It’s six forty-seven on Monday morning. Your alarm went off fourteen minutes ago. The kettle’s on. You’ve got your Bible open on the kitchen table. You read a Psalm. You pray.
Then you close the book. You put it down on the counter. You grab your keys. And you walk out into a world which the Bible doesn’t actually govern, so you’ve been told.
The boss. The contract. The client. The school. The shop. The bank. Monday.
The Bible governs Sunday. Natural law governs the rest. That’s what you’ve been told. That’s the air you’ve been breathing.
And last week, in the first lecture, I closed with a question. If Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth. If those are the words he said on a mountain in Galilee just before he ascended. Then what authority is Van Drunen’s common kingdom running on?
That’s the question I left you with. And that’s the question we’re going to answer today.
Because if the answer is what I think it is, then Van Drunen’s whole system collapses on one verse. One verse. Spoken by the risen Christ. Recorded in Matthew chapter twenty-eight.
And once you see what it says, you won’t be able to walk out of your house on a Monday morning and leave your Bible sitting on the counter. You won’t be able to. Because His Word rules in the big, bad world. Because Christ does.
My name’s Nathan F. Conkey, with Restore Christianity.co.uk. And this is Exiles No More.
What This Lecture Gives You
First, one verse. Matthew twenty-eight, verses eighteen to twenty. We’re going to walk through it slowly. Word by word. Using Greek where it matters.
Second, the Old Testament back-story. Because Jesus didn’t pull the Great Commission out of thin air. He’s standing in a long line of Messianic promises, and we’re going to walk the line with Him.
Third, Van Drunen’s escape hatch. He has one. We’re going to look at it. And then we’re going to weld it shut.
Fourth, what a discipled nation actually looks like. Because if Christ commanded us to disciple nations, we’d better know what one is.
And by the end of this lecture, you’ll have a sentence in your head that you will never be able to forget. A sentence that explains why the common kingdom doesn’t exist. A sentence you’ll want to write on a card and stick on your bathroom mirror. But we’ll come back to that.
The Verse: Matthew 28:18-20
Matthew chapter twenty-eight, verses eighteen to twenty.
“And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying: All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Right. That’s a risen man speaking. A man who was nailed to a cross on Friday. A man who walked out of a sealed tomb on Sunday. A man whose disciples are standing in front of him three days later, looking at his scars, listening to his voice. And those are the words.
So let’s break it down. Three “alls”. All authority. All nations. All I have commanded. We’re going to take them in order.
All Authority
All authority. In heaven. And on earth.
Now, you and I have to be careful with little words. Because little words are where systems live or die. And the little word here is “all”. Not “some” authority. Not “spiritual” authority. Not “authority over the church but not over the marketplace”. Not “authority over Sunday but not Monday”. All.
In Greek, pasa exousia. Total. Universal. Without remainder. In heaven. And on earth.
Now, when Christ said “in heaven and on earth”, what was He excluding? Anything? Was there a third realm he forgot to mention? A common kingdom hiding in the gap between heaven and earth? A natural-law commonwealth tucked away somewhere behind the cushions of the cosmic sofa?
No. There’s heaven. There’s earth. And Christ has all the authority in both.
So when Van Drunen tells you that the common kingdom is governed by natural law, not by Scripture, not by Christ as Mediator, the verse has already answered him. The verse has all the territory. The verse has all the authority. The common kingdom would need to show its credentials at the door of this verse. And it can’t. It shall not pass.
All Nations
Second word. All. Nations. Greek: panta ta ethnē. ethnē. That’s where we get “ethnic” from. It means peoples. It means nations. It means corporate, cultural, civilisational groupings.
Now, there’s a quiet move that happens in modern evangelical preaching. The Great Commission gets shrunk. It becomes “make disciples of all kinds of individuals from every background”. That’s not a small side step. That’s a huge leap.
Because individuals aren’t the object of the verb. Nations are. The Greek doesn’t say “make disciples of individuals from all nations”. It says “disciple the nations”. The nations themselves. As nations. As corporate things. As cultures.
