Who Are We? Fools

I Corinthians 4:10

                Earlier this year I began preaching a series of messages around the queation, “Who Is Jesus?”  Now, I am beginning a series around the question, “Who Are We?”  For this first installment, I’ve chosen an unexpected answer Paul used to describe Christians.

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The hapless target of one of the Three Stooges’ schemes asked, “What kind of fool do you think I am?”  I believe it was Curly who replied, “I don’t know, how many kinds are there?”

Most of us resist calling ourselves fools.  But Paul does so to capture his reader’s attention.  He wants them to remember that being a fool is sometimes a matter of perspective.

Of course, Christians aren’t exempt from demonstrating genuine foolishness.  We can draw a line in the wrong patch of sand to our own hurt.  One example involves the issue of the age of the Earth.  Some of the loudest proponents of teaching creationism or intelligent design in public schools insist the earth is no more than 10,000 years old.  This is in clear contradiction to the evidence of geology.  As a result, anyone taking the Bible seriously is seen as an ignorant opponent of scientific discovery.  It is an unnecessary position for such Christians to defend.

From the earliest days of Christianity, students of the Bible had suggested that the “days” of Genesis might involve great periods of time, not just 24 hours.  There were even some Jewish scholars who felt the creation account may have referred to a lengthy time of activity.  There is nothing particularly “orthodox” in insisting the six days of creation comprised only 144 hours.

To take a hard line on this matter is to invite ridicule and to assure the rest of the gospel message is regarded with contempt.

But Paul is not talking about that kind of foolishness; he’s talking about how the world sometimes perceives the Christian.

In the minds of many, only a fool would promulgate a message branded as offensive and outrageous.

Paul knew that wherever he preached he would probably offend and outrage both the Jews and the Greeks in the crowd.  Both were offended by the picture of Christ the crucified.  While the Jews associated Paul’s message with weakness, the Greeks saw it as utter foolishness.

A story appearing in the Chicago Tribune in March 2001 helps explain the Jewish objections.  The story tells of a Jewish toddler killed in Hebron as she sat in her stroller. On a wall near where she died, someone had written a poem.

It spoke of the little girl’s sweetness and added, "We will take revenge; we will scream for revenge in body and spirit and await the coming of the Messiah."

That image of the Messiah was popular in Jesus’ day.  That’s why they were repulsed by a Messiah who called for repentance and faith, a Messiah who said little about the hated Romans, a Messiah who intended to do his work on a cross.  The Jews saw such a Messiah as weak.

But, for the Corinthians, the more important more important indictment was that of being foolish.

The Greeks tended to believe God was uninvolved in the human condition.  God would certainly not suffer for human beings.  The very idea of the incarnation and the crucifixion seemed foolish to the average Greek.  The occasional god might pose as a man but to actually become human?  No way. The Corinthians, though Christians, seem to have maintained the Greek pride in this kind of thinking.  In time, the message of the cross evidently lost its appeal. 

This is why Paul felt it necessary to assert his intention to place the cross at the center of his message.  As the New Living Translation puts his words, “I decided to concentrate only on Jesus Christ and his death on the cross.”  Of course, for Paul, the significance of the cross had to be understood in the light of the resurrection.  That’s why he spend an entire chapter (15) defending the event which is at the heart of the Easter message.  He would say: 

    And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  [15] We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.  [16] For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.  [17] And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  1 Cor. 15:14-17 (ESV) 

Paul made the message of Christ the core of his preaching because he knew that Christ’s crucifixion and subsequent resurrection provided the only way to deal with the great human problem of sin.

Throughout the history of the church, the challenge has been to remain faithful to the message of Christ, despite the disparaging views of the prevailing culture.  Those who surrender the message are often considered enlightened; those who cling to the orthodox message are considered backward and primitive.  Fools.

Every new generation of Christians must decide it if will remain true to the core of the Christian message, even though we embrace a different style in presenting that message.

It means holding on to that message and refusing to be side-tracked into other debates.  Yes, there’s a place to discuss serious questions about the gospel, but not if it means forgetting the singular significance of Christ.

Imagine some questioner approaching Paul to say, “I’d be a Christian but I don’t know where
Cain got his wife.”

I suspect Paul would say something like, “I don’t know either, but why are we talking about this—Christ is risen.”

