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The Reign of the Servant Kings By Joseph C. Dillow A Review-Summary-Outline
Chapter 25—The Partakers
The Company of the Metochoi
In this final chapter the writer wishes to speak to some of the practical considerations that such a magnificent vision of the future raises. For sensitive readers there is likelihood that the possibilities of rebuke and exclusion from millennial joy are an occasion for unnecessary introspection and discouragement. What Christian has been as obedient as he should? What Christian has believed God as he should? The answer is “no one.” Who then are the objects of the Lord’s displeasure when He returns? We must remember that the parables of the wise and foolish virgins, the good and the wicked servant, and the faithful and unfaithful believer are sharp contrasts. The warnings and parables do not deal with the daily lapses and failures to which all who know the Lord are subject. They deal with those who willfully persist in such unfaithfulness. It is to those who refuse to grow, who sin willfully, who spurn exhortation, and who dismiss their need to repent and change that that these sober warnings are given.
All Christians bring a lot of emotional patterns into their Christian lives. Their personal histories include genetic and environmental factors that, in part at least, determine what they are. It is therefore easier for some to live victoriously than others. It appears, however, that the issue is not success but faithfulness!
Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of Moreover it is required in stewards that one is found faithful. (1 Corinthians 4:1, 2)
Faithfulness means getting back up out of the mud, asking forgiveness, and persevering to the end of life. God is not as concerned with a believer’s success as He is with a believer’s heart. Just because a believer struggles with persistent failure now does not mean he forfeits his reward; in fact, it means just the opposite. The fact that he stays in the struggle and returns to the battle is evident proof that he is one of the Partakers. Remember that David committed adultery and murder, and yet at the end of his life God said of him that he was a “man after God’s own heart.” Success is not the only issue; faithful perseverance, even after failure, is a primary issue!
What then is necessary to become one of Christ’s metochoi? In its most general statement the requirement is “to hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end” (Hebrews 3:14). It often seems more difficult to trust God then to obey Him. The Hebrews were not troubled with problems of disobedience so much as trust. It was the seemingly distance of God in the midst of their troubles and His lack of apparent involvement in their difficulties that caused them to doubt. It is for this reason that the writer of Hebrews sets forth the great heroes of faith in chapter 11, who “died in faith, without receiving the promises” (Hebrews 11:13). It is difficult to “trust God when it hurts.” While ultimately the life of faith cannot be separated from the life of obedience, God seems to particularly exalt the man who persists in faith (Hebrews 11:6).
However, the life of discipleship and practical obedience to God’s commands is also necessary for those who would achieve the highest positions among the metochoi. Here the stern challenges of Jesus to be willing to leave father and mother, to sell all that one has, to deny self, and to take up one’s cross and follow Him comes to the forefront. They are not challenges to become Christians but to those who have become Christians to become “overcomers.”
All who have persevered to the final hour will be Partakers. But even among the Partakers, Jesus taught there will be distinctions. All three subject-persons in Luke 19:12-27 (parable of the minas or pounds) are servants. All three looked for the coming of their master, but only two are rewarded. The third will be in the kingdom, but he will not reign there. And there is a distinction between the first two servants relative to the rewards they received.
In the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 a different truth is emphasized. In that parable the first two slaves did equal work; they doubled the Lord’s investment. However, the Lord gave them differing amounts of money to begin with according to each one’s ability (vs. 15). God never entrusts the believer with responsibilities that exceeds the abilities He has given him! Yet in the final day, even though the servant with greater ability (i.e., more talents) returned more money to his master, both received exactly the same reward (for equal effort). It is not how much a believer produces, but whether or not he has been faithful with the abilities God has given him. This means that the faithful but uneducated Auca Indian could possibly receive greater rewards than a Billy Graham!
Spiritual Motivation
The Motivation of Joint-Rulership
When believers stand before the Lord in perfect resurrection bodies, their capacity to understand the significance of the Lord’s gracious death on their behalf will be heightened to a sublime degree. They will feel many things then that their sin nature clouds today. One thing they will feel strongly is gratitude! They will see as they have never seen that the sinless Son of God loved them and died that they might live. They will be overwhelmed with GRACE.
For those who have not persevered in faith, who have denied their King now, they too will have heightened feelings. They will have feelings of deep shame and regret because they took Him for granted and wasted their lives. The pain will be acute, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Furthermore, the notion of reigning with Christ, or ruling over cities, should not be trivialized as if it means various administrative positions in a kingdom. Believers aspire to higher positions because they can then be more effective in the service of their King. To have ten cities instead of five means that they will have greater opportunity to serve Him—to demonstrate their love and gratitude to Him and to extend the knowledge of His love and goodness throughout the cosmos. To miss that is to miss much.
