UNFINISHED BUSINESS
"And to wait for His Son from heaven, Whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, Which delivereth us from the wrath to come."—1 Thess. 1:10
"For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of glorying? Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus at His coming? For ye are our glory and our joy."—2:19-20
"To the end He may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all His saints."—3:13
"Wherefore comfort one another with these words."—4:18
"And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you, Who will also do it."—5:23-24
In regards to the Second Coming of Christ I would like to consider it in regards to the unfinished business of the King. This coming concerns the rapture of the real church beinf persecuted for their faith while still on earth as well as the judgment to come for the unbelieving busy with that persecution. The work of sanctification towards the point of being without blame at His coming as well as the eternal body which couples with the revealing of the sons of God from the tares who play with religion and faith. In order to brevity and conciseness we shall confine ourselves to Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians.
A brief reference to the history of the founding of the Church at Thessalonica, and the consequent reason of the writing of this particular letter will reveal my reason for selecting it.
After a period of apparent hindrance, Paul had been driven as far as Troas, where he saw the beckoning finger of the man of Macedonia. At once recognizing this as the Divine call, he crossed from Asia into Europe, and preached first at Philippi. As the result of persecution, he passed on to Thessalonica, where for three Sabbath days he proclaimed the evangel in the synagogue; and then, as the result of the persecution of the Jews, turned to the Gentiles, and a marvelous work of God followed. This work proceeded in the midst of strong opposition stirred up by the Jews, but expressing itself through the Gentiles, because he had proclaimed the Kingship of Jesus. Under stress of this persecution the apostle left Thessalonica in company with Silas, and took refuge for a while in Bercea, presently passing on to Athens, and ultimately to Corinth. Timothy, whom he had left in Thessalonica for a time, joined him at Athens, and reported the condition of the Thessalonian Christians; and there can be little doubt that this letter was written as the result of that report, and within a few months of Paul's departure from Thessalonica.
The Thessalonian Christians therefore were being persecuted specifically on account of their loyalty to Jesus as Lord. The purpose of Paul's writing was to comfort them and to strengthen them. What more natural then, than that he should write to them of the return of the absent and hidden King, for loyalty to Whom they were thus suffering? That briefly, is the story of the writing of the letter. It is therefore pre-eminently, the letter of the New Testament dealing with the subject of the Second Advent.
Our method in considering the values of that Second Advent as revealed in this letter will be that of taking the five culminating words with reference to the subject, and considering them in two ways; first as to what they reveal concerning the values of the Second Advent to His own when the Lord shall come; and secondly, as to what they reveal of the values of the Second Advent in the period of waiting for His coming.
In considering the values of the Second Advent of our Lord to His own people in the actual hour of His coming, it must be remembered that our thought is limited. The teaching has to do only with such as, to use Paul's words, are "left unto the coming."
We are not considering what that Second Advent will mean to the blessed dead, except as incidentally we have the apostolic declaration that they will come with Him when He comes; and that they will take precedence of those who are alive on this earth, at His coming for the rapture. The subject of importance to us who meditate this sacred theme is that of what the Second Advent would mean to us should He come again before this day have declined to night, or the coming night merged into a new morning. There are five things to which the apostle made reference in the verses which preface our study. Let me enumerate them, and then briefly consider each one of them.
The apostle declared first that in the hour of the Second Advent we shall come to completeness of deliverance; Who "delivereth us from the wrath to come."
He declared secondly, that in that hour we shall come to the true reward of all service. "What is our hope, or joy, or crown of glorying? Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus at His coming?"
He declared thirdly that at the coming of the Lord we shall come to the perfecting of character, and stand "unblameable in holiness" before Him.
He declared fourthly that in that hour we shall receive perfect compensation for all sorrow, illustrating the declaration by reference to the most poignant of all sorrows, that of bereavement, charging us to "comfort one another with these words."
