There is a grand interconnection between the incarnation of Christ and his second coming. Graeme Goldsworthy gives a great summing up of the relation of the incarnation to eschatology or last things, when Christ returns in glory and brings to completion and finality all he has accomplished (inserts mine, to give context to the quote).
The structure of New Testament eschatology requires that we at least consider that [Christ’s return] is both fulfilled now in the incarnation and awaiting its consummation at Christ’s [second] return. That is, what happened in Jesus’ first advent as fulfiller of all God’s promises is the paradigm of what will happen at his parousia. Everything was fulfulled in him representatively at his first coming, and everything will be fulfilled in a universal consummation at his return.
Graeme Goldsworthy, Christ-Centered Biblical Theology, pgs. 184-185
Leave a Reply