‘…and not only to me, but also to all who have longed
for his appearing.’ (2 Tim. 4:8)
The
Holy Spirit, the promised gift of the Father to Christ’s bride, is the seal of
the covenant which God has made with us in Christ. He is the guarantee of God’s promises to us
regarding that which is to come in the eternal kingdom of God. One form of the Greek word arrhabon,
used in several verses to describe the Holy Spirit, meant an engagement ring,
that which is given to a betrothed as a promise of the marriage that will one
day take place (Eph. 1:13-14; 2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5). So, in this present time on earth, we live in
a committed covenant relationship with Jesus which is sealed by the
Holy Spirit, whose presence within us is a promise of what is to come.
Through
the Holy Spirit’s ministry, the Father is preparing us as a bride for his
Son. So the Holy Spirit creates within
us an intimate spiritual union with the Lord: we are one in spirit with him (1
Cor. 6:17). To have been indwelt by the
Holy Spirit is to have been indwelt by the Spirit of love for God. So yearning, love and affection for God are birthed
within us by him, causing us to want to seek God, and to hunger and thirst for
his word and presence:
‘O
God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body
longs for you…’ (Ps. 63:1)
I
have found many times that if I have neglected prayer or not been in God’s
presence for a few days, for whatever reason, then my heart begins to yearn
deep within me, and this compels me to return to him and to know once again the
joy and peace that his presence brings.
I miss him… God is love and he is deeply loving
(1 John 4:8,16), and our relationship with him is grounded in this mutual
love. As our greatest heart friend, God
yearns and desires that we
live consistently out of the heart-warming love and
intimacy of this spiritual union we have
with him:
‘Love the LORD your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ (Deut. 6:5)
‘My
beloved is mine and I am his.’ (Song 2:16)
‘On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul
loves.’
(Song 3:1 ESV)
Because we are one in spirit with Jesus,
we love him supremely above all other things.
We are betrothed to him. He is
our Beloved, and we are his bride:
‘I promised
you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to
him.’ (2 Cor.
11:2)
The return of Christ for his bride
is a cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith, and it is emphasised
particularly in the apostle Paul’s two epistles to the Thessalonians. Unfortunately, many churches today in the UK neglect
to teach on this subject, but the early apostles taught it to believers as a
foundational truth, exhorting them to live and wait with joyful anticipation
for Christ’s return:
‘But
our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus
Christ...’ (Phil.
3:20)
‘They tell how you 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 – Jesus, who rescues us from the coming
wrath.’ (1 Thess.
1:10)
‘…while we wait for the blessed hope
– the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ….’ (Titus 2:13)
‘...waiting for and hastening the
coming of the day of God...’
(2
Peter 3:12)
Jesus
has promised to return for his bride, and he will come and take her to be with
him in an event which we call ‘the rapture.’
However, Jesus does not know when he will come for us, only the Father
knows this, just as a young Jewish bridegroom did not know when he would go to
get his bride. He would work preparing a
room for his bride in his father’s house, but would wait for his father to tell
him when all the necessary preparations had been completed, and that the time
had finally come when he could go and get her, and bring her to his home:
‘In my Father’s house are many
rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for
you. And if I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I
am.’ (John 14:2-3)
‘No one knows about that day or
hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.’ (Matt. 24:36)
Whenever I am out late in the evening, my wife invariably stays
up and waits for me to come home. She
misses me, she loves and she yearns for me.
She looks for my return, and she is only happy and at peace when I have
returned and we are together once again.
In a similar way, the
return of our heavenly Bridegroom is the deepest longing of our heart, because
we love him even though we have not yet seen him, and we wait expectantly and
joyfully for the fulfilment of his promise:
‘Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him, you believe in him
and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory...’ (1 Peter 1:8)
So we look forward to and wait for Christ’s
return. The signs which Jesus spoke of
in relation to his return are happening all around us in the world today. In fact, they are happening at such an
increasing pace that it is sometimes bewildering to see what is almost daily
unfolding in the world! For those who
observe and understand, who watch and pray, we know that the time has come when
the bride of Christ should look upward, because her redemption is drawing
nigh. It is right at the door! (Matt.
24:32-35).
Jesus is coming back very soon for his
bride, and we live in eager anticipation of this, ready for him to come. A bride lives in
the joy of her engagement in the present and, as time goes on, her daily life
becomes increasingly controlled by her future perspective. She loves her beloved dearly, and the nearer
she gets to her special day, the more her mind is consumed by her preparations
for the wedding to come. She thinks and
lives for what is coming, fixing the eyes of her heart on what is as yet still
unseen (2 Cor. 4:18).
For
myself, the longer I live, the greater my inward longing to be with Christ
grows. And it is this inward yearning, this inward
passion of love in our hearts for Jesus, this future perspective that determine
the way in which we should live our lives.