Finally he declared that in the coming of the Lord we shall come to the perfecting of personality, the whole "spirit and soul and body" being "preserved entire."
With reference to the declaration that at the coming of the Lord we shall come to complete deliverance, in the words, "Which delivereth us from the wrath to come," we have a most suggestive statement, of which the associate statements are needed in order to a full apprehension of its significance. At first sight it appears to be a very simple statement, and yet this almost casual or incidental word of the apostle implies very much which does not appear upon the surface, and yet must be recognized. The arresting word is the word "wrath" here employed in a phrase, "the wrath to come," which might with equal accuracy be translated, "the wrath to go." The word here translated "to come" is used in a variety of ways, sometimes being rendered "to come," and sometimes "to go," the thought being that of the activity of wrath, the conception of wrath not merely as passive, but actively operative. The statement is then, that we are delivered from the operation of wrath by Jesus; and taken in connection with the declaration that we are waiting for Him from heaven, the teaching is that we shall be perfectly delivered from that operation in the hour of the Second Advent.
Now in order to apprehend the value of this more perfectly, let us borrow some light from other Scriptures. In the Roman letter, the foundation letter of the Pauline system, we find this declaration, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men" (Rom. 1:18). In the Colossian letter the same writer said, after enumerating certain evil things of the Gentile world, "For which things' sake cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience” (Col. 3:6). And if we go back to the gospel of John, we find either as the recorded words of Jesus, or as the exposition of John, these words, "He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John 3:36).
Now in all these Scriptures we have the revelation of a Divine attitude toward a human attitude. The human attitude is that of ungodliness, which expresses itself in unrighteousness. The Divine attitude toward that is always one of wrath, not passive merely, but active. It is a revelation of God's opposition to ungodliness and unrighteousness in human life and human conduct and human history. It is the New Testament revelation of the truth which we find in the Old Testament, in language full of figurative force, when the prophet exclaimed, "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" (Isa. 33:14) In that question the prophet referred to immediate conditions. He looked out on all human life, and saw it atmosphered in fire, the fire of the Divine nearness. He saw that the fire was destroying everything that did not harmonize with its own nature; and he cried, Who can dwell in that? None can dwell in that fire unless he who is of the nature of fire. This is the truth which in the New Testament is expressed under the figure running through, the Scriptures we have quoted. The wrath of God is the very nature of God in its attitude and activity toward ungodliness, disobedience, and finally, the rejection of His Son.
To follow that a little further is to recognize the fact that in this world there are two forces antagonistic to each other, those namely of godliness and ungodliness, of righteousness and unrighteousness. Consequently humanity is divided into two camps, the godly and the ungodly, the righteous and the unrighteous; and ultimately, in view of the mission of the Lord Jesus, the obedient and the disobedient, wherever the evangel of Christ has been proclaimed, the believing and the rejecting. Between these opposing camps there is perpetual conflict. The central battle was fought in connection with the first advent, on Calvary, and the victory was with the Lord, and so with godliness, with righteousness, with obedience. The last battle will be fought, and the final victory won in connection with the second advent, when masked, hidden, and insidious evil will be dragged into manifestation in the person of Antichrist, finally smitten to the death, and the Kingdom of God be established forever.
Now these Thessalonian believers and all believers have turned to God, to serve Him, and to wait for His Son. That is to say, they have crossed the line from complicity with the forces of ungodliness, into co-operation with the forces of godliness. They have abandoned the works of unrighteousness for the works of righteousness. They have ceased the life of disobedience for that of obedience. They have ended their rejection of the Son by believing in Him. They have turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven.
