📖 Biblical Definition
A Greek word meaning an age, era, or period of time, especially as a redemptive-historical category. The New Testament regularly contrasts this age (poneros aion, the evil age, Gal 1:4) with the age to come (Eph 1:21; Heb 6:5). Christ's death and resurrection inaugurated the age to come within the present age, producing the “already-not-yet” tension of Christian existence: saints live in this age but belong to the next.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
AGE, n.
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A scriptural Greek term; an age, era, or period of redemptive history.
📖 Key Scripture
Galatians 1:4 — "Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world."
Ephesians 1:21 — "Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come."
Hebrews 6:5 — "And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come."
Matthew 28:20 — "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Modern Christianity collapses biblical time-categories; the saint must learn the two-age framework.
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The two-age framework is one of the most fundamental redemptive-historical categories in the New Testament. There is this age — the present evil age under the dominion of the prince of this world — and the age to come, inaugurated by Christ's death and resurrection, fully arriving at His return. The saint lives in this age but belongs to the next; he experiences the powers of the world to come while still walking in the present.
Modern Christianity often collapses these categories, treating Christianity as either purely future (escape to heaven) or purely present (build the kingdom now). Both are partial. Live the “already-not-yet”: the kingdom has come and is coming; you have eternal life now but await its full unveiling; the Spirit is the down-payment of an inheritance that is real and reserved.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
Hebrew/Greek roots below.
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G165 — aion — age; era; world
G3568 — nun — now
Usage
"Modern Christianity collapses biblical time-categories; learn the two-age framework."
"Saints live in this age but belong to the next."
"The kingdom has come and is coming; live the already-not-yet."