1 Corinthians 15:24 — Christ Hands the Kingdom Over to the Father

“Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.”

1 Corinthians 15:24

Context: the resurrection chapter and its closing sections

1 Corinthians 15 is the great resurrection chapter of the New Testament. Paul responds to a controversy in the Corinthian congregation — some were denying the bodily resurrection of the dead (v.12) — and from there unfolds the salvation-historical architecture of Christian resurrection faith. The structure is stepped: vv.1–11 recall the apostolic proclamation of Christ’s resurrection as a fact; vv.12–19 show the consequence of denying it; vv.20–28 unfold the eschatological final horizon; vv.29–58 conclude with the doctrine of the resurrection body and the triumphal cry over death.

V.24 stands in the key sequence vv.20–28, in which Paul lines up three salvation-historical stages one after another: “Christ as the firstfruits, then those who belong to Christ at his coming. Then comes the end…” (vv.23–24). The word “then” (Greek eita) is not casual here, but strictly sequential: three stages of a single movement worked by the Father. The final stage is the handing back of the kingdom to the Father. Whoever isolates v.24 overlooks the fact that the entire movement proceeds from God and runs back to God — Christ is the mediator installed by God, who brings the work to completion.

The literary horizon is Jewish-apocalyptic kingdom-expectation. Daniel’s vision (Dan 7) describes a succession of world empires which are replaced by God’s eternal kingdom; in the parables of 1 Enoch and in the Qumran texts an analogous expectation is found. Paul christologises this pattern: not the Father directly, but the Christ installed by him first overcomes all hostile powers; only at the end does he hand the kingdom back to the Father. This two-stage construction is not Greek metaphysics, but Jewish salvation history: the Messiah reigns in the interim until the work is complete.

The historical reception is striking: 1 Cor 15:24–28 was one of the most important scriptural proofs of the anti-trinitarian tradition — from Photinus and Marcellus of Ancyra in late antiquity to the Polish Brethren in Raków. The Racovian Catechism (1605) explicitly counts 1 Cor 15:28 among the Pauline passages which attest the subordination of the Son to the Father. Fausto Sozzini himself, in his programmatic work De Iesu Christo Servatore (“On Jesus Christ the Saviour”), cites the whole section 1 Cor 15:23–27 word for word as proof that God is the subject of the subjection and that Christ’s dominion is a received one, not an original one.

Socinian core thesis

The Socinian reading of 1 Cor 15:24 develops from three observations on the text itself that cannot be interpreted away. First: Christ “hands over” (Greek paradidô) the kingdom — the verb necessarily implies a point of origin (the one who hands over) and a recipient (the one to whom it is handed over). The one who hands over does not hold the thing handed over by his own right; the one who receives is the actual rightful owner. Second: the recipient is named with double precision: “God, the Father” (tôi theôi kai patrí). Paul thereby pushes aside any conceptual confusion: the kingdom does not go to “God in general” (which would permit a binitarian reading), but explicitly to “the Father.” Third: v.28 closes the arc: “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.” Here not only the hierarchy is stated, but also the inner movement of the Son: he subjects himself (middle-passive hypotagésétai).

These three observations together exclude the Nicene reading, in which Father and Son are thought of as “of the same substance” (homoousios) and thus of equal rank. A consubstantial second person could not receive the kingdom from the Father, hand it back to him and subject himself to him without thereby negating the consubstantiality. The distinction introduced in late antiquity between “the Son according to the human nature” and “the Son according to the divine nature” (communicatio idiomatum) attempts to defuse the tension; but the Racovian Catechism rejects this answer as unscriptural and logically defective: what is said without restriction of the whole Christ cannot simply be shunted off onto a partial nature.

