Since the first book we are publishing is about the Kingdom of God, I have veered away from the Covenanters and have been digging into books related to Kingdom theology and eschatology.  If you want to experience a paradigm shift in your thinking, not only about Paul’s theology, but your entire concept of the Kingdom of God, it’s nature, and the implications thereof, I would highly recommend Paul: An Outline Of His Theology by Herman Ridderbos, particularly chapter one, “Fundamental Structures”.  In the next few posts I will elaborate on some of the passages I found helpful.  In this short excerpt, Ridderbos is making a point about the dichotomy of the different ages or epochs of the world, and how we who are born again are members of the new epoch, of which the seed is now, but the full “blooming” of that age is still to come:

It is a matter of two worlds, not only in a spiritual, but in a redemptive-historical, eschatological sense.  The “old things” stand for the unredeemed world in it’s distress and sin, the “new things” for the time of salvation and the re-creation that have dawned with Christ’s resurrection.  He who is in Christ, therefore, is new creation: he participates in, belongs to, this new world of God.

In this time of a co-mingling of the ages, Christians are already partakers of the “powers of the age to come”.

As an aside, there’s a really good post, made on the occasion of his passing, about Ridderbos over at Between Two Worlds.