Audio Transcript

Welcome back on this Friday. Pastor John, back in June of 2021, here on the podcast, you gave us a personal update. And at the very end of that update, like a little footnote, you briefly mentioned that you were about to head off for a two-month writing leave to write a whole book about 2 Timothy 4:8 on the second coming of Christ. That was back in APJ 1641. In God’s kindness, the book you alluded to there got written, edited, and published, and is now out under the title Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christ (Crossway, 2023). We’re going to look at that book over the next week or so on the podcast in four episodes of questions that I have for you.

First off, in this new book, what becomes pretty obvious to any reader is that you don’t spend too much time dwelling on wrong views of the end times. Your goal really was to clarify what actually happens when Christ returns and to celebrate it and encourage us to love his appearing. That’s the main theme of the book. But I wonder if you would be willing to take ten minutes or so on this episode to sketch for us some of the misconceptions — the blunders and the urban legends — about the second coming that you hope your book will help people to avoid in the future.

In general, I do think it’s right that we do the most good for the church with regard to the second coming when we don’t focus on distortions and misconceptions, but rather on the truth and the beauty of what it really is in the Bible. And yet, it’s right, now and then, to make our people understand there are misconceptions; there are errors.

Five Misconceptions

Frankly, I’m really happy that my book is viewed as being mainly proactive and positive rather than critical. But of course, even that positive view can be overstated. If we never focus on what’s wrong and show how harmful it is, we won’t really be biblical, because the biblical witness itself describes errors and their harmfulness — like Jesus did with the scribes and Pharisees or like Paul in exposing errors of false teaching in Colossians and other places.

So yes, I am willing to point out some misconceptions about the second coming. Let’s just take them one at a time, and I’ll try to explain why I think they’re a problem.

1. Christ will come after a golden age of Christendom.

First, I would mention the view that the second coming of Christ is far into the future. It will not happen until the kingdom of God is established as the ruling earthly power, including the Christianization of the cultures and societal structures of the earth. This is usually called postmillennialism, meaning that the second coming happens after (or post) the millennium. And the millennium in that view is understood to be an extended period in this age when the gospel has triumphed in such a way that a golden age of Christendom holds sway around the world and the powers of civil government, for example, are brought into the service of promoting Christian doctrine.

Now, I think this view does not adequately come to terms with both the teaching and the spirit of the New Testament that we are to live with a consciousness of the nearness of the coming of the Lord. I don’t think it comes to terms adequately with the teaching of the New Testament concerning this present age as lying “in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19), or how Paul describes this age till Jesus comes as this “present evil age” (Galatians 1:4), or the statement in Hebrews that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14), or how the movement toward the end is described with a movement of greater evil, not less evil (2 Timothy 3:1–5). And practically, I think this view pushes the appearing of the Lord so far out into the distant future that it becomes inconsequential in the daily consciousness of the churches that embrace this view.

“There is no New Testament promise that the church, in this fallen age, will transform any given culture.”

And I think it skews the mission focus of the New Testament away from world evangelization and personal disciple-making and the process of sanctification. It reorients people’s passions onto culture transformation as a foregrounded goal rather than a possible secondary consequence of speaking truth and doing love to the glory of Christ. And the reason I say “a possible secondary consequence” is that the culture is not the report card of the church. There is no New Testament promise that the church, in this fallen age, will transform any given culture. It may. It has. And it may not. It is as likely in any given setting that martyrdom, not transformation, will be the effect of obedience. And when that happens, the church has not failed. Just read the book of Revelation. Martyrdom is not failure.

2. Christ has already come.

Second, there is a view of the second coming that basically says it’s already happened — for example, in the events of AD 70, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. It’s not a very common view, I admit, but in that view, the descriptions of his coming that sound globally visible and world-shaking and obvious were really just traditional apocalyptic language to say that the Lord comes in historical judgments in this age, and then he carries it out for the rest of the time — namely, his rule over the world through the church, with no expectation of any literal second coming at all.