Read Socinianly, the Christology of 1 Cor 15:24–28 is strictly salvation-historical and functional: the man Jesus, raised by God, equipped with all power in heaven and on earth (Mt 28:18), reigns until completion; then he places the received kingdom back into the hands of him from whom he received it. This order is not a temporary “economy-status” that does not touch the eternal consubstantiality; it is the final, completed, eschatologically definitive form of the relation between Father and Son. What Paul formulates here is the closing bracket of the entire New Testament confession of Christ: the one God remains the one God; the man Christ Jesus remains the mediator sent by him and exalted into full glory.

The closing clause v.28b — hína êi ho theòs ta pánta en pâsin, “that God may be all in all” — is the theological point of the whole section. The “that” is final: the purpose of the handing-over of the kingdom is the universal dominion of the one Father. Not a trinitarian we-form (“that we, the triune God…”), but the singularity of the One: ho theós with article, which in Paul throughout means the Father. With this, 1 Cor 15:28 is the Pauline parallel to John 17:3, Mark 12:29 and 1 Tim 2:5: the Father alone is the one true God; Christ is the mediator established by him.

Exegesis: key terms and word field

Four linguistic key terms determine the theological interpretation of the verse and its context vv.24–28:

paradidô — “to hand over” / “to deliver up”

The Greek verb paradidômi means literally “to give over, hand over, deliver up” and always implies a transaction between two distinct subjects. In the Gospel of Matthew the same verb is used to describe Judas “handing over” Jesus (Mt 26:15); in Mk 7:13 the disciples hand over the bread to the crowd; in the Pauline tradition-formula usage (1 Cor 11:23; 15:3) the apostle hands over the tradition. In 1 Cor 15:24 the subject is unambiguously Christ, the object is the kingdom, the addressee is the Father. The one who hands over is not the actual owner of the thing handed over, but its administrator or mediator.

The theological consequence is hard: a consubstantial Son, eternally equal, could not hand over the kingdom to another, since the kingdom would belong to him in his own eternal right. The Pauline language compels a functional, salvation-historical Christology determined from God the Father onwards. This is precisely what Sozzini observed in “On Jesus Christ the Saviour,” where he cites and comments on the whole section: “You see how the divine Paul judges: that God will subject all things to the feet of Christ.”

basileía — “kingdom” / “royal dominion”

The word basileía in New Testament usage generally does not mean a spatially circumscribed territory, but a dynamic royal dominion — the exercise of royal power. In the synoptic Gospels Jesus speaks of the “basileia tou theou” (Kingdom of God) as the eschatological reality which is already breaking in and is yet still outstanding. Paul uses the word more sparingly, but centrally in v.24: the kingdom which Christ hands over is the active dominion conferred upon him over all powers and authorities.

The link is important: 1 Cor 15:24 implicitly distinguishes between the “kingdom of Christ” (which he has received and which he gives away) and the “kingdom of God” (which eternally belongs to the Father). This distinction was decisive for the anti-trinitarian tradition: the Racovian Catechism devotes a separate section to the “kingdom of Christ,” which is built up strictly along salvation-historical lines — from the reception of dominion after the resurrection through the present mediatorial reign to the eschatological handing-back. The Son is king, but as the installed one, not from himself.

katargésê — “to destroy” / “to bring to nothing”

The aorist subjunctive katargésê denotes the abolition, the setting aside, the ending of a reality. Christ “brings to nothing” every rule, every authority and every power. The verb is frequent in Paul: 1 Cor 1:28; 2:6; 6:13; 13:8.10.11; 2 Cor 3:7–14; Gal 3:17; 5:4; Eph 2:15. Everywhere it means the setting-out-of-force of a previous reality through a new, more effective action.

