This is an excerpt from the introduction to a modern-language version of Messiah the Prince by J.K. Wall that is in production by Crown & Covenant Publications. The original version is now in print (Crown & Covenant). J.K. Wall is a business journalist in Indianapolis and a member of Christ Church RP in Brownsburg, Ind. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from DePauw University and Indiana University-Indianapolis.

Introduction

William Symington’s book Messiah the Prince is about a king and his kingdom. Which means it might as well be written in a foreign language.

The concept of kingship is utterly alien in the 21st century, especially in the United States. Not only do we Americans have no king, but our country’s founders explicitly rejected the claims of a king—any king—over them.

Since then, most of the rest of the world has followed suit. Out of the world’s roughly 190 countries, only 30 still have a monarch. And most of those are figureheads, like Queen Elizabeth of England, who occupies lavish palaces and holds a regular consultation with the prime minister but whose power is mostly symbolic.

Even the kings who still hold real power present a sorry picture of kingship. There are several ruling kings in the Middle East, such as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. He may be a friend of the United States and other western powers, and he may be shrewd at turning oil into opulent riches, but his people have few rights and enjoy little of the royal family’s abundant wealth.

Other kings with real power are standing jokes to the rest of the world. King Mswati of Swaziland has made international news every year since 1999 when he revived the traditional Reed Dance in which tens of thousands of virgins dance at his estate and he chooses one as his next wife.

In spite of the impotence, indifference and immorality associated with monarchies today, this book calls us to consider a radical possibility: that a king could have power greater than King Mswati and riches more abundant than King Abdullah and yet rule his people with perfect selflessness and love.

No mere man could use absolute power perfectly for good. But we are not talking about a man. We are talking in this book about Jesus Christ, who is both God and man, who possesses absolute reign and absolute righteousness.

This book is about Jesus Christ and His kingdom. This book is about Jesus’ dominion, which extends far beyond the church to encompass all people, all governments, all businesses, all families, all things, all thoughts, all ages.

This book is about how Jesus is using that unlimited dominion, right now, to build His church and to save the souls of all His people.

This book is about Jesus’ long-range plan to give a new purpose to all parts of life: to spread righteousness and peace across the globe, across the street and deep in our hearts. It is about His call for us to join Him, as loyal subjects in His kingdom, to take part in His great work of worldwide redemption.

Dominion Defined

The subtitle of this book, “the mediatorial dominion of Jesus Christ,” describes a truth that lies behind all of Christianity and ties it together. We cannot understand the Bible or our purpose as Christians unless we understand the idea of kingdom.

The value of William Symington’s Messiah the Prince is that it thoroughly documents, defines and explains Christ’s mediatorial dominion. No other book on the doctrine of the kingdom uncovers the idea of kingship in so many Bible passages and organizes them in such a systematic way.

Being a king is one of Jesus Christ’s three simultaneous but distinct roles. As a prophet, Jesus proclaims the truth and law of God. As a priest, He sacrificed Himself to pay the penalty for our sins. And as a king, He governs His people and applies the benefits of redemption.

God the Father made Christ King over the whole world as a reward for Christ’s accomplishments: His perfect obedience, His death for our sins, and His resurrection. Christ uses His absolute power to bring men and women to saving faith in Him, to form them into a community (the Church) that loves God and loves one another, and to grow this Church throughout all ages.

Christ is using His dominion as we speak to bring all material and earthly things—politicians and their people, parents and kids, movies and music, businesses and charities, animals and amoebas, rocks and even “random” events—under the Church’s mission. And that mission is this: to reverse the curse of sin in His people so they can, with Christ’s power, live out the truth and righteousness of Christ in all areas of life.

The most important verse in Symington’s book is Eph. 1:22: “For He (God the Father) gave Him (Christ) to be head over all things to the church.” The last three words tell us why God gave Christ absolute power over all things—in order to build and benefit His Church.

Needed Now

When we understand Christ’s mediatorial dominion over all things, it will radically reorient our thoughts and actions not just about the church, but also about family, government, business and all other institutions of our society. And we need that new thinking desperately. Family and marriage are now being redefined in unbiblical ways by rampant pornography, adultery and divorce, and by the rulings of courts and state legislatures. Messiah the Prince tells why all people—even non-Christians—ought to conduct family life according to the pattern given in the Bible by Christ, the King of all families.

Church leaders have embraced secular business and marketing techniques to build the church, instead of doing Jesus’ work Jesus’ way. Messiah the Prince shows that Christ has given specific operating instructions for His church and promises for great success—if only church leaders would loyally follow their King instead of the latest trick from Madison Avenue. In business, fraud has surged as Christian principles have become increasingly foreign in business schools and corporate boardrooms. Jesus saw nothing wrong with profits, as His parable of the talents showed. But Messiah the Prince makes clear that each business—in fact, each group of any sort—must acknowledge Christ’s authority over it and base its code of conduct on God’s law.

