2. Reigning Together: Christ and His People as One Body- What Christlikeness Looks Like When Christ Returns

In the previous article, I argued that becoming like Christ is not the end of humanity’s story.

Christ is our model. He shows us what faithful humanity can look like. Scripture promises that we will be conformed to his image and that, when he appears, “we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2).

But Christlikeness ultimately leads beyond itself.

Paul prays that believers will be “filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). Peter speaks of becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Paul says that even Christ himself will ultimately be subjected to God, “that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Christ is therefore not the ceiling.

God is.

Christ is the human Messiah who leads humanity toward God. He is our elder brother, our model, our head, our king, and the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. We are being formed into his likeness so that, together with him, we can become the kind of humanity through whom God can work in extraordinary ways.

And when Scripture describes the age to come, this becomes remarkably practical.

Christ does not return merely so that everyone else can stand at a distance and watch him rule.

He returns to reign with a people.

The saints reign with him.

They judge with him.

They inherit with him.

They sit with him.

They participate with him.

Christ and his people increasingly appear in Scripture not as two unrelated categories—a great ruler on one side and passive subjects on the other—but as one body, united under God for the restoration of creation.

That changes how we should imagine the kingdom of God.

They Reign With Christ

Revelation 20 gives perhaps the clearest picture:

Again:

Notice the language.

It does not merely say that Christ reigns over them.

It says that they reign with Christ.

Revelation has already prepared us for this. Jesus promises:

And the redeemed are described as a kingdom and priests who “shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:10).

At the end of Revelation, the same destiny remains:

Paul makes similarly astonishing statements.

“If we endure,” he writes, “we shall also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:12).

He tells the Corinthians:

He goes even further:

Romans describes Christians as “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17).

These are not peripheral verses.

Together, they reveal something fundamental about God’s plan.

God is not preparing one extraordinary human being to rule forever while the rest of redeemed humanity remains permanently beneath him as spectators.

God is preparing a people.

Christ has a unique role as Messiah, firstborn, head, and pioneer. But the destination toward which he leads us is participation.

The kingdom is shared.

The inheritance is shared.

The work is shared.

The glory is shared.

The reign is shared.

“So Also Is Christ”

Paul gives us perhaps the most remarkable image of all in 1 Corinthians 12.

He explains that a body is one body even though it contains many members:

That final phrase is extraordinary.

Paul could have said, “So also is the Church.”

Instead he says:

“So also is Christ.”

He then explains that believers have been baptized into one body (1 Corinthians 12:13).

Christ and his people are so closely united that Paul can describe the many-membered body and then simply say:

This is Christ.

Not because Christians literally become Jesus.

Not because personal distinctions disappear.

But because Christ is not meant to function alone.

Christ is the head of a body.

And a head is not a complete body by itself.

Paul develops the same picture elsewhere:

And believers are to grow:

This is a deeply corporate vision.

Christ supplies leadership.

The members supply what has been given to them.

Every part contributes.

And together the body grows.

That means the kingdom cannot be reduced to Jesus doing everything.

God has chosen to work through a body.

Christ Needs His Body

Christians are accustomed to saying that we need Christ.

And of course we do.

Jesus tells his disciples:

But the body metaphor pushes us to recognize another truth that Christians sometimes hesitate even to say:

Christ also needs his body.

I do not mean that Christ ceases to have his unique calling as Messiah and head.

I mean something much more concrete.

Jesus is a man.

A head is not a body.

One human being is not an entire redeemed humanity.

One person cannot embody every gift, every relationship, every vocation, every culture, every act of service, every form of creativity, every expression of wisdom, and every calling that God intends for humanity.

God never intended Christ’s mission to terminate in Christ alone.

Christ is the beginning.

He is the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Romans 8:29).

He is the pioneer bringing many sons and daughters to glory (Hebrews 2:10).

He is the head from whom an entire body grows.

Jesus himself prepared his disciples for this.

He told them:

After his resurrection, he did not tell his followers merely to admire what he had accomplished.

He sent them.

“You shall be my witnesses,” he told them (Acts 1:8).

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).

The ministry expanded because Christ worked through other human beings.

That pattern does not disappear when Christ returns.

It reaches its fullness.

The Messiah and his people become a functioning body through whom God can act.

Christ needs his body in the same practical sense that a head needs hands, feet, eyes, ears, lungs, and a heart if a body is going to accomplish its work.

And the body needs its head.

Neither picture is complete without the other.

By this I do not mean that Christ is incomplete as a person or incapable of acting without Christians. I mean that God has chosen to unite Christ and his people as one body, in which the members genuinely give to and receive from one another. They also do ministry together.

One Body Does Not Mean One Level of Authority

This does not mean that Scripture erases every distinction between Christ and Christians.

Christ is the Messiah.

He is the firstborn.