In v.24 the “what” of the abolition is named threefold: archê (every rule), exousia (every authority) and dýnamis (every power). The Pauline language takes up apocalyptic designations of powers (Eph 1:21; 6:12; Col 1:16; 2:15) and says: Christ is the installed conqueror of these powers. He conquers them not from his own original sovereignty, but by virtue of the kingdom conferred upon him by the Father — and after the completion of this work he places the thus emptied dominion back into the hands of the one who installed him.

hypotagésétai — “he will subject himself” (v.28)

The key verb of v.28 is hypotagésétai: the Son himself will subject himself to the Father. Grammatically it is future passive, which in New Testament usage often carries a middle colouring (“to subject oneself”). Important is what is not stated here: not “the Son according to his human nature,” not “in a particular aspect,” but simply: “the Son himself also” (kai autós ho huiós).

Precisely this passage is reckoned in the Racovian Catechism among the decisive Pauline proofs that Christ does not possess the divine nature of the Father: “that the Son will one day be subjected to him who has subjected all things to him — none of this could be said of Christ if he possessed that divine nature.” The logic is compelling: a being which from eternity simply is God cannot subject himself to another without ceasing to be what he simply is. Nicene theology felt this and tried to save it through the distinction between essence and person; the Socinian position explains the passage more simply and more faithfully to the wording: the Son is another than the Father, truly subordinated to him, even in completion.

Comparison of interpretations

Reference to Fausto Sozzini — De Iesu Christo Servatore

Fausto Sozzini treats 1 Corinthians 15:23–28 several times in his main work De Iesu Christo Servatore (1594). In the chapter on “Resurrection — Blessedness” he cites the whole section verbatim and lets it speak as Paul’s own testimony to the salvation-historical sequence of stages in which God is the subject of the subjection and Christ the one installed by him. The exegetical point: Paul himself does not speak here speculatively-metaphysically, but in narrative salvation history — and precisely in this narrative God the Father alone is the proper subject of all the verbs:

“But each in his own order: Christ as the firstfruits, then those who belong to Christ at his coming. Then comes the end, when he will have handed the kingdom over to God and the Father, when he will have brought to nothing every rule and every power and every might. For he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he has put all things under his feet. — You see how the divine Paul judges: that God will subject all things to the feet of Christ, since in the end all things will be subjected to the power of his feet, brought beneath the feet of Christ.”

Fausto Sozzini, De Iesu Christo Servatore, chapter “Resurrection — Blessedness”

Sozzini holds firmly: the subject of the subjection is God, the recipient of the subjected power is Christ. From this it follows strictly: Christ is not himself the one who subjects, but the one installed, to whom power is conferred. This reading decides the whole Christology: the Son is not an independent second God beside the Father, but the man exalted by the Father, to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been given (Mt 28:18) — until the eschatological handing-back.

In the same chapter Sozzini refers in support to Heb 2:8 and Ps 8: the same pattern (everything subjected to Christ, but visibly not yet everything subjected, because the final act is still outstanding) runs through the entire salvation-historical vision of the New Testament. Thus 1 Cor 15:24–28 is not an isolated Pauline special clause, but a knot in a continuous New Testament confession of the salvation-historical subordination of the Son to the Father.

In the Racovian Catechism (1605), the theological congregational book of the Polish Brethren, the same line is systematically worked out. In the section “Whether Christ possesses a divine nature” 1 Cor 11:3 (God as the head of Christ), 1 Cor 3:23 (as we are Christ’s, so Christ is God’s) and 1 Cor 15:28 (subjection of the Son to the Father) are cited as a coherent Pauline triad:

“Christ openly asserts that the Father is greater than he, by which he indicates that he is not as great as the Father; and he repeatedly calls the Father his God. This is also confirmed by other sacred writers, and namely by Paul, who likewise attests that God is his head, and that, as we are Christ’s, so Christ is God’s, and that the Son will one day be subjected to him who has subjected all things to him — none of which could be said of Christ if he possessed that divine nature.”

