Acts 1:6-7 — The disciples’ last question: the kingdom, the times, and the Father’s authority

“So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.’”

Acts 1:6-7

Context: the last question before the ascension

The scene stands at a seam. Luke closed his first book with the blessing of the risen one and his parting from the disciples; the second resumes at exactly that point and recounts more fully what happened between Easter and Pentecost. For forty days, he writes, Jesus presented himself alive to the apostles “by many proofs” and spoke to them “about the kingdom of God” (1:3). Only then comes the sentence at issue here.

This is decisive for the interpretation: the disciples’ question is no marginal lapse, but the question that arises from the instruction they have just received. Whoever has been taught for forty days about the kingdom of God and then asks his teacher whether the kingdom is now coming has not missed the subject. He has taken up the subject and wants to know how it continues.

The wording of their question comes from prophecy. “Restore” is the language of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Amos: of the gathering of the scattered, the raising up of the fallen booth of David, the renewal of the people under one shepherd. The Emmaus disciples had the same expectation behind them when they said: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21); and already on the road to Jerusalem Luke had noted that they supposed “the kingdom of God was to appear immediately” (19:11).

Jesus’ answer consists of two parts, and both must be observed. The first refuses something: not the kingdom, not its restoration, not Israel — but the knowledge of “times or seasons”. The second gives a commission: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses” (1:8). The commission does not take the place of the hope; it fills the interval whose length no one knows.

And the scene ends not with a dissolution, but with a confirmation. Scarcely has Jesus been taken up when two men in white robes step up to those gazing upward and say: “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (1:11). Whoever holds that the disciples’ question was as such rejected must explain why the narrative immediately afterwards announces a return.

The Socinian core thesis

Read Socinianly, the verse is above all a statement about jurisdictions. Three magnitudes occur in two sentences — the kingdom, the times, the authority — and each is assigned to someone. The kingdom is restored; the times are fixed; the authority to dispose of them lies with the Father. The Son, who is asked, does not answer as the one who commands the times, but as the one who knows them to be with the Father.

From this follows the first thesis. Christ’s kingdom is a received kingdom. The Racovian Catechism begins its section on the kingly office exactly where Luke begins: with the resurrection and the reception into heaven. Christ reigns because God exalted him and gave him all power — not because a rule were his own from all eternity, which he merely reclaimed. Precisely for that reason he can answer the question about the times as he does: the giver of the rule is also the lord of its terms.

The second thesis concerns the side that is refused. Jesus does not say: “You are mistaken in your object”, but: “It is not for you to know”. The boundary does not run between a false and a correct hope, but between what is revealed and what the Father has kept with himself. The traditional interpretation, which turns the sentence into a correction of the Jewish expectation of the kingdom, lays more upon it than it can bear — and overlooks that Luke leaves these same disciples a few verses later with a promise of return.

The third thesis holds the two sides of the concept of the kingdom together, and here Fausto Sozzini is more precise than most. In his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer he understands the petition “Your kingdom come” not as a wish for a merely outward event, but first of all as a plea that God may reign in our hearts; without this inward reception, he says, there can be no talk of God’s reigning in the proper sense at all. At the same time he nowhere dissolves the kingdom into mere inwardness: he speaks of the kingdom as of something that comes, is sent, spreads. Acts 1:6-7 says both in one movement: the kingdom is real and is really coming — and its hour belongs to the Father.

The fourth thesis follows of itself and is the most consequential for the question of the Trinity. A knowledge which the Father has fixed “by his own authority” is a knowledge which another does not have. The risen one, standing already glorified before his disciples, points to an authority that is not his. Whoever here introduces two natures, of which the one knows what the other does not know, must carry that distinction into the text; the text itself distinguishes not natures, but persons: the Father, who reserves, and the Son, who says so.

Exegesis: key terms and semantic field

Five expressions carry the interpretation: the verb of restoring, the phrase “the kingdom to Israel”, the word-pair for the times, the concept of authority, and finally the power promised to the witnesses. Each of them can be checked elsewhere in the Lucan double work — and the check turns out remarkably unanimous.

ἀποκαθιστάνεις — “restore”

The verb means to put something back into its former, proper condition. The Gospels use it of the healed hand that is “restored” (Mark 3:5), and of the coming of Elijah, who is to “restore all things” (Mark 9:12). It is thus no word for a political upheaval, but for the restoration of what had been damaged or interrupted.