You’re not just sent to fish out a handful of converts from a sea of pagans and leave the sea pagan. You’re sent to disciple the sea. You’re sent to disciple the courts. You’re sent to disciple the schools. You’re sent to disciple the laws. You’re sent to disciple Scotland. And England. And America. And Papua New Guinea. And every other glorious chunk of earth with a flag stuck in it.
This is the Old Testament background showing up. Psalm two, verse eight. “Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance. And the ends of the earth for Your possession.”
Christ is asking. The Father is giving. And the deed is being passed to him in Matthew twenty-eight. The nations are his inheritance. He’s just told you to go and take possession.
All I Have Commanded
Third word. All. “Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.”
All things. How much of that is natural law? How much of “all things that I have commanded you” is accessible to the unregenerate conscience through Romans two? How much of the Sermon on the Mount can a pagan deduce from his sense of fair play? The Beatitudes? “Love your enemies”? “Do not lay up treasures on earth”? “Seek first the kingdom of God”?
You can’t get any of that from natural law. You get it from the mouth of the Lord. From the words of Christ. Which means the nations are being discipled not by clever boffins or bureaucrats getting round a table and hammering out the truth, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the God-Man Christ Jesus.
Including, by the way, what Christ said earlier in the same gospel. Matthew five, verse eighteen. “Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” Not one jot. Not one tittle. Still binding. Still operational. Still standard.
So put the three “alls” together. All authority. To Christ. All nations. As the discipling target. All commands. As the curriculum.
That’s not a private spirituality. That’s not a Sunday-only religion. That’s a civilisational mandate.
The Ascension Reality
Now, here’s the thing. When Christ said those words, he was about to exit this terrestrial orb. Forty days later He ascended into Heaven. And here’s where modern Christianity makes its first wrong turn.
Most people picture the ascension as a departure. Christ leaves. The Spirit comes. The church waits. Ascension equals absence.
But that’s not what the New Testament says. The ascension isn’t departure. The ascension is coronation. Christ doesn’t ascend to retire. He ascends to reign.
Psalm one hundred and ten, verse one. The most-quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament. “The Lord said to my Lord. Sit at My right hand. Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” Sit at my right hand. That’s a throne. That’s a king. That’s the cosmos under new management.
And what is the king doing from that throne? Watching? Waiting? Hiding? No. “Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” He is actively subjugating all the enemies of Christ’s present reign. In history. Right now. Even those who are inside the walls of the Church.
Daniel seven, verses thirteen and fourteen. “Behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the Ancient of Days. Then to Him was given dominion. And glory. And a kingdom. That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.” Dominion. Glory. A kingdom. Peoples, nations, languages. All of them. Serving him.
That’s the heavenly scene Christ has just entered when he says “all authority”. He’s not bragging. He’s reporting. He’s just been seated. He’s just been given the deed. He’s just received dominion over all the nations. And then he turns to his disciples and says: disciple the nations.
Hallelujah. That’s the Christ of the New Testament. He is no mere footnote. He’s not your “forever friend” who lives to give you warm feelings in your heart. He is a King. Crowned. Ruling and reigning. Now.
An Absent Christ, an Abandoned Culture
Joe Boot has a line about this that I want to give you. “An absent Christ. An abandoned culture.” That’s the equation. If you believe Christ is absent from culture, you’ll abandon culture. If you believe he’s reigning over it, you’ll engage it.
Now here’s why that matters in the real world. The earliest Christian confession was three words. “Kyrios Christos.” Christ is Lord. That’s not a private feeling. That’s a political claim. Because the Roman empire had a competing confession. “Kyrios Caesar.” Caesar is Lord.
And the martyrs went to their deaths because they refused to put a pinch of incense in front of Caesar’s statue. They didn’t die for a private spirituality. They died because they would not concede that Caesar had authority Christ did not.
Two Kingdoms theology operates on an absent Christ. Christ over the church? Yes. Christ over the heart? Yes. Christ over heaven? Naturally. But Christ over the law courts? The legislatures? The economic life of nations? Absent. A symbolic king with no real power, no actual clout.
Now I’m going to ask you something. What kind of king has authority but no jurisdiction? What kind of king reigns in heaven but is shut out from earth?
