Christ Takes Up the Kingdom

This, then, is how we are to understand it. At the completion and restoration of all things, those who advance a step at a time and keep climbing will come, each in due measure and order, to that land and to the training that belongs to it, where they can be made ready for those better ways to which nothing can be added. [a]

For after his agents and servants, the Lord Christ, who is King of all, will take up the kingdom himself. That is, after the training in the holy virtues, he will himself teach those who are able to receive him, teaching them as the wisdom that he himself is, and reigning in them until he has made them subject to the Father, who has made all things subject to himself — that is, so that when they have been made able to receive God, God may be to them all in all.

Then, as must follow, bodily nature will reach that highest state to which nothing more can be added. Up to this point we have been discussing the quality of bodily nature, or of the spiritual body. We leave it to the reader’s own choice to decide what he thinks best. And here we may bring the third book to a close.