The present constant expectation of the coming of Christ stamps its own character on the Christian: “Ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding” (Luke 12:3636And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. (Luke 12:36)). It is by this that the Christian in his mind and thoughts becomes associated with Christ Himself. You find this especially in the letter to the church at Philadelphia, for there, besides keeping His Word and not denying His name, you read, “Because thou hast kept the word of My patience” (Rev. 3:1010Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. (Revelation 3:10)). Whose patience? Christ’s. Christ is waiting, and He is waiting a great deal more truly and earnestly than we are. We are waiting for Him, and He is waiting for us with all the love that the Bridegroom bears to the bride.
True, He is waiting until His enemies be made His footstool, but for His friends He has perfected His work, and He sits expecting this subjugation of His enemies, and then He will rise up to judgment. He does not know the time in that sense (of course, as God, He does), for it is not a revealed thing yet.
He is waiting, and we wait for Him; so complete is the association, now in spirit and then in glory, that save His personal glory, He cannot take any glory until He has us with Him, for we are joint heirs with Him. In the address to the church at Philadelphia we get, “I know thy works,” but there is not a word said about them; the saints must be content to wait till the Lord comes.
“Because thou hast kept the word of My patience”; that was Christ’s own path down here, and we are to walk in it now, at the end of a dispensation which, as an outward system, has wholly departed from God.
J. N. Darby