A Collect Reflection for Christ the King Sunday
The last Sunday after Pentecost, before the start of a new church year at Advent, is Christ the King Sunday. Here is the collect:
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
— The Book of Common Prayer (2019), 623
Explaining the Collect
What “restoration” does the collect allude to? Why does it talk about “peoples” of the earth? What is the relationship between the Father and the Son in the latter’s “gracious rule”? Let me try to explain.
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God is King
The Bible repeatedly declares that God will be king forever in the future (e.g., Psalm 10:16; 29:10; 66:7; Jeremiah 10.10; 1 Timothy 1:17). It calls YHWH the king over both his own people, including Israel’s kings, but over the nations as well (Nehemiah 23.21; Ezra 20:33; Exodus 15:18). All the peoples of the world will worship him in the end (Zechariah 14:16).
Jesus is King
Jesus shares the kingship of all God’s people, the nations, and the cosmos. He is the son of David (Matthew 1:1; Romans 1:3), Israel’s greatest king and the king whose line God promised would last forever (Psalm 89:36). Jesus is the “Christ,” which is the Greek translation of “Messiah” (Heb. masiach) or “anointed one.” Hebrew kings were the primary recipients of anointing.
Therefore, Jesus was the anointed king par excellence from the line of David, whose kings would be God’s “son” (2 Samuel 7:14; Psalm 2:7). However, Jesus is the Son of God ontologically, the second person of the Trinity to whom all of David’s earthly sons pointed. Their kingships were types of the eternal kingship God the Father exercises and delegates to the Son after Jesus’ Ascension.
King Jesus Will Restore Israel & the World
One day, King Jesus will renew all of this world and restore Israel to its center. When his disciples asked him immediately before his ascension:
Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?
Acts 1:6
Jesus did not challenge their assumption that God would restore his Kingdom to physical Israel. He rather asserted that the Father had set the date and that they did not need to know it yet.
A Time of Restoration
These indications in the gospels and Acts caused Oxford historian Markus Bockmuehl to write that: “…the early Jesus movement evidently continued to focus upon the restoration of Israel’s twelve tribes in a new messianic kingdom.” Paul, Peter, and the writer of the Book of Revelation had similar expectations. Paul uses Isaiah’s prophecy of restoration in Isaiah 59 to declare that:
The deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.
Romans 11:26
In Acts, Peter looks forward to:
…the times of restoration of all things which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient time.
Acts 3:21
In apokatastasis, Peter uses the word for “restoration” that the Septuagint (which the early church used as its Bible) used for God’s future return of Jews from all over the world to Israel. The Lamb draws his followers to Zion in the final stage of history (Revelation 12:1). The new earth is centered in Jerusalem, which has twelve gates named after “the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel” (Revelation 21:2, 12).
Renewing the Covenant
Evangelical New Testament scholar Scot McKnight argues that Jesus intended to renew Israel’s national covenant, not found a new religion. He wanted to restore the twelve tribes, bringing the Kingdom of God in and through Israel. By his death, Jesus estimated that the whole Jewish nation was nailed to the cross, and God was restoring the country and restoring its people.
Therefore, salvation was first and foremost for Israel, but the nations would find salvation by joining themselves to the redeemed Israel. The apostles tell us that we Gentiles are joined to Israel by the Holy Spirit when we put our faith in the Jewish Messiah and are baptized into him (Acts 16:31-33; Romans 6:3-4; Romans 11:11-24).
The Kingdom Without End
During the new heaven and earth, King Jesus will rule visibly from Israel (Revelation 20.4, 9; 21:1-3). He will rule over not just individuals but “tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9). This Kingdom will be endless (Luke 1:33; Revelation 11:15), but at some point, the Son will return his delegated kingship to the Father:
Then comes the end . . . . When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
1 Corinthians 15:24, 48
That will be the time when Jesus told his disciples he would “drink the fruit of the vine new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29). One day, then, the Son will return the Kingdom to his Father and share that kingly rule with Him.
What Does This Mean for Us?
First, we know that King Jesus rules now, and what seems terrible sifts through his loving hands to ensure it works for our good (Romans 8:28). Second, we should hope for the day when God, to a far greater glory, renews and restores this world. Third, we can see that this future world will be a time not only of individual salvation but also of glorious fellowship among different nations and peoples. While ethnic differences now cause strife, on that day, they will bring joy.
Photo: Paul Zoetemeijer on Unsplash
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