Already but not yet

When a wedding day arrives, most couples are well-prepared to commit their lives to each other. In the minutes before the ceremony begins, if you were to visit with the bride and groom, and if you were to ask each of them at that point, “Do you love your fiancé? Will you commit yourself completely to him or her?” they would answer “Yes. Yes.” Are they married at that point? No, not yet. Yet are they deeply committed to each other? Yes. Do they love each other profoundly? Yes. All that’s necessary for a marriage is present and ready to go. In many ways they’re already feeling as if they were married, and yet they aren’t married. The concept of "already but not yet" implies that believers in Jesus are currently taking part in the kingdom of God, but that the kingdom of God is coming in fullness sometime in the future.

 “Already, but not yet” describes the tension between the benefits of redemption already experienced in this life and those benefits which await us at the consummation. Christians enjoy the “alreadyness” of the Atonement—remission of sins, adoption as children, the indwelling Holy Spirit, etc. However, there is a sense in which we will not see these realities in totality until the last day, and so they always remain objects of faith. For instance, the believer already has eternal life, but they are not yet physically resurrected. Likewise, the church is a fellowship of persons who are both new creatures in Christ and still imperfect sinners. We await our glorification and the destruction of our sinful natures in the last day.

 If Jesus has won the victory over sin, suffering, and death, why is it that we still sin, suffer, and die? To understand this seeming contradiction, we must recognize the“already, but not yet ”tension of the gospel.

Many of the kingdom of God's blessings are here to be enjoyed now; but many of them are not yet here. Some of its power is available now but not all of it. Some of the curse and misery of this old age can be overcome now by the presence of the kingdom. But some of it cannot be. The decisive battle against sin and Satan and sickness and death has been fought and won by the King in his death and resurrection, but the war is not over. Sin must be fought, Satan must be resisted, sickness must be prayed over and groaned under, and death must be endured until the second coming of the King and the consummation of the kingdom.

 We need to understand that while God's promises are being fulfilled in and through Jesus, they are not yet complete. There's more to come.