Also it should be stressed that the motivation behind their perseverance in holiness is not just the crowns they receive but why they want these crowns. They do not want crowns so in carnal hubris they can compare theirs with others throughout eternity! There will be no sin nature, no selfishness, no envy, and no pride then. Rather, they want these crowns to have much to lay at Christ’s feet! The crowns are theirs to use as tokens of worship and gratitude—for eternal salvation.
A Mercenary Motive?
Perhaps the greatest objection to the notion of joint-rulership is that it seems to be an unworthy motivation for spiritual living, i.e., to be motivated toward faithfulness by offering rewards is completely backward in the economy of grace. This view of ethics is sometimes called “disinterested benevolence.” This is the atheistic ethic in which good is done only for the sake of the good, with no consideration of reward for the doing of it.
Regardless how one may feel about the matter, it is evident that the New Testament writers did not hesitate to use the motivation of future rewards as a central motivator for godly living. Certainly the motivation of thankfulness and grace was very important, but the vision of the future enhanced this stimulus. Furthermore, they did not stagger to use the negative motivation of the loss of rewards and exclusion from the joy of co-rulership.
In Matthew 19:27-30 Peter forthrightly asked what the benefit would be in the kingdom for a life of sacrifice now. Instead of rebuking him for striving for rewards, Jesus commends this motivating factor by telling him that he will rule with Him. The morality of the Bible is an offense to the “purely moral.” It constantly urges the reader to look to the future. As Abraham wandered in Canaan, he “was looking forward to the city with foundations” (Hebrews 11:10). Moses made his great decision to turn his back on the wealth of Egypt and endure suffering with the people of God “because he was looking ahead to his reward” (Hebrews 11:26). Being stimulated by the reward one will receive is viewed as a praiseworthy motivation. Perhaps the Bible is a better judge of man’s nature and how to inspire one’s zeal than the moral philosophers.
It is not a striving so much for personal benefit but persevering in good works so that believers can achieve the goal of sharing in the future reign of the servant kings. Because they love Christ, they want to earn the right to rule with Him. So it is their love for Him and the joy set before them that motivates. They are not saying that the desire for future reward is to replace altruism as a motivator, only that it enhances it.
It is impossible to separate the motivation of love and the motivation derived from reward. They are, in the Bible at least, inextricably interrelated. This is so because to strive for the biblical inheritance requires that one strive “according to the rules.” This means that:
Performance and Unconditional Acceptance
Does this doctrine imply that God no longer accepts the believer unconditionally? No. When persons become Christians, the Scriptures affirm that they enter into two different relationships with Christ:
To deny this is simply to deny that God holds His children accountable for their behavior. If the Reformation placed too much emphasis on the fear of God, it is possible that this generation, inspired by the benevolent God of liberal theology and the narcissistic nature of this modern culture, has placed too much emphasis on God’s love. Or at least it has defined love in a way that excludes accountability.
In his farewell speech to the Ephesian elders, the apostle Paul declared, “I commend you to God and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). It is grace that builds and motivates. Only when grace is the foundation can the doctrine of accountability be seen in its biblical context.
The Purpose of the Messianic Kingdom
It is vitally important that the purpose and nature of this rulership be understood. Only then can this doctrine of glorious joint-heirship be properly defended from critics who degrade it as “carnal.”
The design of this glorious reign of the metochoi is to deliver the world from the results of sin and to fill it with blessing and glory! These metochoi are not ruling for themselves but for others. Part of the problem is that in the present world, rulership nearly always implies the appropriation of power due to selfish motives. It has the connotation of “lording over” others. But the King Himself has taught another kind of rulership, servant rulership. The metochoi of King Jesus are not above their Master. They too are servant rulers.
And He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves. For who is greater, he who sits at the table, or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet I am among you as the One who serves.” (Luke 22:25-27)
Indeed the kingdom has been postponed for several thousand years precisely for this purpose, to raise up a body of rulers who will sustain it with dignity, purity, compassion, and selflessness worthy of the Messiah Jesus. A period of time is necessary to prepare the future rulers. God has predetermined the number of those who will share in the reign of David’s Greater Son, and until this number (known only to God) is completed, the kingdom itself will not be established. The experience gained now prepares them to be wise, intelligent kings and sympathetic and loving priests. Their goal is not to exert authority but to serve those over whom they have been placed.
The present world may be viewed as the training ground for the aristocracy of the future kingdom, the ruling class of the world to come. A man may be in abject poverty now and completely ignored by the leaders of this world. He may be despised and without means to adequately provide for his family. Yet he is now a prince and will one day inherit his kingdom. Then he will obtain a position far higher and with more grandeur than that of any human ruler who ever lived. This truth is based upon numerous scriptural promises that God will fulfill!