And I don’t think the language of the New Testament that describes Christ coming can be reduced to symbolic statements of historical events like AD 70. Paul’s understanding of the second coming in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17 is that it involves the resurrection of all the Christians from the grave. That did not happen in AD 70 or at any time. It’s going to happen when the Lord’s appearing comes.

3. No events need to happen before Christ comes.

Third, I think it’s a mistake to say that there are no events that are yet to happen in history before the Lord comes. Second Thessalonians 2:1–12 describes an apostasy and the appearance of the “man of lawlessness.” And Paul gives these two realities as an answer to the question for those who thought that the day of the Lord was upon them. And he says, “Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction” (2 Thessalonians 2:3).

4. Christ will spare his people from the tribulation.

Fourth, perhaps the most common misconception of the second coming is that it happens, so to speak, in two stages. First, he comes and takes Christians out of the world and returns them to heaven with him while there’s a great tribulation on the earth. And then, after a short time, maybe seven years, he returns with his saints to establish his kingdom.

Now, that’s one misconception I do deal with in the book. I devote a whole chapter to it, in fact. So I’m not going to go into any detail here. It is probably the most common misconception, and people will be surprised. “Whoa, I didn’t know that was a misconception. That’s what I’ve always believed.” I grew up with this view. My dad held this view. I love my dad to death, to the day he died, and we got along just fine. But gradually I came to see that this view did not have the Bible on its side.

I think the primary danger of a view like this is not that it undermines any important doctrine (at least I’m not aware of anybody going off the rails in any fundamental way because they hold this view). But the danger is that it fosters the expectation that God will spare his people from suffering in the latter days. I think that’s a mistake. And it could be a harmful mistake if people lost their faith because suddenly they found themselves enduring end-time hardships that they thought they were going to escape.

“God’s own people experience some of the suffering of judgment, but we don’t experience it as punishment.”

First Peter 4:17 says, “It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” I think he’s showing in that statement that God’s own people, the apple of his eye, experience some of the suffering of judgment, but we don’t experience it as punishment. Christ took our punishment. We experience it as testing, proving, purifying us.

5. Christ will never come.

Finally, I think it’s a mistake to say what the skeptics did in 2 Peter 3:4: “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” In other words, it’s a serious mistake, Peter says, to think, “Well, it’s just been too long. Everything just goes on. He’s just not coming. It was all a myth.” That is a tragic mistake. And here is Peter’s response: “Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness” (2 Peter 3:8–9). Wow — what a response.

Love the Lord’s Appearing

So again, Tony, like I said at the beginning, I would much rather spend three hundred pages in a book meditating on the beauty and the power and the wonder of what’s really going to happen when the Lord comes than I would talking about mistakes. So that’s what I tried to do in the book. The aim isn’t mainly to correct errors. It’s mainly to help people love the Lord’s appearing.

Audio Transcript

On Monday we looked at the topic of suffering — in particular, the divine design behind suffering. What is God doing inside of us when trials hit? That was APJ 1852. God is the great physician, and he knows how to use pain in our lives to kill inside of us the sin that robs us of the greatest pleasures — namely, enjoying Christ as our greatest treasure. That Monday episode was a deep exploration into why suffering is not paradoxical to the joy-aims of the Christian Hedonist.

As a complement to that episode, today I want to play for you a sermon clip that stands out to me. In this clip, Pastor John explains how to prepare for suffering. If we are going to suffer well, what groundwork must happen inside of us first? This is a critical point to be made, with principles drawn from Paul’s own testimony in Philippians 3:1–11. Here’s Pastor John to explain.

You know this list, don’t you? He’s listing off his characteristics that, as an unbeliever, he really enjoyed: “Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews” (Philippians 3:5). This is a pedigree that, in the Jewish culture, was simply awesome.

“‘I’ve got a pedigree, and people know it.’ That’s the unbeliever’s satisfaction. That’s the old Paul.”

