After His coming back, the Lord will drink the cup of the new covenant new with the overcoming believers in the heavenly part of the millennium. When the Lord was establishing the table, He said, “I shall by no means drink of this product of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in the kingdom of My Father” (26:29). This word indicates that from the time He established the table, the Lord would be away from the believers physically and would not drink of the fruit of the vine with them until He drinks it new with them in the Father’s kingdom. The Lord’s promise in this verse will be fulfilled in the kingdom of the Father during the manifestation of the kingdom of the heavens.
In the kingdom of the Father the overcoming believers will feast with the Old Testament overcomers. This is the Lord’s promise in Matthew 8:11: “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west and will recline at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens.” It will be in the manifestation of the kingdom of the heavens that the overcoming Gentile believers will feast with the Old Testament overcomers, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
In 1 Corinthians 6:10 Paul speaks of inheriting the kingdom of God. The word inherit in this verse implies enjoyment. To inherit the coming kingdom means to enjoy the kingdom. To inherit the kingdom is not just to enter into the kingdom; it is to receive the kingdom as a reward for our enjoyment. The coming kingdom will be a joyful inheritance to the overcomers as their reward and as their enjoyment with the Lord.
In Luke 12:32 the Lord Jesus said, “Do not be afraid, little flock, because your Father has been well pleased to give you the kingdom.” The Father delights to give the believers the coming kingdom as an inheritance reward.
James 2:5 says, “Listen, my beloved brothers: Did not God choose the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which He promised to those who love Him?” We cannot receive the kingdom as a reward simply by believing and receiving salvation. In order to inherit the coming kingdom as a reward, we need not only to believe in the Lord but also to love God for our overcoming, because the kingdom is God’s promise to those who love Him.
Ephesians 5:5 speaks of the believers’ “inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” The kingdom of Christ is the millennium (Rev. 20:4, 6; Matt. 16:28) and also the kingdom of God (13:41, 43). The believers have been regenerated into the kingdom of God (John 3:5), and they are in the church life, living in the kingdom of God today (Rom. 14:17). However, not all the believers will have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God, because the kingdom of Christ and of God does not refer to the kingdom today in the church life but to the manifestation of the kingdom in the coming millennium. Only the overcoming ones will inherit the kingdom during the millennium; that is, they will have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. The millennium will be a kingdom in a way that is more practical than what we are experiencing in the church today. Only in the millennium will the kingdom of Christ become the kingdom of God. However, the defeated believers will have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God in the coming age.
The promise of inheriting the kingdom should be an incentive for all believers to live an overcoming life on earth today. Paul warned the believers in Galatia that those who practice the works of the flesh “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21). “The works of the flesh are manifest, which are such things as fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, divisions, sects, envyings, bouts of drunkenness, carousings, and things like these, of which I tell you beforehand, even as I have said before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (vv. 19-21). Those believers who practice the works of the flesh will not inherit the coming kingdom as a reward.