“The whole content of Paul’s preaching can be summarized as the proclamation and explication of the eschatological time of salvation inaugurated with Christ’s advent, death, and resurrection.”
Herman Ridderbos
Paul: An Outline of His Theology — pg, 44
For Christians, the Redemptive sequence of events initiated by the birth of Christ marks the future eschatological age as invading the present non-eschatological age. As such, for every Christian since the 1st advent the present crackles with the meaning that the future invests it with. For every Christian died with Christ, is now resurrected with Christ, is now seated with Christ in the heavenlies and is reigning now with Christ. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit who is the anticipation of the end as occupying the present. Every Christian has been translated from the Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear son. Every Christian is tasting of the powers of the age to come in their existential present. We are living in the eschatological latter days in our current existence because with Christ’s work the latter days have arrived.
Christians are like Tolkien’s elves who occupy two worlds at the same time. As being citizens in the age to come we are God’s agents of change as inveighing against this present evil age wherever we find it. We are those whom God uses to turn the wilderness of this present wicked age into the garden of the Lord so that it blooms with age to come ferocity.
All of this makes us a future-oriented people but it is a future orientation which is rooted and grounded in the past because the future orientation is dependent upon how the Christ event brought the future into the then present.
It is true that we are moving towards the future eschatological age but this is only true because in the Christ event the future eschatological age located and locates itself in the present.
All of this is why St. Paul could say, “We are more than conquerors.”