Racovian Catechism, section “Whether Christ possesses a divine nature” (arguments from Holy Scripture)

The Catechism also explicates the counter-argumentation: the early-church distinction between human and divine nature, which restricts such passages “according to the humanity,” fails on a simple logical principle. “What can be said and is customarily said of a whole simply, without an expressly added restriction, cannot be denied of the same whole simply, even if it does not obtain according to some particular part.” In other words: if Paul says without restriction “the Son himself will subject himself,” this statement cannot be defused by a subsequent splitting into two natures without breaking up the language of Scripture itself.

Overview of Sozzini’s writings

Logical arguments

From 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 the following arguments, anchored in the tight fabric of Scripture, emerge against the Nicene consubstantiality of Father and Son and in favour of a salvation-historical Christology of subordination:

1. Argument from the verb “to hand over” (paradidô). Whoever hands over a kingdom is not the actual owner, but its administrator or mediator. Christ hands the kingdom over to God, the Father — therefore the kingdom is not his by his own eternal right, but a received mandate. A consubstantial second God could not receive the kingdom from the hands of the Father and hand it back to him, since it would belong to him in his own right.
2. Argument from the doubly named address. Paul writes not merely “God,” but “God, the Father” (tôi theôi kai patrí). The explicit identification of the recipient as “the Father” excludes a binitarian or trinitarian reading in which the kingdom goes to “the Godhead.” It goes specifically to the Father, who is distinguished from the Son thereby.
3. Argument from the self-subjection of the Son (v.28). The verb hypotagésétai — “he will subject himself” — carries a middle colouring and designates an active self-subordination. Whoever subjects himself to another is not consubstantial with him. The statement stands simply, without division into two natures, and a “quoad humanitatem” reservation cannot be justified from within the text.
4. Argument from the telos “that God may be all in all” (v.28b). The final hína shows: the purpose of the handing-over of the kingdom and of the subjection is the universal dominion of the one God. If this one God were also Christ, the point would be circular (“that Christ may be all in Christ”); the point only makes sense if the one Father alone is meant as the one God, to whom in the end all things, including Christ, are subjected.
5. Argument from the three-stage sequence vv.23–24. Paul lines up salvation-historically: Christ as firstfruits — then his own — then the end. The sequence is temporal, not ontological: it describes a course that only culminates in the handing-back of the kingdom. A timeless, consubstantial Son could not occupy the last place in such a step-logic, the place at which he gives back what he has received.
6. Argument from mediatorship (cf. 1 Tim 2:5). A mediator stands between two parties. Christ is “the one mediator between God and men” (1 Tim 2:5) and in 1 Cor 15:24 the one who completes the work of mediation salvation-historically. Mediatorship is logically incompatible with consubstantiality with God: if Christ were himself God, he would not mediate between God and men, but act immediately as God.
7. Argument from Mt 28:18 and Phil 2:9. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt 28:18); “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name” (Phil 2:9). The power of Christ is consistently described as conferred, given, received power. 1 Cor 15:24 closes the arc: what was received is at the end given back.
8. Argument from incompatibility with ancient pagan philosophy. An ontological consubstantiality between Father and Son is a concept first developed by the Greek-philosophical theology of the fourth century (Nicaea, Constantinople). The Pauline language of receiving, handing over and subjecting is shaped by Hebrew salvation history and cannot be translated without distortion into the language of homoousios-theology.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages deepen the interpretation in light of the whole-biblical attestation of the salvation-historical subordination of the Son to the Father:

1 Corinthians 11:3 — the head of Christ is God

“But the head of Christ is God.” Paul orders a four-stage hierarchy: God — Christ — man — woman. Christ too has a “head” over himself, and that is God (the Father). This passage is the Pauline sister-formulation to 1 Cor 15:28 and, together with it and with 1 Cor 3:23, forms a three-membered chain of proof in the Racovian Catechism. Whoever has a head over himself cannot be consubstantial with him.

John 14:28 — the Father is greater than I

“For the Father is greater than I.” Christ himself formulates the hierarchical difference. In the Racovian Catechism this passage is cited in one breath with 1 Cor 15:28: both attest that Christ is not “as great as the Father.” An ontological reading, in which the Father is eternally consubstantial with the Son, cannot explain this Johannine statement without splitting into two natures.