If proclaiming the one message which reconciles men and women to God and to each other, the one message which lifts the burden of sin and overrules the power of death makes Christians “fools,” then our world needs more people engaging in that kind of foolishness.

In the minds of many, only a fool would embrace a lifestyle which might lead to discomfort, danger, and misunderstanding.

Craig Keener points out that Hellenistic culture considered the philosophers to be wise, which included the assumption that they were morally virtuous and honorable persons.  But their high regard for philosophers did not extend to the teachers known as Cynics.  You might think of the Cynics as somewhat like ancient hippies.  They sought to escape the establishment, even to the point of abolishing the family—all with the goal of leading people to live simpler lives.  Diogenes, one of the best-known Cynics, lived as a vagabond pauper.  Many other Cynics followed his example.  The Greeks considered the homeless Cynics to be foolish beggars. 

Although Paul and his team did not share the Cynics message, they were essentially such homeless persons, even though this “homelessness” was a voluntary price for doing their work as traveling evangelists/missionaries.  They often had to depend upon the hospitality of strangers in their travels.  In his later letter, Paul would remind the Corinthians of some of his experiences in preaching the gospel:  “I have worked with unsparing energy, for many nights without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty, and often altogether without food or drink; I have been cold and lacked clothing.”

Some of the Corinthians may have wanted to escape the stigma of embracing a message about a crucified Jew preached by a homeless evangelist.  His discussion of the Lord’s Supper in chapter ten suggests there were some Christians in the church who were financially better-off than most other believers. They may have been especially embarrassed by the charge that Christianity lacked philosophical and social sophistication. Of course, had these Corinthians been truly wise, they would have seen that wisdom was on the side of the apostles.

This is why Paul speaks with such irony as he describes his commitment to the Corinthians.  He is willing to be considered a fool for Christ’s sake.  He is contrasting his commitment and that of his fellow laborers—a commitment willing to face ridicule and misunderstanding for the sake of the gospel—to the haughtiness of the Corinthians.  Ultimately, he wants them to understand that if they are truly followers of Christ they are aboard that same ship of fools—fools in the eyes of the culture but not God’s eyes.  Yet, the Corinthians seem to want to appear to be wise or clever in the eyes of their neighbors.

But their viewpoint is warped, their perspective is all wrong.  In almost every age those who follow Christ have been perceived as fools by the undiscerning culture.  This is especially true when those Christians give up what is thought to be the good life, thing not really wrong but which can become a consuming force which stands in the way to radical commitment.

Yet, there have always been those who have understood the higher wisdom of such commitment. 

  When William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school he was different than most of his fellow graduates.  He was a millionaire.  He was also fully committed to Christ.  While enjoying his graduation present—a trip around the world—he resolved to become a missionary.  In 1905, this heir to the Borden dairy fortune enrolled at Yale.  While at Yale he participated in several student-led prayer groups and Bible studies.   During his remaining years at Yale he worked to help the poor in New Haven and to prepare for mission work in China.   During his senior year he hosted a large student missionary conference and served as president of Phi Beta Kappa. 

After graduating from Yale, he turned down several lucrative job offers to enroll at Princeton Seminary.  When he completed his seminary work he set out for China, where he hoped to work with some of the Muslims who had settled there.  His plans called for him to stop in Egypt for language study.  While in Egypt he contracted spinal meningitis and died on 9 April 1913, at the age of twenty-five. 

At the time, Borden was considered a hero.  I wonder how he would be seen today. 

I can’t remember a time in my life when certain newsmakers have been more willing to brand Christians as fools or losers, at best, or dangerous fanatics, at worst. 

The contributions of Christians to culture and the improvement of society are largely ignored or denied.  Yet, should those whose tireless work has spread the gospel, brought hospitals and schools to the poorest, and improved the status of women and children wherever the message be considered fools?  Ask the countless souls who have benefited from their sacrifices.

In the minds of many, only a fool would champion a moral vision which challenges the passions of a culture which welcomes no restraints.

You know that Corinth was a city known for its immorality.  The phrase “to live like a Corinthian” suggested a lifestyle of abandonment to lust and physical desires.  Yet, in I Corinthians 5, Paul mentions conduct going on in the Corinthian churches which even the pagans would find shocking.  Amazingly, the Corinthian Christians don’t appear to be shocked.  Instead, Paul says to them, “… you are proud of it, instead of being sorry for it….”  Paul seems to be saying that the Corinthians were proud of their enlightened open-mindedness, an attitude which ignored behavior which ought to have been swiftly and openly condemned.

