1 Corinthians 15:25

“For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet.”

Paul cites the well-known words of Psalms 110:1: “The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit Thou at My right hand till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” The Divine necessity expressed by He must follows from this promise of Jehovah to the Messiah.

The emphasis in the saying quoted is put by Paul on the till; for the object of the quotation is to justify the terms of 1 Corinthians 15:24: when He shall have put down. According to this Divine declaration, the reign of the Messiah on the throne of the Father must last till there be no longer any enemy left capable of separating God and man. Then this reign will cease. It has therefore for its essential object the carrying out of this judgment on the opposing powers which still remain after the Advent. The subject of the verb put is, according to some, God, as in the Psalm (Beza, Grotius, Bengel, Holsten); according to others, Christ Himself (Chrysostom, Rückert, de Wette, Meyer, Hofmann, Edwards). The latter rest their view on the fact, that it is the reigning Christ who must act. But, even if it is God who fights, Christ is not therefore inactive; God acts with Him and by Him. If the αὐτοῦ after πόδας is unauthentic, we cannot well think of any other feet than those of Him who is the subject of the verb; in this case Christ is the subject. As the till indicates the certainty of victory, the ἄν, if it is authentic, expresses the uncertainty of the moment when the struggle shall cease.

At what time does the apostle make the kingdom of Christ, of which he here speaks, begin? It seems at first sight as if it could be no other than the date of the ascension. But would the idea of a purely spiritual reign, such as that which began with the ascension of Jesus, harmonize with a context like this, where the external and universal fulfilment of the Divine plan is in question? Is it not more natural to take the term βασιλεία in its full sense, at once spiritual and external, as in 1 Corinthians 15:50 ? Comp. also 1 Corinthians 6:10; Ephesians 5:5; Galatians 5:21, then the prayer: “Thy kingdom come,” and the words of the Apocalypse 1 Corinthians 12:10: “I heard a voice saying: The kingdom of God is come.” The reign begins, according to Luke 19:15, when Jesus, after receiving the kingship in heaven, returns to the earth to exercise it. It is the coming of Jehovah in the person of the Messiah, promised by the prophets, and which Jesus called His Advent. We must therefore regard the reign of Christ as the whole state of things which follows the Advent, and which will last till the epoch called the end. It is the whole interval between the time when He shall appear visibly as king, and that when He shall cease to be so (1 Corinthians 15:28); and as among the ancients reigning meant judging, and judging reigning, so the Saviour's reign here consists of judgment.

The till setting a limit to Christ's reign, it has been asked if there was not a contradiction between these words and those of Isaiah 9:6 and Luke 1:33, where it is said, “that of His kingdom there shall be no end.” This question has been variously answered (see Meyer). It seems to me that the simplest solution is this: Christ's kingdom in these prophetic sayings is confounded with that of God, which He is commissioned to establish. The distinction between the two is a new revelation whereby the apostle gives precision and completeness to the prophetic revelations. What remains true in these is, that Christ has no successor; for God cannot be regarded as the successor of the Messiah.

Christ's victory, to be complete, must reach to the last enemy, and that even in the external and bodily domain.