Matthew 28:18 — all authority has been given to me

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” The passivum divinum (edothê, “it has been given”) shows: God (the Father) has conferred all power on Christ. The power is received, not from itself. 1 Cor 15:24 closes the movement: what was received in the beginning is given back at the end.

Philippians 2:9–11 — God has exalted him

“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name… to the glory of God the Father.” The hymn ends exactly as 1 Cor 15:28: everything runs toward the glory of the Father. Christ’s exaltation is not self-glorification, but a means to the praise of the one Father.

Hebrews 2:5–9 — we do not yet see everything subjected

The Letter to the Hebrews cites Ps 8 and says: everything is subjected to Christ, but visibly not yet everything. Precisely in this tension stands 1 Cor 15:24–28: the definitive completion of the subjection is still outstanding, and it will culminate in the handing-back of the kingdom to the Father. Sozzini cites this passage expressly alongside 1 Cor 15 as a parallel attestation of the salvation-historical pattern.

John 17:3 — the only true God and Jesus Christ

“And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” The singularity (“the only true God”) and the difference (“whom you have sent”) between Father and Son is here linguistically just as clear as in 1 Cor 15:28. The “that God may be all in all” (v.28b) is the eschatological form of the same confession.

1 Timothy 2:5 — one God, one mediator

“There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” The number “one” with God means the one Father; mediatorship places Christ between God and man. In 1 Cor 15:24 this mediatorship is described before its eschatological completion: the work is brought to completion, then the commission is laid back into the hands of the one who gave it.

Daniel 7:13–14 — the kingdom is given to the Son of Man

“With the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man… and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom.” The Danielic vision is the salvation-historical background of 1 Cor 15:24: to the Son of Man the kingdom is given (passivum divinum) — and in the end, Paul adds, it is given back to the Father.

Objections and Socinian answers

Objection 1: “The subordination in 1 Cor 15:28 concerns only the human nature of Christ, not the divine.”

This solution fails on a simple exegetical-logical principle which the Racovian Catechism formulates explicitly: what is said without restriction simply of the whole Christ cannot be weakened by a subsequent splitting onto a partial nature. Paul does not say “the Son according to his humanity will subject himself,” but “the Son himself also” (kai autós ho huiós). This categorical form is incompatible with an ontological reading — or one would have to be permitted to restrict positive statements about Christ (“Christ is the only-begotten Son of God”) likewise to a partial nature, which would dissolve the whole language of Scripture.

In addition: the distinction “quoad humanitatem” is not indicated from within the text. Paul nowhere operates with this linguistic convention; it is a later dogmatic construction that is read into the text in order to protect a particular christological grammar. Whoever lets the text speak for itself hears what it says: the Son himself, without any aspect-restriction, will subject himself to the Father. This is not a defect of scriptural language, but the deliberate theological content of the statement.

Finally, the two-natures reading doubles the problems instead of solving them: if only the human nature subjects itself, then there is in the Son a part which does not subject itself — and thereby a division within the one person of Christ, which the Chalcedonian confession itself was actually meant to exclude. The Socinian reading avoids this division: the whole Christ, as the man exalted by God, subjects himself to the Father — without inner division, without aspect-trickery, without dogmatic patchwork.

Objection 2: “The handing-back of the kingdom concerns only the order of salvation (oeconomia), not the intra-trinitarian consubstantiality.”

This distinction — however theologically refined it may be — only shifts the problem. If the “economic” self-subjection of the Son occurs in completion (v.28), then it is not a temporary functional status, but the final, definitive, eschatological form of the relation between Father and Son. Paul does not hold out the prospect that after the self-subjection a state of equality of rank will set in again; rather, the self-subjection is the Son-step with which salvation history concludes.

