Where We Are in the Story

The gospel is running to the nations. The church has been born and is spreading from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. But step inside that church — sit among those baptized believers — and you find something strange. They are forgiven, indwelt by the Spirit, heirs of a finished salvation. And they are also still sinning, still grieving, still burying their dead. They sing of victory on Sunday and battle temptation on Monday. They are, in the apostles’ language, citizens of two ages at once.

This is the deep structure beneath everything in the church age, and it is the subject of this movement. The Jews divided history into two ages: “this present age,” under sin and death, and “the age to come,” the promised age of resurrection, righteousness, and the reign of God. They expected the Messiah to end the first and begin the second in one stroke. What actually happened is the great surprise of the New Testament: the age to come has already broken into this present age — in Christ’s death, resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit — and yet the present evil age continues until he returns. The two ages overlap. And we live in the overlap.

This is where every Christian since Pentecost has lived: between the comings, between the already and the not-yet.

The Story

You can hear the overlap in the way the apostles talk. They speak of salvation in three tenses at once, and they mean it.

We have been saved. “By grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph 2:8) — past, accomplished, sealed. We were dead, and God made us alive together with Christ, raised us up, and “seated us with him in the heavenly places” (Eph 2:6). Already. The believer is justified — declared righteous, the verdict of the last day brought forward and pronounced now. Already adopted, called a child of God this very moment (1 John 3:2). Already indwelt by the Spirit, who is poured into our hearts as a deposit.

And yet, in the same breath, we are being saved, and we will be saved. We “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23) — adopted already, awaiting adoption still. We are being sanctified, worked on, conformed slowly and painfully to Christ. And we await glorification, the resurrection of the body, the consummated kingdom that has not yet come.

Paul gives this its sharpest image in Romans 8. The whole creation, he says, was subjected to futility and now groans together in the pains of childbirth, waiting for the day of release.

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God… And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:19, 23)

Firstfruits. That is the key word. The Spirit we have received is the firstfruits — the first sheaf of a harvest that is real, certain, and begun, but not yet gathered in. Elsewhere Paul calls the Spirit the “guarantee” — the down-payment, the engagement ring — “the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it” (Eph 1:14). We have the deposit in hand. The full sum is coming. So we wait — not in anxiety, as those unsure of the outcome, but in hope, as those who have already tasted the powers of the age to come (Heb 6:5) and know what is coming because a piece of it is already ours.

This is why the Christian life feels the way it does. The joy is real because the salvation is real and present. The struggle is real because the consummation is real and future. We are not disillusioned that the battle continues; we were told it would. We are not despairing that we still groan; the groaning itself is the ache of the Spirit within us, pulling us toward home.

Covenantal & Redemptive Significance

The new covenant was inaugurated, not yet consummated — and that single fact organizes the whole of Christian existence. Jeremiah promised a covenant in which the law would be written on the heart, all would know the LORD, and sins would be remembered no more (Jer 31:33–34). At Pentecost that covenant was inaugurated; the Spirit was poured out, the law was written on new-covenant hearts, sins were forgiven once for all in Christ’s blood. The blessings are genuinely present.

But they are not yet complete. The same believers in whom the law is written still find another law at war in their members (Rom 7:23). The same people whose sins are remembered no more still confess sin daily. The covenant is operative but not perfected; we have the first installment, not the final estate.

This is the proper Reformed and covenantal way to hold the tension. We do not, on the one hand, deny the already — as if the kingdom were entirely future and the present merely waiting; the Spirit truly indwells, Christ truly reigns, the new creation has truly begun. Nor do we, on the other hand, over-claim the not-yet into the present — as if we should already enjoy perfect health, perfect holiness, and freedom from death now; that is to grasp the consummation before its time and to be disappointed by a gospel that never promised it. The kingdom is here and coming. Christ reigns now from heaven and will reign visibly at his return.

Confessional Reformed theology has read this present reign of Christ in a broadly amillennial key: the “thousand years” of Revelation 20 describes this very age of the church, in which the ascended Christ reigns and the gospel binds the powers of darkness, until he returns to raise the dead and consummate his kingdom. This is the historic Reformed reading. Yet here we should note, with respect, that confessional, Bible-believing Reformed Christians have differed on the details — some holding a postmillennial hope of gospel triumph before Christ’s return, others a premillennial expectation — without dividing over the great certainties they share: that Christ has come, reigns now, and will return bodily, visibly, and gloriously to judge the living and the dead and to make all things new. On that the whole church stands together.

The believer’s perseverance through the overlap is itself a covenant mercy. We do not hold on to Christ by our own strength across this long age; he holds us. The Spirit who is the guarantee is also the one who keeps the guaranteed.

Promise & Fulfillment / Typology

Israel’s history was itself a long parable of the already / not-yet. Redeemed from Egypt — already free — they nonetheless wandered through a wilderness toward a rest not yet possessed. Brought into the land — already home — they still awaited the true rest the land could only picture. The writer to the Hebrews makes the point: a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God (Heb 4:9), because the earthly rests were only shadows of the rest in Christ, already entered by faith and not yet enjoyed in full.

