Christ’s Return
One of the dominant themes within the New Testament writings is that, though Jesus died, rose from the dead and was ascended to heaven, he will not remain physically distant from us but will return again in glory. Much ink has been spilled over this issue, and much of it is not helpful, especially when attempt has been made to develop a timeline for when Christ will return in relation to other world events. Because there are so many different variations in interpretation and the texts are ambiguous in exactly how they must be understood, the treatment here will be in broad brushstrokes, sticking to the very most basic issues at stake.
The issue of Christ’s return is complicated by the fact that there is a sense in which Christ has already returned and is present with us even now. Jesus says at one point that there are those who are with him at that time who will not taste death before they see him coming in glory (Matthew 16: 28, Mark 9:1, Luke 9:27). The vast majority of the history of the church has interpreted that prediction as referring to Pentecost. When this is the approach taken, it is acknowledged that, in the giving of the Holy Spirit, Christ is indeed present with us; however, this is not the return in glory that Jesus spoke of. There are some who consider the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost to be the fulfillment of Christ’s return. This view strikes me as problematic in light of some of the implications of the return of Christ that would be nullified if Christ has already returned in every sense spoken of in the New Testament. However, as this is not the position of this work, it will not be engaged with at any length.
However, it is important to take a moment and understand some of the New Testament evidence that the church is to expect a distinct return of Christ that is not identical with the giving of the Spirit on Pentecost. Every letter of the New Testament is written from the point of view of the Resurrection. If the Resurrection of Christ were to be denied, the letters would collapse into intelligibility. It could just as strongly be said that each of the New Testament letters is written in expectation of a physical and powerful return of Christ. Every single book of the New Testament was written after Pentecost. To speak of a return of Christ that is identical with the gift of the Spirit would make absolutely no sense.
There are further clues that Jesus’ return in the fullest sense is physical (though it will still be a resurrected humanity). When Jesus ascended to heaven (Acts 1:6-11), there are two strangers who appear to the disciples who tell them that Jesus will return in the same way they have seen him leave, that is, physically. The other major texts that imply a physical and powerful return of Christ are in the book of Revelation, where Christ is portrayed as forcefully asserting his reign in the midst of our world of space and time, establishing a new heaven and a new earth, overthrowing the armies and rulers of the world.
If the fact is predicted that Jesus will indeed return as a conquering king who will fully and finally institute the full reign of God over the earth, what are some of the implications of this? The most significant for Christian life and hope in the here and now is that it is the assurance that the world is not as it should be, that even though God has entered into our world, even though Jesus has declared that the kingdom of God has drawn near and the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ are so profound that they set the entire world on a different foundation, the work is not utterly completed. We must not confuse the world as it is today with the world as God would have it. Though sin has been defeated and overcome in an objective sense, it still lingers on. The kingdom of God has come and is continually pressing against the kingdom of humanity, but the latter has not yet totally been overtaken by the former.
Another implication is that it is God who will establish his final kingdom on earth and not human beings. There is a sense in which we have been called to participate in the establishment of the kingdom of God in various ways here and now, but the actual transformation is a work of God and not a work of human beings. This final triumph of God does not at all mean that we are stagnant until then, expecting Christ’s return as if he were a knight in shining armor while we sit utterly helpless. Indeed, as will be argued more directly later, the fact that the final state of the world has already been made known means that we press forward all the more boldly in works that move toward that point, even while knowing that the consummation will only come at the hands of God.
This has a further, two-fold consequence. On the one hand, it empowers the church and individual Christians to stand for the causes of God because, as people who know how things will end up, we can have confidence even in the face of setbacks. The other side of this consequence is that, although we are human beings working on God’s behalf, we are freed from placing our hope in human leaders of one kind or another. We do not need to despair when our human leaders let us down, when they fail to keep the peace and when they lie to us. What else could we expect, so long as God does not reign fully throughout the entire world? Knowing that the deliverance of the world will come from God enables us to stand with confidence as human leader after human leader fails.
Another important factor comes from the fact that, although tradition from the second century onwards has made a distinction between a first and second coming of Christ, where the first was when Christ was born of the Virgin Mary and the second is his mighty return in glory, the New Testament never speaks of the coming of Christ in the plural. According to the Biblical witness, there is only one coming of God in the flesh, although this one coming is spoken of in a two-fold way. It is as if Christ was going to come in glory anyway, but that, in the love, mercy and grace of God, he came among us early, to give us a foretaste, as it were, of the coming kingdom. If this is the case, the question, “Why has Jesus waited so long to come back,” is really not appropriate. Instead, we should marvel that Jesus came a first time at all, that the kingdom of God has not remained simply a prediction but has actually broken in on us in a real way long before the final consummation of God’s purposes for humanity.
The question that has been raised over the years has been “When is Jesus going to come back?” Many people have put forward different theories, speaking of certain world events that are predicted to accompany the end. Incidentally, every generation of Christians has believed that they have seen these events in their own time. This does not mean that the predictions are not valid, but that our ability to interpret them is not always reliable. It also serves to remind us of the fact that, indeed, nobody knows the day or hour when Christ will return. It seems that the desire to develop a timeline of the end times is rooted in a desire to probe more deeply into the predictions of the New Testament than Jesus’ assertion that we will not know the day or hour will allow us to.
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