Moreover, the Pauline order of salvation is not distinguished from another order of being lying behind it. Paul knows no two-stage theology, in which the “immanent Trinity” would be a reality of its own, detached from the saving event. This distinction is a philosophical-theological late construction (especially in modern doctrine of the Trinity since Karl Rahner) which has no counterpart in the Pauline texts. Whoever operates with it imports a modern conceptuality into an ancient text.

In addition: the final hína (v.28b: “that God may be all in all”) links the handing-over of the kingdom and the self-subjection with the final purpose of salvation history. If this final purpose is the universal dominion of the one Father, then the self-subjection of the Son is not a temporary salvation-historical step, but the definitive constellation. The “immanent Trinity” would have to be sublated in this final form, which classical trinitarian doctrine cannot permit.

Objection 3: “Hand over” is a metaphor and says nothing about ontological subordination.

The metaphorical reading of paradidô would have to show that the verb is used non-literally in comparable Pauline contexts — and this cannot be shown. On the contrary: paradidômi in Paul consistently designates real transactions between different subjects: tradition is handed over (1 Cor 11:23; 15:3), men are handed over to God (Rom 1:24–28), Christ is delivered up (Rom 4:25; 8:32). A perichoretic meaning of the verb is not attested in the Pauline corpus.

Whoever wishes to defuse the passage metaphorically must moreover explain how this reading harmonises with v.28: there hypotagésétai (“he will subject himself”) stands likewise simply and in the same salvation-historical sequence. If “to hand over” is to be metaphorical, “to subject oneself” is also metaphorical — and with that the whole verse evaporates into nothing. The Pauline language becomes unintelligible.

Finally, the metaphorical reading is hermeneutically late: it becomes necessary only when Nicene consubstantiality is brought to the text as a presupposition and one then has to explain why the text seems to contradict it. Whoever approaches the text without this presupposition simply hears what Paul says: Christ hands the received kingdom over to the Father and subjects himself. That is precisely the Socinian reading — not a reduction, but the natural reading of the text.

Objection 4: “If Christ gives up his dominion at the end, then his kingdom is not eternal — that contradicts Luke 1:33 (‘of his kingdom there will be no end’).”

The apparent contradiction dissolves as soon as one takes seriously the Pauline distinction between “kingdom of Christ” and “kingdom of God.” Christ does not “hand over” his own personal kingship (which subsists into eternity, because he lives forever and ever: Rev 1:18), but the administrative dominion conferred upon him over the hostile powers. This administrative dominion has a purpose — the bringing-to-nothing of every rule and power (v.24) — and ends when its purpose is achieved.

Luke 1:33, on the other hand, speaks of the abiding royal dignity of Christ as the exalted Son of Man. This dignity is not given up with the handing-back of the administrative kingdom; it passes into another mode: no longer administrator in the war against the hostile powers, but head of the completed people of God in the universal dominion of the Father. The Racovian Catechism formulates this as a both-and: Christ reigns eternally at the right hand of God, but as the subordinated one, as the installed one, as the one subjected to the Father.

The exegetical lesson from this: Pauline and Lukan statements do not contradict each other; they take up different aspects of the same salvation-historical reality. Paul stresses the completion and the “that God may be all in all”; Luke stresses the eternal dignity of the messianic kingship. Both together yield the full Christology: Christ is the eternal king of the redeemed and at the same time the one subordinated to the Father.

The Racovian Catechism on Christ’s present dominion

The Racovian Catechism treats at length, in the section “Christ’s rule at the right hand of God,” how the present power of Christ — designated in 1 Cor 15:24 as “kingdom” — is to be understood salvation-historically. It is exaltation, bestowal, equipment for the commission — and precisely not an original sovereignty belonging to him from eternity:

“The sitting of Christ at the right hand of God means, as the Apostle testifies, his exaltation, by which he has been raised far above all rule and power and might and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in the one to come. All things are put in subjection under his feet, and he possesses supreme dominion and power over all and over everything.”