Christians make a mistake when they approach those who have failed morally with a censorious attitude which implies they are exempt from such failures.  At the same time, the church makes an equally grave error when it fails condemn sin for the dangerous condition it is.  In our culture, the church seems more likely to make the second of those mistakes.  Though we know the mantra to “hate the sin and love the sinner,” we find it easier to love the sinner and ignore the sin.

But Paul understood we can’t take that course.  Sin is self-destructive.  Love can’t ignore that. If we love the sinner, we will hate the sin because we know what sin does to the sinner.  This is why Paul is so blunt when he writes to the Corinthians about sexual sin.  He says, “There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others.  In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love.”

When the young church burst onto the first-century world, it faced a staggering task.  Not only were these ragtag Christians to call men and women to faith in Christ, they were to be salt and light in their communities.  They were to make a difference.  In time, they did.  The moral climate of the world was changed because of these Christians.  No, the world has never been perfect because the church has never done its work perfectly. 

Yet, the high moral vision of the church did make a difference in the world.

Conclusion

I don’t know the answer to Curly’s question about how many kinds of fools there are. 

There are fools who think they are wise.  Con artists love to meet them.

There are the wise that are labeled fools.  They have invented devices or discovered things that have benefited the whole world.

For the sake of the gospel, Paul was willing to be labeled a fool by those who thought they were wise.  Those who have followed on that same “fools’ errand” have discovered that it was the wisest thing they could do—for the world and for themselves.

Servant, Evangelist, Father

Servant, Evangelist, Father

Acts 21:8-9

Our trip to see Robin Hood started me thinking about one the first times I attended a live performance with professional actors—with an actor I’d seen on TV.     The actor was John Davidson.  Right now, some of you are thinking I haven’t heard of John Davidson in ages, is he still alive?  The answer is yes.  The play was Carousel. 

This Rodgers and Hammerstein musical tells the story of a carnival worker, Billy Bigelow, who meets a young woman, Julie Jordan, in a small New England town where the carnival is playing.  They fall in love and marry.  Then they both lose their jobs, just as Julie learns she is pregnant.  I won’t tell you any more of the story except to say that when he discovers he is going to be a father, Billy sings a song that marks a turning point in the story.

 At first, he sings about all the fun he will have with his son.  Then, suddenly, it occurs to him that Julie might give birth to a daughter.  The song goes on:

What if he is a girl?
What would I do with her?
What could I do for her?
A bum with no money!
You can have fun with a son
But you gotta be a father to a girl

  

Of course, we can only hope that men know “you gotta be a father” to both girls and boys. 

This is why fathers who might wish to be role models, need role models. 

One of these role models is Philip.  If you’ve been in church long, you know him as a servant and an evangelist.  You might not know him as a father.

We meet him in that role long after Luke had introduced him as servant and evangelist. Luke’s reference to Philip’s daughters allows us to surmise something about him as a father

But first I’ll offer a word of clarification.  That these four young women might have functioned as prophets in the church in Caesarea would have surprised no one who knew about the birth of the church on Pentecost nearly three decades before. 

In his sermon on that day Peter had quoted Joel to explain what was happening.  The passage he used included the words “your sons and your daughters will prophesy.”  The phrase, which has been used throughout the history of Christianity to justify the women ministering in the churches, was fulfilled within the worship of the early church.

Because we Baptists seldom speak of “prophets” or “prophetesses” in our congregations, perhaps I should briefly examine the role of prophecy in the New Testament church.

To begin with, Paul saw the ability to prophesy as a charism, a supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit to the church.  While Paul seems to have believed any Christian could prophecy, since the Spirit indwells each believer, he also recognizes that some individuals in a congregation appear to be gifted specially to offer prophecies (I Cor. 12:10).  In Paul’s view…

“[a] prophecy is given in order to meet one or more needs within the Christian community for guidance and direction, edification, encouragement, consolation or witness, and it ultimately points back to the One who gives this gift.”[1]

At the same time, prophecy was “a major means whereby God communicated with his people.”[2]  This is why Paul valued the gift of prophecy over the gift of speaking in tongues (unless accompanied by the gift of interpretation) and why he warned the Thessalonians against “quenching” the Spirit by despising or disdaining prophecy.[3]

David Aune points out that most Protestants follow the Reformers of the sixteenth century by insisting that the gift of prophecy has morphed into preaching rooted in the thoughtful exposition of the Word of God.  Pentecostals and Charismatics, on the other hand, while not denying the Spirit speaks “prophetically” through preachers, would not limit the gift of prophecy to this mode of expression.[4]  Most Baptists seem to believe that the prophecy of the New Testament church has become the preaching of the modern church. 