In politics, many American Christians are demoralized today because 40 years of evangelical activism has hardly budged governments from their irreligious drift. In response, some are calling Christians to re-emphasize the preaching and practice of the gospel instead of trying to redeem the government,1 while others are doubling down on the project of bringing Christian morality into the halls of power.2 Messiah the Prince stresses that that the church should be Christians’ prime focus, as it is Christ’s. But it also shows us that church and state are both creatures that owe allegiance, separately, to Christ. Symington calls governments across the globe to acknowledge Christ as their King and then to support the work of His church. In international affairs, western society has lost its understanding of the true “kingdom of God” right as it faces a big threat from terrorist groups that want to usher in a profoundly different kingdom—the kingdom of Allah. But despite the fear of 9/11 and the frustration of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Messiah the Prince proclaims a stirring vision of how and why Christ will put down all enemies to His kingdom.

For Christians to see through the fog of our times, we must grasp the mediatorial dominion and its implications. We need to learn how—and why—we should serve and glorify King Jesus in every area of our lives. Symington’s book can help us do that.

Strange Silence

At about this point, you might be thinking: If this doctrine is so important, why does the phrase “mediatorial dominion” sound so foreign? And why have I never heard of William Symington?

Symington’s life and language are quite obscure today. He was a Reformed Presbyterian, or Covenanter, pastor in 19th Century Scotland. Messiah the Prince was published in 1839 as Symington moved to the booming city of Glasgow to lead a Covenanter church amidst the tumult of the Industrial Revolution.

The Covenanters got their name because they repeatedly demanded that Scotland return to the National Covenant the nation swore in 1638, which called for reformation of both church and government. The covenant document asserted that both commoners and King Charles I were bound to serve Christ, that both church and state ought to follow Christ’s law laid down in the Bible.3

Symington built his doctrine of the mediatorial dominion on earlier works by giants of Christian theology: Augustine, John Wycliffe and Martin Bucer, a friend and mentor of John Calvin.4

Some of the key implications of Symington’s work on the mediatorial dominion—Christ’s authority over all areas of life, for instance—overlap significantly with other work far better known.

The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper emphasized the “Lordship of Christ” over all areas of life. And he practiced it too, in his work as preacher, founder of a university, journalist and, ultimately, prime minister of the Netherlands.

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence,” Kuyper famously said, “over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”5 Following in Kuyper’s footsteps, the American pastor Francis Schaeffer also emphasized Christ’s rule over all of life.

“The Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of life equally,” Schaeffer wrote, adding, “Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth—Truth about all of reality.” 6

Schaeffer shaped the thinking of an entire generation of Christians. Those applying the ideas of kingdom and Lordship now range from academics such as Gene Edward Veith, to think-tank intellectuals such as Os Guinness, to journalists such as Cal Thomas and to pastors across a wide theological spectrum.

Not everyone agrees on the nature of Christ’s kingdom. In fact, theologians have debated the doctrine for centuries. Regardless, Symington deserves to be heard.

His exhaustive exploration of the relevant Bible passages on Christ’s kingdom will add substantially to the kingdom conversation. So will his lengthy discussions on how these truths ought to be applied—by both individuals and institutions.

Also, Symington’s work serves as an excellent primer for understanding the church and the state—and how Christians should approach each one.

Lesson in Lordship

Symington liked to quote Psalm 110:3, which says of Christ, “Your people will be made willing in the day of Your power.” This is the incredible power Christ has as King: the power not only to make people submit to Him, but also to change their hearts so they desire to submit.

Talk of submission will set off alarm bells for many readers. The idea is not at all popular in most of the world today. …But Jesus thinks of His power in relational terms: He holds dominion over every person’s heart, mind and soul. And He expects them to submit their hearts, minds and souls to Him.

This relationship is a formal one—with duties and promises written down. Indeed, the Bible is a series of promises by our King to us and duties our King expects of us.

We submit to Christ when we obediently perform the duties He asks of us—rather than following the orders of any other “lord,” including ourselves. We submit to Christ when we trust in His promises—instead of the false promises of the world around us.

This submission to Christ is the purpose of our lives. Once we recognize that He has enlisted us—with our willing assent—as His soldiers to carry out His worldwide agenda, we will understand that we must obey our King’s laws. We will see that we must—in spite of the pull of our culture—follow Kuyper’s and Schaeffer’s and Symington’s advice to integrate our faith in all of life.

