Living in the Overlap of the Ages

"We live in the 'overlap of the ages.' The present age is not yet over--'I am with you always,' Jesus said, 'to the end of the age' (Matt. 28:20)--and yet the age to come has begun. We are, in Christ, 'new creation'! 'The old has passed away, behold the new has come' (2 Cor. 5:17)! As a result, we live with the tension of being in two 'ages' at once, a tension that no Jew ever thought would exist. When the Jews read the prophecies of Isaiah and Joel and Daniel, they expected that there would be a hard break between the present age and the age to come. The one would end, and the other would begin. But in God's wisdom, the coming of the Messiah turned out to be not just one event, but two--his first coming to inaugurate the age to come in the midst of the present age, and his second coming to end, finally, the present age and consummate the age to come. Thus we enjoy the forgiveness of sin even as we struggle with it;  thus we enjoy the presence of the Spirit even as we may still grieve him; thus we have been raised with Christ, seated at his right hand in the heavenly places, even as we know we will, for a time, return to dust. And thus we live in a world that is shot through with injustice and sin and oppression and evil and tears and sadness, even a world that we know will be shot through with such things until Jesus comes back, even as we strive to 'walk as children of light' and to 'shine as lights' in a crooked and twisted generation' (Eph. 5:8, Phil. 2:15)."

Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, What is the Mission of the Church? Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission 

[The church library owns a copy of this if anyone is interested. http://www.amazon.com/What-Mission-Church-Justice-Commission/dp/1433526905/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320358349&sr=1-1 ]