In the New Testament witness it is impossible to keep the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Christ separate. These two concepts are so interlinked in the New Testament, that it could even be said that they are identical. Therefore the words `messianic' and eschatological must be seen together.1.43 In the messianic kingdom of Christ we have the full eschatological salvation. We have already seen that it is of the essence of this kingdom that this salvation is concealed. Christ's fulfillment of the Old Testament means that all God's promises are `yea and amen' in him.1.44Nevertheless, even in the New Testament the christian life is dominated by promise and expectation.1.45 We have not yet entered into the eschatological reality itself, we have not come out of the promise into the promised reality, out of the expectation to the life itself. Thus there is a difference between the regnum Christi and the regnum Dei. This difference is ``not described by the category of fulfillment (pleroma) but by the category of revelation (apocalypsis).''1.46The difference is thus a difference in modality. It is one and the same kingdom in its concealment and in its revelation.
The concealment in the flesh, the humanity of God in Christ, will be undone in the eschatological act of revelation. Then the `Son' - that is the Son as he appeared in the flesh - will give the kingdom to the Father. This does not mean that he will lay aside the glory, but that in a certain sense he will return to his glorious divinity.1.47
In other words the incarnation falls away in the eschaton and then nothing remains except the triune God and the things in their naked (redeemed) existence.1.48