"And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come." 1 Thessalonians 1:10

1 Thessalonians 1 

Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers; Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father; Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God. For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. 

And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost. So that ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. 

For from you sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing. For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.

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"God is our warrant, who makes it to be our responsibility (if we bear in mind and respect the apostle's ways in Christ, as he taught everywhere in every assembly), to set the Lord in His coming glory as the object of hope before the babe in Christ. Be assured that we all need it. Even the soul that is only just brought to God has wants met nowhere else. The reason is manifest. You can no more hinder any one, even the new-born soul, from thinking of the future, than you can command your natural eye not to look before you. Was it not made so to look right onward? It is wrong to cross the bent of its original constitution and its habitual aim. It is not merely that you can look into what you like of things open; but you cannot without violence avoid looking before you. And so it is spiritually. As the natural man, audaciously confiding in himself, or even worse, would pry into the dark unknown before him, the heart of the child of God cannot but look onward; but he is privileged so to look—humbly, believingly. How is the future for him to be filled? Is God to occupy him with His future? or is the believer to imagine a future of his own? This seems to me the real question. And what does God answer? That He who hung upon the cross,

"that same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven."

The hope of the Christian, it thus appears, is worthy of his foundation. As there is but one Lord and one faith, so God has given him but one hope: it is Christ. If the true hope be not presented according to Scripture to the inexperienced believer, he is in danger from, nay, he will inevitably fall into, the various thoughts and expectations with which human tradition has peopled the future. What is it that you find many an old Christian looking for? Are not some labouring, not merely to gather souls to Christ in heaven, but to get the world better now? Is that the Christian hope? Others again seem to look for little more than, when they die, to go and be with Christ. Precious truth it is, that departing we shall be with Him above. God forbid that I should slight it, or say one word to weaken its importance; but it is not the Christian hope. However sweet to be thus with Christ, my part of it is assuredly but an imperfect condition, my going as a separate spirit, even to be with the Saviour. Blessed as it is, and far better even so than abiding here away from Him in the sorrows and failures of the world, still it is not the hope as God speaks of it. 

The Christian hope is not our going to be with Jesus, but Jesus coming from heaven for us, that we may be caught up, and so may ever be with Him. Is there no difference? or is it a mere secondary matter? Is it a trivial distinction, whether it be each individually after death going to heaven, or Jesus coming for us all from heaven, when mortality shall be swallowed up of life? Do you say, it makes no difference either way, for it will be all well with you? Ah! I see what is the root of the objection pressed: you are occupied with your things. If it be well with you, is this the one and only consideration? What poverty of thought, what lowness of feeling for the soul of the saint, when thus his hopes are limited to the horizon of his own well-being! Well with him! Has not the cross made it well with you? The blood of Christ has washed you from your sins, and you are made kings and priests to God, who has sealed you in Christ with the Holy Spirit of promise, the earnest of our inheritance for the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory. Is it not, as far as present object is concerned, for the very purpose of leading your heart, enlarged and free, to enter into His thoughts and His glory?

And where and on what does His glory shine? Upon you? Upon me? Thank God, it is upon Christ, the only worthy One! Will it not then be even for us infinitely better, than if it shone only on you or me, to show out what we are in our weakness, in our selfishness, in our little thoughts and hearts, so unworthy of His grace? God has not left it to us to decide. He has not made it our business to form our hope, any more than to define the proper object of our faith. He has given us Christ everywhere—Christ our hope no less than Christ the object of our faith.

