I shall now show, not only that this hope is thus set before us, but that it entwines itself with all the states and thoughts and motives of the Christian life. The Lord in leaving His disciples comforts them first of all with the assurance that He would come again and receive them to Himself. When He was going up, the angels asked the disciples why they were gazing up; that He would come in like manner as He had gone away. The last parting word of Revelation is, “Behold I come quickly, Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus.” Having Jesus again, whom in a personal sense they had lost, was the bright and blessed hope set before them.
We will now see that all is referred to this, that every feeling and motive is connected with it; it is interwoven with every gospel feeling, and enters into its whole texture. In 1 Thess. 1 they were exhorted to wait for God's Son from heaven. It was, as to hope and the future, the effect of their conversion. His person was before their minds, and waiting for Him was the state they were called into. Next (1 Thess. 2), as to the joy of service and ministry: “What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?” To what is holiness referred? “Unblameable in holiness before God, even our,—Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints." What the comfort as to a saint fallen asleep? “Them also which sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him;” and then it is fully revealed how we shall all be with Him in order so to come. We are withal “of the day” that it should not overtake us as a thief.”
I do not go into warnings to the world, because my object is the saints; but that day will come upon it as a thief in the night. But we are thoroughly associated with Christ in glory now. As yet our life is hid with Christ in God; but He will appear, and we shall appear with Him in glory. We see Him through the Holy Ghost by faith. We are now children of God, and the world knows us not, because it knew Him not. It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but as He that sanctifieth and thay who are sanctified are all one, we know that “when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is;” and hence he that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself even as He is puce. We are changed into the same image from glory to glory. Our conversation (living associations) is in heaven, from whence we look for, as Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile bodies and fashion them like His glorious body.
The Lord's statement, as to the true character of the Christian (Luke 12), is that he is waiting for the Lord; the blessing rests on those who are found watching. And this specifically; for the watching is distinguished from service while He is away, and the reward distinct (see verses 37, 43, 44): for the watcher, the joy of heaven ministered by Christ; for the servants, rule over all. Again, the Christian calling is represented as originally going out to meet the Bridegroom; failure as going to sleep and forgetting it. What again roused the saint and set them in their true place was the cry at midnight: Behold the Bridegroom Then they arose and trimmed their lamps. “Occupy till I come” was the direction to the servants when He went away. What led to worldliness and ecclesiastical oppression in Christendom was saying in the heart, “My Lord delayeth his coming;” and judgment and cutting off as unbelievers and hypocrites was the consequence. No time was declared—midnight, cock-crowing, or in the morning it might be—so that they were constantly to wait and watch. The dead saints would be raised, the living changed, and hence Paul, being alive, says, “We which are alive and remain;” for he was then of that class. People have been bold enough to say he made a mistake. He made none, but will fully reap the fruit of his thus walking, waiting for the Lord, as he had told them to do. Peter knew he would die soon, before the Lord came. But how strongly does this show the truth I insist on? Who would think of a special revelation for anyone now that he would die?
There is a striking scriptural circumstance connected with this, that the Lord or His apostles never speak beforehand of the coming as beyond the life of those concerned, or to whom they address themselves. The virgins who fell asleep are the same who awoke; the servants who get the talents, as those who were judged. So, when He would give a moral history of the professing church to the end, He takes seven existing churches to picture the successive states. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, but long-suffering to usward. But those who were to be judged when He came had already appeared when Jude and John wrote. “These are they,” says Jude, “of whom Enoch prophesied.” That was corruption in Christendom. John tells us that they knew it was the last time, because antichrists were already there.
People talk of death as Christ's coming to us; but this leaves out all the thoughts and purposes of God. Our spirits, absent from the body, go to Him; but when He comes, the dead saints will rise, not die, and all of them; and, further, they will be raised in glory or, if alive, changed into His likeness. We shall see Him as He is, and be like Him; the two great features of blessedness being that we shall be with Him, face to face, and be like Him, and so ever with the Lord. Christ's coming to saints is resurrection (or change), not death. The Corinthians, bad as their state was, were waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1) The oppressed were to be patient until the coming of the Lord Jesus. (James 5) The prophets learned what they prophesied of was not for them, but for us to whom the things are reported with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven: wherefore we are to be sober, and gird up the loins of our mind, and hope to the end for the grace to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1) It was the Son of man coming in His kingdom which was shown to the three who were to be pillars, to strengthen their faith. We are predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's Son, that He may be the first-born among many brethren; but this is as He is in glory, not as when He died and His body was in the tomb. We have borne the image of the earthy, and are to bear the image of the heavenly—see Him as He is, and be like Him when He appears, and appear with Him when He appears, caught up to meet Him in the air, and then brought with Him in glory.
And present holiness, note it well, is always identified with this likeness to Christ in glory, perfected when we are raised. “Beholding with open (unveiled) face the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory. as by the Spirit of the Lord.” So in John: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; and he that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.” (1 John 3:2, 32Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. 3And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. (1 John 3:2‑3).) So in the passage already quoted from the Thessalonians: the holiness now sought is in its true perfectness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. And so in Ephesians “He loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot,” &c. (Verses 35-27.) Holiness is always identified with our correspondence to Christ in glory when He comes—being like Him then.
Every book in the New Testament but two—Galatians and Ephesians—specifically and distinctly presents the coming of Christ as the known constant hope, characterizing the Christian. The saying, “My Lord delayeth his coming,” is noted as the cause of the church's worldliness and ruin; the denial of it, as characteristic of the scoffers of the last days. It is identified with every element of the Christian life and service. They were to be as men that waited and watched for their Lord. The Galatians had got, in their minds, away from the faith; the apostle had to travail with them in birth as to justification by faith. Ephesians gives us the counsels of God, a new creation in which all is perfected, not the way of bringing it about in His ways. All the other books either teach the coming (sometimes for the saints, sometimes with them to judge the world), or minister to conscience and hope by it, or speak of it as the known, and one full hope of the Christian. What characterizes the Christian is the hope of Christ's coming, the waiting for God's Son from heaven; and that in the present power of the indwelling Spirit sent down from heaven, consequent on the perfect fulfillment of redemption. Reader, are you waiting for Him? I do not ask you if you hold the Lord's corning; but are you waiting for Him? The church in general has lost the object, as to what is before us in hope, to which they were converted. Are you walking in the power of the indwelling Spirit, who makes us have our conversation, our living associations, what we belong to, in heaven? The waiting for God's Son is the normal state of the Christian because he does belong there; and when He does come, he will be there with Him. Then, too, he will be like Him; God our Father will rest in His love, Christ will be perfectly glorified, all the saints perfect, with and like Himself; Christ will possess what He is worthy of in glory. Till then all is imperfection, this earthen vessel dimming the sight of what God has prepared for them that love Him while we are down here, or perhaps with the Lord indeed with no body at all, He expecting still and we with Him till His and our full glory is accomplished. Are you waiting for God's Son from heaven? Christ is expecting on the Father's throne, the Holy Ghost is come down to reveal Him—the Man in glory to whom we belong, to whom we shall be like, with whom we shall be forever. The living presence of the Holy Ghost, and the waiting for Christ, characterize Christianity and the Christian state. Not to be thus is to have lost it.
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