I am greatly indebted to Goldsworthy’s books (The Goldsworthy Trilogy, According to Plan, and Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture).  Goldsworthy has helped me a great deal in understanding the structure of revelation and seeing the big picture of the Bible as God’s story climaxing in Jesus the King.  Because of this, I think Goldsworthy is a must read for all Christian preachers, and I recommend him to all Christians.

          With this said, I still think that Goldsworthy can be improved (as we all can), and I think one area regards God ruling his creation by the means of Man, male and female.  I may have missed something in Goldsworthy’s work, but I don’t think that he gives rightful place to God ruling his creation through Man.  Goldsworthy’s typical pattern for the Kingdom is

a)    God’s People

b)    In God’s Place

c)     Under God’s Rule (The Goldsworthy Trilogy, 54).

Now, while this is helpful I do not think it is dare I say biblical enough.  Why?  Because of the role of Man as the image of God.  In Genesis 1:26-28 it is written,

          26 Then God said, "Let us make man as our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."  27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.    28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" (Personal Translation).

 

What we have here is that because Man, male and female, is made to be the image of God after the likeness of God; he is to rule over the creation which God had made.  In other words, God is ruling his creation through the kingship of Man.  Some have called this the vicegerency of Man (See especially Dan McCartney’s Ecce Homo: The Coming of the Kingdom as the Restoration of Human Vicegerency, WTJ 56:1 [Spring 1994], 1-24).  Because of the vicegerency of Man I think we need to tweak Goldsworthy’s kingdom of God pattern to something like the following:

a)    God ruling

b)    In God’s place

c)     By his people

With these elements in place, I think there is a more biblically defined view of the kingdom of God.  McCartney summarizes this emphasis on vicegerency thusly,

…the “coming” of the kingdom of God that is expected in the OT involves a reinstatement of humanity to the proper position of vicegerent, exercising the reign of God on earth. This vicegerent reign is imminent, indeed is already here, in the preaching and actions of Jesus and the testimony of the Evangelists. It is already here, in even greater measure though not yet in its fullness, in the preaching of Paul and the other apostles, as they proclaim Christ’s exaltation and his receiving of dominion as the anointed king, God’s Son. It is also growing as the vicegerency of The Man is given to Christ’s elect ones, the saints of the Most High ( Dan 7:18 , 27 ), who are also anointed by the Holy One (1 John 2:20) who thus already reign with Christ in heavenly places (Eph 2:6 ). Finally, at “that day” the vicegerency of all who are in Christ will be fully realized, and the reign of God will be all in all (McCartney, Ecce, 24).