The locus classicus in Scripture on which the doctrine/theologoumenon of the Messianic Intermezzo is based, is I Cor. 15:24-28. ``Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. `For God has put all things in subjection under his feet.' But when it says, `all things are put in subjection under him,' it is plain that he is excepted who put all things under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone.''
These statements imply that the work of the Christ is in its totality an `intermezzo' in the historical succession of God's acts of salvation. The incarnation of Christ (that is, of the eternal Son of God in the Son born of Mary) was/is not an end in itself. By its very nature it was/is a means to an end. God is not first and foremost concerned with the Christ, but with the world and its recreation unto the kingdom of God. The world as such is to be redeemed in order to exist eternally before God. To this end God does not `transsubstantiate' the world into something other than world. His protological and eschatological intention is that the world should be saved, that is, cleansed from sin, guilt and death. Therefore God's ultimate intention is not to `Christify' this world, but to cleanse it from sin and death. In an eschatological perspective it should be said that God did not create the world for the sake of Christ, but for its own sake. All his historical acts of salvation point toward this end, namely, the eschatological purification of this world. The incarnation of the eternal Son was the decisive means to this end.