Security and Significance
It is vitally important for the believer’s mental wholeness that he feels both secure and significant with God. God does not threaten His children’s security as a means of motivating them. But God does deal seriously with His children in terms of their final significance.
The Believer’s Need for Security—It is certainly arguable that the most fundamental of human needs is secure love. And God for Christ’s sake has granted believers freely this thing they need and desire most from Him, primary security. Salvation is unconditional. The person who believes in Christ and has accepted His offer of forgiveness has:
RESULST: The believer’s security is established by God.
God’s acceptance and adoption gives the believer a basis for life. As an earthly parent always loves his child, so the heavenly Father remains committed to His children. Like an earthly parent, however, the heavenly Father does not always approve of His children’s actions, and He will hold them accountable for their waywardness. In some cases He will deal severely with their willful failures.
The Believer’s Need for Significance—In order for believer’s to be motivated in what they do, they need to feel that their task and lives are significant and that there is a final accounting for what they do. Without that feeling work is a burden, and their lives lack focus and meaning.
It is self-evident that believer’s motivation to accomplish a given task is directly related to how significant they feel the task. When Paul said, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward,” (Colossians 3:23, 24) he was appealing to this same motivational force. This verse reveals a central aspect of what makes believers feel something is significant: a task will be viewed as significant if the people who matter to them value it as so. In this cases since it is God who determines the ultimate significance of the work, it will be perceived as highly important: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
There must be recognition and affirmation by someone else. Someone other than themselves, someone who has expertise and authority to affirm that a particular task is valuable must give his affirmation. God is the ultimate one who will evaluate the believer’s work and will pronounce the desired “Well done.” Believer’s eternal security gives them freedom to pursue their significance. They do not have to worry about rejection or about loss of salvation. But even though they cannot lose their justification, the warnings in the Bible reveal that they can forfeit the inheritance, they can lose their eternal [millennial] significance.
Believer’s lives do matter. They make a difference. Through service to God they can attach eternal value to the life they live. Some of them will pursue the goal more diligently than others. Some Christians, to their great shame and eternal [millennial] loss, will not purse this worthy goal at all. The differences will become evident when they stand before Christ at His Judgment Seat (2 Corinthians 5:10).
Differences in Eternity Future
Editor’s comment: The author takes the position that the differences in positions between believers in the millennial kingdom will be carried on past the kingdom age. This reviewer believes this will not be the case based on Revelation 21:4, 5.
Final Accountability
Why has the church, which is supposedly a bastion of absolutism in the surrounding sea of relativism, so easily accepted the values of the encircling culture? This is a question that church and cultural historians will wrestle, but it is quite clear that a profound theological error is near the heart of the matter. The doctrines of Westminster Calvinism, while designed to promote a high degree of moral purity, have virtually robbed the church of any sense of final accountability. This is true for three reasons:
But the Scriptures do not point such men to examine the fruits of regeneration in their lives to ascertain whether they are Christians or not. They point them to the great future. Instead of threatening them with the fear of hell, the Scriptures warn them of profound regret and millennial disinheritance in the future. The danger is missing the Master’s “Well done!” This is a healthy and ennobling fear that inspires men to growth and discipleship. The continual challenge to reconsider whether or not one is saved can hardly compare with this for spiritual incitement. Indeed, it leads backward to introspection and legalism instead of forward to confidence and freedom in Christ. Love and grace have always been higher and more powerful motivators than fear of hell, but the Experimental Predestinarian cannot offer these incentives because a carnal lifestyle suggests to him that the man in question has not experienced the love and grace of God at all. All that is left in his bag of motivational influences is to warn the man that he may not be saved and is in danger of perishing. Rarely do the Experimental Predestinarians attempt to motivate by means of appeal to the magnificent future. In fact, they often disparage it as “some millennial crown.”
The great neglect of Western Christianity is not that its pulpits have failed to warn people who claim the name of Christ that they are perishing. Its neglect is that it has not sufficiently explained the great future joy of sharing in the coming messianic partnership and the danger of forfeiting this inheritance. If such a vision were consistently held before its congregations, the love and fear of God would be greatly increased. Surely many of those fifty million reported by the Gallup poll who claim to be born again would begin to act like it.
Conclusion
The Lord promises to all who really know Him and see Him that they will enjoy unspeakable privilege in the final kingdom of David’s Greater Son. That great future must constantly be set before the vision of all who name the Lord Jesus as their King. Believers should daily be evaluating their lives, their priorities, and their hearts in view of how they will feel about their decisions when before the Judgment Seat of Christ. Only those who live like this and who finish their course with their flag at full mast will share in the future reign of the servant kings.
Let us “lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). After all, we “have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end” (Hebrews 3:14).
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is the whole duty of man For God will bring every work into judgment, Including every secret thing, Whether it is good or whether it is evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:12-14)
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