The return of Christ is a glorious event. It is the hope of the Church, to which it is looking forward with great longing, like the bride and the bridegroom long for the day of their wedding. The word ‘hope’ often has the following meaning in the New Testament: longing for Jesus’ Coming in Glory. Paul’s wish for the Ephesians is that the eyes of their hearts will be enlightened, so that they will know what the hope is to which He has called them, and what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.1 He writes to Titus that we are waiting for the blessed hope—the appearance of the Glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,2 the hope stored up for you in Heaven from which you must not move.3 1 Peter 1:3 and 3:15 ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you…’
All who have this hope in Him purify themselves, John says.4 Which hope is he talking about? That we shall see Him as He is, and that we shall be like Him. He will redeem us from this body of death. We shall receive new, eternal, everlasting resurrection bodies, just like He had after His resurrection. Those who die in Him go first and we are added to them immediately.5
What will be a glorious redemption for His church that is alive and awake will, however, be a nightmare for others. There is nothing scarier than to be confronted by a thief, to suddenly find someone standing at your bedside rummaging through your belongings when you are in bed. You wake up but is too late. This is what happened to the foolish virgins.6 The Lord Jesus warned about this time and time again in His discourse about the last things. He said that it will be as in the days of Noah, as in the days of Lot, when people were eating, drinking, marrying, buying and selling, planting and building. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with all this.7 Yet they were not paying attention to the ‘signs of the times’, and they were not taking into account of what might happen. For the unprepared, His appearance will be like a thief in the night8—a coming that brings fear and sudden destruction.9 The elements will be destroyed by fire on that day, Peter says.10 Christ will appear for the second time,11 and be seen by those who are expecting Him as their redemption. But it will be like a burglary—like a thief’s coming12—for the dead church.
• When will Jesus come? No one knows, but we do have to pay attention to the signs of the times. We do not know the exact point in time; we are not advised to calculate and compute, but we are to pay attention to the signs. The Lord Jesus says: You know how to discern the signs in the sky (whether the weather is going to be good or bad), but are you not able to understand the signs of the times?13 One hears the disappointment in His voice. He expects us to understand what kind of (bad) weather is coming towards planet earth, when we put the daily news at the side of our open Bibles! And read and understand the prophecies!
• For ‘come to you’ at the end of the verse the Greek uses the same word as is used for ‘come as a thief’, in the beginning of the sentence. An unexpected arrival.
• In the church history concept ‘Sardis’ represents the time after the Reformation (1520 – 1750 AD) when ‘dead orthodoxy’ and rationalistic dogmatic thinking took over from living faith. While the Reformers swept away much ritualistic and doctrinal rubbish they failed to recover the promise of the Second Advent. They turned to God from idols, but not to “wait for His Son from the Heavens.”
Bible References:
1.Ephesians 1:18 2.Titus 2:13 3.Colossians 1:5 and 23 4.1 John 3:3 5.1 Thessalonians 4:13–17 6.Matthew 25:1–1 7.Luke 17:26–30 8.Matthew 24:36-44 9.1 Thessalonians 5:1–11 10.2 Peter 3:10 11.Hebrews 9:28 12.Luke 12:35–48 13.Matthew 16:3
