The attentive reader of the New Testament will find three solemn and weighty facts presented. First, the Son of God has come into this world and gone away; second, the Holy Spirit has come down to earth, and is here still; and, third, the Lord Jesus is coming again.
These are the three great subjects unfolded in the New Testament, and we shall find that each of them has a double bearing. It has a bearing on the world, and a bearing on the church; on the world, as a whole, and upon each unconverted man, woman, and child in particular; on the Church, as a whole, and upon each individual member in particular. It is impossible for anyone to avoid the bearing of these three grand facts on his own personal condition and future destiny.
It should be noted we are not speaking of doctrines— though there are doctrines—but of facts, facts presented in the simplest possible manner by the various inspired writers. There is no attempt at garnishing. The facts speak for themselves; they are recorded and left to produce their own powerful effect on the soul.
THE FACTS OF CHRIST’S COMING & GOING
First of all, let us look at the fact that the Son of God has been in this world of ours. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (Jn. 3:16). “The Son of God has come” (1 Jn. 5:20). He came in perfect love as the very expression of the heart and mind, the nature and character, of God. He was the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person, yet a humble, gracious, social Man—One who was to be seen from day to day about the streets, going from house to house. Kind and affable to all, He was easily approached by the poorest. See Him taking up little children in His arms in the most tender, winning way; drying the widow’s tears; soothing the sorrowing heart; feeding the hungry, healing the sick; cleansing the leper; meeting every form of human need and misery. “He went about doing good.”
He was the unwearied servant of man’s necessities. He never thought of Himself, or sought His own interest in anything. He lived for others. It was His meat and drink to do the will of God, and to gladden the sad and weary hearts of the sons and daughters of men.
Here, then, we have a marvellous fact. This world has been visited by the Son of God. The Creator and Sustainer of the universe, the lowly, self-emptied, and loving Son of Man—Jesus of Nazareth—God over all, blessed for ever, came into this world as the expression of perfect love to those who had sinned against God and deserved nothing but eternal perdition. He came not to crush but to heal—not to judge but to save.
What has become of this blessed One? How has the world treated Him? It has cast Him out! It would not have Him! The world had its choice. Jesus and a robber were placed before the world, and the question was put, “Which will you have?” What was the answer? “Not this man, but Barabbas.” The religious leaders—the men who ought to have led them in the right way—persuaded the poor ignorant multitude to reject the Son of God, and accept a robber and a murderer instead.
Remember, you are in a world that has been guilty of this terrible act. And not only so, but, unless you have truly repented and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, you are part of that world. This is most solemn. The whole world stands charged with the deliberate rejection and murder of the Son of God. We have the testimony of no less than four inspired witnesses to this fact. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all bear record that the whole world—Jew and Gentile—kings and governors, priests and people—all classes, sects, and parties—agreed to crucify the Son of God. All agreed to murder the only perfect Man that ever lived on this earth, the perfect expression of God. We must either pronounce the four Evangelists to be false witnesses or admit that the world is stained with the awful crime of crucifying the Lord of glory.
If I want to know what the world is, I have only to reflect that the world is that which stands charged before God with the deliberate murder of His Son. Tremendous fact! A fact which stamps the world in the most solemn manner, and places it before us in characters of appalling blackness. God has a controversy with this world. He has a question to settle with it—an awful question—the mere mention of which should make men’s ears to tingle and their hearts to quake. A righteous God has to avenge the death of His Son. What a reckoning it will be; how red will be the day of vengeance! How utterly vain the notion that the world is improving! Improving!—though stained with the blood of Jesus. Improving!—though under the judgment of God for that act. Improving!—though having to account to a righteous God for its treatment of the Beloved of His soul, sent in love to bless and save.
But this fact also bears on the Church as a whole, and on the individual believer. If the world has cast Christ out, the heavens have received Him. If man has rejected Him, God has exalted Him. If man has crucified Him, God has crowned Him. We must carefully distinguish these two things. The death of Christ, viewed as the act of the world, involves nothing but unmitigated judgment. On the other hand, the death of Christ viewed as the act of God involves nothing but full and everlasting blessedness to all who repent and believe. A passage or two will prove this.
