I pray for them: I pray not for the world; destruction at work in the world outside

 

 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. John 17:9 KJV

The world seems here to signify all mankind, for whom Christ in this place doth not pray; though some interpret it of reprobates, others of unbelievers. Christ afterward prayed for the world, Jn.17:20; that is, for such who, though they at present were unbelievers, yet should be brought to believe by the apostles’ ministry.

 But to teach us to distinguish in our prayer, our Saviour here distinguishes, and prayeth for some things for his chosen ones, which he doth not pray for on the behalf of others: these he described to be such as his Father (whose they were) had given him, either by an eternal donation, or by working faith in them. Jn.17:19 (Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1853), 368.)

John probably remembered these words of our Lord when he wrote his epistle some years later. To all believers everywhere he issued a ringing admonition: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).

 Worldliness is more an attitude than an act; it has to do not so much with what we do as why we do it. (Kenneth O. Gangel, John, vol. 4, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 318.)

For John the world and Christians are two distinct groups, Joh.14:22: The world is ruled by Satan, (Joh.12:31; 14:30; 16:11, does not know God, Joh.17:25,) cannot receive the Spirit of truth, Joh.14:17, and does evil deeds, Joh.7:7. Christ came from heaven, (Joh.3:13; 6:38), into the world, the very world he had made, and the world knew him not, Joh.1:10.

Christ is not of the world, Joh.8:23, his kingdom is not of the world, Joh.18:36, and his disciples are not of the world, (Joh.17:14, 16). The disciples are given to Christ out of the world, Joh.17:6, “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world; and the world hates them, Joh.15:19, because they do not belong to it, Joh.17:14.

 The world rejoices when they are grieved, Joh.16:20. The world cannot hate its own but it hates Christ, indeed, hated him before it hated his disciples, Joh.15:18, because he declares that its deeds are evil, Joh.7:7. (Robert L. Reymond, John, Beloved Disciple: A Survey of His Theology (Fearn, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2001), 91.)

Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. Augustine of Hippo

Elliot Ritzema, 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Early Church, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).(cf.Gen.4:17; 11:4; Ps. 127:1; Habakkuk 2:12; Rev. 21:2) 

The future has a name: Jesus of Nazareth. Like all doctrines of the faith, eschatology is an outworking of Christology. God’s final purpose with his creation is to “bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him” (Eph. 1:10 HCSB).

This means that all of reality is about a clash of kingdoms.

Both these aspects of the kingdom thus represented in our Lord’s teaching must be carefully guarded from current misconceptions. The doctrine of an eschatological kingdom must not be confounded with the ordinary Jewish expectations of the coming age.

 The latter were national, political, sensual. It was inevitable that these expectations should more or less color the understanding of what Jesus taught concerning the kingdom not merely among the people but even among His disciples. But we have no right to identify our Lord’s own ideas with such misunderstandings.

What forms the contrast of God’s kingdom in Jesus’ mind is never any political power, e.g., that of Rome, but always a superhuman power, viz., that of Satan.

 (Geerhardus Vos, Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001), 308.)

that the only ‘significance’ that Rome and Caesar had for Paul was like the ‘significance’ of the cars and the road for those who use them without asking awkward questions. Paul, on this account, had bigger fish to fry.

 He was indeed concerned to turn people away from the idols of their world, but the battles he was fighting at that level had to do with supernatural and ‘spiritual’ forces, not with the political realities which would, in any case, come and go from one culture to another.

 Today it was Rome; yesterday it might have been Babylon, Greece, Egypt or Syria; tomorrow it might be somebody else; but the gospel of Jesus was the same, and its cosmic reach and power made the petty princelings of this world about as significant as the pebbles in the road to one who drives over them on urgent, perhaps divine, business (N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4, Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 1273.)

the Noahic covenant explains why fallen humanity simultaneously exists alongside God’s people until the consummation.

 Instead of continually wiping away fallen humanity and starting over again, two kingdoms emerge until the end:

 God’s kingdom or saving reign, which is seen in his people through specific covenant relationships, as evidenced in Noah and then later in Abraham, Israel, and David; and

 the kingdom of man or of this world—identified with Satan—which stands in foolish opposition to God.

 Obviously, there is a tension between these two kingdoms, which is evidenced throughout the Old Testament and which emerges in the New Testament by the larger church-state distinction. In fact, in the New Testament, even though Christ has come and already inaugurated the future age, given the Noahic promise, an overlap of the ages continues until Christ returns and brings “this present age” to its end.

Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, Second Edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 686.

  Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire. Mt 3:10 NLT 

The Ax also may refer to the Gospel: The Word of God is an Ax to hew and square some Persons for God’s spiritual Building, and to cut down others also, as Trees that are Rotten, and bear no good Fruit, Therefore (saith the Lord) I have hewn them by the Prophets; and what follows, mark it, I have slain them by the words of my Mouth, Hos. 6:5. 

The Word of God either kills or cures; ’tis either a savior of Life unto Life, or the savior of Death unto Death, 2 Cor. 2:16.  

The Ax may refer to Men, whom God makes use of, as Instruments in his Hand, to cut down and destroy a Wicked and God-provoking People: Hence wicked Rulers and Kings, whom God raises up as Instruments in his Hand, to chastise and cut down a rebellious People, are called His Sword, and the Rod of his Wrath and Indignation, Psa. 17:14. Arise, O Lord, disappoint him, cast him down, deliver my Soul from the wicked, which is thy Sword.

