Part 2
But He will come, and we should ever live in the hope of His coming. Thus the Apostle taught his beloved Thessalonians to live. Thus he lived himself. The blessed hope was intimately bound up with all the habits and feelings of his daily life. Was it a question of reaping the fruit of his labors? Hear the Word of God on this:
“For 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?”
He would see them all then and there. No enemy will be allowed to hinder that meeting. Satan hindered an angel of God in the discharge of his business in the days of Daniel; and he hindered an apostle of Christ in the accomplishment of his loving desire to see his brethren at Thessalonica. But, thanks be to God, he will not be able to hinder the joyful meeting of Christ and His saints for which we wait. What a moment that will be! What precious reunions! What affectionate greetings of dear old friends! But, far above all, His smile, His welcome, His soul-stirring “Well done!” – Himself!
What a precious soul-sustaining hope! Need we wonder at the prominent place it occupied in the thoughts and the teachings of the blessed Apostle? He recurs to it in all occasions, and in connection with every subject. Is it a question of progress in the divine life and practical godliness? Thus he puts it:
“And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all, even as we do toward you; to the end He may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the corning of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.”
Triumphant answer to all who would have us believe that none will share the joy of our Lord’s coming save those who see this, that, and the other! “With all His saints,” spite of their ignorance and their errors, their wanderings and their stumblings, their shortcomings and their failures. Our blessed Saviour, the everlasting lover of our souls, will not shut any of His out at that blissful moment.
Is all this matchless grace to make us careless? Nay, it is the abiding sense of it which alone can keep us alive to our holy responsibility to judge everything in us and in our ways which is contrary to the mind of Christ. And not only so, but the hope of our Lord’s return, if it be kept bright and fresh in the heart, must purify, sanctify, and elevate our entire character and course, as nothing else can.
“Every man that hath this hope in Him, purifieth himself even as He is pure.”
It is morally impossible for any one to live in the hope of seeing his Lord at any moment, and yet have his heart set upon worldly things, upon money-making, self-indulgence, pleasure, vanity, folly. Let us not deceive ourselves. If we are daily looking for the Son of God from heaven, we must sit loose to the things of time and sense.
We may hold the doctrine of the Lord’s coming as a mere dogma in the intellect; we may have the entire range of prophetic truth mapped out before our mind’s eye, without its producing the smallest effect upon the heart, the character, or the practical life. But it is another thing altogether to have the whole moral being, the entire practical career, governed by the bright and blessed hope of seeing the one who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in His own most precious blood.
Have we lost the freshness and power of our true and proper hope? The truth of the Lord’s coming has become so familiar as a mere doctrine, that we can flippantly speak of it, and discuss various points in connection with it, and argue with people about it, and, all the while, our ways, our deportment, our spirit and temper give the lie to what we profess to hold.
May the Lord look upon us, and graciously heal, restore, and lift up our souls. May He revive in the hearts of all His beloved people the proper Christian hope of seeing Him, the Bright and Morning Star. May the utterance of the whole life, be,
“Even so come, Lord Jesus!”
(Concluded)