Nevertheless all believers continue in the realm of conflict, and consequently in the realm where wrath is operative. The anger of God is still burning, and these fires of God act upon them also. That is the meaning of all our present suffering on account of sin, the sin of others as well as our own. We are still in the realm of the first advent and the Cross. We are still in the place of human suffering, resulting from human sin. In the hour of the Second Advent we shall be brought to full and final deliverance from that wrath of God which is active against ungodliness, as we are brought into relationship with the Lord as the triumphant and glorified One. Then we shall feel no longer the fire of His wrath, shall no longer be left in the place of pain or of suffering. I endure today the results of my own sinning, and the results of the sinning of others. So also does every saint of God. We are all bearing something of the punishment of sin of our own, and of others, and shall do so until the Second Advent. There is infinite value in this fact, for by the transfiguring power of His grace, such suffering on the part of the saints is, in a mystery almost too deep for explanation, fellowship with His suffering. But in the hour when He appears a second time apart from sin unto salvation, we shall be finally delivered from the wrath that acts, from the fire that burns. It is in that hour that we shall come to perfect deliverance from the wrath to come.
There is undoubtedly a very definite and immediate value in this declaration in relation to the activities of the advent. One phase of that will be the full and final operation of His wrath against ungodliness, but from this we shall be delivered by being caught up into union and fellowship with Himself, as He acts, apart from sin, unto salvation.
The second fact of value, to which the apostle referred, was that of the reward of service. In these verses we have a wonderful picture presented to the vision, as the apostle exclaimed, "What is our hope, or joy, or crown of glorying? Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus at His coming?"
Now if we are merely mechanical in our reading, we cannot understand that. It is only as we permit the Holy Spirit to inspire our imagination that we can see the glory of the vision that flamed before the apostolic mind. It was a vision of the Lord Jesus manifested in glory and with Him those very men and women of Thessalonica, who had been won for the Master through the toil and travail of the apostle.
If we glance back over the chapter, of which this statement is the conclusion, we shall find the experiences of that toil referred to. The apostle wrote, "Having suffered before, and been shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we waxed bold in our God, to speak unto you the Gospel of God in much conflict" (2:2) "But we were gentle in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherisheth her own children" (2:7). . . . “Ye received from us the word of the message" (2:13).
In Thessalonica he had proclaimed the evangel in much conflict. He had cared for the Thessalonian believers with a great and beautiful gentleness as his singularly suggestive statement reveals, "When a nurse cherisheth her own children." Observe in that the combination of trained skill and motherly love; not as when a nurse cherisheth children, nor even as when a mother cherisheth children; but "as when a nurse cherisheth her own children." Add to the love of the mother the skill of the nurse, and you have a revelation of the most perfect gentleness and wisdom. The result of this proclamation and this tender skill was that the Thessalonians received the Word. In these descriptions we are brought face to face with the buffeting, the travail. And now the apostle declared that at the coming of the Lord Jesus, he would see these believers among the saints, and they would constitute his joy and his crown of glorying.
That is a remarkable vision of that great and wonderful hour when we shall see, associated with the Lord in His coming, those whom we have won for Him through the toil and travail of our present service. What an hour it will be, that hour when all the saints will be manifested, and when Christian workers will see in them the real meaning of their toil; when those who patiently, and perhaps without apparent success, gather about them the children, the youths and the maidens, the promiscuous, assemblies of men and women, and proclaim to them the Gospel, will see the results of their work in the saints, manifested with the Lord.
"Saints of the early dawn of Christ, Saints of Imperial Rome,
Saints of the cloistered middle age, Saints of the modern home,
Saints of the soft and sunny East, Saints of the frozen seas,
Saints of the isles that wave their plumes, In the far Antipodes,
Saints of the marts and busy streets, Saints of the squalid lanes,
Saints of the silent solitudes, Of the prairies and the plains,
Saints who were wafted to the skies, In the torment robe of flame,
Saints who have graven on men's thoughts, A monumental name."
Among such will be some as the result of the fact that we preached and taught and suffered and toiled, all resplendent in His glory and giving His heart satisfaction and that fact will constitute the reward of all service.