Exactly how Philip’s daughters carried on their role in the church may not be clear.   Still, a couple points seem obvious:  The women spoke to the church and what they said held a special authority.[5]

Now, I understand that the theological term for the statement I just made is “can of worms.”  So, let me say that my point this morning has nothing to do with the gender of Philip’s children.  Well, almost nothing.

Certainly, I could say most of what I am about to say even if Luke had told us Philip had “four unmarried sons who prophesied.” 

So, let’s look at Philip the servant, evangelist, and father.

1.  Philip led his children to a genuine commitment to Christ.

Philip was described as “one of the seven” a reference that takes us back to the days of the early church when it was wrestling with growing pains. One problem involved making sure poor-relief funds were fairly distributed all the poor.  The solution was the creation of a team to coordinate the distribution.  While common sense and a practical bent were important, the apostles realized that the team members needed other qualities.  They were to be “men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.”  To be full of the Spirit meant their commitment to Christ was deep and genuine.

Now, years later, his daughters showed that same commitment.  Their capacity to prophesy indicated that they, too, were full of the Spirit.

I think most parents would love to be able to help their children get a good education and even get start in life. Philip passed on something of greater value to his daughters—a faith that would sustain them as they faced life. 

Fathers in the first century had a greater influence on their children than today’s fathers.  The threat of prison could do that.  But forcing a child to follow your religion by no means guaranteed they would be true believers.  That kind of influence demanded integrity.  Dawson McAlister talks about this.

Kids want to know if the Christian faith actually works, and one way they can be shown that is to observe it working in the lives of their parents. In the end, Christianity is not simply taught, it’s caught. And if you ain’t got it, they won’t catch it. So I say to parents, “Get right with God. Live for God, not simply for yourself but also for your children and your children’s children.”

Philip lived his faith before his daughters and his integrity bore fruit.

2.  Philip was a father who instilled in his children a desire to serve the Lord.

Don’t forget how we first met Philip.  He had made himself available to serve the church in a practical way.  He helped make sure no one was neglected when help was given to the poor in the church.

We don’t know all that may have meant but it may have included something as practical as carrying meals to the poor.  In any case, Philip was soon involved in other work.   It was the work that would earn him the title “the evangelist.”  Philip carried the gospel to the Samaritans, that despised group whom most Jews would have believed to be beyond redemption.  He also witnessed on a lonely country road to an Ethiopian official.  He led the man to Christ.  We don’t know this for sure but it’s reasonable that the man was able to share the gospel at the highest level of Ethiopian society.

Now, years later, Philip’s own daughters were serving the church with their own gifts. 

Sometimes I think my generation has done the younger generation a disservice. We’ve been so intent on making church an entertaining, even fun, experience that we have failed to remind them that the church is a place of service.  

Philip helped his daughters discover that following Christ could give them a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

3.  Philip helped inspire his daughters toward a life of purity.

When the summer Olympics begin in a few weeks a lot of attention is going to be focused on a young woman who grew up in poverty and in a broken home but found peace through her faith in Christ.   She says that God has helped her so much in her life that even if she were to never win a medal, she would still praise him.

 Her name is Lolo Jones.  The twenty-nine year old, who will compete for the US in the London, is expected to win the 100m hurdles.  Not long ago she surprised fans by admitting she is a virgin, something many in our culture consider not only an oddity but an impossibility for an attractive woman who is almost thirty.  In an interview with Bryant Gumble she talked about the challenge to live with sexual purity in our age and why she had made that choice.

It’s just a gift I want to give my husband.  But please understand this journey has been hard.  There are virgins out there and I want to let them know that it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Harder than training for the Olympics.  Harder than graduating from college has been to stay a virgin before marriage.  I’ve been tempted.  I’ve had plenty of opportunities.