Decisive is that Luke himself uses the same semantic field shortly afterwards — and approvingly. Peter preaches in Solomon’s Portico of the “times of refreshing” and of the fact that heaven must receive Christ “until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Acts 3:20-21). The noun there — ἀποκατάστασις — is the same word as the verb here. What the disciples ask about in 1:6, Peter proclaims in 3:21 as a coming reality. Had Jesus himself rejected the expectation, Luke would have taken that back unnoticed two chapters later.

τὴν βασιλείαν τῷ Ἰσραήλ — “the kingdom to Israel”

The Greek expression stands in the dative: the kingdom for Israel, not “Israel’s kingdom” in the sense of a possession. The question is therefore not whether Israel will in future have a kingdom like other nations, but whether the kingdom — that kingdom of which there had been talk for forty days — now comes to Israel’s benefit. This is a question about sequence and about recipients, not about the constitution of a state.

The course of the narrative confirms it. Peter speaks on the day of Pentecost to “all the house of Israel” (2:36) and shortly after of the promise that is “for you and for your children” (2:39); only in chapter 10 does the first Gentile come in. The movement from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria “to the end of the earth” (1:8) is the answer to the question the disciples asked — it does not name the hour, but it names the way.

χρόνους ἢ καιρούς — “times or seasons”

Two words that do not mean the same thing. Chrónos is duration, the measurable span; kairós the determined, fitting moment. Together they cover both ways of asking about the when: “how much longer?” and “when exactly?”. Jesus excludes not one of the two ways, but both; the pair is a deliberate formula of completeness.

Paul uses exactly the same doubling in the same matter: “Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you” (1 Thessalonians 5:1). There too what follows is no renunciation of the expectation, but an exhortation to watchfulness. The apostolic community therefore learned from Jesus’ word no abstinence towards hope, but towards the calendar.

ἐν τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ — “that the Father has fixed by his own authority”

Here lies the weight of the whole verse. Exousía does not mean capacity of force, but authority, right of disposal, jurisdiction — the same word with which Matthew has the exalted one say: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (28:18). And the little word ídios — “own” — expressly marks off: it is the jurisdiction of the Father and not that of another.

With that more is said than a statement about knowledge. The sentence does not explain that the disciples are too weak to grasp it, but that the matter lies within another’s competence. Fausto Sozzini brings out precisely this thought when he expounds the closing formula of the Lord’s Prayer: that “the kingdom is God’s” means for him that he has “the right and the lawful dominion over all things”. Whoever has the right over all things also has the right over their times.

And it is telling who speaks here. Not the sufferer before Gethsemane, but the one already risen, a few sentences before his reception into heaven. Had the limit of knowledge been a matter of the earthly estate, it would have fallen here. It does not fall.

δύναμιν … μάρτυρες — “power” and “witnesses”

What is given to the disciples in place of the date is not consolation, but equipment: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you… and you will be my witnesses” (1:8). Dýnamis is the capacity to act, mártyres are those who stand up for a cause, even to the point of standing up for it with their lives. The refused question is therefore not answered with an instruction, but with an office.

This corresponds exactly to the way in which Sozzini expounds the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer: where God reigns, a doing of human beings is always also involved; the kingdom is prayed for and at the same time received. “You will be my witnesses” is the form this same insight takes in Acts — the interval is no time of waiting, but the time in which the kingdom finds reception among human beings.

Comparison of interpretations

The Racovian Catechism on the kingly office of Christ

The catechism treats Christ’s rule not under the statements about his essence, but under his offices — and it begins its answer to the question about the character of this kingdom with a date, not with a statement about eternity:

“This, that God, after he had been raised from the dead and taken up into the heavens, seated him at his right hand and gave him all power in heaven and on earth, so that he might most freely rule, protect and preserve his believers for ever.”

Racovian Catechism, “The Kingly Office of Christ”

Note the sequence of times, for it is the interpretation of our passage. Resurrection, reception, installation at the right hand, transfer of power — in this series the disciples’ question stands exactly between the second and the third member. They ask the one who is already raised and about to be taken up about the kingdom; and he answers them as one to whom it is given, not as one who has disposed of it from all eternity. The answer is therefore not evasive, but precise: the times do not lie with him.