The bride of Christ has given her heart to her Beloved and she keeps her
love for him warm, preparing herself for his return (cf. Rev. 2:4-5). She is known by his name, so she makes it her
aim to live in such a way that honours and pleases him, by keeping his commands
(John 14:23, 2 Cor. 5:9, 1 Thess. 4:1, 2 Tim. 2:4). She does not want to disappoint him, she
wants him to be pleased with her when he returns. She remains faithful to him, living a
self-controlled and pure life (Titus 2:11-14, 1 John 3:2-3). She washes herself daily with the word of God
and makes herself look radiant for him (Eph. 5:26-27).
‘For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his
bride has made herself ready.’ (Rev. 19:7)
Furthermore, when we
live with our hearts warm with love for God, we then minister to others out of
this love. They feel it and sense it in
us. And we do everything as unto the
Lord, because in our hearts we are doing it for him (Col. 3:23). The wise and faithful steward loved his master and was
looking out for his return, so he continued faithfully and joyfully with the
tasks that had been assigned to him, working to his master’s expected
standards. Likewise, the five wise
virgins prepared themselves for the bridegroom’s arrival by supplying
themselves with the oil necessary to see them through the night-time
festivities that would follow his return.
The servants who had been given five and two talents loved their master,
and so they went out at once and invested these talents in order to gain more
for him, knowing that this would please him on his return (Matt. 24:45 –
25:30).
In the same way, the
apostle Paul too loved
Jesus with all his heart and longed for his appearing. The things of this world meant nothing to him
(Phil. 3:8). He lived a fully committed
and focused life, working day and night to fulfil the Lord’s purposes for
him. As he made clear to the believers
in Philippi and Corinth, he lived daily with the tension within himself which
was created by wanting to be with the Christ he loved so dearly, but knowing
that he had to continue in God’s work here on earth:
‘For
to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain...
I am hard pressed between the two.
My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary
on your account. Convinced of this, I
know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in
the faith...’
(Phil. 1:21,23-25)
‘Meanwhile,
we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling...’ (2 Cor. 5:2)
‘We
are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home
with the Lord.’ (2
Cor. 5:8)
Furthermore, Paul evidently believed that
the return of Christ for his bride would happen in his own lifetime. He expected to be alive when it
happened. This is clear from his use of
the pronoun ‘we’ in his statements regarding the rapture:
‘...that
we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord... Then we who are alive, who are left, will be
caught up...’
(1 Thess. 4:15,17)
However, as we all know, Jesus did not
return in Paul’s lifetime. In AD 67,
when he wrote his final words to Timothy, it is clear that Paul knew he had
reached the end of his life’s journey, and that he was soon going to be
executed by Nero. He knew then that he would pass away before the rapture happened, so it didn’t
work out as he had hoped and expected.
Instead of being raptured, he was to pass straight into Christ’s
presence to receive the reward due to him for his faithful service:
‘...the
time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished
the race, I have kept the faith. Now
there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous Judge, will award me on that day – and not only to me, but also to
all who have longed for his appearing.’ (2 Tim. 4:6-8)
And so similarly for us: we know that Jesus
is coming back, and we wait expectantly for his return, but, as with Paul, it
may turn out that it does not happen in our lifetime. We too may eventually pass away in death
before the rapture happens. This
unfulfilled longing is a characteristic of the Christian life. And also, like Paul, we live daily with the
inner tension of longing to be with Jesus in heaven, but knowing that we have
to stay here on earth to continue with the responsibilities that he has given
us. We have to live by faith, not by
fulfilled sight...
Delay seems to be
wrapped up in God’s end-time purposes (2 Peter 3:3-4, Rev. 10:6). The Bridegroom is staying away for a long
time (Matt. 24:48; 25:5,19), but the bride continues to look eagerly every
day for his return, because her heart longs for him. Impatience is normal in the face of delay,
especially where a loved one is concerned, and it can perhaps breed inward
frustration and sometimes even doubt, but it is tempered by the fact that we
know that God’s purpose is trustworthy and will therefore be fulfilled. In fact, every day that passes brings it one
day nearer. Mature love has learned to
be patient in life and is willing to wait, because it knows the integrity of
God’s character, and therefore knows that his promise will certainly be
fulfilled sooner or later.
So as we trust God with
the matter, we maintain our inward peace.
If we have to wait a little while longer, then so be it. God knows his purpose: he too is waiting
patiently, because he does not want anyone to perish eternally, but wants everyone
to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). And
in the meantime, we can continue here on earth assured that the longing of our
hearts will one day be fulfilled, and, when it is, it will prove to be an
eternal tree of life which was well worth waiting for!
‘He
which testifieth these things saith, “Surely I come quickly.” Amen. Even
so, come, Lord Jesus.’
(Rev. 22:20 AV)
‘…a longing fulfilled is a tree of
life.’ (Prov.
13:12)
Scripture
quotations marked (ESV) are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good
News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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