There were plenty of opportunities to surrender to sexual temptation in the first century as well.

Some of our translations refer to Philip’s daughters as “unmarried.”   The literal term is “virgins.”  While it means these women were unmarried, it also implies they had never had sexual relations with a man.  That’s not always the implication of the term “unmarried” today.

Much like today, the climate around Caesarea was filled with temptation to sexual looseness.  There would have been plenty of opportunities for Philip’s daughters to abandon the moral standards shared by Judaism and Christianity.

Philip’s wife, the girls’ mother, isn’t mentioned.  We don’t know if she was still alive.  Certainly, she had a role in their upbringing.  Her character was probably reflected in her daughters’ demeanor.  Perhaps they learned the importance of hospitality from her, so they could make the wandering missionaries welcome.

But my focus is on Philip and his influence.  Even today a father can help move his children toward sexual purity.  He might model for his son the proper attitude toward women and sexuality.  At the same time, it’s said a young women learns from her father what a man is like.  That means if a girl sees her father behave as if any woman is just an object of lust, that’s what she will expect from any man and nothing more. 

A Christian father understands maintaining sexual purity is a challenge because he faces that challenge and because he faces that challenge he will accept the high call to pray for his children. 

It’s possible Luke’s reference to Philip’s daughters being “unmarried” or “virgins” underscores the depth of their commitment to Christ.  Still, the call to purity is no less and, really, no more than it is for any Christian young person. 

It is a blessed young person who has Christian parents who will pray and offer support to their children as they strive for purity in our culture.

4. Philip was a father who showed his children that God can overcome the hatred that builds walls between people.

Philip was a trail-blazer.  He took the gospel to the Samaritans and was instrumental in introducing the Ethiopians to the gospel.  As a Jew he had probably been instilled with disdain for the Samaritans but God’s love overcame it.  Earl Radmacher describes the impact of Philip’s ministry.  

…the gospel message transcended the first-century barrier between the Jews and Samaritans. The Spirit of God created a loving fellowship of believers out of the hate that existed. The formation of the Samaritan church indicates that there is no room for racism in the church, for Jesus died for the sins of the whole world.^[6]

Over the years, I’ve met my share of unashamed racists.  I’m sure you have too.  I’ve rarely met a twenty or thirty-something racist who didn’t have a father or mother who was a racist.  It is a sad heritage that’s too often passed from one generation to the next.  The hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans had been passed from generation to generation for almost eight centuries.

This is conjecture.  But I’m guessing that as Philip ministered in that cosmopolitan seaport town of Caesarea, filled as it was with so many cultures, he never allowed skin-color or accents to keep him from sharing God’s love.

His daughters would have watched and learned.  They saw him treat those who were different with grace and respect.  They never heard him use a pejorative, derogatory slur for a fellow human being.  They never knew him to blame a whole race of people for the actions of one.  They watched him give every individual the honor due one for whom Christ died.

Some of you were raised by racists.  You have the choice of passing that racism on to another generation or stopping it now.  Learn from Philip.

5.  Philip was a father who encouraged his daughters look beyond social barriers in their quest to do God’s will.

Several years ago, Barbra Streisand starred in a film called Yentl.  It’s the story of a young woman who disguised herself as a man so she could study the Torah.  The story was set in the nineteenth century but the same attitude was found in the first century. 
Rabbis believed it was a waste of time to try to teach the Torah to a woman. 

The Greek culture gave a little more freedom to women but very little more.  

Most of what I’ve said could have applied to a father of four sons.  Now, I want to speak about Philip as a father of daughters.

Philip might have allowed the pressure of his Jewish culture to persuade him to squelch his daughters’ first tentative efforts to exercise their gifts.  He didn’t. 

This servant and evangelist would not prevent his daughters from doing the work God had for them.  He seized the opportunity to serve as an encourager, not as a champion of the status quo. 

Back when I attended seminary in New Orleans, Pat and I knew the wife of a fellow student.   She was in her mid-twenties but couldn’t drive.  She had never learned.  Her father told her she didn’t need to drive because she would eventually marry and her husband would drive her wherever she needed to go.

Her father was a model of those fathers who would tell their daughters that God couldn’t possibly have something special for them to do, that it would be best if they simply married and lived a conventional life.

