Longing for the future - Are you looking forward to the Second Coming?

Have you ever asked yourself what is the biggest difference between our churches (and lives as Christians) and those we read of in the New Testament?

Could it be our lack of power? It is salutary to read Luke's account of Paul's lonely ministry in Athens. He sounds disappointed with the effects of Paul's sermon to the Areopagites - that only a few men and a number of women became followers of Paul and believed! Such effects would be talked about for many years in most of our churches!

Or perhaps the biggest discrepancy between evangelical churches in the UK today and the New Testament Christians is our lack of boldness and zeal. When many Christians fled from Jerusalem to avoid the persecution that led to (and from) Stephen's death, they didn't keep their heads down for a while, but went everywhere gossiping the gospel (Acts 8.1-4). How lethargic and worldly our best witness seems by comparison!

Yet arguably, the greatest discrepancy between New Testament Christians and those of our day (at least in British evangelicalism) is our lack of life-transforming hope regarding the future. The New Testament church was dominated by the expectation of Christ's return. The new Christians at Thessalonica had not only 'turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God', but they were waiting for his Son from heaven (1 Thessalonians 1.10). The Corinthian and Philippian churches were made up of people who were 'eagerly awaiting' the Saviour (1 Corinthians 1.7 and Philippians 3.20). Indeed, the New Testament writers even define Christians in terms of their lively hope. Paul tells Timothy that the Lord will not only give a crown of righteousness to him in the day of judgement, but to 'all those who have longed for his appearing' (2 Timothy 4.8). And the writer of Hebrews assures us that 'Christ will appear a second time . . . to bring salvation to those' (and presumably only those) 'who are waiting for him' (Hebrews 9.28). Clearly a lively longing for the return of the Saviour is a hallmark of authentic Christianity and the fact that it is largely replaced among us by a much more formal, wooden belief to which only a few give much more than a theoretical status in their personal doctrinal statement, is very disturbing.

It must surely be important to ask some pressing questions about this clear difference between New Testament church life and that of our own day.

1. Why did the early Christians set such store by the Lord's coming?

The answer is quite simple. They knew that the great day for which they longed would bring them both salvation and their Saviour (Hebrews 9.28).

Asylum seekers long for that affirmation letter from the Home Office to tell them that they can stay in the UK. It will bring them security and the right to work and make their own lives here. It will also mean the end of the fear that they will be deported back to suffering and perhaps even death in the country from which they escaped.

In the same way, the return of the Saviour from heaven will bring his people salvation from all their problems and anxieties. It will mean the end of sinning (2 Timothy 4.8), of separation from believers who have died (1 Thessalonians 4.16), of bodily problems and suffering (Philippians 3.21), of doubt (2 Corinthians 5.4-7) and discouragement - indeed the end of everything bad (Revelation 21.1-4)!

More than that, the New Testament believers knew that the Second Coming would bring them their Saviour. Predominantly, they were 'waiting for him' (Hebrews 9.28). The family whose husband and father has been serving his country in the army in Iraq is eagerly awaiting his return. They are not thinking of the presents he will bring, not the places to which he will be able to take them, but simply of having him back with them all the time! In the same way the New Testament Christians so loved and delighted in their Saviour and their Lord that their longing for his return was intensely personal. The real joy and consolation of the day of Christ's return was and is, surely, 'and so we will be with the Lord for ever'? (1 Thessalonians 4.17).

2. Why is this intense longing for the Lord's return largely missing from our churches today?

Heart-searching would lead me to suggest a number of possible reasons.

* We are preoccupied with life here and now. Our minds are so often on 'earthly things' (Philippians 3.19). We have fallen in 'love with this present world' (2 Timothy 4.10, and notice the contexts of both these verses!). We are often involved in 'storing up treasures on earth' (Matthew 6.19). This is surely the great sin of the church in our prosperous age. How we need to remember that 'the time is short' and that 'the world in its present form is passing away'. Only then will we who buy things remember that they are not 'ours to keep' and that we are not to be 'engrossed in the things of the world' (1 Corinthians 7.29-31).