 And thus the Assyrian were an Ax in God’s Hand, to use, as he pleased, and the Romans afterwards, to the Jews likewise. 

Caution. Take heed on what you build your Hopes of Justification and Salvation, what is that which bears up your Spirits: for if you are Trees that grow not out of the true root, Jesus Christ, and the Covenant of Grace; if you have not Union with the Lord Jesus, or are not built on that Foundation, or Corner-stone God hath laid in Sion, down you fall; for now the ax is laid to the Root of the Trees.

Enquiry. Is not Morality a civil and honest Life, Doing to all as you would be done unto, the Ground or Foundation of your Hopes? Do you build upon this? if it be so, tremble: remember Christ saith, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Joh. 3:3.

Benjamin Keach, “Sermon I,” in The Ax Laid to the Root, Parts I & II, vol. 1 (London: John Harris, 1693), 7-9.

 The rule Adam once had over Eden, a husbandry that was to extend to the ends of the earth, is now overtaken because Adam’s heirs do not image God but another ruler, Satan.

 Humans may pretend to be autonomous, but they live and move as subjects in a kingdom—either the kingdom of the god of this age or the kingdom of the Christ of God. 

The expressions civitas (city) and regnum (kingdom) can be interchanged, but it is always the conflict between Jerusalem and Babylon, between Cain and Abel, good and evil, God and the devil which is meant when he speaks of the two kingdoms. (Cf. now also H. A. Oberman, Luther. Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel (Berlin, 1982), who gives strong emphasis to the apocalyptic structure of Luther’s theology.) 

Just as this conflict between the two kingdoms dominates world history, it also dominates the personal life of the Christian as the continual conflict of the spirit against the flesh, justice against sin, life against death, faith against unfaith.

 This struggle of faith which leads to mortification of oneself and vivification in the spirit will find its end only when the power of sin is conquered in the resurrection of the body and death is swallowed up in the victory of life.

At this point the doctrine of the two kingdoms begins to become ambivalent: In the “fall” the world raised itself in rebellion against God, but it is still God’s creation. The devil has become “lord of this world,” but the world is still the creation of God.

 As a result, the world finds itself in self-contradiction: It is godless, but God in his faithfulness will not let it go. By removing itself from its origin in God, it has fallen into destruction out of its own guilt. That it still remains, however, shows that God patiently and gracefully preserves it in spite of its turning away.

 Equally, every human being is also a creature and a sinner at the same time and is both of them totally.

Jürgen Moltmann, On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics, trans. M. Douglas Meeks (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 64,66.

To get the full import of Obadiah, it is important to remember that what he says specifically about Edom applies generally to all those hostile to God and His kingdom. Historic Edom is divinely intended to represent the kingdoms of this world, regardless of place or time.  

To separate the gift from the Giver is always tragically dangerous. It is typical for those who are ignorant of the Lord to take credit for themselves and convince themselves that they are indomitable.

 All too often the powers of government, all of which God has ordained (Rom. 13:1), are blind to the source of their commission and operate independently of the Lord—or so they assume. They brashly ask in echo of Edom, “Who shall bring me down to the ground?” (Obadiah 3).

It is the inviolable law of God that “pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16:18).

 All too often God’s people are intimidated and paralyzed by the grandiose bravado of those hostile to God’s kingdom and destined to fall. Rather, they should be confident and remember that God will right all wrongs and “the upright shall have dominion” in due time (Psa. 49:14 KJV).

What Obadiah declares with the frequentative verb the psalmist expresses with the timeless verbless clause in Psa.22:28: “the kingdom is the LORD’s.”

 This is our assurance that even when the kingdoms of the world appear to operate on their own, they are all within the borders of God’s sovereign control. The whole of the universe is His domain.

Significantly, in Christ this escape from the world is not just an eschatological hope.

 Its experience is for now since Christ has overcome the world (John 16:33) and has given us the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith (1 John 5:4). 

 (Michael P. V. Barrett, “The Message of Obadiah: It’s Going to Be Okay,” Puritan Reformed Journal 5, no. 2 (2013): 17,20,21.)

The message of Christian eschatology is that the tumult of this present warfare between the people of Christ and the principalities and powers is not eternal. Armageddon has been on the horizon since Eden. And, in the end, “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev 11:15 KJV). (Russell D. Moore, “Personal and Cosmic Eschatology,” in A Theology for the Church (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2014), 697.)

If we suffer the Holy Spirit to unfold that word to us, we shall understand what it is to be in the world as He was in the world. That “EVEN AS” (John 17:16) has its root and strength in a life union. In it we shall discover the divine secret, that the more entirely one is not of the world, the more fit he is to be in the world.

 The freer the Church is of the spirit and principles of the world; the more influence she will exert in it. (Heritage of Great Evangelical Teaching: Featuring the Best of Martin Luther, John Wesley, Dwight L. Moody, C.H. Spurgeon and Others. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997).)

‘I am the LORD who sanctifies you’ (Lev. 20:8, 22:32 NASB)

The entire mission of Jesus in the world has in reality been the mission of the Father in and through him, the Sender in the Sent. The mission of the disciples, sent into the world by the Son, is likewise not theirs but his through them.

 The mission of the church is nothing other than the continuation of the mission of its Lord. Equally, however, the demand will be real. Being sent meant for Jesus his utter dedication to the claim and call of the Father. The disciples’ commission can mean nothing less. Thus, Jesus’ prayer is, finally, Sanctify them by the truth.

