05/16/2026
Meditation: “The power that Christ as the exalted Lord exercises, even to his coming again to judge the quick and the dead, is twofold: he rules over the entire world by his might, and he rules over his church by the power of his grace. The Catechism points to this distinction in answer 51…It is important to keep in mind this distinction, or else we expose ourselves to the danger of entertaining the erroneous notions that this world is now become the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God; that by the power of the exalted Lord all the various departments and domains of human life—the home, school, society, and state—will become Christianized; that it belongs to our calling to Christianize the world and to crown Christ king over all; and that in this way the world will gradually be transformed into the perfect kingdom of God…The result is a serious deception [that] presents the cause of man, the cause of this world, as if it were the cause of the Son of God…Further, this view…substitutes the world for the kingdom of God and is a denial of the antithesis. The scope of the kingdom of God is strictly limited to the operation of Christ’s sovereign grace, and outside of that scope there is nothing but the kingdom of darkness. Only where and insofar as it pleases Christ to pour out his heavenly graces, where men are regenerated, called out of darkness into his marvelous light, so they become poor in spirit and mourn, hunger and thirst after righteousness, and become merciful, pure in heart, meek, peacemakers, the salt of the earth, the light of the world—only in that sphere of grace is realized the kingdom of heaven. Beyond that sphere no man is able to extend that kingdom in this world. The scope of that kingdom is not contingent upon man’s efforts; it is sovereignly determined by the absolute lordship of Christ. He holds the key of David; he opens and no man shuts; he shuts and no man opens. That key he employs strictly according to the will of his Father, that is, according to the sovereign good pleasure of election and reprobation. If it pleases him to translate you out of the power of the world into his blessed kingdom, it is your calling not to make of this world a kingdom of God, but to stand for the cause of the Son of God in the midst of and in an antithetical relationship to a world that lies in darkness” (Herman Hoeksema).