“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, that the day of Christ is at hand” (2 Thess. 2:1, 2).
There are two great parts in the future advent of our Lord Jesus Christ which need to be carefully distinguished. They are both of the greatest importance, but they have each a very distinct character; and the confusion of that which is distinct always leads to the enfeebling, if not the destruction, of the truth.
It is so with every truth of God. If I look at the person of Christ there are two great sides to it. There is His deity and His humanity. If I confound them, or use one to neutralize the other, I have lost the truth about Christ. It is not true that He is God only, nor that He is man only. Nor is it true that it is a confusion of the Godhead with the humanity of the Lord, There is His person, but most assuredly there is a Divine nature and there is a human.
So, again, if I look at the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ; there is the very fullest grace, but there is righteousness. If I forget the righteousness, undoubtedly I shall use the wondrous self-abandonment of the Son of God, who suffered for our sins, in a selfish manner. If I only see love in it, I shall make light of sin; and if I do not see love and the fullness of love in it, I shall never have peace with God. So that the confounding of things that differ—no matter what the theme you take up, or the test by which you prove the truth of it—the confounding of things that differ is one of the most dangerous ways of losing the power of that which God reveals for the blessing of our souls.
It is not otherwise with the second advent, as it is called, of our Lord Jesus. There is one side of it which is the expression of the fullest love and sovereign grace. There is another side—that there will be the execution of the most solemn judgment. Here the distinction is even more marked, if possible, than in the atonement, or even in the person of our Lord, because the expression of judgment falls upon man objectively, whereas the Christian is now and ever safe in Christ. As to the person of Christ it is the same principle. One needs to be subject to the truth of God as to the deity and humanity of the Lord. In the atonement, it is just the same thing. It is the believer who reaps all the blessedness of God's unsparing judgment of sin; and it is the believer who enters into all the fruit and perfect results of God's perfect love. But in the second advent of our Lord Jesus there are different objects. It is not only that there is the twofold side of the truth, but the sovereign grace which is manifested in the coming again of our Lord Jesus will give to those who know Him a definite, distinct, and intimate relationship with Himself; whereas the execution of judgment is on those who abide His enemies. To confound these, therefore—to suppose they are bound up together in one and the same transaction—we shall find to be a mistake fraught with consequences wholly destructive of spiritual intelligence. Whereas, when we discriminate between these two things so different, then I am persuaded we are on the way to find that a great deal of the Word, otherwise hidden from the believer, will become more and more plain to him. Therefore I press very much the distinctness of these two doctrines as an important element—as important as any other—for those who believe the Word of God.
And, one must add, it is the more necessary to do so, because the confounding of these two things is rather common in fact, a natural tendency of the heart. I have not the slightest doubt from the translation that is given in our ordinary Bibles that those who made it excellent men as they were, and learned—did not distinguish between the two. To me that is manifest from the mistake into which it led them—a mistake which I have not to combat now, I am thankful to say. You have all got the Revised Edition of the New Testament in your hands, I suppose, and anyone who takes the trouble to compare the Revised Version with the old, will find that what I have often insisted upon—very probably in this town—has now been effected. Undoubtedly the revisers did not make that alteration because they believed in what I am going to set before you to-night. They did it very much as a question of language. I suspect that very few of them knew the truth in respect to the question. I say this not in the least out of a disposition to slight their knowledge of languages; and I am persuaded that they themselves would allow that this is the case-more particularly, also, as there appears to be a mistake in the way in which they translate the first verse. But they have been faithful in this, that they let you know that the true meaning of the last clause of the second verse is that the day “of the Lord” —for this is the true reading of the best copies—is not “at hand,” but present.
It is not a question of translation—in the day “of the Lord” rather than “of Christ” —it is a question of text, and their text is better there. But the last word is a question of translation. They say, “is now present.” I need not tell you that this makes an enormous difference. To say that the day is “at hand” represents the day as future. To say that the day is “now present” is in contrast with the future. Now, there the main error lay. What our Authorized Translators say—that the day of Christ is at hand—was really true; whereas, to represent the apostle as combating its nearness is not true. It is a most serious mistake. The false teachers were preaching that the day was already come, but the Authorized Translation makes it appear that the apostle denies this to be true. Elsewhere, in the thirteenth chapter of Romans, the apostle says— “The night is far spent, the day is at hand.” He could not possibly say in chapter thirteen of Romans it is true, and that it is false in 2 Thess. 2:2. That is what the Authorized Translators really involve-that the apostle contradicts to the Thessalonians what he affirms to the Romans. That could not be; nor is it true. Any scholar knows that the word is quite different, and that the word “at hand” is perfectly right in Rom. 13:12, and “at hand” utterly wrong in the A.V. of 2 Thess. 2:2.
The Revisers are here right. What the false teachers taught was that the day of the Lord was now come. You would naturally ask how that could be. It seems such an egregious thing to assert that the day of the Lord was already come. They clearly had a sort of figurative understanding about the day of the Lord. They knew the day of the Lord to be an outburst of trouble and perplexity—a time of darkness and thick clouds, according to the Old Testament prophets; and they pointed to all the trouble the Thessalonians were suffering and said— “The day of the Lord is come.” The apostle says, “No; it is not arrived. It cannot come yet. There are tremendous evils which must take place before the day of the Lord can deal with them.”