Now the word “holy” is used first of all with reference to an array of persons and things that have been set apart from general use and placed in a special relation to God and his service

In all these instances the term “holy” does not yet refer to an internal moral quality but only indicates that the person or objects so described have been consecrated to the Lord, have been placed in a special relation to his service, and are therefore set apart from the common domain

By itself the entire world is חֹל, profane, not in communion with God, and unfit for his service, and even that which is pure is as such not yet holy. Nor can these persons and things sanctify themselves and assume for themselves that special relation to God that is conveyed by the word “holy.” Sanctification proceeds from God alone (Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 218.) 

‘Sanctify’, like ‘holy’, comes from a Hebrew root meaning ‘separate’. Earlier, Jesus had prayed to him who is the ‘holy Father’. It is the Father’s holiness which is the basis of the Son’s mission. That holiness, in its separation from sin and its dedication to the way of righteousness, Jesus now desires in the disciples. The mission is one of light confronting darkness. Its instruments hence must be the sons of light who do not walk in darkness (Jn.8:12). They are to be ‘set apart for the gospel of God’ (Rom. 1:1).

The means of their sanctification, no less than the means of their protection, is the Word of God

 (Jn.17:17). Jesus has conveyed that Word to them. He himself is the incarnate Word of God (Jn.1:14). He will send his Spirit to enable the further expression of that Word in them and others. The reality which will make their consecration effective is, however, the consecration of Jesus himself. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified (Jn.17:19).

 Thus the work of Christ, which will be ‘finished’ in its atoning virtue in the moment of his death, will be ‘finished’ in a further sense only when the mission of the disciples is fulfilled. ‘He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again’ (2 Cor. 5:15).

 Living no longer for themselves means, among other things, living as those available for the service of the gospel. To be a disciple is to be a missionary. (Bruce Milne, The Message of John: Here Is Your King!: With Study Guide, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 246–247.) 

They are to do good to all men—to the poor, the afflicted, the needy, the widow, the fatherless. They are to endeavor so to live and act—so to converse, and so to form their plans as to promote the salvation of all others.

 They are to seek their spiritual welfare; and to endeavor by example, and by conversation; by exhortation and by all the means in their power to bring them to the knowledge of Christ. For this purpose they are kept on the earth instead of being removed to heaven; and to this object they should devote their lives.(Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament: I Corinthians, ed. Robert Frew (London: Blackie & Son, 1884–1885), 94–95.)

Perhaps John Calvin is right that all three terms point to the same reality of the believer’s salvation. Washed speaks not primarily of baptism but of the deep spiritual cleansing from sin’s defilement and guilt that the person of faith experiences when she is brought into Christ (Eph. 5:26–27; Tit. 3:5; Rev. 1:5; 7:14).

 Sanctified refers to the act of God’s Holy Spirit setting believers apart (making them holy) from the world and the devil by uniting them to the body of Christ as God’s own possession, to be used exclusively for his service and worship and thus to reflect his holy and moral character (1 Cor. 1:2, 30; 1 Thess. 4:3–4, 7).

 Justified expresses Paul’s understanding as developed in Galatians and later in Romans: God’s act of forgiving, accepting as righteous in advance of the final day of judgment, and empowering with the Holy Spirit on the basis of Christ’s death all sinners who believe the proclamation of the gospel (Rom. 4:1–8). 

Three terms overlap in meaning, yet each has a focus that complements the others’. The gift character of God’s forgiveness and new status before him should go a long way to correcting the wrong views of earthly status among the Corinthians.(Alan F. Johnson, 1 Corinthians, vol. 7, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 2004), 97–98.)

The kingdom of heaven came not in order to redeem all institutions and spheres of life in this present world, but to redeem sinners and to gather them into an ecclesial community, until the day when the civil institutions of this age are brought to a sudden end. 

In Matthew Jesus announced a kingdom way of life strikingly different from the state’s task of enforcing retributive justice, yet did not question the ongoing existence of civil authority and believers’ participation in its work.

 Had Jesus intended the state to be transformed by the ethic of the kingdom of heaven, the state would presumably have to give up its work of coercive enforcement of retributive justice, for Matt 5:38–42 proclaims that this has no place in his kingdom. Yet in Matthew Jesus himself indicates that the state has continuing authority to pursue this work, a point that Paul makes explicitly (e.g., Rom 13:1–7).

David VanDrunen, “Bearing Sword in the State, Turning Cheek in the Church: A Reformed Two-Kingdoms Interpretation of Matthew 5:38–42,” Themelios 34, no. 3 (2009): 333.

Surprisingly, there is a general tendency for scholars who interpret Calvin’s concept of the two kingdoms and political thought to relate it exclusively to natural law, overlooking the importance of the distinction between common grace and saving grace. (Westminster Theological Journal 72 (2010) 

  Now it is true that the usage of the sword in particular must not be entrusted to just anyone for resisting evil. For the arms of Christians are prayer and gentleness in order to pass their days in patience and conquer evil by doing good, in accordance with the teaching of the gospel (Luke 21:19; Rom. 12:21). Thus the duty of each of us is to suffer patiently when someone offends us rather than to use force and violence.

  But to condemn the public sword which God ordained for our protection is a blasphemy against God Himself. The Spirit of God Himself proclaims through Saint Paul (Rom. 13:4) that the magistrate is a minister of God for our benefit and on our behalf, for the purpose of restraining and preventing the violence of the wicked. And for that reason the sword is placed in his hands in order to punish crimes. (Calvin, Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Against the Libertines, 72.) 