Psalm 69 vividly presents our Lord suffering at the hand of man and appealing to God for vengeance.
Hear Me, O Lord…hide not Thy face from Thy servant; for I am in trouble: hear Me speedily: draw nigh unto My soul, and redeem it: deliver Me because of Mine enemies. Thou hast known My reproach, and My shame, and My dishonor: Mine adversaries are all before Thee. Reproach hath broken My heart, and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave Me also gall for My meat, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink. Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake. Pour out Thine indignation upon them, and let Thy wrathful anger take hold of them (vv. I6-28).
All this is impressively solemn. Every word of this appeal will have its answer. God will assuredly avenge the death of His Son. He will reckon with man for the treatment which His only begotten Son has received at their hands. We deem it right to press this home. How awful the thought of Christ making intercession against people! How appalling to hear Him calling on God for vengeance upon His enemies! How terrible will be the divine response to the cry of the injured Son!
But look on the other side of the picture. Psalm 22 presents the blessed One suffering under the hand of God. Here the result is wholly different. Instead of vengeance, it is everlasting blessedness and glory.
I will declare Thy name unto My brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.…My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation; I will pay my vows before them that fear Him. The meek shall eat and be satisfied; they shall praise the Lord that seek Him; your heart shall live for ever. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s; and He is the Governor among the nations. A seed shall serve Him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done this (vv. 22-3I).
These two quotations present the two aspects of the death of Christ. He died as a martyr for righteousness under the hand of man. For this, man will have to account to God. But He died as victim for sin under the hand of God. This is the foundation of all blessing to those that believe in His name. His martyr-sufferings bring down judgment on a godless world: His atoning sufferings open up the everlasting wellsprings of life and salvation. The world is stained, and the saved purchased, by the blood of the cross.
Such is the double bearing of the first of our three great New Testament facts. Jesus has come and gone— come, because God loved the world—gone, because the world hated God.
But, blessed for ever be the God of all grace! The true believer can look up to heaven and say. “My absent Lord is there, and there for me. He is gone from this wretched world, and His absence makes the entire scene around me a desolate waste.” He is not here. This stamps the world with a character unmistakable in the judgment of every loyal heart.
We must now glance for a moment at our second weighty fact. God the Holy Spirit has come down to this earth. At the birth of the Church the blessed Spirit descended from heaven and He has been here ever since. There is a divine Person now on this earth and His presence—like the absence of Jesus— also has a double bearing. As regards the world, this august Witness descended from heaven to convict it of the terrible crime of rejecting and crucifying the Son of God. As regards the Church, He came as the blessed Comforter, to take the place of the absent Jesus and comfort by His presence and ministry the hearts of His people. Thus, to the world, the Holy Ghost is a powerful Convictor; to the Church, He is a precious Comforter.
A passage or two of Scripture will establish these points in the believing heart. Let us turn to John 16.
But now I go My way to Him that sent Me…Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you. And when He is come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. Of sin, because they believe not on Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged (vv. 5-11).
Again in John 14, we read,
…I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you (vv. 16-19).
These quotations prove the double bearing of the presence of the Holy Ghost. We cannot dwell on this subject in this brief introduction, but we trust the reader may be led to study it for himself. We are persuaded that the more he studies it, the more deeply he will feel its immense practical importance. Alas! that it should be so little understood; that Christians should so little see what is involved in the personal presence of the eternal Spirit on this earth—its solemn consequences for the world, and its precious results for the assembly as a whole and each individual in particular!
Oh that God’s people everywhere may be led into a deeper understanding of these things; that they may consider what is due to that divine Person who dwells in them and with them; that they may have a jealous care not to “grieve” Him in their private walk, or “quench” Him in their public assemblies!
THE FACT OF CHRIST’S COMING AGAIN
In approaching this most glorious subject, we feel that we cannot do better than to lay before the reader the distinct testimony of Scripture to the broad fact itself, that our Lord Jesus Christ will come again—that He will leave the place He now occupies on His Father’s throne, and come in the clouds of heaven, to receive His people to Himself; then to execute judgment upon the wicked and set up His own everlasting and universal kingdom.
