The central proclamation of the New Testament is that the kingdom has already come in Jesus, and this kingdom is a full reality in the present. But it is concealed with Christ in Heaven, in God (fl. Col. 3:3; 1 Peter 1:4), which at the same time means safely put away and withdrawn from publicity. The concealment of salvation in the present does not diminish its reality or fullness, but rather emphasizes its particularity. However real the presence of the kingdom of God on earth may be, it is present as kingdom of Christ, not in the majesty and glory and generality of the kingdom of glory, but in the concealment of the flesh and the concealment of heaven, merciful and graceful in the particularness of His special revelation.1.38 Thus the present is to be understood as the kingdom of God which has dawned upon us in all its fullness as the kingdom of Christ.
The kingdom of God is present but it is also an eschatological figure and thus a matter of the future. The eschatological perspective must be upheld.1.39 It lies in the nature of the kingdom of God as the kingdom of Christ that it can be denied and rejected because it lies in the essence of the supremacy of Christ to reign in the midst of his enemies (Psalm 110; 1 Cor. 15). And the supremacy of Christ will never be other than a supremacy in medio inimicorum.1.40 But the fact that it is the kingdom of God implies a hidden supremacy over all resistance,1.41and because the kingdom of God is essentially eschatological the promise and the expectation holds that what is now concealed will once for all be revealed and unveiled. Christ will give the kingdom to the Father (1 Cor. 15:24). This will be a new act of God in history.