Jeong Koo Jeon, “Calvin and the Two Kingdoms: Calvin’s Political Philosophy in Light of Contemporary Discussion,” Westminster Theological Journal 72, no. 2 (2010): 308.

We always give thanks to God for all of you as we make mention of you in our prayers, because we constantly remember before God our Father your work produced by faith, your labor produced by love, and your patient endurance produced by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. knowing your election, brothers loved by God.

 For when we brought you the Good News, it was not only with words but also with power, for the Holy Spirit gave you full assurance that what we said was true 1 Th. 1:2–5

This description that Scripture gives of the power of the church points not only to its unquestionable existence but also to its complete independence from and uniqueness in comparison with all other powers in the world. There are all kinds of power and authority on earth: in the family, society, the state, art, science, and so forth.

 But the power of the church is essentially distinct and completely independent from all of these. For all this other power comes from God as the creator of heaven and earth (Rom. 13:1), but this ecclesiastical power comes directly from God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:11; Acts 20:28) and is therefore completely free and independent from all other earthly powers.

But when the power of the church is called spiritual, that signifies that it has been given by the Holy Spirit of God (Acts 20:28) and can only be exercised in the name of Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit (John 20:22–23; 1 Cor. 5:4); only applies to humans as believers (1 Cor. 5:12); works and can only work in a spiritual and moral manner, not with coercion and penalties in money, goods, or life, but by conviction, faith, good will, freedom, and love, and hence only with spiritual weapons (2 Cor. 10:4; Mark 16:16; John 8:32; 2 Cor. 3:17; Eph. 6:7; and so forth).

 Finally, this power also has its own purpose. Even though for unbelievers it makes their judgment all the heavier, it is meant for salvation, for building up, not for destruction, for the perfection of the saints and the upbuilding of the body of Christ (Matt. 10:13; Mark 16:16; Luke 2:34; 2 Cor. 2:16; 10:4, 8; 13:10; Eph. 4:12; 6:11–18; and so forth).

As a result of all this, ecclesiastical power differs in kind from all political power. Even under the Old Testament, state and church, though closely connected, were not identical. Christ much more clearly defined the difference, however, between his kingdom and the kingdoms of the world (Matt. 22:21; John 18:36). He himself refused all earthly power (Luke 12:13–14; John 6:15) and prohibited his disciples from undertaking anything that smacked of worldly rule (Matt. 20:25–26; 1 Pet. 5:3).

They differ in the means employed, for the church only has spiritual weapons, but the government bears the sword, has power over life and death, and may exact obedience by coercion and violence.

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 414,415.

Christians are citizens of two kingdoms. They are members of Christ’s church, the kingdom of grace. They are also citizens of the state, the kingdom of power. Each kingdom has its own head, mission, and God-ordained means of operation. We begin by looking at the Christians’ citizenship in the church.

The head of the church is Christ. Paul wrote, “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Eph. 1:22, 23). The mission of the church is to make disciples of all nations. Jesus said, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19).

 The means by which the church is to carry out this mission is the gospel in Word and sacraments. Jesus commissioned his church to make disciples of all nations by “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19, 20).

 The gospel is the tool God uses to change hearts, give salvation, and preserve faith. It is the means by which the church is to carry out its mission (Rom. 1:16). The church also preaches the law of God, but this is done in the interest of preparing the way for the preaching of the gospel.(Lyle W. Lange, God So Loved the World: A Study of Christian Doctrine (Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Publishing House, 2005), 643.) 

The spiritual government is that by which Christ rules inwardly in the conscience by his Word and Spirit, the realm of grace; the temporal government (weltliche Regimente) is that by which Christ governs all external human affairs by law, in which he works not directly and immediately, but through the larvae, “masks,” of earthly governors and institutions. Only the elect experience the former; the latter they share in common with the unregenerate. (W. Bradford Littlejohn, The Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed (The Davenant Trust, 2017), 15.)

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people; I did not at all mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the greedy and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to leave the world.

 But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person, or a greedy person, or an idolater, or is verbally abusive, or habitually drunk, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a person. For what business of mine is it to judge outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. 1 Cor. 5:9–13 NASB.2020 cf. (Rom. 13:3, 4)

The punishments that the church applies in this connection are purely spiritual. They do not and may not consist in fines, corporal punishment, branding, torture, imprisonment, deprivation of honor, banishment, the death penalty, and so forth, as Rome claims; nor in the dissolution of family, civil, and political connections, as the Anabaptists taught; nor in the exclusion from the public worship services, a remedy applied by the Christian church in the early years.

 For the weapons of the church are not worldly but spiritual and therefore powerful before God (2 Cor. 10:4). (Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 426.) 

For what business is it of mine to judge those who are outside (the church)? The statement as it stands is clear enough, and is consistent with Paul’s explanation that he does not require the church to isolate itself from non-Christians of bad character.

 Rather, judgement is God’s prerogative, and when men undertake to sit in judgement on their neighbors they are prone to fall into their neighbors' sins (cf. Rom. 2:1; 14:4, 10, 13). Difficulty arises when this verse is compared with 1 Cor. 6:2. There however the reference is to judgement at the time of the end; here Paul is dealing not with final judgement but with discipline, which by definition is limited to the community.