And when you have a good pedigree, you strut your pedigree. You get the praises, and you bask in the pleasures of the admiration of being a man with a pedigree. “This feels so good,” says the man. “This is satisfying. I’ve got a pedigree, and people know it.” That’s the unbeliever’s satisfaction. That’s the old Paul.

Blameless and Blind

And then he adds, at the end of Philippians 3:5, “I have three other things that make my life glorious. First, I am a Pharisee. There are no better law-knowers and law-keepers than Pharisees. And I’m outstanding.” Or as Paul says in Galatians 1:14, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people.” Oh, he had a lot going for him in his reputation.

Paul goes on to say in Philippians 3:6, “And zeal-wise — I took on the church, this renegade sect that’s undermining what I’ve lived for, calling this crucified criminal ‘the Messiah.’ What a blasphemy! And I’m taking it on from city to city and bringing it down. That’s who I am. That’s my identity. Has anybody got zeal? I’ve got zeal. The rest of you cowards are afraid to take on this sect. I’ll take it on.” Oh, how he had meaning, significance, purpose in his life.

And finally, he says, “As to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6). This verse is why I think Paul was, by and large, free in his conscience. I know a lot of people try to say things like, “His conscience was killing him all the time because of this and that.” I’m not sure of that because Paul used to say, “I was blameless.” He was blind, but he was blameless in his eyes.

When Loss Becomes Gain

Now he meets Christ in Acts 9, on the Damascus road, and suddenly his world collapses. He was getting his meaning from a zeal for the law, an allegiance to the law, as he understood it. A passion for God, as he understood it. And at the core of it was the opposite: Jesus, crucified pretender, criminal, rightly executed — and people saying, “He’s the Messiah.”

And there he was before Paul, alive with a glory so bright, a greatness so great, that he blinded Paul. All Paul could do was listen as Jesus said, “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). And Paul’s life was over.

“This is how you prepare to suffer: you turn your value system upside down.”

How, at that juncture, did he prepare himself to suffer? Look at Philippians 3:7. He said, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” That’s what he did. He looked at his life and all that list — all that pedigree, all those achievements, all that reputation — and he said, “Now I will regard that as loss. I will regard that as loss.” In other words, “I have now consciously reversed, turned upside down, my value system.” This is how you prepare to suffer: you turn your value system upside down.

Before he was a Christian, he had a ledger. He had a loss column and a profit column, a gain column. Over here, in the column of profit or gain, was “Hebrew of Hebrews” (astonishing pedigree), “Pharisee,” “zeal,” “blameless” (Philippians 3:5–6). Off the charts — what a gain column he had. And over here, in the loss column, was this horrible opposition: Christ Jesus.

And the possibility that Christ Jesus might be the Messiah — well, that’s not going to happen, Paul thinks. But then he meets Jesus. And what does he do? He takes out a big red pencil, and on the gain column he writes, L-O-S-S — and above the Jesus column, G-A-I-N. And everything is reversed in his life.

Preparing to Suffer

Has that happened to you? That’s what it means to become a Christian, right? The shortest parable, Matthew 13:44, says it this way: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” The man counts everything he has as loss, that he might have the treasure.

It was just a field before — just walking through a field on his way to his treasure. Then he stumbles over King Jesus in glory, and he realizes the field is full of diamonds. It’s full of gold and full of silver. God opened his eyes, and now everything else — it’s all loss.

Once your eyes are open, then your mind also makes that transition. Your mind considers everything in your life that way: “It’s all loss.” This is how you prepare to suffer. You get up in the morning, and you consider your life that way. That’s how Paul says it in Philippians 3:7: “I consider it, I regard it, I consciously, mentally am looking at all the goods in my life and regarding them, compared to Jesus, as loss. They’re in the loss column, and Jesus is in the gain column.”