This father might have told his daughter that things are they way they are and she wasn’t  going to change them. Philip wouldn’t do that.  He wouldn’t stand in his daughters’ way or in God’s way.

Conclusion:  Philip’s culture would have offered little support to him as he tried to be a model father.  Still, he was just that.

Any parent could learn from him. 

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[1] C. M. Robeck, Jr, “Prophecy, Prophesying,” Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Ed. G. F. Hawthorne and R. P. Martin, Downers Grove, IL:  Inter Varsity Press, 1993, p.755.

[2] David Aune, “Prophecy,” Encyclopedia of the Bible, Volume 2, Walter Elwell, Ed, London:  Marshall Pickering, 1988, p. 1778.

[3] See I Cor. 14:6ff and I Thess. 5:19-20.

[4] Aune, p. 761.

[5]  Check a good Bible dictionary or encyclopedia for the role of the prophet in the New Testament church.

^[6] Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1997). The Nelson Study Bible: New King James Version (Ac 8:5). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.

Who Is Jesus? The Returning Lord

Acts 1:1-11

Within a few hours Jesus would be dead.  The Romans, conspiring with the Jewish leadership, would have done their brutal work.  Jesus’ body would be sealed away in a tomb where the inevitable work of decay would do its work—in fact, we now know that the decay would have begun the moment he breathed his last.  Even though Jesus had told them again and again that the cross wouldn’t mean it was over, in the minds of his disciples it would be over.  So, Jesus tried one more time to comfort his followers. 

He said,

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.
In my Father’s house are many rooms.

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,

I will come again

The teaching that Jesus would come again brings us to another answer to the question, Who is Jesus?  The answer is—Jesus is the Returning Lord.

Before I say more, join me in a little exercise.  Imagine you are looking at one of the key landmarks of downtown Columbus, the LeVeque Tower.  When the building was completed in 1927 it stood 555.5 feet tall and was, at the time, the tallest building between New York City and Chicago.  Until 1974, it was the tallest building in Columbus.  On a clear day, you can see the building when you are still miles from downtown.  On a clear night, you can see the building illuminated, sometimes with white lights, sometimes with colored lights to commemorate some special event.  From a distance, the tower is an impressive building that speaks of another age.  When you get closer, you see the details of its Art Deco design.  Some of those details can be appreciated only if you should be able to enter areas that are usually closed to the public.   Yet, on a foggy night, you may only be able to see the blur of those lights.  There’s no doubt the building is there but a vision of the details is denied.

Like the LeVeque Tower, the doctrine of Christ’s Second Coming stands out against the backdrop of the New Testament.  We are all aware it’s there.  Yet, in some ways, it is like the LeVeque Tower on a foggy day; there is no doubt the doctrine is there but the fog prevents us from seeing all its details.  There are hidden aspects of this doctrine that are closed to us—closed by divine providence.  No one is permitted to see them so be especially cautious when you encounter those who claim to know more about the Second Coming than they could possibly know.

With that in mind, I’m going to try to focus on what we do know about the Return of Jesus.

The Return of Jesus will be personal. 

This is a common emphasis when the New Testament speaks of the Second Coming.  The focus is on Who is coming.  Jesus’ told his troubled disciples, “I will come again.”  The angels told the disciples who had just witnessed the Ascension, “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”  Paul wrote the Thessalonians, “The Lord himself will descend.”

The idea seems clear that Jesus Return is not an abstract promise, but the promise of a known Person who will return.

Some Christian writers of the liberal tradition have tried to argue that the Second Coming was accomplished with the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  That cannot explain why the earliest Christian preachers, including some who were there at Pentecost, continued to speak of the Jesus’ Coming as a future event.

The Return of Jesus will be powerful and public.

A well known sectarian group claims Jesus returned on October 1, 1914, and began his reign in Jerusalem.  This is far from the Biblical picture of Christ’s Return.

According to the Bible, his Return will be glorious, powerful, and triumphant.  Again, Paul told the Thessalonians:  For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.”  (I Thess. 4:16)

His victory will be complete and unquestioned.  The early Christians sang a hymn declaring that at his return “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

This picture of Christ’s Return which will be so visibly victorious seems to run contrary to the popular theory that his coming will involve some sort of “secret rapture.”  I just don’t think the Scriptures support this idea.  There will be nothing “secret” about his Return.