What then of the outsiders? Those who are outside (such as, apparently, the woman of verse 1 Cor.5:1, who is not judged in this chapter) God will judge, presumably, that is, at the last day, whose verdict is not to be anticipated by men, and may indeed bring to the orthodox Christian a number of surprises (1 Cor.9:27; 10:12; Matt. 7:22 f.). This is why no Christian, not even an apostle, has the right to judge those who stand outside the organized framework of the church. 

The verb translated will judge could be taken as a present tense, judges; the only difference between the two tenses (in the third person singular) lies in the accents, and these are not used in the oldest New Testament MSS. (κρινεῖ, future; κρίνει, present; the same problem occurs at Rom. 3:6).

 It is possible to decide between the tenses only on the basis of the general sense of the passage. It makes good sense, and is true, to say that God judges the world here and now (‘The verb is certainly to be accented as a present: it states the normal attribute of God’—Robertson-Plummer), but it makes perhaps better, and more Pauline (cf. Rom. 2:5; cf. Acts 17:31), sense to say that he will judge it hereafter.(C. K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Black’s New Testament Commentary (London: Continuum, 1968), 132,133.)

Them that are without God judges. The Greek present tense of this verb fits well with Paul’s thought in Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is being revealed (presently) from heaven against all ungodliness.” There is a vitally important truth to be observed here. It is true, as the Apostle John said, that “the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 Jn. 5:19).

They are “free from righteousness” (Rom.6:20), not that they have no moral obligation to obey God, but that righteousness has no effective influence in ruling their lives. Even the effect of God’s law is only to provoke them to more sin (Rom. 7:5, 7–13). God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. Rom.5:20; For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. 1 Co 15:56.NLT

Looking back on the law-covenant, the New Testament apostles reveal that it functions to intensify sin and prepare God’s people for his righteousness to come apart from the law, in a man “from heaven” (Rom. 3:21; 5:20–21; 7:13; 1 Cor. 15:47–49; Gal. 4:4).(Stephen J. Wellum, God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ, ed. John S. Feinberg, Foundations of Evangelical Theology Series (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 139–140.)

John Murray commented, “To be ‘under sin’ is to be under the dominion of sin.” Believers may rejoice to hear that “sin shall not have dominion over you,” but those outside of Christ have no such freedom (Rom. 6:14, 17). Sin is their lord and master. But it will not do to simply curse the darkness.

 It is the task of the believer to proclaim the positive truth of the gospel. The saints are obligated to be faithful stewards; as for the world, God will take care of it. 

(Edward E. Hindson and Woodrow Michael Kroll, eds., KJV Bible Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 2293.)

Paul’s understanding of the church belongs to this scriptural tradition. “No man is an island,” as the poet John Donne perceived; all in Christ’s church are bound together closely, responsible for one another, and profoundly affected by one another’s actions.

 Paul pictures this reality by using the proverbial image (cf. Gal. 5:9; Mark 8:15; Matt. 16:6, 11–12; Luke 12:1) of the corrupting influence of leaven: “Do you not know that a little leaven [not ‘yeast,’ as in NRSV and NIV] leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump” (1 Cor.5:6–7). 

The image provides an explanation for Paul’s directive of expulsion: Allowing the offender to remain in the church will contaminate the whole community, which is conceived as a single lump of dough. When Paul says to clean out the old leaven, he is not telling the individuals at Corinth to clean up their individual lives; rather, he is repeating in symbolic language the instruction of verses 1 Cor. 5:2–5 to purify the community by expelling the offender.

This symbolic language is drawn from the heart of Israel’s story, the celebration of the Passover commemorating the Israelites’ liberation from bondage in the land of Egypt. Paul assumes not only that his Corinthian readers will understand this symbolism but also that they will identify metaphorically with Israel.

 Christ, as the Passover lamb, has already been sacrificed (cf. Exod. 12:3–7), so the time is at hand for the Corinthians to carry out the other major part of the festival, searching out and removing all “leaven” (symbolizing the wrongdoer) from their household (Exod. 12:15). 

It is important to be clear about the function of the Passover lamb. This is not a sacrifice to atone for sin; rather, it symbolizes the setting apart of Israel as a distinct people delivered from slavery by God’s power. “And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this observance?’ you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses’ ” (Exod. 12:26–27).

 The blood of the lamb on the doorposts of the houses marks Israel out as a distinct people under God’s protection, spared from the power of destruction at work in the world outside.

 In the same way, Paul’s metaphor suggests, the blood of Christ marks the Corinthians as a distinct people.(Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1997), 83.)

But the true sense of the Hebrew substantive is plainly indicated in Exod. 12:27; and the best authorities are agreed that פָּסַח  never expresses “passing through,” but that its primary meaning is “leaping over.” Hence the verb is regularly used with the preposition over עַל.

 But since, when we jump or step over anything, we do not tread upon it, the word has a secondary meaning “to spare,” or “to show mercy” (comp. Isa. 31:5 with Exod. 12:27). The Sept. has therefore used σκεπάζειν-And I will observe the blood, and I will shelter you,... in Exod. 12:13; and Onkelos has rendered זֶבַח־פֶּסַח, “the sacrifice of the Passover,” by דְּבַח חֲיָס, “the sacrifice of mercy.” (John M’Clintock and James Strong, “Passover,” Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1894), 734.)

Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ Mt 9:13
For I desire mercy and not sacrifice,
And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. Hos. 6:6 NKJV

Although the older Protestants opposed the idea that the Passover was a sacrificial festival, the expression “the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover” (Ex. 12:27), as well as many other passages, place it in the category of sacrificial repasts-feast. Indeed, in Num. 9:7, it is expressly termed an offering to God. The sacrificial element is negligible in Egypt, probably because of the absence of priests and altars.