Allow me to put the case otherwise. You suppose that there is, practically, no difference; for it is but a small matter with you, whether it be your going to Christ, or Christ coming for His saints: in short, you think that, after sin and salvation are settled, all else must be but secondary questions. But I answer, if there be a fact above all others of primary moment; if a truth which, most majestic in itself, will embrace within its range, beyond dispute, delay, or concealment, every creature of God; it is that change, most mighty in its character, which will be ushered in by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. A secondary thing! Heaven, earth, and all that are in them, not to speak of the unseen world, the lost, with the devil and his angels,—the entire universe of God, throughout time, must bow virtually at once, formally in due season, to the Lord Jesus in that day. Never since time began has there been anything comparable to it, save one hour; that hour I grant most entirely, with all my soul, to be, beyond all compare, solitary, exclusive, standing unrivalled in time, yea, which will stand alone throughout all eternity—the hour of the Cross, when the Saviour died for our sins. But the coming again of the Lord Jesus will be no rival of the cross, but its triumph—will in no way detract from, but rather prove and display to all, the full power and blessedness of the cross. Impossible that God could ever introduce any scheme even of good, which would come, I will not say, into collision with the cross, but into the smallest independence of that scene, the weakness and suffering of our great God and Saviour. On the contrary, the second coming of Christ will not be as once God glorifying His Son in Himself at His own right hand in heaven, which no doubt is the present joy of faith, and was, we know, a debt paid in raising Jesus up from the dead, and setting Him at His own right hand in heavenly places: the Lord's advent will be the introductory, or first act, of that mighty change in which God will never allow a return, stop, or check, until His glory is established both in the heavens and earth, and in every part of His creation; and therefore, I must repeat, so far from its being in any respect a doubtful or subordinate question, it is not only the sure truth of God but second to the cross alone in weight and solemnity. In point of fact it is the application, as far as it goes, of the reconciling power of the cross; it is the beginning of God's display to every eye of what the cross of Christ is, which faith knew before, but which God will then manifest by degrees to every creature. Therefore manifestly no objection can be less founded in truth than the notion that the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ can be shelved and slighted, as if it were an insignificant matter, even if true.

Hence we see in 1 Thess. 2 that the joy and hope of the apostle's heart in his labours of love is no present honour, recompense, influence, or gratification; it is the saints he here cherished and led on as his crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at His coming. In 1 Thess. 3 he prays the Lord to make them exceed and abound in love toward one another, and toward all, in order to confirm their hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. In 1 Thess. 4 it is the especial consolation, yea triumph, in presence of the death of brethren. As Jesus died and rose, resurrection will be the portion of those who die; for God will bring with Jesus those who have slept through Him. In 1 Thess. 5 the day of the Lord is supposed to be familiarly known, and about to come as a thief in the night with destruction for those who are of darkness, which is in no way the characteristic of the Christian, but of the condition out of which the knowledge of Christ takes him. Also, in verse 23, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not death, is presented as the time and circumstances in which the desire for the entire sanctification of the saints, wholly and in every part, inwardly and outwardly, will be realized according to the faithfulness and power of Him who calls the saints. 

2 Thessalonians 1 brings into prominence the retributive character, not of Christ's coming to receive the saints, but of His day when He will be displayed in judgment of the troublers of His people, strangers to God and rejecters of the Gospel, and withal in publicly-awarded rest to those now troubled for the sake of righteousness and His name. 2 Thess. 2 dispels the alarm created by the pretence that the day of the Lord was actually come, by showing that this cannot be; for the Lord must come and gather His saints to Himself above, and the apostasy and man of sin must be revealed fully before that day. In the last chapter (2 Thess. 3) the apostle prays the Lord to direct their hearts into the patience of Christ as well as God's love. Christ patiently waits to come, and the saints should cultivate communion with Him in this.

. . . This is the Christian hope, and far beyond the word of prophecy. Search the Scriptures for yourselves. Search the word of prophecy from beginning to end; search it from Genesis to Malachi, yea, to the Apocalypse of John. Search where you will, the word of prophecy, though it is a blessing provided of God for His people on the earth, is but a lamp for the dark place; but this is the bright light of heaven for that glorious home above where we are going. This is the suited light for the heaven from which it springs. It is of the Son bringing many sons unto glory. It is for those that are heavenly, though they be yet on the earth. It was given to mould and fashion their hearts according to that heavenly hope. By and by we shall be there with Christ ourselves, when we shall no longer need its conforming power. But we do need this blessed hope now; and while we value the prophetic word of God, we ought to value yet more—I was going to say, infinitely more—that which is the sweetest, highest, most intimate word of the Son of God revealing to us from God our Father, His own house in heaven, and our place with Him there. Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. To have the Christian hope before us now, and nothing short of this, is the day dawning, and the day-star arising in the heart.

William Kelly 

Excerpt from, The Second Coming and Kingdom: The Christian Hope



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