That Luke has the same sequence in mind is shown by the catechism in another place, where it comes to speak of the forty days themselves. To the question why Christ was raised in the very body in which he was crucified, the answer runs:

“In order to make his apostles and disciples certain of his resurrection; this was also the reason why for forty days he repeatedly associated with them and spoke about the kingdom of God, after he had been raised from the dead.”

Racovian Catechism, “The Resurrection Body of Christ”

The sentence takes up Acts 1:3 and at the same time determines the relation of the two themes: the instruction about the kingdom belongs to the authentication of the resurrection. The disciples are to know not only that he lives, but for what he lives. Their question in verse 6 is therefore, read Socinianly, the result of a successful instruction — and not the survival of a misunderstanding which no one had corrected for forty days.

In what this rule then consists, the catechism unfolds in its exposition of the sitting at the right hand. There too there is not a word of an inherited right, but throughout the language of exaltation:

“Christ’s sitting at the right hand of God signifies, as the apostle testifies, his exaltation (Ephesians 1:21), by which he has been raised far above all rule and power and authority and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in the world to come.”

Racovian Catechism, “Christ’s Rule at the Right Hand of God”

Here the reach of this rule is set as high as it can possibly be set: over everything that is named, in this world and in the world to come. All the more weight attaches to the fact that the same catechism describes it without exception as given. Precisely in this gradient lies the sense of Acts 1:7 — the highest authority in heaven and on earth does not include disposing of the terms of the one who conferred it.

Sozzini on the petition “Your kingdom come”

Whoever says that the kingdom is still to come must be able to say what of it is already here. Fausto Sozzini answers this question in his exposition of the Sermon on the Mount at the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer — and he does so by distinguishing two meanings of the name “kingdom of God”: the revelation of the divine will and its acceptance, and God’s reigning in the hearts. Between the two there is a gradient:

“But from this very manner of God’s reigning there follows what we here understand above all, namely that God may reign in our hearts themselves; and if this does not follow, it can hardly be said in the proper sense that God reigns.”

Fausto Sozzini, Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, “The Second Petition: The Coming of the Kingdom of God”

The sentence is more precise than it sounds on first reading. Sozzini does not deny that the kingdom also has an outward side — proclamation, confirmation through the gifts of the Spirit, visible spread. He says only: where this outward side does not arrive in an obedience of the hearts, there is as yet no talk of a reigning in the proper sense. That is the exact counterpart to Acts 1:8: between the refused question of the date and the promised coming there stands a witness-service through which the kingdom reaches human beings.

The second point concerns the question to whom the kingdom belongs. In his exposition of the closing formula of the Lord’s Prayer, Sozzini explains why we may ask for such great things at all — and the reason lies in the relation of ownership:

“And first the reason is given that the kingdom is God’s, that is, he has the right and the lawful dominion over all things; then, that the power is his, that is, nothing is so difficult that he could not accomplish it.”

Fausto Sozzini, Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, “The Closing Formula of the Prayer: Kingdom, Power and Glory”

Right and power — exactly the two magnitudes that Jesus distributes in Acts 1:7-8. The right over the times the Father keeps in his own authority; the power he gives, and gives to the witnesses, through the Holy Spirit. What Sozzini shows in the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer stands in Luke as an action: the Father is the one to whom the kingdom belongs, and therefore he is also the one with whom its hour lies.

With that it is also said what Socinian doctrine does not assert at this point. It does not diminish the rule of Christ — the Racovian Catechism sets it above every name that is named, in this world and in the world to come. It only determines its origin: it is conferred, and the conferring has a moment and an author. Whoever reads Acts 1:7 in this way has nothing to explain away; he only has to stay with the persons the sentence names.

Logical arguments

The following considerations are ordered by weight: they begin with the immediate wording and end with the consequences for doctrine as a whole.