 Later the blood was poured upon the altar and the fat was burned (Ex. 23:18, 34:25). Essentially the Passover does not belong to the expiatory sacrifices but rather to that unique kind centering in the meal-time and representing communion of God and man. In form it is a household and family offering.

Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (New York; London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1908–1914), 370.

And so the Paschal lamb becomes a type of Christ, and the Paschal meal of the Christian Eucharist. Christ was the true Paschal Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7), who gathered up into Himself, and realized in a higher, more spiritual sense, the associations of redemption and deliverance—no longer, however, from the bondage of Egypt, but from the thralldom of sin—of which the Passover, for so many centuries, had been the expression.

 And in the Eucharistic feast, not only is the sense of unity between Christians forcibly expressed (1 Cor. 10:17), but in it the faithful believer partakes of the Body and Blood of the true Paschal Lamb, he enters anew into vital union with God, he appropriates to himself the atoning efficacy of Christ’s blood, shed for him and for all mankind, and he nourishes his spiritual life with Divine grace and strength.

S. R. Driver, The Book of Exodus in the Revised Version with Introduction and Notes, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 412.

By faith Moses kept the first Passover (Heb. 11:28) and the firstborn of Israel were preserved from death

Eugene E. Carpenter and Philip W. Comfort, Holman Treasury of Key Bible Words: 200 Greek and 200 Hebrew Words Defined and Explained (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 134.

The blood shall be for a token or sign to you upon [the doorposts of] the houses where you are, [that] when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. [I Cor. 5:7; Heb. 11:28.] Ex 12:13  The Amplified Bible (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1987)

A sign for you may seem strange, for it was to be a distinguishing mark for Yahweh to see. Ex.12:13 TEV omits for you (as do NAB, JB), but REB uses it to begin the verse: “As for you, the blood will be a sign.” Durham interprets this to mean “for your benefit” and translates “The blood is to be for your protection.” (Noel D. Osborn and Howard A. Hatton, A Handbook on Exodus, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1999), 278.) 

It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the animal outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones. Ex 12:46

The sacrifice of the animal atones for the sin of the people, the blood sprinkled on the doorframes purifies those within, and the eating of the sacrificial meat sanctifies those who consume it. By participating in the Passover ritual the people consecrate themselves as a nation holy to God (cf. Ex 19:6; Deut 14:21; 26:19; 1 Pet 2:5; Rev 1:6; 5:10 ) Leland Ryken et al., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 629.

Christians will take an interest in what government is doing. We strike a balance between becoming too comfortable with the ways of the world, as Lot did (Ge 19:1), and becoming isolationists who withdraw from the world (cf. the movement of monasticism).

 We are in the world but not of the world (cf. Jn. 17:14, 16). Jeremiah told the exiles in Babylon to take an interest in the affairs of their land of captivity. He wrote, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jer. 29:7).(Lyle W. Lange, God So Loved the World: A Study of Christian Doctrine (Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Publishing House, 2005), 652.) 

On the other hand, the warnings of judgment can escalate until they result in a different kind of narrative, where pagan empire reaches its arrogant height and is finally overthrown by the one true God in an act of judgment which will, ipso facto-automatically, bring his own people not only into freedom at last after their exile, but into their own long-promised world sovereignty. 

This results in a very different message from the command to settle down and seek the welfare of Babylon. Instead, in a diverse range of texts, the people are commanded to leave Babylon in a hurry and to avoid contracting uncleanness as they do so (Isa. 48:20; 52:11; cf. Zech. 2:6–13; Rev. 18:4.)  N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4, Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 1274–1275. 

The covenant does not simply function to bind the people of Israel to their God, but it also marks the liberation of the people from subservience to a worldly power, namely, Egypt. In this context the significance of the treaty pattern emerges, for the form that symbolizes worldly vassal-dom is transposed to another context, that of Israel’s relationship to God. Like the other small nations that surrounded her, Israel was to be a vassal state, but not to Egypt or the Hittites; she owed her allegiance to God alone. (Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), 28.)

 What agreement does Christ have with Beliar-the devil; Satan? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? 

For we are the temple of the living God, as God said, “I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 

 Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, (Isa 52:11; Rev 18:4) and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”(Isa 43:6; Hos 1:10) 2 Cor. 6:15–18

Babylon the great/the great city is the highest achievement of humanity, but it must fall as the city of God descends.  for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfillment of all that is written.  Lk 21:22 ; Ex. 9:13–14; Jeremiah 51:6

Come out of her, my people,
so that you do not take part in her sins
and so that you do not share in her plagues, Rev. 18:4. 

“Fallen, fallen Babylon the great” (Rev.18:2) is the leading announcement of the entire passage, and it restates Isa. 21:9, originally an announcement of Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon. Those who remain in the city, who were not slaughtered in the great harvest, are commanded to leave (Rev.18:4), repeating a command of Jeremiah to the exiles. Both Jeremiah and the heavenly voice of Revelation. 18 buttress their exhortation with warnings about the coming of the Lord’s recompense, using the image of a cup of wrath:

Flee from the midst of Babylon,
And each of you save his life
Do not be destroyed in her punishment
For this is Yahweh’s time of vengeance;
He is going to render recompense to her.
Babylon has been a golden cup in the hand of Yahweh
Intoxicating all the earth
The nations have drunk of her wine;
Therefore the nations are going mad. (Jer. 51:6–7; cf. 51:45

Babylon the harlot evokes not only neo-Babylon but the original Babel, left unfinished on the plains of Shinar. She is Sodom, also Egypt, also Tyre the great city of trade (see below). As the “great city,” she is Nineveh, described as “the great city” four times in Jonah, a phrase used virtually nowhere else in the prophets (Jon. 1:2, 3:1, 3; 4:11; cf. Jer. 22:8)

 All this fits neatly with biblical accounts of the fall of Gentile cities, yet I have argued throughout this commentary that the setting of the Apocalypse is pre- AD 70 and that 

the focal point of John’s visions is the end of the old covenant order, most dramatically and visibly evident in the fall of Jerusalem to Roman armies led by Vespasian and Titus.