Racovian Catechism, section “Christ’s rule at the right hand of God”

Three observations are important here. First, the Catechism understands the present dominion of Christ as the one presupposed in 1 Cor 15:24–27: all things are subjected under his feet because God (the Father) has subjected them to him. Second, the dominion of Christ is unfolded concretely in its content: over bodies and souls, over angels (good and evil), over death and hell. This is not an abstract omnipotence, but a purposeful authority oriented toward the salvation of believers. Third, this dominion is at a decisive point restricted: in another place the Catechism observes that Christ has “all things laid under his feet, God alone excepted” — the exegetical paraphrase of 1 Cor 15:27b: “But when it says, all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him.”

This last refinement bridges to 1 Cor 15:24: because all things are subjected to the Son, except the Father, who has subjected all things to him, the hierarchy does not dissolve into an abstract omnipotence, but remains open in the relation to the Father. Precisely here the handing-over of the kingdom takes hold: at the end, when all enemies have been overcome and death as the last enemy has been defeated (v.26), the administration of what has been administered is given back to the proper Lord.

Theological consequences

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast the interpretation presented here:

• 1 Corinthians 11:3 — the head of Christ is God; the sister-formula to the subordination in 1 Cor 15:28.
• John 14:28 — “the Father is greater than I”; Christ’s own statement of the hierarchical difference.
• John 17:3 — the Father alone the true God; Christ the one sent by him.
• 1 Timothy 2:5 — one God, one mediator, the man Christ Jesus.
• Philippians 2:6–7 — the exaltation of Christ by God to the glory of the Father.
• Acts 2:36 — “God has made him both Lord and Christ”; christology of appointment.
• Mark 12:29 — the Shema Israel; the unity of God as presupposition of the whole Christian doctrine.

Summary

1 Corinthians 15:24 is the Pauline final axis of eschatological Christology. Christ receives the kingdom from the Father, exercises it as the installed mediator, brings to nothing every hostile rule and authority — and at the end places the received kingdom back into the hands of the Father. These four verbs (receive, exercise, bring to nothing, give back) structure the entire salvation history of Christ; they culminate in v.28 in the self-subjection of the Son to him who has subjected all things to him, “that God may be all in all.”

Socinianly, 1 Cor 15:24–28 is one of the hardest scriptural proofs against the Nicene consubstantiality of Father and Son. The Racovian Catechism explicitly counts 1 Cor 15:28 among the Pauline passages that show Christ “does not possess that divine nature of the Father”: whoever receives the kingdom and gives it back, whoever subjects himself to the one who has subjected all things to him, cannot be the one God, who receives from no one and is circumscribed by no boundary. Fausto Sozzini himself, in “On Jesus Christ the Saviour,” cites the whole section verbatim and reads it as a salvation-historical sequence of stages in which God is the subject of the subjection.

Three key verbs carry the text: paradidô (to hand over), katargésê (to bring to nothing) and hypotagésétai (to subject oneself). Each one implies a hierarchy between the one who acts and the one upon whom or in relation to whom action is taken. The early-church answer that these statements concern only the human nature of Christ fails on the simple categorical form of the Pauline text: “the Son himself also” — without aspect-reservation. Whoever lets the text itself speak hears a consistent salvation-historical subordination: the Father alone is God; the Son is the man installed by him, equipped with all power, who at the end subjects himself.

The theological point is the final hína in v.28b: “that God may be all in all.” This is not a trinitarian we-form, but the singularity of the one Father, who through the whole of salvation history is and remains the one God. 1 Cor 15:24–28 is thus the Pauline parallel to John 17:3 and Mark 12:29: the Father is the one true God, Christ is his mediator — and at the end, when all is completed, nothing remains but the one God, to whom all is subjected, the one Father, to whom even the Son himself has subjected himself.