* We are badly affected by scepticism and unbelief. Scoffers have been telling Christians for more than 1,900 years that our hopes of Christ's return are baseless. And some Bible scholars have reinforced that doubt by wrongly insisting that the apostles taught that Christ would assuredly come in their lifetime. We urgently need to recapture the conviction that every promise of the Lord is reliable, because he is the God who cannot lie (Titus 1.2). Indeed, Jesus's resurrection guarantees absolutely his return to raise the faithful dead to share in his glory (1 Corinthians 15.20-23).

* We are too ready to view death as the focus of our hopes. Many believers in our churches simply think of the heaven they will enter at death as the climax of all their spiritual longings. And that seems logical, for it will bring the great glory of being present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5.8). Yet the New Testament doesn't view disembodied life as the great future of the believer. In that state men still ask: 'How long, sovereign Lord?' (Revelation 6.10)! The curse will not be defeated until our bodies are raised, the world is transformed and God is vindicated in the great day of judgement. No wonder then that Paul facing death as he writes his second letter to Timothy is still focussing on the Lord's appearing (2 Timothy 4.8).

* We are fearful of Christ's return because we have not grasped sufficiently the wonder of justification and adoption. We see our ongoing failures and fear the Lord's reaction to us in the great day of judgement. We have not truly appreciated that being justified by faith we have peace with God (Romans 5.1) and that the blood of Jesus, God's Son, purifies us from all sin (1 John 1.9). We have turned the doctrine of judgement according to works into a search for perfection rather than for reality and faith. And we have failed to appreciate the staggering words of the great apostle Paul: 'Wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motive of men's hearts. At that time each (believer) will receive his praise from God' (1 Corinthians 4.5 - what a gloriously unexpected twist these closing words have to a heart that has forgotten, or never really grasped, the love the heavenly Father has for his own dear children!).

* We lack heart love for Christ. Just as the 12 did not love Christ enough to rejoice in his glorious return to the Father (John 14.28), so we do not love him enough to be excited about, and longing for, his return. Or, rather, our love for him is so inconsistent that we rarely feel deeply a longing for his coming.

3. What must we do to restore this great hope to our hearts and so to the church?

* We must repent of our obsession with the present (and with our possessions), and seek God's mercy for all that is amiss. And we must cry out to him to give us a true spiritual delight in his Son. Jesus's parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25.1-13) only underlines to us what a serious and dangerous thing it is to lose sight of the return of the heavenly Bridegroom.

We must begin to think, and think regularly and seriously, about all that the Scripture teaches us of the promised appearing of Christ. We will not long for something we are vague and uncertain about. And we must focus on the big facts of that Coming, like its certainty, power, glory, awesome seriousness, suddenness and imminence, and not allow ourselves to be sidetracked into uncertain details or dubious interpretations of minor points of Scripture.

Help needed

To this end, church members will need the help of their pastors. One reason for the loss of this lively hope is the widespread lack of preaching on this theme on the contemporary church. A church tempted by all the luxuries of the age needs to hear constantly the reality of eternity and the certainty of Christ's imminent return. Preachers must preach Christ's return and the judgement and the glory that will follow, simply and vividly, with delight in the Saviour and a sense of the urgency of sober preparation and godly living.

And this must be done frequently. It is too big an issue to be covered once, twice or three times a year. If, as I fear, there is a widespread indifference in the churches to the promise of Christ's return, then preachers must make every effort to win the church back to a New Testament longing with regular, winsome, Christ-honouring preaching on this wonderful theme.

* We must challenge our worldliness, discouragement, casualness and fear of men with this great promise and expectation. Few things are so important to our spiritual health as a realisation that life will not just drift on endlessly from generation to generation. Christ is coming again. And he comes to punish those who know not God and obey not the gospel, and to be glorified in and with his people (2 Thessalonians 1.7-10). A realisation of that will give us greater urgency to press the gospel upon this generation (and every individual in it) while there is still time, and to confirm that testimony by being salt and light in this ungodly world with its rottenness and darkness.

Surely there is much to discourage us in both society and the church in Britain today. To survive and thrive as Christians we need to be those who are 'eagerly awaiting a Saviour' from glory. That he is coming for us, that we might be with him and like him, is too glorious a hope to be buried or overlooked. Shame on us that we have allowed anything to cloud this glorious future.

Graham Heaps is the pastor of Dewsbury Evangelical Church, Yorkshire.