That’s not the Christ of Matthew twenty-eight. That’s not the Christ of Psalm one hundred and ten. That’s not the Son of Man of Daniel seven. That’s a fictional Jesus. A man-made church mouse, a domesticated Christ. That’s not the one who walked out of the tomb.
But here’s where Van Drunen would push back. Because he’s seen Matthew twenty-eight. And he’s not embarrassed by it. He has an answer.
Van Drunen’s Move, and the Answer
I told you in the first lecture that I’m not going to caricature this man. I meant it. So here’s his move. He’s a Reformed theologian. He’s read Matthew twenty-eight a thousand times. His response is a distinction. A distinction between Christ’s mediatorial authority and Christ’s creational authority.
The argument goes like this. Christ has two kinds of authority. He has authority as Mediator, which is exercised over his redemptive kingdom, his church, his people in their identity as the elect. And he has authority as the eternal Son and Creator, which is exercised over all things, but not in the same way. Not as Redeemer, but as God.
Matthew twenty-eight, Van Drunen would say, is Christ asserting his mediatorial authority. It’s about the church. It’s about the gospel. It’s about discipling the elect from every nation. It’s not, on Van Drunen’s reading, a claim that Christ as Mediator governs the courthouses, the parliaments, and the marketplaces. Those are still in the common kingdom. Governed by natural law. Under Christ as Creator, but not as Mediator.
Now. That’s a clever move. I have to hand it to him. Clever, but wrong. And here’s why.
Where in the text does Christ make that distinction? Where in Matthew twenty-eight does he say “all authority, but only in my mediatorial capacity”? Where does he say “all nations, but only in their religious dimension”? Where does he say “teaching them to observe all my commands, except the ones that touch civil life, which they should work out from natural law alone”?
It’s not there. It’s not anywhere in the text.
The distinction between mediatorial and creational authority is a high-flying fancy idea that Van Drunen brings to the verse. It’s not coming out of the verse. The verse is total. The distinction is the move that lets him keep the system standing in spite of the verse.
And here’s the test. Read Matthew twenty-eight to someone who has never heard these big-brained Reformed scholastic distinctions. Read it to a man at the mechanic’s shop. Read it to your wife. Read it to one of your children. Ask them: what does Christ have authority over here? They won’t say “his mediatorial kingdom only”. They’ll say “everything”. Because that’s what the verse says.
But here’s the deeper problem. Even if you grant Van Drunen his distinction, even if you grant that there’s a difference between mediatorial and creational authority, you’ve still got a problem. Because the Son who is Mediator and the Son who is Creator are the same Son.
Christ isn’t divided. The man at the right hand of the Father is the same man who walked out of the tomb is the same eternal Son who made the world. He doesn’t switch hats depending on what room He’s in. If he has all authority, he has all authority. The two natures, one person.
The Christ of Colossians one, the one in whom “all things were created, and in Him all things consist”, is the same Christ who said “all authority has been given to Me”. There’s no Christ who’s Lord of Sunday but not Monday. There’s no Christ who’s King over your hymn-singing but not over your hiring decisions. There’s one Christ. And he has it all.
What a Discipled Nation Looks Like
So Christ has all authority. He’s commanded us to disciple nations. He’s given us the curriculum: all his commandments.
The question that should be hanging over your head right now is this. What does a discipled nation actually look like? Have you ever stopped to picture one? Have you ever sat down and thought: if Scotland were discipled, what would Scotland look like on a Tuesday afternoon? If America were discipled? If your town were?
Let me sketch it out for you. It’s a Tuesday afternoon in a discipled nation. A man walks into a courtroom. The judge swears him in on a Bible because the law of the land assumes the law of God. A child walks into a school. The first thing she’s taught is the fear of the Lord, because the school assumes that knowledge starts there.
A builder honours his contract because perjury and theft are still crimes. A grocer keeps his scales honest because false weights are still an abomination. A factory pays its workers on time and regularly, because the wages of the hired man are not allowed to remain with the employer overnight.
None of that is utopia. That’s just what happens when the true law of King Jesus shapes a culture.
That’s a discipled nation. It’s not the absence of sin. It’s the presence of standards. It’s not perfect. It’s just.
