Dear reader, young or old, how is it with you? Is Christ’s coming a prospect dear to you? This question is a good test of your soul’s condition, for if your sins are not put away, you can only regard Christ’s coming with distress. The Thessalonians knew that Jesus, who was coming for them, had delivered them from the wrath to come. On the cross Jesus cried, “It is finished;” and, surely when He said so, it was so! If, then, the claims of God’s justice were satisfied upon the cross, why should not you be satisfied that His death has met the guilt of your sins? Never, until you are assured of salvation, will you be able to say from a heart filled with Christ’s love, “Lord Jesus, come. Come quickly and take Thy beloved ones home to Thyself, to dwell forever in Thy blessed presence and to go no more out.”
Yet, while many do indeed know that Jesus has bought them for Himself, alas! how few are really “waiting for His coming!” If we really lived in the power of this “blessed hope,” how little the troubles and cares of this world would affect us! And, as for its so-called pleasures, they would be indeed contemptible in our eyes! If we lived in the power and hope of a coming Christ, what different Christians we should be! When we went out in the morning we should feel that, perhaps, we might be “caught up” before evening, and when we went to rest at night, it would be with the thought that we might be with the Lord before another sunrise!
Thus, fellow believers, we should show to the world that we had real faith in the promise of our beloved Lord. We should be manifestly a people “waiting for God’s Son from heaven.” The Lord looks for us to go through the duties of our present life in the constant, lively expectation of His return. And if we were in this spirit we should be like Gideon’s three hundred men, who lapped the waters with their hands to quench their thirst in passing, and who did not stoop down on their knees to enjoy it; we should use the things of earth only in passing, and not seek our enjoyment in them. When we follow earthly things because of the enjoyment they give us, we have relinquished our waiting posture. The Lord keep “His own” true to Himself in these days of abounding evil and lukewarmness!