Worship in this life that is shaped by our covenant relationship with God through the gospel, the spiritual realities of heavenly worship, sanctifies us into a pure church who live in light of that relationship as we wait for our blessed hope. By reenacting what we are in Christ, Christian worshipers become what we are.

Though during this present age kingdom and cultus (God’s worshiping community) are separated, God intends one day to join them together under the rule of his Anointed One. The question for us is, of course, where we currently fit in this plan of God for a holy theocracy, a perfect union of kingdom and cultus under the kingly rule and priestly ministry of the Second Adam.

The book of Hebrews addresses both kingdom and cultus in this present age. First, the author quotes God’s declaration in Psalm 8 that he intends for man to exercise regal dominion over all the earth; however, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Heb 2:8). The First Adam failed, and still all things are not yet in subjection to the son of man. But, “because of the suffering of death,” Jesus is “crowned with glory and honor” (Heb 2:9)—he has earned the right to rule; Christ is, as Psalm 110 states, presently seated at the Father’s right hand until the Father makes his enemies his footstool. The perfect eternal kingdom has been promised and already ensured, but it is not yet a consummated reality. Christ sovereignly rules over all creation as the Son of God, and Christ presently rules over his redeemed people, but the consummation of his rule over all things on earth as the Son of Man will happen when he comes again, when “the kingdom of this world”—that is, the common grace kingdom—“will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev 11:15).

In other words, if we want to look to the Old Testament for an analogy to our present situation as Christians in this age, we are more like the sojourning patriarchs and the exiled Hebrews than either the Edenic or Mosaic holy theocracies. And, of course, this is exactly how the New Testament portrays us. Peter specifically calls us “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11). “Our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul tells us (Phil 3:20); we are “citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph 2:19). Like Abraham on his pilgrimage or Daniel in Babylon, Christians participate in the common grace aspects of the earthly kingdoms in which we dwell, but we “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb 11:16); we long for the heavenly Jerusalem above our highest joy (Ps 137:6). And that heavenly Jerusalem will one day descend to the earth, uniting kingdom and cultus as was God’s intention from the beginning.

Yet Hebrews also reveals to us the nature of our worship in this age as well. The author proclaims at the end of chapter 12,

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb 12:22–24)

This is the heavenly palace/temple Isaiah and John envisioned, the place where God himself sits enthroned, surrounded by heavenly beings.” To this higher kingdom where God reigns Christian worshipers come to the reality, to the true worship of heaven itself. Paul describes this reality for Christians in Ephesians 2:6 when he states that God has “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Christ is seated in heaven as the king/priest, and since we are in him by faith, we are with him there. And he tells us how just a few verses later in Ephesians 2:18: “For through [Christ] we . . . have access in one Spirit to the Father.” We have access to the Father because in one Spirit through Christ, we are actually there, in the presence of God in heaven.

Pure Worship

This biblical understanding situates us in this present age as dual citizens. As members of the human race we are citizens of common grace earthly kingdoms, and so we participate as such. But ultimately we are a called out cultic community with “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for [us], who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet 1:4–5). Consequently, as Peter goes on to say, “as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. . . . Conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers” (1 Pet 1:15, 17–18).

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