And here’s what cuts. You’ve been told that’s not on the table. You’ve been told that’s a fantasy. You’ve been told that any Christian who wants that is naive at best and dangerous at worst. But that’s what Christ commanded. Disciple the nations. Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.
Not perfectly. Not all at once. But progressively. Generation after generation. Faithfully. The way Christendom was built the first time round.
What You Do This Week
I’m not leaving you in the abstract. Five things. Specific. This week.
Step 1: Memorise the verse
You started memorising Matthew twenty-eight, verse eighteen, last week. If you didn’t, start now. But this week, memorise the whole passage. Verses eighteen to twenty. All three “alls”.
Say it out loud in the car. Say it walking the dog. Say it before you fall asleep.
Because something happens when those words get into your very bones. You stop being able to say “the Bible doesn’t apply here”. The verse says it does. And the verse is sitting in your head, refusing to be quiet.
Step 2: Audit one domain of your life this week
Pick one. Just one. Your work. Or your finances. Or how you spend your evenings. Or your kids’ schooling. Or your relationship to the civil authorities.
Pick the one you’ve quietly written off. The one you’ve been operating in for years without ever asking “what would obedience to Christ look like here?”
Don’t start with the government. Don’t start with the schools. Don’t start with the WEF. Start with the domain you are responsible for. And ask: have I been functioning as a citizen of the common kingdom in this area? Or as a man under the authority of King Jesus? Write down what you find. Don’t rush past it.
Step 3: Pray Psalm 2 over your nation
This week, every morning, open your Bible to Psalm chapter two. And pray it. Not as a private devotion. As a request. “Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance.”
So ask. Ask him for your nation specifically. That God’s rule of that nation would take on flesh, as Christ has done, in time and history. Name it. Scotland. Or England. Or New Zealand. Or America. Or wherever the Lord has set your feet.
Because you’re not asking for utopia. You’re asking the Father for the fullness of the inheritance for which the Son has already asked. That’s not presumption. That’s covenant prayer.
Step 4: Have the conversation
Sit down with someone who’s a Van Drunen believer. Put the kettle on. Break out the biscuits. Open your Bible to Matthew twenty-eight. Read verses eighteen to twenty aloud. Then ask him three questions.
Question one. How much authority does that verse say Christ has? Question two. Who is being discipled in that verse? Individuals, or nations? Question three. If both of those things are true, what does your week look like?
Don’t argue with him. Don’t quote Van Drunen at him. Don’t show off. Just read the text. Ask the three questions. And listen.
If he says “all authority, full stop”, and “the nations”, and “my week looks very different”, you’ve found a brother. If he hedges. If he reaches for the mediatorial distinction without knowing he’s reaching for it. If he says “well, but, in a sense…”, then you’ve found a man who has been catechised by a tradition that’s afraid of its own Bible.
Either way, the conversation needs to happen. Either way, you’re not alone in your kitchen with this anymore.
Step 5: Sit with the question the next lecture will answer
Here it is. Van Drunen says Reformed theology has always taught Two Kingdoms. Calvin. The Westminster Confession. The whole tradition. He says transformationists like me are the revisionists. We are the latecomers. We are the ones departing from the Reformed mainstream.
That’s a serious charge for any Reformed Christian. Because if he’s right, then everything we’ve said today is novelty. And if he’s wrong, then he’s the one who has departed.
Sit with that question. Because in the next lecture we’re going to look at Calvin himself. In Geneva. Not the Calvin of selected quotations. The Calvin of the ecclesiastical ordinances and the trial of Servetus and the magistrate’s duty to both tables of the Decalogue. We’re going to ask: is Van Drunen’s Calvin the real Calvin? Or has he given us a Calvin made to measure?
One Last Thought
Let me leave you with this. Van Drunen wants you to believe there are two kingdoms. A redemptive one. And a common one. Christ ruling one. Natural law ruling the other.
But the risen Christ said: all authority. In heaven. And on earth. There’s no common kingdom written between the lines of that sentence. There’s no magical third realm tucked into the gap. There’s heaven. There’s earth. And Christ has the authority over both.
Which means there’s no common kingdom. Only one kingdom. And you’re either building it. Or you’re trespassing in it.
I’m Nathan Conkey, with Restore Christianity.co.uk. This is Exiles No More.