The next declaration of the apostle was that in the advent we shall come to the perfecting of character. First affirming that the ultimate scrutiny will be that of God Himself, as we stand before God our Father, he proceeded to describe the ultimate condition of those who are presented to Him in the hour of the coming of His Son, as that of having "hearts unblameable in holiness."
We realize immediately what a tremendous description that is. The heart, standing as it forever does in Biblical language for all the central and spiritual facts of personality, will be unblameable, that is without fault, in holiness. We almost tremble in the presence of the description, and desiring to know what it really means, we look back to the words immediately preceding, "The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men."
That is the heart unblameable in holiness, the heart love-mastered. In the enunciation of His ethic the Lord had said, "Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect," and Himself had explained what He meant by the previous declaration, "He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good." Love-mastered life is holiness, and at the advent we shall come to that perfection of character. It was to that consummation that Thomas Kelly looked when he sang,
"Then we shall be where we would be; Then we shall be what we should be;
Things which are not now, nor could be, Then shall be our own."
The fourth phase of value revealed in the teaching of the apostle is indicated in the injunction, "Comfort one another with these words." At the coming of the Lord His people will receive perfect compensation for all their sorrows.
It is important that we should remember that the particular sorrow which the apostle had in mind at the moment was the Thessalonian sorrow, and that their sorrow was on a high level, in that it was utterly unselfish. The Thessalonians were not grieving because they had lost loved ones, but because they thought that the loved ones who had died, had missed the Second Advent, and so in some sense had suffered loss.
These people as the apostle had declared had turned to God from idols to serve the living God, and to wait for His Son. Some of their number had died, and they thought that this was in some way wrong; and they ought to have remained until the Lord came; and they were sorrowing, not because they had lost their loved ones, but because their loved ones had lost the Second Advent. We may say that their sorrow was due to ignorance, but it was none the less beautiful; and Paul especially comforted them by declaring that those who remain until the Second Advent will not take precedence of those who have fallen on sleep.
Now I do not mean by this to suggest that sorrow for the loss of our loved ones is wrong, or that there is no comfort for us. Nay, rather, the teaching of the apostle is full of comfort for all bereaved hearts. We do not sorrow as the Thessalonians did, because we are better instructed than they were; but we do sorrow, for we miss the friends that have gone before. To all who sorrow thus, there will be perfect compensation in the hour when the Lord brings back such as have fallen asleep. It is in the light of that advent that we are able to sing,
"Some from earth, from glory some, Severed only till He come."
This comfort, in the sense that the sorrow caused by death will be compensated by reunion is a final form. Death is the last enemy and our sorrow in its presence the ultimate sorrow in our earthly experience. Sorrow is the sense of lack, of something not possessed, of something missing. Consider the whole gamut of sorrow, from that of a child crying for its lost toy, to the inability of the crushed heart to cry because of the agony created by the departure of the loved one; it is always a sense of lack. That final agony, of the bereaved soul, is to find compensation in the hour of the advent; and so also all sorrow, from the tears of the child to the dumb silence of the impoverished heart will find compensation when He Himself appears; and we find, in fullest sense, our all in Him.
Finally, in the hour of the Second Advent we shall come to the perfect realization of personality, or shall I rather say, to the realization of perfected personality? It is noticeable that this is the great passage in which we have a revelation of Paul's conception of personality, in the words, "spirit and soul and body," or as we will read, "spirit and mind and body." At His advent the saints will come to the perfecting of each of these parts of the one personality; the perfecting of the spirit, the perfecting of the mind, the perfecting of the body.
In Paul's autobiographical passage in the Philippian letter he declared that the ultimate goal of his ambition was that hour of resurrection in which the Lord will "fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory." That will be the final fact.
Moreover, there will be not merely the perfecting of each part, but the perfecting of all three in their proper inter-relationships. This is suggested by the expression "preserved entire." None of us will come to that perfection of personality until the Second Advent. The spirit is justified when we believe; the mind is sanctified through processes; but not until the perfected body is given to us, can we come to the ultimate meaning of our salvation in Christ.