1. What is refused is the knowledge, not the matter. “It is not for you to know times or seasons” — the sentence expressly names an object of not-knowing, and that object is the date. Of a false expectation there is not a word. Whoever turns a statement about times into a correction of content replaces the sentence with another.
2. The question follows upon forty days of instruction about the kingdom of God. Luke himself says in 1:3 what was spoken of in this time. To dismiss as a mere misunderstanding a question asked after such instruction is to charge the teacher with having missed the subject for forty days.
3. Peter takes up the thought approvingly shortly afterwards. In 3:21 he speaks of the time “for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets” — the same semantic field the disciples use in 1:6. Had Jesus rejected the expectation, his first witness would have publicly restored it two chapters later.
4. The narrative ends with a promise of return. Immediately after the ascension the two men in white robes say that this Jesus will come again as he departed (1:11). The scene therefore closes not with the dissolution of a hope, but with its confirmation — only without a date.
5. In place of the date comes a commission, not an instruction. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you… and you will be my witnesses” (1:8). Had the question been wrong in its object, the answer would have had to correct the object. Instead it furnishes the interval.
6. The authority is expressly ascribed to the Father. “That the Father has fixed by his own authority” — ἐν τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ, in his own jurisdiction. The little word “own” marks off; it has sense only if there is someone to whom this jurisdiction does not belong.
7. It is the one already risen who speaks. The statement is not made in the state of humiliation, but after Easter, a few moments before the ascension. A barrier of knowledge that one wished to ascribe to the earthly life would long since have had to fall here.
8. The rule of Christ is described in the same narrative as given. Peter sums up on the day of Pentecost: “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (2:36); Matthew has the exalted one say that all authority has been given to him (28:18). Received power and reserved times fit together; inherent omnipotence and reserved times do not.
9. The two-natures answer does not solve the problem but shifts it. If one person knows according to the one nature what she does not know according to the other, then she knows it — and the sentence “it is not for you to know, for the Father has reserved it to himself” loses its ground. The text does not distinguish natures, but names two persons and assigns the disposal to one of them.
10. The finding fits into the overall Lucan picture. In Luke, Jesus prays to the Father, receives the Spirit, is exalted by God, is appointed judge. Acts 1:7 is no isolated case that would have to be explained, but a member in a continuous manner of speaking.
11. The consequence for piety is a sober one. Whoever knows that the hour lies with the Father has occasion neither for calculating dates nor for resignation. He has a service, a power and a promise — and that is exactly the equipment with which Acts begins its narrative.

Biblical cross-references

These passages deepen the interpretation in the light of the whole biblical testimony:

Mark 13:32

“But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” The sentence says before Easter what Acts 1:7 says after Easter; the boundary is the same, and it is not abolished by the resurrection. Cf. the entry on Mark 13:32.

Acts 3:20-21

“…that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things.” Peter uses the same semantic field as the disciples in 1:6 and presents the restoration as a promise — the strongest evidence that Jesus did not reject the matter.

Acts 2:36

“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” The lordship is made, not inherited; and the one addressed is the same Israel about which the question was asked in 1:6. Cf. the entry on Acts 2:36.

Luke 19:11

“…because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.” Luke knows the impatience of his readers and marks it expressly as a question of time — not as an error of substance. The parable that follows is about the absence of the lord and about the responsibility of the servants in the interval.

Luke 22:29-30

“And I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.” The kingdom is handed on in a chain: from the Father to the Son, from the Son to his own. Whoever receives a share in such a kingdom does not dispose of its times.

1 Corinthians 15:24-28

“Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father… that God may be all in all.” The rule of Christ has a beginning and a goal; it issues in the handing over. This is the dogmatic long form of what stands in a subordinate clause in Acts 1:7. Cf. the entries on 1 Corinthians 15:24 and 1 Corinthians 15:28.

Daniel 7:13-14

“…and he was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples… should serve him.” The rule of the Son of Man is conferred, and conferred by the one who sits on the throne. The conception of the kingdom out of which the disciples ask is from the outset that of a transferred, not of an own power.

Daniel 2:44

“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed.” It is God who will set it up — the verb has the same bearer as the authority in Acts 1:7. Cf. the entry on Daniel 2:44.

1 Thessalonians 5:1-2

“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Paul uses the same word-pair and draws the same conclusion: no calculation, but also no doubt about the coming.

Revelation 11:15

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.” The consummation is announced as an event that occurs — and the order “our Lord and his Christ” holds fast the order that our verse too presupposes. Cf. the entry on Revelation 11:15.

Objections and Socinian answers

1. “Jesus corrects the question — the disciples were thinking politically”

The objection would have weight if the answer contained a correction. It contains none. “It is not for you to know times or seasons” is a statement about access to a piece of information, not about the correctness of an expectation. Had Jesus wished to reject the matter, the simplest of all formulations was available to him: that there would be no such kingdom. He says the opposite — he points to a timetable that another administers.