Those who have denied his very existence will give a collective, “Oops.”

The Return of Jesus will be purposeful.

The Returning Lord will complete the process of salvation.

To begin with there will be the Resurrection of the dead.  The Return of Jesus will bring about the fulfillment of the promised that we will share Jesus’ victory over death. 

While Christians differ on the details of the resurrection, they agree that believers will be given transformed bodies.  In First Corinthians, Paul offers an explanation of this transformation.  Here is Peterson’s paraphrase:

    Some skeptic is sure to ask, “Show me how resurrection works. Give me a diagram; draw me a picture. What does this ‘resurrection body’ look like?”
If you look at this question closely, you realize how absurd it is. There are no diagrams for this kind of thing.
    We do have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a “dead” seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant.  You could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed. What we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don’t look anything alike. The dead body that we bury in the ground and the resurrection body that comes from it will be dramatically different.

In this new body believers will maintain their identity but will no longer be subject to pain, suffering, or death.  The blind will see, the lame will leap, the deaf will hear—all will be changed.  This affirmation reminds us that Christianity prizes the body.  We don’t treat the body with disdain.  A body is a part of our identity.  The body, as one writer says, is the form a self is in.

Jesus, who was the first-fruit of this great resurrection, led the way.  The One who was victorious over death will share his victory.

Following our resurrection, the Returning Lord, moves us toward the experiencing of glorification.  Through glorification, we become truly Christlike.  One definition puts it this way,

In glorification believers attain complete conformity to the image and likeness of the glorified Christ and are freed from both physical and spiritual defect. Glorification ensures that believers will never again experience bodily decay, death or illness, and will never again struggle with sin.^[1]

Visit a great art museum and you will see portraits of Christ by masters from every age.  No matter how different the artists’ technique and style, you recognize the subject. Whether the painting is by DaVinci or Korean artist Juchul Kim you look and see Jesus.   In the same way, in our glorified condition we retain our distinctive identity yet we bear the unmistakable image of Christ.  This will be the work of the Returning Lord.

The Returning Lord will complete the work of judgment.

I’ve spent a long time studying the faith of America’s founders.  I’ve come to the conclusion that any attempt to portray men like Jefferson as evangelicals or orthodox Christians is just wishful thinking.  True, some of the founders, like Dr. Benjamin Rush and John Carroll, seem to have been orthodox believers.  Patrick Henry might be in that number as well.  But that can’t be said of Jefferson, Madison, or Adams, among others.  Jefferson could not believe in the deity of Christ or his resurrection.  He believed the simple ethical teachings of Jesus had been corrupted by subsequent writers.

Yet, almost all of these men—believers or not—thought there would be a final reckoning, a final judgment of their deeds and works.

Most of humanity has seen the world as a place of injustice.  Too often the innocent die under the lash while their tormentors die peacefully in their beds.  Something in us cries out for that to be remedied.  When the Returning Lord presides over the final judgment, all will be made right. 

But it will not just be the Hitler’s, the Stalin’s; the Capone’s who stand before this Judge.  It will be every one of us.  Those who have trusted Christ’s sacrifice may be assured that the charge against them has been erased because their sins have already been judged.  Others will face the Judge without that confidence.

His judgment and his alone will determine their final fate, whether heaven or hell.  Some will enter eternity with the assurance of God’s presence.  Others will know only the darkness of God’s absence, the culmination of a lifetime of denying God his rightful place in their lives, wishing God would just leave them alone. 

This is not an easy truth but  an honest reading of the Scripture and the weight of Christian thought through the ages seems to demand it.

Since the fate of those facing the Judge is linked to their relationship to him, it’s common for critics of Christianity to raise the question of the fate of those who haven’t heard the gospel.  For all the ink spilled in debating the question, there is a simple fact that needs to be kept in mind.  It is namely this; the Bible doesn’t tell us their fate.  Jesus doesn’t address the issue, neither does Paul nor any other writer.  The Bible does remind us that the Judge of all the earth will do what is just.

Instead of wondering what the Judge will say to those who have never heard, perhaps we should ponder what that Judge might say to those who have never told.

This is a rapid sketch of what seems clear about the work of the Returning Lord.  The rest is not so clear.  With that in mind let me offer some observations.