He is the head.

God has given him extraordinary authority.

But even Christ remains under God.

Paul says:

And at the culmination of the kingdom, Paul describes Christ handing the kingdom to God the Father. Even the Son himself is subjected to God:

That hierarchy matters.

God is not one member of the body.

God is the source of everything.

Christ and his people are the redeemed human family through whom God works.

So when I say that Christ and his people reign together, I am not saying that Christ has no leadership or unique role.

I am saying that his leadership is not solitary rule by a divine being who needs no one.

It is the leadership of the human Messiah within a redeemed people.

The biblical picture is far more relational and participatory.

Christ leads.

His people respond.

His people contribute.

Christ learns through his relationships with others, just as genuine human relationships involve both giving and receiving. If Jesus remains genuinely human and capable of continued growth, as I have argued from Scripture elsewhere on this blog, then his relationship with his people need not be entirely one-directional. Christians can receive from Christ while also bringing their own experiences, perspectives, gifts, and relationships into the life of the body. In that sense, Christ can genuinely learn from and receive from his people.

The body develops together.

And God works through all of them.

Righteous Does Not Mean Morally Impeccable

This also helps us understand what kind of people will reign with Christ.

They will be righteous.

They will be holy.

They will be faithful.

They will have overcome enormous evil.

They will have been transformed into Christ’s likeness.

But none of those statements necessarily means that they become metaphysically incapable of making a wrong choice.

Scripture never defines righteousness that way.

Nor does Scripture explicitly say that Christ’s perfection means that he became morally infallible.

Hebrews tells us that Jesus:

“learned obedience” through what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8),

was “made perfect” (Hebrews 5:9),

and ultimately offered himself to God “without blemish” through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14).

Those are extraordinarily strong statements.

We should affirm them as strongly as Scripture does.

But we should not automatically turn them into a philosophical proposition that Scripture itself does not state:

Jesus became metaphysically incapable of ever making another morally wrong choice.

The Greek perfection word-family (teleios/teleioō) can describe maturity, completeness, or being brought to an intended goal; the terms do not, by themselves, establish that every possible form of subsequent growth has ended (Danker et al. 995–96).

The same restraint should apply when we speak about Christians.

To become righteous does not necessarily mean to cease being capable of moral choice.

To become mature does not mean to become incapable of further development.

To become like Christ does not mean becoming frozen at a final psychological, relational, intellectual, emotional, or experiential endpoint.

Human perfection can mean completeness or maturity appropriate to a particular stage and calling without meaning that no further growth is possible.

That distinction matters tremendously for the kingdom.

A Righteous People Who Can Still Grow

What might life in Christ’s kingdom actually look like?

Scripture does not give us a detailed schedule.

But it repeatedly presents the age to come as active.

There is reigning.

Judging.

Serving.

Priestly work.

Responsibility.

Nations.

Relationships.

Healing.

Learning.

Stewardship.

These are dynamic categories.

They imply life.

And real life involves development.

Even within the present age, Paul describes Christian maturity as movement rather than stagnation.

We are transformed “from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The body is to grow “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

Paul immediately adds that we should “grow up in all things into him who is the head—Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

Growth can occur in many dimensions.

Wisdom can deepen.

Relationships can mature.

Understanding can expand.

Love can become richer.

Leadership can develop.

Creativity can flourish.

Communities can learn.

People can become more skilled at governing justly.

A person can be profoundly righteous and still become wiser tomorrow than she or he is today.

A person can deeply love God and still discover new dimensions of love.

A person can faithfully lead and still become a better leader.

There is no contradiction between righteousness and growth.

In fact, righteousness may finally make healthy growth possible.

And What About Christ?

This question also applies to Christ.

Scripture clearly presents Jesus as someone who grew during his earthly life.

Hebrews tells us that he “learned obedience” through suffering (Hebrews 5:8).

His humanity was not static.

He learned.

He suffered.

He developed.

He became perfect.

The New Testament does not tell us that resurrection transformed Jesus from a genuinely developing human being into a metaphysically static being incapable of ever learning anything new.

Nor does Scripture explicitly tell us exactly what kinds of growth may remain possible for Christ in the age to come.

So I do not think we should claim more than Scripture gives us.

Scripture describes his return in extraordinarily righteous terms: faithful, true, just, victorious.

But neither should we quietly insert an additional doctrine and insist that resurrection must mean the end of every possible form of moral, relational, intellectual, or experiential growth.

Jesus remains human.

And genuine humanity need not be defined by static perfection.

This matters because the kingdom involves relationships Jesus has never previously lived in exactly this way.

He will reign with a glorified body of brothers and sisters.

He will work alongside a redeemed humanity.

He will lead a global people.

And those people will not simply receive from him.

They will also bring their gifts, their histories, their wisdom, their perspectives, and their callings into the body.

