The original and final intention of God is the kingdom of Glory understood as the naked existence of all creation before the triune God. Originally this plan could have been carried out through the covenant of works but man sinned. This necessitated the incarnation - understood as expiatio, satisfactio and placatio. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit was also necessary for the mediation and appropriation of the salvation that was procured for us by Christ. (There was also the election of Israel and the giving of the law - the entire covenant of grace). This was all necessitated by the fall. It is all an enormous detour undertaken by God to reach his goal. In the eschaton God will reach this goal. Then the particularity with which God has posited salvation in existence will fall away. This applies not only to the particularity of the incarnation of the Son, of the messiahship of Jesus and the particularity of the church with all its offices, preaching and sacraments; but to all the particularness of special revelation itself, the entire christological-pneumatological intermezzo, the entire dispensation of the gift of salvation and the appropriation of salvation.3.84
The fact that the present experience of salvation is a detour does not detract from the fact that the kingdom is really present now - but in a determined modality. The unveiling of this kingdom will be a new act of God and in no sense can we act as if this unveiling has already taken place. There is a distinct eschatological border between the regnum Christi and the regnum Dei. The social ideal is an eschatological prospect. In the present we get no further than the church and christianization. Guilt lies too deep in existence and society for it to be done away with all at once. It must first be reconciled - we must allow it to be reconciled. Before the social ideal there is the unio mystica cum Christo.3.85 In the present God is struggling with the flesh and in christianization man and culture are stamped with the form of Christ. But there is never a complete synthesis of creation and redemption in this dispensation. ``Wij moeten christenen blijven om uberhaupt een beetje mens te kunnen zijn.''3.86 In the eschaton we will be what God intends us to be -true man and true woman, but in the present we only gain our true being fragmentarily and ambiguously in Christ through the Spirit.3.87