It is quite mistaken, however, to speak as modern theology does, of the "service" here required as belonging to the "new ethic of the Kingdom of God." There is for Jesus no ethic of the Kingdom of God, for in the Kingdom of God all natural relationships, even, for example, the distinction of sex (Mark xii. 25 and 26), are abolished. Temptation and sin no longer exist. All is "reign," a "reign" which has gradations -Jesus speaks of the "least in the Kingdom of God"-according as it has been determined in each individual case from all eternity, and according as each by his self-humiliation and refusal to rule in the present age has proved his fitness for bearing rule in the future Kingdom.
For the loftier stations, however, it is necesasry to have proved oneself in persecution and suffering. Accordingly, Jesus asks the sons of Zebedee whether, since they claim these thrones on His right hand and on His left, they feel themselves strong enough to drink of His cup and be baptized with His baptism (Mark x. 38). To serve, to humble oneself, to incur persecution and death, belong to "the ethic of the interim" just as much as does penitence. They are indeed only a higher form of penitence.
A vivid eschatological expectation is therefore impossible to conceive apart from the idea of a metamorphosis. The resurrection is only a special case of this metamorphosis, the form in which the new condition of things is realised in the case of those who are already dead. The resurrection, the metamorphosis, and the Parousia of the Son of Man take place simultaneously, and are one and the same act. [1] It is therefore quite indifferent whether a man loses his life shortly before the Parousia in order to "find his life," if that is what is ordained for him; that signifies only that he will undergo the eschatological metamorphosis with the dead instead of with the living.
The Pauline eschatology recognises both conceptions side by side, in such a way, however, that the resurrection is subordinated to the metamorphosis. "Behold, I shew you a mystery," he says in 1 Cor. xv. 51 ff.; "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
The apostle himself desires to be one of those who live to experience the metamorphosis and to be clothed with the heavenly mode of existence (2 Cor. v. 1 ft.). The metamorphosis, however, and the resurrection are, for those who are "in Christ," connected
- ↑ If, therefore, Jesus at a later point predicted to His disciples His resurrection, He means by that, not a single isolated act, but a complex occurrence consisting of His metamorphosis, translation to heaven, and Parousia as the Son of Man. And with this is associated the general eschatological resurrection of the dead. It is, therefore, one and the same thing whether He speaks of His resurrection or of His coming on the clouds of heaven.