The important theme to-night is not the day of the Lord. I merely make these preliminary observations to show you how mistaken it is to conceive of the coming of the Lord as the same thing with the day of the Lord. Beyond controversy, it is evident that the Thessalonians would not have allowed for a moment that the Lord was come. That was contrary to the sense of all—contrary to every appearance of the truth. They knew that when the Lord comes—the apostle had shown them that carefully the dead in Christ should rise first, “and we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” All this was not come—therefore the Lord could not have come. There was some figurative meaning given to the day of the Lord, and that was exactly where the folly of the false teaching showed itself.
The apostle elaborately enters into this, for the purpose of putting both truths in their right relation the one to the other. “We beseech you, brethren” (not here in regard of, but) “by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The word the Authorized Version has translated “by” —and, I think, not improperly— is the word referred to first, and I believe we do not get so good an equivalent in the Revised Version. Thus what betrays that the revisers did not understand the argument of the apostle is that they say “in regard of” or something equivalent. Now, by this they show that they conceived the coming of the Lord and the day of the Lord to be the same. They thought that the subject which the apostle was discussing was the coming of the Lord. Now, this is not so. The subject under discussion is the day of the Lord. The error was that the day was present. The false teachers did not trouble themselves about the coming of the Lord; but they were very full of the day of the Lord, and they took advantage of the circumstances of the Thessalonians to say that the day had begun—that that day had actually arrived.
For what, then, does the apostle bring in, in verse 1, the coming of the Lord? To lift up their eyes from their circumstances, from their troubles, from their persecutions, from the darkness and clouds of the earth, to heaven. Do you not know that the Lord is coming—that He Himself is coming in person? No one could say that the Lord was come. This would have been so utterly to contradict common-sense that they would themselves have repudiated such an assertion. But the apostle recalls them to the great and blessed hope of the Christian. We all know—all of us who are familiar with the New Testament, with the First Epistle to the Thessalonians more particularly—that the bright hope of the Christian is that the Lord is coming. What is He coming for? Not to put away our sins: He has done that already. Not merely to bless the earth, because this is not our hope, although we expect it. There are many things we expect that are not our proper hope. What is our spiritual hope? Himself; He Himself, to take us to the Father's house; Himself, to present us in His own beauty and glory to THE FATHER; Himself, that as He has gone into the Paradise of God He will come to fetch us there—not even leaving it to the highest angel in heaven to bring us there, but Himself will come, that the objects of perfect favor may enjoy it where there is nothing inconsistent, where there is glory, where there is the absence of all that can grieve or distract the heart, where there is everything to promote the enjoyment of His love, and where all will be according to that love. Glory is not the highest thing, but love; and, therefore, in the seventeenth of John, our Lord Himself tells us that the glory will be the proof to the world of the love that is set upon us. But a proof to the world never can be so deep as the thing itself. We all know, supposing a subject were arrayed by his Sovereign in the most gorgeous robes, and put in a position however high, it would not be the same as enjoying the love and confidence of the Sovereign in the most intimate way. And what is a Sovereign's love compared with that of Christ? Remember, too, that it is not a love that is for a little season only, but full and forever.
Well, then, this is the hope of the Christian; and it is of the greatest importance that you should remember this is our true hope, that the Lord Jesus will come to take us to be with Himself, and like Himself, and this where He will be forever. It is not merely going to heaven, and still less is it reigning over the earth. I fully allow that both these things are true. God never made the earth to be merely a football for the devil. He will not allow the earth to be a place for His enemy to harass His creature and put dishonor upon Himself. He means to make this earth a part of His glory. It may be the outer circle of it, but this earth shall know the glory of Jehovah. It is not only the knowledge of His glory, but the glory of Jehovah shall fill the earth; not merely the heavens, but the earth. The heavens are higher than the earth, and so the glory unveiled there will be of a superior character to that which will embrace the earth. Accordingly there is where the Lord will give us this blessed hope in all its fullness and in the depths of its power; when the Son of God will come to receive us unto Himself, and present us with Himself on high the objects of God's love—the love that rests upon Him resting upon us, and ourselves brought into a suitable relationship to God. Now we are members of His body; then we shall be His bride. Of course I know, and you know, that these are but figures; but the figures of Scripture are not the flourishes of rhetoric, nor are they to be regarded as words that signify nothing; on the contrary, they signify everything that they express—that is, they are vivid images of the truth, which God will most surely make good in that great day.
But there is another thing of very great moment. You will see why it is that if Christ personally be the center of our hope, as He undoubtedly is, it exactly falls in with all truth. What is it that makes any part of divine revelation vague or indistinct? I will tell you, separating it from Christ. If you are a believer, yet if you allow the very smallest separation of any truth from Him, if you do not see all truth in Christ and with Christ, you will be, comparatively speaking, feeble in the faith. That is the reason why, if you take up a book on theology or divinity, as it is called, it is all so cold, and has so little in it which attracts the heart. It is only a skeleton. It is not really the living Christ. Everyone feels this who has any kind of spiritual sensibility. Therefore it is that when persons draw their views from books of divinity rather than from Christ, as revealed in the Word of God, the effect on their souls is to make them cold. There may be power of reasoning, order, or even imagination in the book; but imagination is more like the coruscations of electricity than the real, true warmth of living power. Nothing but Christ has life. Christ is our life, and the Holy Ghost will never act except in view of Christ and for Christ. The Holy Ghost has been sent down from heaven for the express purpose of glorifying Christ. He does not glorify Himself, and He certainly will not glorify any mere article of faith, although it may be true.
[W.K.]
(To be continued)