1.   When we speak of Jesus fulfilling his role as Returning Lord we should remember we are speaking of a legitimate facet of the Christian tradition.

The great creeds of the Christian Church all concur that God will bring history to its end through the Return of Christ.  The Apostles' Creed says: "He [Christ] ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead"

 These creedal statements are rooted in Scripture.  Jesus predicted his return. Read the Gospels and you’ll be surprised how often He mentions his return—even in the Sermon on the Mount.   Every New Testament writer mentions the Second Coming.  In fact, some scholars have said that his Return is mentioned ever four pages of the New Testament.

2.  When we speak of Jesus fulfilling his role as the Returning Lord we should recall that honest Christians differ in their understanding of what the Bible teaches about his Return.

One topic on which Christians differ is the role of Israel.  The Christian consensus seems to be that through the Returning Lord, God will make clear he has kept his promises to Israel.  But what does that mean?   Certainly, I think the answer must lie somewhere between those who say God finished with the Jews in the first century and those who say we Christians must support modern Israel in everything the nation does, lest we find ourselves enemies of God.

Good Christians disagree about what the Bible has to say regarding the future.  They disagree about what will happen immediately before and immediately after Christ’s Return.  They disagree about details but agree that Christ’s Return will change everything.

3.  When we speak of Jesus fulfilling his role as the Returning Lord we should wrap our conclusions in sincere humility.

None of us knows as much about the future as we would like to know.  We shouldn’t think we are the enlightened ones and those who disagree are benighted.  We may be right.  They may be wrong.  We may be wrong.  They may be right.  We may both be wrong.  Studying what the Bible says about the future is supposed to fill us with hope, not arrogance.

As we wait for Jesus to fulfill his role as Returning Lord, what should we be doing?

As we wait for Jesus to return we should continue his work.

Luke says that in his first volume, “I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach…”  If his first volume focused on what Jesus began to do, the second volume focuses on what Jesus continued to do. The perspective Luke wants to give us can be expressed this way:  The ministry of the Spirit-filled church is a continuation of the ministry of Jesus. 

  Christ’s People are those who carry on the work of Christ.

Continuing His work means maintaining the priorities he set.

There was nothing wrong with the disciples being interested in the future, especially in how God might act to bring about his purposes in the world but their question seemed to indicate an inappropriate preoccupation with that future.

Jesus had a better idea.  That better idea is summed up in a few words:  “You will be my witnesses….”

 Instead of being prognosticators they were to be preachers.  Instead of watching the skies they were to be witnesses.  Instead of being princes of the Kingdom they were to be proclaimers of the Kingdom.

Specifically, they were to tell the world—the whole world—about Jesus.  That immediately that challenges the provincialism implied in their question to Jesus.  The Messiah hadn’t come merely to be a blessing to “Israel” but to everyone, even those at “...the ends of the earth.”

In the Book of Acts we will see Christ’s People finally catch the vision which motivated Jesus Christ from the beginning.  The church will become a missionary church.  One of its leaders, Paul, would write the Romans that his great dream was “…to evangelize where Christ has not been named.”  (Romans 15:20 HCSB)

For some, today, that vision dream is terribly wrong.  In their minds it is the height of arrogance to even attempt to win men and women to Christ, to disturb the order of some non-Western culture by attempting to impose our world-view upon it.  But time and again those who have carried the gospel to other cultures have discovered that many who accept Christ did so because they saw in him the fulfillment to the secret yearnings of their hearts.

At the same time, as Christ’s People attempted to carry out Christ’s purpose, they changed the world for the better.  Because they saw every man, woman, and child as individuals for whom Christ died they built hospitals to care for the sick, they eventually were victorious in the war against slavery, and brought about many other changes too numerous to mention.

This is the work accomplished by those who stayed busy while waiting for the Lord who promised to return.

Conclusion:  I haven’t said anything about the peril of date-setting.  I’ve talked about it before and we all should remember Jesus’ warning.  Still, there will always be those who, ignoring the warnings of Scripture and history, will set a date for the Second Coming.  And there will always be those who, ignoring the warnings of Scripture and history, will believe those predictions.

How much better to honor the One who will come by helping others find the answer to the question “Who is Jesus?”

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^[1] Grenz, S., Guretzki, D., & Nordling, C. F. (1999). Pocket dictionary of theological terms (55). Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.