 In fact, the strongest evidence for this identification of the great city is in chapter Rev. 18, the discovery in Babylon of “the blood of the prophets and saints and of all who have been slain on the land” (Rev.18:24). That is closely parallel to Jesus’s statement about Jerusalem in Matt. 23:34–35:

 “upon you may fall all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.”

 Jerusalem is the city that has killed prophets, and will continue to kill them until the cup of martyr blood is filled to overflowing (Matt. 23:32; 1 Thess. 2:16). If Revelation. 18 alludes to Jesus’ prediction, it seems likely that it refers to the same city.

 In how many different cities, after all, can we find the blood of all who have been slain? Jesus’s statement in Matthew. 23 makes it clear that Jerusalem is charged with all the blood of the righteous; Jerusalem, not Rome, is unmasked as the apocalyptic city of man. cf. (Dt. 32:35. Isa. 34:8. 63:4. Jer. 5:29. Hos. 9:7.)

 Christ will forever separate the two “cities” within mankind, glorifying the city of God (Rev. 21), the heavenly Jerusalem, and ruining the city of man, the demonic and worldly Babylon (Rev.18:1–8). The world acts as a spiritual prostitute in its idolatrous, violent, and perverse self-exaltation (Rev.17:1–6).

 However, Christ redeemed a people for himself by his blood (Rev.5:9), and their eschatological hope is to be the spiritual “wife” of Christ in a marriage of supernatural fellowship (Rev.19:7–9; 21:2, 9). Christ will fulfill his covenants with Abraham (Rev.21:3), Israel ( Rev. 21: 12), and David ( Rev. 21: 7, 22; 22:5) in the one, holy, glorified church.(Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Church and Last Things, vol. 4, Reformed Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 720–721.)

But the parallels are numerous and compelling. Revelation. 18 speaks of the blood of the prophets, as does Matt. 23:34 (ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἀποστέλλω πρὸς ὑμᾶς προφήτας). Revelation speaks of blood being found in a city, and Matthew. 23 is a prophecy about Jerusalem. Both passages speak of the blood of “all” being charged to a particular city.

 That Matthew speaks of blood being “charged” and Revelation of blood being “found” makes sense given the different times: Jesus speaks prophetically about coming events, the accounting of blood to the city that we have already seen in Revelation. 16; Revelation. 18 speaks of the uncovering of the city’s bloodthirstiness after the city has fallen. The blood of the witnesses is part of a legal process, a charge and a discovery that leads to a sentence.

No other city within the biblical frame of reference qualifies. Rome piled up the corpses of Christian martyrs for several centuries, and there have been thousands of thousands of modern martyrs. The temporal frame of Revelation, however, precludes the possibility that it is talking directly about martyrs from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, or even the third.

 Seleucids slaughtered Jews, Jews sometimes slaughtered other Jews, but, according to Jesus, only Jerusalem has shed blood of all prophets and wise men. When Jonah goes to the great city Nineveh, the Ninevites listened and repented. Jeremiah has no such luck, nor did Jesus. “A prophet is accepted except in his own country.” 

Revelation was written, by virtually any account, in the first century, and at that time Jerusalem is the only city that, for an early Christian who knows the Olivet Discourse, remotely fits the description of Rev. 18:23. 

The only alternative is to suggest that Babylon is not a specific city at all, but a generic city of rebellion, perhaps represented in the first century by Rome but not limited to Rome. We have seen that this option raises more problems than it solves.

 If Babylon is the city of man, when did it fall? If the fall of Babylon is still future for us, then what are we to make of John’s insistence that the things he sees “must shortly take place”? ( Rev. 1:1; 22:10,12,20)

 When we take seriously (a) the temporal frame of the book and (b) the prophecy of the city’s destruction, then the only consistent reading is that Babylon is Jerusalem.

Identifying the city as Jerusalem significantly affects the political economy of chapter 18. Commentators make much of the condemnation of consumerist trafficking lamented by the kings and merchants of the land, and by the shippers and sailors of the sea. The text can be deployed in a powerful critique of Mammon worship and the liturgies of consumption that support it.

Commenting on the list of goods in Rev.18:9–19, Mangina (2010: 208–209) writes,

  The list exposes the way in which human beings, made in the image of God, are treated as mere commodities, convertible in principle with other goods. From the merchants’ perspective, human souls or lives (the word psyche means both) are no different in kind from silk, spices, or sheep, since the value of all these things is determined by the price they can command in the great marketplaces of Ephesus, Smyrna, or Rome itself.

There is a Mammonite ontology at work:

 “Nothing ‘is’ what it is (i.e., as created and established by God). It ‘is’ only insofar as it can be traded for other things or exchanged, even more abstractly, for money. Each thing is worth nothing more nor less than what the market will bear.” 