Nor does the change of subject take place. Verse 8 names the sequence “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” — it begins with Israel and widens out. This is no replacement, but an extension; and this is exactly how the narrative of Acts runs, which begins with the preaching to the “whole house of Israel” and crosses the threshold to the Gentiles only in chapter 10.

Decisive is the sequel in Luke himself. A few weeks later Peter says in the temple that heaven must receive Christ “until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets” (3:21). He uses the same semantic field as the disciples in 1:6 — and he uses it as proclamation, not as a concession to a weakness. An apostle who had just had the expectation refused does not preach it publicly two chapters later.

What the Socinian interpretation rejects is therefore not the warning against political enthusiasm, but the claim that our verse contains it. The promise remains what it is; only its date is withdrawn. That is a more modest interpretation, but it is the one that stands in the text.

2. “The kingdom is inward — Luke 17:21 settled that long ago”

The Socinian interpretation takes Luke 17 seriously — so seriously that it does not play him off against the rest of the double work. In his exposition of the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, Fausto Sozzini determines precisely this inward sense as the essential one: where God does not reign in the hearts, there can be no talk of a reigning in the proper sense. In that respect the objection is not false, but incomplete.

For the same Luke, in the same chapter, lets the statement about the inward kingdom be followed immediately by the talk of the days of the Son of Man, which will come “as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other” (17:24). Inwardness and visibility stand in his text within one connected passage, not in opposition. Whoever makes the one statement the dissolution of the other must skip the sequel.

The Lord’s Prayer itself also speaks against it. “Your kingdom come” is a petition for something still outstanding; and the third petition runs: “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. Sozzini expressly concludes from this that in these petitions there is something contained which does not exist without our doing — but also something which is prayed for and therefore expected. A kingdom that were exclusively inward and exclusively already here could be neither prayed for nor expected.

The disciples’ question is therefore no relapse behind Luke 17, but its other half. They ask about what is not yet here. And the answer confirms that it is not yet here — otherwise the statement about times and seasons would be pointless.

3. “Christ has all authority — therefore he also disposes of the times”

The objection overlooks the decisive word in its own proof text: “has been given”. A given authority is a limited authority, and limited not in its extent, but in its origin. Paul draws this boundary with all clarity when he remarks on 1 Corinthians 15:27: “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.” The exception stands in the text, not in the interpretation.

The Racovian Catechism speaks likewise. It sets the rule of Christ as high as it can possibly be set — “far above all rule and power and authority and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in the world to come” — and it describes it in the same breath as what God gave him after the resurrection. Highest authority and received authority do not exclude one another; here they coincide.

With that the pedagogical explanation is also dispensable. Jesus grounds his refusal not in the curiosity of the questioners, but in a jurisdiction: “that the Father has fixed by his own authority”. Were only the attitude of the disciples meant, the ground would have to lie with them. It lies with the Father.

And finally the objection amounts to a statement that no one wishes to maintain: that the authority of the exalted one included that of the Father completely. Then the handing over of the kingdom at the end (1 Corinthians 15:24) would be an empty proceeding and the “that God may be all in all” a formula without content. The Socinian reading takes both sentences literally and needs to defuse neither of them.

4. “The not-knowing concerns only the human nature”

First it should be acknowledged what this explanation is meant to achieve: it wishes to preserve the unity of the person and at the same time to let the statement of Scripture stand. That is a serious concern. Only, in our passage it does not meet the wording — and that for three reasons which taken together weigh heavily.

The first is the moment. In Mark 13 the earthly Jesus speaks before his passion; here the risen one speaks, immediately before his reception into heaven. If the limitation depended on the state of humiliation, it would be void after Easter. It is not: the one already glorified gives the same information he gave before his death.

The second is the ground given. The sentence does not say: “You cannot grasp it”, nor: “I do not know it according to my humanity”, but: the Father has fixed it “by his own authority”. The Greek ἐξουσία denotes not a faculty of knowledge, but a power of disposal. It is not a matter of who can grasp something, but of to whom something belongs. A jurisdiction, however, cannot be distributed over a nature; it lies with a person.

