What does it mean that we will reign with Christ?

Question 10131.

The promise that we will reign with Christ is one of the most repeated and least discussed statements in the New Testament. Paul says it, Revelation says it several times, and Jesus said it before either of them, yet you will rarely hear a sermon on it.

I suspect that is because it sounds either far-fetched or faintly self-important. It is neither, and taking it seriously will change how you think about the small faithfulness of an ordinary week.

Where the promise to reign with Christ is made

Paul writes to Timothy that if we endure, we will also reign with him. Revelation 5 has the redeemed singing that they have been made a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.

Revelation 20:6 says that those in the first resurrection will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years. Revelation 22:5 extends it beyond the Millennium: they will reign for ever and ever.

Add Daniel 7:18, where the saints of the Most High receive the kingdom and possess it for ever, and you have a promise running right across both Testaments. To reign with Christ is not a fringe idea.

The Millennium is where it begins

The thousand years of Revelation 20 is a literal period on this earth, with Jesus reigning from Jerusalem on the throne of David. That is where the promise first takes visible shape.

The millennial population includes survivors of the tribulation in natural bodies and their descendants, alongside resurrected saints in glorified bodies. Somebody has to administer that world under the King, and Scripture says it will be us.

If you want the framework, I set it out in my article on the Millennium. Without a literal earthly kingdom, the promise that we will reign with Christ has nothing concrete to attach to.

What reigning actually involves

The Greek verb is basileuo, to exercise kingly rule. It is the ordinary word for what a king does, and the New Testament does not soften it into something vaguely spiritual.

Jesus spoke of servants given authority over ten cities and five cities in the parable of the minas. Cities are administrative units. He was describing responsibility, delegated and graded.

Paul asks the Corinthians whether they do not know that the saints will judge the world, and even angels, and uses that as an argument against taking each other to court over trivial disputes. The reasoning only works if reigning is real.

Kings and priests together

Every time the promise appears in Revelation it is paired with priesthood. A kingdom and priests. Priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign.

In Israel those two offices were kept apart, and King Uzziah was struck with leprosy for trespassing on priestly ground. Only Melchizedek held both, and Hebrews makes much of the fact that Jesus is a priest after his order.

So to reign with Christ is not to rule as the world rules. Priests represent people to God and God to people. Authority in the kingdom always has service running through it, which is exactly what our Lord said when the disciples argued about greatness.

Who reigns?

All believers are included in the promise, since all who trust Jesus are in the first resurrection and all are made a kingdom and priests. Nobody has to qualify for entry.

But the degree of responsibility appears to vary. Ten cities and five cities are not the same, and the servant who hid his master’s money received nothing at all. That is a matter of reward rather than of salvation.

The distinction is important and I hold it firmly. Entry into the kingdom is by grace through faith alone. Position within it is connected to faithfulness, which is why the judgement seat of Christ exists at all.

What about enduring?

Paul’s line in 2 Timothy 2:12 is often misread as making salvation conditional on perseverance. Read the whole hymn he is quoting. If we have died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

That last line is the anchor. Life with Him rests on having died with Him, and God’s faithfulness holds even when ours fails. What is conditioned on endurance is not being saved but reigning.

I write about the security of the believer elsewhere, and I would not surrender it here. Losing a reward and losing salvation are two entirely different things, and this passage distinguishes them within four lines.

Reigning over what?

Over a real world with real nations, cities and cultures. The millennial kingdom is not a religious retreat. There is agriculture in Isaiah’s picture, building, planting, longevity and international relations.

Beyond the Millennium the promise continues into the eternal state, where the nations walk by the light of the city and bring their glory into it. Whatever the redeemed are doing there, Revelation calls it reigning.

Genesis is the clue. Humanity was made to have dominion, to tend and keep and rule under God. That commission was damaged rather than cancelled, and to reign with Christ is the restoration of what we were made for.

Not a promotion for the ambitious

It would be easy to hear all this as a reward for the competitive, and Scripture goes out of its way to prevent that. The elders in Revelation 4 cast their crowns before the throne the moment they receive them.

Jesus said the last will be first. The people given cities in the parable are the ones who did not lose their nerve, not the ones who pushed forward. Every crown in that city was bought by a Lamb.

Faithful in little

Here is the pattern our Lord gave. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. The training ground for reigning is not a leadership conference. It is a small life lived carefully.

The woman who has prayed for her grandchildren for forty years without visible result is being prepared for something. So is the man who has run a church sound desk for two decades and never been thanked.

Reigning and the resurrection body

You cannot separate this promise from the body you will be given. Paul says the perishable puts on the imperishable, and that we shall bear the image of the man of heaven. Those who reign with Christ do so in bodies fitted for the work.

That removes a common objection. People say they cannot imagine themselves administering anything, given how badly they manage a small household now. Quite so. Neither can I. The people who reign with Christ will not be the people we currently are.

Every limitation that makes authority dangerous in us, the impatience, the vanity, the tiredness, will have gone. Read 1 Corinthians 15:49 and let it settle the question of competence.

Israel and the church in the kingdom

The twelve apostles are told they will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, which assumes the tribes are still there and still identifiable. God’s promises to Israel are kept literally, and the presence of the church does not absorb them.

David is named by Ezekiel and Jeremiah as a prince in that kingdom. The nations come up to Jerusalem to keep the feast in Zechariah 14. There is structure to the millennial world, and those who reign with Christ have a place within it rather than replacing anybody.

If you want the distinction spelled out, see my article on whether the church has replaced Israel.

A promise made to persecuted people

Notice who receives this promise in Revelation. Not comfortable Christians with time on their hands, but churches under pressure, some of them poor, one of them with a member already martyred.

To tell such people they will reign with Christ is to turn the world the right way up. The powerless are told they will hold authority; the accused are told they will judge. That is not escapism. It is the correction of a temporary distortion.

A promise repeated to seven churches

Jesus says it Himself in the letter to Thyatira. The one who conquers and keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron.

To Laodicea He says that the one who conquers will sit with Him on His throne, as He conquered and sat down with His Father on His throne. That is an extraordinary sentence, and it was addressed to the least impressive church of the seven.

So, now what?

Stop treating your present circumstances as a holding pattern. If you will reign with Christ, then how you handle a difficult colleague, a tight budget and a tedious duty is not filler. It is formation.

And let it steady you when you feel powerless. Christians are not being trained for retirement. Whatever authority you lack now, the promise stands that you will reign with Christ, and He does not hand responsibility to people He has not prepared. What is God quietly training you in at the moment?

“If we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us.” (2 Timothy 2:12)