Our God is so big and so wonderful we will be marveling at Him for all of eternity, so it is good to get started! Because the first commandment is to love Him above all things, the ultimate issue by which it will be determined if we are successful human beings or not will be by how much we love God. Therefore, this should be the greatest devotion of our lives.
Because God is the most lovable Being in all of creation, I am convinced that we cannot see Him or learn anything about Him without loving Him more. Therefore, I consider my ultimate purpose as a minister of the gospel to be describing Him, revealing Him, and preaching Him in a way that would compel people to seek Him. Because The Great Commission begins with expressing the scope of His authority, which is all-inclusive, we must begin with this.
As we have discussed, the scope of His kingdom includes the entire universe, the natural and spiritual realms, with the temporary exception of planet earth. Here His kingdom is coming, but it does not extend over the entire earth at this time. His authority is over all in heaven and the earth, but His kingdom has not yet come to the earth, which means that He only exercises limited authority on the earth at this time. That limit is set by us. Let me explain.
Presently we are told I John 5:19 that “the whole earth lies in the power of the evil one.” Then again, we are told in Psalm 24:1 that “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.” So the earth is presently in the power of the evil one, but it belongs to the Lord. The Lord has “all authority in heaven and earth” (see Matthew 28:18) and He could take the earth back from the power of the evil one at anytime, but He hasn’t yet. Why? He has not taken His authority over the earth yet for our sakes.
How is it for our sakes that the earth is left in the power of the evil one? That is an obvious and good question. For those who only perceive Christianity as something to bless them and make their lives easier and better, it may be hard for them to ever understand the answer to this. Even so, the truth is very clear in Scripture. The Lord had the authority immediately after His resurrection to bind Satan and throw him into the lake of fire. Right then He could have taken His authority over the earth and made life much, much easier for everyone. Why would He not do this? He did not want to make this life easier for us, not yet anyway. In fact, He actually wants it to be hard. He wants us to go through trials.
This could sound like heresy for those who have bought into the man-centered, self-centered, and “bless me” gospel, but the true gospel that is actually the door to the greatest blessings in all of creation in the heavens or the earth, and the one corroborated by the Scriptures, is better summed up by Paul’s statement in Acts 14:22: It is “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
Tribulations, or trials, are the gateway to the kingdom. The Lord has a much higher purpose than just making life easier for us. It will get easier, and far more glorious than we can yet comprehend when His kingdom comes, but presently He is seeking those whose hearts are fully His, who will serve Him regardless of the cost, even to the giving up of this life. These will be found worthy to rule with Him in the age to come and even be co-heirs with Him as sons and daughters of God.
It was this race that Paul refers to in Philippians 3:14 as “the high calling of God,” which he affirmed in this text that he did not think he had yet attained. Paul was not talking about his salvation, or eternal life, which he had the moment he believed in the atonement of the cross of Jesus for his redemption. He saw a calling so high that near the end of his life, this one who was possibly the greatest of all missionary apostles, did not think that he had yet attained. Read that chapter if you have any doubts that is what he was saying.
We will unpack this a little more in the weeks to come. Though this and many other Scriptures reveal very clearly that there is such a high calling, they are too ambiguous to be very dogmatic about many aspects of it. Many who have started to perceive this have also gone to extremes, and we do not want to do that. This is usually the result of us trying to carry to logical conclusions that which God has only revealed in part, because that part is all that we need to know right now. Even so, it is crucial that we get the part that He has revealed, and this we will seek to do.