That is what bodies do.

They live together.

They affect one another.

They grow together.

The Body Needs Every Member

Paul says something striking in 1 Corinthians 12:

In its immediate context, Paul is describing the interdependence of members within the Church.

We should not simply turn the “head” in that particular sentence into a technical reference to Jesus.

But the principle fits the larger body imagery beautifully:

a healthy body does not contain unnecessary members.

Every part matters.

Every member contributes something.

And God deliberately arranges the members:

That means redeemed humanity is not an audience.

It is not decoration around Jesus.

It is not an eternal cheering section for one central person.

These are people God has prepared to do something.

They have gifts.

They have responsibilities.

They have authority.

They have wisdom.

They have work.

Christ needs those members precisely because God has chosen to build a many-membered humanity rather than accomplish everything through one man alone.

The Messiah has a body.

And the body matters.

Together, They Can Do More

Think about how extraordinary this becomes.

One righteous human being can accomplish much.

What can millions—or eventually billions—of righteous human beings accomplish together?

What happens when people who genuinely love God begin governing without exploitation?

What happens when rulers seek restoration rather than domination?

What happens when intelligence is used for healing rather than manipulation?

What happens when creativity is freed from greed?

What happens when strength is used to protect the vulnerable?

What happens when people with different abilities and experiences truly function as one body?

The possibilities become enormous.

This may help us understand why God’s plan has always been larger than simply producing one perfect human example.

God wants a family.

God wants a people.

God wants humanity restored.

Jesus is the firstborn within that family.

And through him God is building something far greater than an isolated hero.

He is building a body.

The Messiah Is Not the Destination

This brings us back to the argument of the previous article.

Christlikeness is essential.

But Christlikeness is not the ultimate ceiling.

Jesus himself points beyond himself to God.

He calls the Father “my God and your God” (John 20:17).

He teaches that eternal life is knowing the Father as “the only true God” and Jesus as the one whom God sent (John 17:3).

Paul says Christ ultimately subjects himself to God so that “God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

So becoming like Christ should never mean that humanity stops wherever Christ once stood at a particular moment in his development.

It means joining him on the journey toward God.

Christ goes ahead.

We follow.

Then, increasingly, we walk together.

The goal is not eternal inferiority to Christ.

The goal is participation with Christ in the life and work of God.

That is why Paul can pray that we become filled with all the fullness of God.

Christ shows us the way.

But God remains the infinite horizon.

There will always be more of God to know.

More love to receive.

More love to give.

More wisdom to discover.

More beauty to create.

More relationships to deepen.

More ways to serve.

More dimensions of goodness to embody.

God is infinite and inexhaustible.

And if God is infinite and inexhaustible, there is no reason to imagine redeemed life as static.

A People Made Righteous

This is what I believe Revelation 20 is showing us.

A people have been formed.

They have suffered.

They have overcome.

They belong to God.

They belong to Christ.

And now:

they live and reign with him.

Not as morally meaningless people who have simply been declared righteous while remaining unchanged.

They have truly been transformed.

But neither must we imagine them as metaphysically impeccable creatures who have ceased to possess meaningful agency.

They are righteous people.

Mature people.

Faithful people.

Christlike people.

And they reign.

They make decisions.

They exercise responsibility.

They serve.

They learn what it means to govern God’s world in love.

And Christ is among them—not as Almighty God somehow existing as both God and man, but as their fully human Messiah, brother, head, pioneer, and king.

He needs them.

They need him.

Together, they need God.

And together, God can work through them in ways humanity has barely begun to imagine.

One Body Under One God

Jesus prayed before his death:

That prayer reaches far beyond institutional unity.

It points toward a humanity so deeply united in love that God can dwell and work through the whole.

Christ does not disappear.

Neither do we.

Difference remains.

Personhood remains.

Relationship remains.

But division is overcome.

The head and the body function together.

Many people become one people.

And that entire people lives under one God.

Perhaps this is one of the deepest meanings of the kingdom.

Not one man ruling while everyone else watches.

Not humanity disappearing beneath Christ.

Not Christ disappearing into God.

But an ordered family:

God over all.

Christ and his people united.

Many members functioning as one body.

A righteous humanity learning to reign in love.

And through that body, God filling creation more and more with God’s own goodness.

Christlikeness prepares us for that.

But Christlikeness is not where the journey ends.

We become like Christ so that we can stand with Christ.

Work with Christ.

Reign with Christ.

Grow with Christ.

And together move ever more deeply into the inexhaustible life of God.

The kingdom is not the story of one extraordinary man replacing humanity.

It is the story of God using that man to restore humanity.

And when Christ returns, the beautiful result is not Jesus alone.

It is Jesus with his body.

A people made righteous.

A people made one.

A people learning to love.

A people entrusted with the world.

And together with Christ, under God, they reign.