This fact is as clearly and fully set forth in the New Testament as either of the other two facts to which we have already referred. It is as true that the Son of God is coming from heaven as that He is gone to heaven, or that the Holy Ghost is still on this earth. If we admit one fact, we must admit all; and if we deny one, we must deny all. All rest upon precisely the same authority. Are these things true? As true as Scripture can make them. Then just as true is it that our blessed Lord will come again, and set up His kingdom on earth— that He will literally, actually, and personally come from heaven and reign from pole to pole, and from the river to the ends of the earth.
When our Lord was about to leave His disciples, He sought to comfort their sorrowing hearts:
Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also (Jn. 14:1-3).
Here we have something as definite as it is cheering and consolatory. “I will come again.” He does not say, “I will send for you.” To send an angel or a legion of angels would not be the same thing as coming Himself. No doubt it would be very gracious of Him and very glorious for us if a multitude of the heavenly host were sent with horses and chariots of fire to convey us triumphantly to heaven. But it would not be the fulfillment of His own sweet promise, and most surely He will do what He promised to do.
Amid the many mansions of the Father’s house there would be no place for us if our Jesus had not gone before; and, lest there should be in the heart any feeling of strangeness at the thought of our entrance into that place, He says, “I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” Nothing short of this can fulfill the gracious promise of our Lord or satisfy the love of His heart.
And carefully note that this promise has no reference whatever to the death of the individual believer. Who can imagine that, when our Lord said, “I will come again,” He really meant that we should go to Him through death? How can we presume to take such liberties with the plain words of our Lord? Surely if He meant to speak of our going to Him through death He would have said so. But He has not said so because He did not mean so; nor is it possible that He could say one thing and mean another. His coming for us, and our going to Him, are totally different things.
Turn to the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. The blessed Lord had just gone up from this earth, in the presence of His holy apostles.
And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven (vv. 10-11).
This is intensely interesting and furnishes a striking proof of our present thesis. From it we learn that the selfsame Jesus who ascended into heaven in the presence of a number of witnesses shall so come in like manner. How did He go? He went up personally, literally, actually, the very same person who had just been conversing with them—whom they had seen with their eyes, heard with their ears, handled with their hands— who had eaten in their presence, and “showed Himself alive after His passion, by many infallible proofs.”Well then, “He shall so come in like manner.”
Who saw the blessed Lord as He went up? Did the world? No; not one unconverted, unbelieving, person ever laid his eyes upon our precious Lord from the moment that He was laid in the tomb. The last sight the world got of Jesus was as He hung on the cross, a spectacle to angels, men, and demons. The next sight they will get of Him will be when, like the lightning flash, He shall come forth to execute judgment, and tread, in terrible vengeance, the winepress of the wrath of Almighty God. Tremendous thought!
None, therefore, but His own saw the ascending Saviour, as none but they had seen Him from the moment of His resurrection. He showed Himself, blessed be His holy name! to those who were dear to His heart. He assured and comforted, strengthened and encouraged their souls by these “many infallible proofs” of which the inspired narrator speaks to us. He led them to the very confines of the unseen world, just so far as men could go while still in the body; and there He allowed them to see Him ascending into heaven; and while they gazed on this glorious sight, He sent the precious testimony home to their very hearts. “This same Jesus”—no other, no stranger, but the same loving, sympathizing, gracious, unchanging Friend— “whom ye have seen go into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.”
Could proof be more clear or conclusive? How can any objection be raised? Either these two men in white apparel were false witnesses, or our Jesus shall come again in the exact manner in which He went away. There is no middle ground between those two conclusions. All this, blessed be God, is wrapped up in two little words “as” and “so.”
Surely we can never sit down to the Lord’s Supper without being reminded of this glorious hope, so long as those words shine on the page of inspiration “for as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till”—when? Till you die? No; “till He come” (1 Cor. 11:26). How precious is this!
The table stands between those two marvellous epochs, the cross and the advent—the death and the glory. The believer can look up from the table and see the beams of the glory gilding the horizon. It is our privilege, as we gather each Lord’s day round the table to show forth the Lord’s death, to be able to say, “This may be the last occasion of celebrating this precious feast. Before another Lord’s day dawns upon us, He Himself may come.” —from The Lord’s Coming by C. H. M.
Written by C. H. Mackintosh