The third is the logic of the explanation itself. If the same person knows according to the one nature what she does not know according to the other, then she knows it — for it is a person who knows, not a nature. The sentence “the Father has reserved it to himself” would thereby lose its sense, because nothing would be reserved. The Socinian interpretation does not need this construction: it reads the verse as it stands, as a statement about two persons — the Father, who disposes, and the Son, who passes it on.

And it does so not in order to diminish Christ. The same catechism that does not ascribe the times to him ascribes to him rule over the living and the dead, over angels, over death and hell. The question is not how great his power is, but whence it comes.

5. “Without a date the hope becomes empty”

The objection assumes that certainty hangs on dates. Acts assumes the opposite. It tells of people who received no date and therefore did not less, but more: they preach, they travel from Jerusalem to Rome, they stand before courts, and none of them grounds his perseverance in a deadline. What was promised them was not a moment, but a power — “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you”.

Furthermore, the hope is by no means indefinite. It has an object: the restoration of all things of which the prophets spoke; it has a bearer: the one who was taken up and will come again in the same way; and it has a guarantor: the Father, to whom the right and the dominion over all things belong. Sozzini’s reason why we may ask for great things at all takes hold precisely here — because the kingdom is God’s and the power is his, nothing is so difficult that he could not accomplish it.

The alternative of simply declaring the kingdom to have come does not solve the problem either, but creates a greater one. It has to confuse the present with what Scripture says of the consummation: no more death, no crying, no tear. Whoever wishes to read that off the Church of his own time must either make the promise smaller or gloss over reality. The Socinian reading spares itself both.

Finally, the not-knowing itself has a spiritual shape, and it is not mere renunciation. Whoever knew the hour could wait for it; whoever does not know it must be watchful. This is exactly how Paul draws the conclusion from the same word-pair: because the day comes like a thief in the night, “let us keep awake and be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6). The withheld information is the condition of a bearing, not its hindrance.

Related verses

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

• Mark 13:32 — “nor the Son, but only the Father”: the same boundary before Easter.
• Acts 2:36 — God has made him Lord and Christ.
• 1 Corinthians 15:24 — Christ delivers the kingdom to God the Father.
• 1 Corinthians 15:28 — that God may be all in all.
• Matthew 6:10 — “Your kingdom come”: the kingdom of the Father.
• Mark 1:15 — the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand.
• Luke 17:20-21 — the kingdom does not come with signs to be observed.
• John 18:36 — “My kingdom is not of this world.”
• Daniel 2:44 — the God of heaven sets up a kingdom.
• Revelation 11:15 — the kingdom of the world has become our Lord’s.
• Matthew 6:33 — seek first the kingdom of God.
• Acts 13:23 — of David’s offspring God has brought the Saviour.
• Philippians 2:9-11 — therefore God has highly exalted him.
• John 17:3 — the Father as the “only true God”.

Summary

Acts 1:6-7 is the last scene before the ascension and at the same time the most concise statement in the New Testament about the order of the kingdom. The disciples ask what was to be asked after forty days of instruction about the kingdom of God: whether it will now be restored to Israel. Jesus does not take the object from them, but the date. What he refuses is precisely named — “times or seasons” — and to whom it belongs is named just as precisely: to the Father, in his own authority.

The Racovian Catechism reads the scene as Luke tells it: as a transition. Christ reigns because God, “after he had been raised from the dead and taken up into the heavens, seated him at his right hand and gave him all power in heaven and on earth”. This rule is comprehensive — over human beings and angels, over death and hell, over this world and the world to come — and it is throughout received. Whoever receives a kingdom does not dispose of the terms of the one who gives it; therefore the answer in verse 7 is no evasion, but an indication of place.

The counter-test is supplied by Luke himself. Two chapters later Peter preaches of the time “for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets” — with the same word the disciples used in their question. The expectation has therefore not been revoked; it has been confirmed and stripped of its calendar. And the angelic word after the ascension says it once more in a single sentence: he will come in the same way as you saw him go.

What remains is not less, but differently distributed. Fausto Sozzini held fast to both in his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer: that God reigns in the proper sense where he “may reign in our hearts themselves”, and that we may ask for great things because “the kingdom is God’s, that is, he has the right and the lawful dominion over all things”. Exactly these two sentences stand side by side in Acts 1: the witness-service through which the kingdom reaches human beings, and the authority of the Father with whom its hour lies. Whoever holds both together needs neither a date nor a consolation — he has a commission and a promise.