The firstfruits image is itself drawn from the old festal calendar: Israel brought the first sheaf of the harvest to God as a pledge of the whole crop to come. Christ’s resurrection is called the firstfruits (1 Cor 15:20), and the Spirit is the firstfruits — both of them downpayments guaranteeing the full harvest of resurrection and glory.

And the wilderness generation stands as a sober type for the church in the overlap. Paul takes their failures — their grumbling, their idolatry, their falling in the desert between redemption and rest — as written “for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor 10:11). We too are a redeemed people on pilgrimage between the comings, called to perseverance and warned against presuming on grace.

Christ in This Movement

Christ is the one who, by his own resurrection, has already begun the age to come in his own body. He is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20) — the first man through the door of the new creation, the pledge and pattern of our own rising. Because he is raised, our resurrection is not a hope hanging in the air but a harvest already started.

He is the reigning Lord of the overlap, who “must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:25–26). Note the already and not-yet even there: he reigns now, but the last enemy is not yet destroyed. We live in the stretch of his reign before the final enemy falls.

And he is the one in whom our true life is already hidden and from whom it will be revealed. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col 3:3–4). Our deepest identity is secure in him already; its full unveiling waits for his appearing. To live between the ages is to live by faith in him — the one who has come, who reigns, and who is coming again.

Themes Advancing

• Already / not-yet. The age to come broken into this present age; the defining structure of Christian existence, now made explicit.
• The Spirit as guarantee. Firstfruits and down-payment — the certain pledge of a harvest begun but not yet gathered (Rom 8:23; Eph 1:13–14).
• New creation begun. In Christ, raised as firstfruits, the new creation has dawned in his people, awaiting its completion.
• Hope and perseverance. Suffering and groaning are not signs of failure but the birth-pains of glory; the believer endures by the Spirit who keeps him.
• Kingdom. Christ’s present reign from heaven, awaiting its visible consummation at his return.

Looking Back / Looking Ahead

• Looking back to 09_01 (The Church and the Mission to the Nations): the mission goes forward precisely in the overlap. The church evangelizes the nations as a not-yet-glorified people, advancing through weakness, suffering, and hope rather than triumphal power — which is why the gospel runs by cross-shaped witness.
• Looking back to 08_The_Coming_of_Christ: the already of our salvation rests entirely on the finished cross, the empty tomb, and Pentecost. Christ’s first coming inaugurated the age to come; we now live on the strength of what he there accomplished.
• Looking back to 04_Exodus_and_Sinai and the wilderness: Israel’s redemption-then-pilgrimage is the great type of the church living between deliverance and rest (1 Cor 10:11; Heb 4:9).
• Looking ahead to 10_The_New_Creation: every not-yet of this movement — glorification, resurrection, the destruction of death, the consummated kingdom — finds its answer there. The groaning ends; the harvest is gathered; the King appears, and we appear with him in glory.

Key Texts

• Romans 8:18–25 — creation and the church groaning; the firstfruits of the Spirit; the redemption of our bodies
• Ephesians 1:13–14 — the Spirit as the guarantee of our inheritance
• Ephesians 2:6–8 — already seated with Christ; saved by grace
• 1 Corinthians 15:20–26 — Christ the firstfruits; he must reign until the last enemy falls
• 2 Corinthians 5:17 — “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.”
• Colossians 3:1–4 — life hidden with Christ, to be revealed in glory
• Hebrews 4:9 — a Sabbath rest remains for the people of God
• Hebrews 6:5 — having tasted the powers of the age to come
• 1 Corinthians 10:11 — the wilderness written for us, “on whom the end of the ages has come”
• 1 John 3:2 — “now we are God’s children; and what we will be has not yet appeared.”
• Revelation 22:20 — “Come, Lord Jesus!”

For Reflection

If you feel the strain of being a Christian — really saved and really struggling, deeply loved and still sorrowing, certain of heaven and weeping at a graveside — you are not malfunctioning. You are living exactly where the gospel places you: between the ages. The tension is not a sign that something has gone wrong with your faith; it is the very shape of faith in this age.

So do not be surprised by the groaning, and do not be crushed by it. Paul calls it the groaning of those who have the firstfruits of the Spirit — it is the ache of glory already begun in you, straining toward its completion. The same Spirit who makes you long for home is the guarantee that you will arrive. Your justification is finished; your adoption is real; your life is hidden with Christ in God. Nothing in the not-yet can undo the already.

And so we wait — not with the anxious uncertainty of those who do not know the end, but with the steady hope of those who have tasted the powers of the age to come and have the King’s own pledge in hand. We live by faith between the comings, and we lift our eyes, and we pray with the whole church across the centuries: “Come, Lord Jesus.”