This is objectifying, but Mangina brilliantly observes that this objectification of human lives is rooted in a more fundamental subjectification: “the market is, after all, a marketplace of fantasy and wishes, a field of dreams for those who have the resources to play.”

 He takes note of the phrase “the fruit of the longing of your soul,” and connects it with the Augustinian insight that human beings are “constituted by desire.” For John as for Augustine, not only human beings but human communities are constituted by inordinate desire for things.

If the city is Jerusalem rather than Rome, however, these critiques are less tightly tethered to the text. We might attempt a historical reconstruction demonstrating that Jerusalem is a large-scale trader in the eastern Mediterranean.  Alternatively, we might venture the proposal that Revelation. 18 is fundamentally about a different sort of commerce, the temple commerce Jesus himself condemns (cf. Jn. 2:13–22), which is both liturgical and “economic.” 

 Babylon is Sodom, so the righteous make like Lot and leave (Oecumenius 2011: 77). Commentators commonly take the exhortation “Come out!” metaphorically, as a reference to flight from worldliness or pagan culture that does not involve any spatial or geographic movement (Cyprian in Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 191; Boxall 2006: 257; Reddish 2001: 341).  

 On the interpretation offered in this commentary, the exhortation to leave is quite literal, repeating Jesus’s warning to flee the city when the abomination of desolation comes into view (Matt. 24:15–16). The harlot is the queen of abominations, and her greatest abomination is consumption of holy martyr blood. When she intensifies the slaughter of the saints, the city is doomed and it is time for the faithful to leave.

For Christians in Asia, especially Jewish Christians, it is an exhortation to leave the doomed synagogues to enter a new city, new Jerusalem, the church, which is a new place, even if it is not merely a place.

Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, vol. 2, The International Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), 209-218.

In the midst of modern conveniences and sophisticated technology, the church finds it more and more difficult to live in the world without being of the world. We find it increasingly tricky to escape the snares of the evil one and the enchanting attractions of our own flesh and the world around us. Calvin once put it this way:

 “As the wantonness of our flesh ever itches to dare more than God commands, let us learn that our zeal will turn out badly whenever we dare to undertake anything beyond God’s Word.”

If the church interferes with the state’s business, what will happen? The role God gave the governing authorities will be usurped by the church. We see in the Roman Catholic Church the claim that the papacy holds two swords, one over the church and one over the state.

 If the church interferes in the state’s work, the church will lose sight of its own mission and become more concerned about temporal matters. Finally, the church will attempt to use the state to carry out its work. It will lose sight of the gospel and try to legislate or force people to be moral.

 You cannot change hearts by legislation. We find in Reformed theology that often the church has attempted to use the state to carry out its work. Only the gospel can change hearts.

(Lyle W. Lange, God So Loved the World: A Study of Christian Doctrine (Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Publishing House, 2005), 646.)

The spiritual kingdom of the church is totally different in its politics from the world and a wedge must be driven between the two.

 Even though the two kingdoms are under the authority of Christ, the rules governing them are different.(Paul Wells, “Reformational Thought and the Social Covenant,” Themelios 31, no. 3 (2006): 34–35.) 

Observe Luther’s own words about the two kingdoms in his 1525 Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants, “There are two kingdoms, one the kingdom of God, the other the kingdom of the world.… God’s kingdom is a kingdom of grace and mercy … but the kingdom of the world is a kingdom of wrath and severity.… 

Now he who would confuse these two kingdoms—as our false fanatics do—would put wrath into God’s kingdom and mercy into the world’s kingdom; and that is the same as putting the devil in heaven and God in hell.” 

(David W. Jones, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, B&H Studies in Christian Ethics (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2013).)

“One of the responsibilities of government is to hold at bay the totally depraved multitude.”

said Bill Leonard, a church historian at Wake Forest University. “Total depravity and a response to the principalities of this world are closely related in his theology,” (Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “Moore on the Margins,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today International, 2015), 36.)

Martin Luther was one of the inheritors of this radical questioning. Fundamental to his view of God’s governance of the world was the distinction between the two kingdoms, to which he returned repeatedly. Luther thought that it was an error to mix the two, a situation inherited from Constantine, in which the church sought to dominate the world and the world tried to govern the church.

 ‘The devil, he said, never stops cooking and brewing these two kingdoms into each other.’

“Man is under a twofold government … the kind that resides in the soul or inner man and pertains to eternal life … [and] the other kind, which pertains only to the establishment of civil justice and outward morality.” We must not “unwisely mingle these two, which have a completely different nature.”

 However, Calvin said, “they are not at variance,” for each has “its appointed end” from God.(Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Church and Last Things, vol. 4, Reformed Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 380.)

The civil government is not to judge inward beliefs or affections, but “works,” whether good or evil (Rom. 13:3).

Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Man and Christ, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 460.

However, it is precisely here that the kingship of Christians exhibits its otherworldly focus. Christians serve Christ in this world but do not seek this world; instead, they seek “treasures in heaven” in “the kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:19–20, 33). Their inheritance is not here, for they are “pilgrims on the earth” on their way to the heavenly city (Heb. 11:13–16).

 They do not love this world or lust after its pleasures and honors, for “the world passes away … but he that doeth the will of God abides for ever” (1 John 2:15–17). Here they are uncrowned princes sojourning in a strange land soon to be destroyed; there they will reign as kings in their own palatial estates, having received their Lord’s reward on judgment day for deeds done in this life.(Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Man and Christ, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 1165.)