on the new man, which is renewed in the knowledge after the image of Him that created him: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all” (Col. iii. 10, 11).

Here the Greek reads:

Alla  ta panta  kai  en pasi  Christos 

But   the all     and  in all     Christ 

In this passage the one unifying ‘image’ sets aside the conflicting differences of Jew and Greek, bond and free; these like ‘all rule’ authority and power are set aside in the higher unity of the Spirit. Human knowledge, being exceedingly limited, cannot expect to comprehend what the first term ‘all’ in I Cor. xv. 28 can mean; we must leave the answer to the coming day of glory, but we should be able to envisage the extent and character of the second ‘all’. Does this passage teach Universalism? Does the word ‘all’ here embrace every one that has ever lived, including not only men, but angels and demons, wheat and tares, saved and lost? Yes say some, No say others; our quest therefore must be “What saith the Scriptures?”. 

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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 44, page 61).

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