“The friends of truth, the subjects of Him who is King in Zion, must stand prepared to surrender the applause of man,” Symington wrote, “must value, above everything, the approbation of the Almighty; and aim, at all times, at being able to say in sincerity, We serve the Lord Christ.”7

Hidden in Plain View

In the Bible, the idea of kingdom appears in nearly every book and in a plethora of verses within those books. In his narrative, Symington cited verses from 51 of the Bible’s 66 books. The verses he marshals as evidence run from Genesis 3:15 to Revelation 22:5.

The “kingdom of God” was Jesus’ most frequent topic during His earthly ministry. The phrase occurs 54 times in the gospels. In addition, the phrase “kingdom of heaven” appears 30 times. And there are another 16 uses of similar phrases in the gospels, such as “My kingdom” and “My Father’s kingdom” and “His kingdom” and, simply, “the kingdom.”8 So that’s 100 instances of the word “kingdom”—in the four gospels alone. By comparison, the word “sin” in all its forms appears 41 times in the gospels. “Love” in all its forms shows up 58 times.9

But the frequency of the word “kingdom” in the New Testament doesn’t even begin to depict the prominence of the doctrine. When Jesus declared, “the kingdom of God is at hand,” His Jewish audience would have recognized it as a phrase loaded with meaning.

That’s because the Old Testament—the Scriptures of the Jews and of Jesus—is filled from beginning to end with promises of “Messiah,” a Hebrew word that refers to the royal anointing of a king. In the Old Testament, the Messiah is the Anointed One and the Coming One—the King who will come in the future to rule and reign. All the promises of the Old Testament—God’s blessings on His people and the restoration of their kingdom—were connected to the coming of Messiah.

When scholars began translating the Old Testament into Greek around 200 B.C., the word they used for “Messiah” was Christ. So Jesus and the New Testament writers are talking about kingdom not merely when they use the word “kingdom,” but also every time they use the word “Christ.” Guess how many times that is? 550.10 Christ in the Old Testament After only a few pages, readers will see that Symington drew much of his documentation of the mediatorial dominion from the Old Testament. He refers especially often to Psalms—as a good Reformed Presbyterian would, since the church sings only psalms in worship.

Some readers may find this odd, to base so much of a doctrine about Christ on Old Testament verses. But Symington has a pretty solid model to follow when he does this.

In Luke 24:27, Jesus built a theological argument about Himself using nothing but the Old Testament: “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”

Also the apostles, before they had written a word of the New Testament, preached about Christ from the writings of Moses, the Psalms, and the prophets of the Old Testament.11

“Jesus Christ is in all the Old Testament, not merely in a few messianic passages,” wrote Edmund Clowney, the former president of Westminster Theological Seminary. “His Lordship and his servanthood are intertwined in it like the threads of a fabric. The pattern of the fabric remains a puzzle to us until we see Him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote, the Alpha and Omega of our faith.”12

A Goal of Glory

Symington’s book shows the purpose Christ has erected around our lives. The kingdom doctrine gives us reasons to do the things Christ calls us to do. It also gives us confidence that, as an absolutely powerful but absolutely righteous King, He will “work all things together for good for those who love God.”

This is why Christians worship. This is why Christians fellowship. This is why Christians evangelize. This is why Christians serve. This is why Christians have families. This is why Christians set up governments, start businesses, build schools, form clubs. This is why the church—and everything else—exists. We serve our King so that His glory advances—throughout the world, throughout time.

“The grand ultimate end, contemplated in the existence of the church, is the glory of God,” Symington wrote. “This is the end, indeed, of everything that exists.”

Footnotes 1 Darryl Hart, A Secular Faith, 2006.

2 Charles Colson, with Ellen Santilli Vaughn, God & Government: An Insider’s View On the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 314-15.

3 Roy Blackwood, with Michael LeFebvre, William Symington: Penman of the Scottish Covenanters (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2009), 8. This new book is the best source on Symington’s life and theology. The work of Blackwood and LeFebvre, as well as their personal advice, has shaped the updated version of Symington’s book from beginning to end.

4 Roy Blackwood, William Symington: Churchman and Theologian, doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1964. Self-published in 1999. One reason British and American theologians may have neglected the doctrine of the mediatorial dominion is because Bucer’s work on dominion was not translated from Latin into English until the 1950s, and then only partially.

5 Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.

6 Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1981), 19-20.

7 Symington, Messiah the Prince, or The Mediatorial Dominion of Jesus Christ (Pittsburgh: The Christian Statesman Press, 1999), 209.

8 Counts from A.C. Zenos, “Jesus’ Idea of the Kingdom of God,” The Biblical World, vol. 3, no. 1 (January 1894), 36.

9 Counts from James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988).

10 Counts from Strong’s concordance.

11 For examples, see Acts 17:2-3; Rom. 1:1-5; and 1 Cor. 15:3-4.

12 Edmund Clowney, “What is the Bible About?” in The Reformation Study Bible: New King James Version, ed. R.C. Sproul et al. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995), 2039.