In this final sense our blessed dead are also waiting the perfecting of the advent.
These are the facts into realization of which we shall come at the Second Advent. These are the things for which we wait. In this tabernacle we verily groan. Nevertheless, we also sing, "Now is our salvation nearer to us than when we first believed." We have never yet come to the full realization of all that is ours in Christ, nor can we, until not merely is the spirit justified, and the mind sanctified, but the body is glorified, and made the perfect instrument of the spirit life. In the hour of the advent of our Lord we shall come to that perfecting. Our worship shall be perfect.
The values of the Second Advent in the time of our waiting are self-evident. If indeed, we wait for the Son from heaven, we shall live the godly life, that is, the life which serves the living God, in conflict against unrighteousness, and in perfect loyalty to the Lord Himself. If presently we are to be perfectly and finally delivered from the wrath of God, today we shall act in harmony with that wrath, in conflict with all the forces of evil wherever they may manifest themselves, whether in our own lives, or in the conditions in the midst of which we live; content to share the pain of the burning that we, and others may be delivered therefrom.
If the final reward of service is to be that of souls won for him, seen in His glory; then the present life will be one of godly service, in which by word and work we proclaim the evangel, and devote ourselves to the sacred business of watching for souls. The question is forced upon us; if He should come and His saints with Him before the day be done, will there be any among them whom we have won for Him? In the hour of that Second Advent, not the amount of this world's goods which we have amassed, will be of value; not the name we may have made for ourselves among our fellow men will count; but the souls which we have won by travail.
And yet let not that way of stating the case bring despair to any heart. There are those who say they cannot name any that they have thus influenced for Christ. This does not signify. Have they been living the life of loyalty to the Lord, caring for their own children as in His sight, bearing the witness of godly living among their neighbors? Then let them have no care for statistics. He will startle many in the hour of His advent by introducing to them, men and women who are His because of what they have been, even though they have never been able to write the name in a book, of any whom they have definitely known as won for Him by their word spoken. The doctrine of the advent does not produce a fever for statistics. It creates an inspiration for service.
This expectation of the Second Advent will necessarily produce a godly love toward one another and toward all men. To wait for the Son from heaven is to cease strife as among ourselves, and to be driven out with a passion to serve and save them that are without.
To wait for the Son is to sorrow in the hour when we are bereft; but the sorrow will be with hope, the sackcloth will be transfigured, and we shall be eager to comfort others with the comfort wherewith we are comforted of God.
Finally, conviction of the return of the Lord, and expectation thereof will produce a godly discipline. If our whole spirit and mind and body are to be preserved entire, then with what earnestness we shall seek for present subjection of spirit, conformity of mind, and mastery of the body, according to the will of the Lord!
The Second Advent of our Lord is in the purpose of our God, and will take place at His time, and by His power. This is the foundation of our certainty, and the secret of our patience.
Therefore we wait for the Second Advent, according to His will, by living, by serving, by loving, by hoping, by persevering. Not by isolation from the affairs of everyday life, not by withdrawing ourselves from the world's sorrow and its wounds, not by lifting eyes to the heavens, to the forgetfulness of earth; but by fulfilling the daily duties of the home, by diligent attention to business, by the walk along the highways, and the operations of the market-place, all in the will and for the glory of God; all the while hearing in our hearts the song of His coming, and being ready, whenever He comes, gladly to welcome Him.
"I woke, and the night was passing,
And over the hills there shone
A star all alone in its beauty
When the other stars were gone—
For a glory was filling the heavens
That came before the day,
And the gloom and the stars together Faded and passed away.
Only the star of the morning Glowed in the crimson sky—it was like a clear voice singing, Rejoice! For the Sun is nigh!
O children! a Star is shining
Into the hearts of men—
Into the hearts of men—
It is Christ with a voice of singing
Rejoice! For I come again!"
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