And if you think, “Well, that was just Paul,” he says in Philippians 3:17, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” This is normal Christianity. Jesus said, “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). Period.

Now, you’ve got clothes on. You probably have a car out in the snowy parking lot. You might have an apartment or a house and other possessions. You probably have an iPhone or computer. So, you own things. And this text says, “You can’t be a follower of Jesus if you don’t renounce those.” You can check out different translations on that word renounce in Luke 14:33. Wouldn’t that be the same as Paul saying to “count as loss” in Philippians 3:7?

So this coat that I am wearing — this is my coat. It is mine. It’s my preaching coat. And I should count this coat as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.

It’s just Jesus. In Christ is all we get from God. Nothing more. Nothing other. He is the answer to our every need.

Does that disappoint you? Were you hoping for something newer? Or easier? Or cooler? Sorry, it’s just Jesus. He is who God is and all God gives us comes in and through him. Maybe that seems like dull news. But as we consider the great Reformation motto “Christ alone,” I hope to thrill you.

This one man who walked the earth long ago still lives. He interacts with us. He lifts away the blanket of guilt and blows the breeze of forgiveness. He fills in the yawning loneliness with a warm presence that will not leave us. He directs our wandering lives to eternally meaningful service. He calls us out of our endless self-loop to an abundant life of love. Just Jesus is a sky full of stars more than we can count. We can never reach the end of the beauty and mystery that awaits exploration. There’s always more.

Recovering Christ

The hallmarks of the Reformation are often expressed in five solas, five “only’s” that needed to be recovered to get Christians reconnected to the Savior. The first sola is Christ alone. All of our salvation, including our justification, comes from Christ Jesus, not from anyone or anything else.

“‘Just Jesus’ is a sky full of stars more than we can count.”

The Reformers labored to express what Christ alone meant in the context of the heavy-handed, burdensome requirements of the medieval church. The church had bottled Christ like a commodity. They had hidden him from the view of ordinary believers. But the recovery of Christ alone as the free gift of God for our justification cracked through those barriers and gave Jesus back to his people.

Of course, the Lord’s own people in every age are always prone to shade the searing light of Christ alone. So let’s consider now three aspects of what Christ alone might mean for the twenty-first century Western situation in which we find ourselves. Christ alone means God gives us Jesus in particular, only Jesus, and all of Jesus.

Jesus in Particular

Good mentors continually pressed this truth into me: There is no god behind the back of Jesus. God is nothing other than who he is toward us in Jesus Christ. Jesus “is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). God is not an angry “Old Testament God” toward us one morning but then a sweetly accepting “New Testament God” toward us the next. When we see Jesus, we have a clear window into the triune God.

Jesus himself said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). There’s not God the Father over there and then God the Son over here (with the Spirit floating around somewhere). There’s only “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10). In Jesus, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19). As this specific man, who stood so high and talked in this distinct tone of voice, who walked with this unique gait, and with a scent like no one else’s, God incarnated. Indeed, there is a reason only Christians worship the human founder of their faith. Because, wild as it is, we declare that precisely this Jesus, of all the humans who ever lived, is God come to us in flesh and blood.

Some have tried to avoid this scandal and seeming foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:22) by separating Jesus from his beloved title Christ. A liberal theologian once said, “There is more to the Christ than we meet in Jesus.” Another wrote of a “universal Christ.” Christ would thus be a principle or power that Jesus embodied — a principle we also can embody if we live authentically. As if!

Still others ask the question, “Who was Jesus before the church made him out to be God?” Their idea is to find the real Jesus by scrubbing away as inauthentic all his claims to be the Son of God. Couldn’t we just get back to the humble, wise rabbi from Nazareth who lights a path, among many, to the one God? No, Christ alone means this Jesus of the Gospels is uniquely the fully human, fully divine Savior.

Only Jesus

This second aspect reveals a distortion that even good Reformed Christians make. We know that Christ alone means there is no other person or path that can make us right with God. Paul wrote, “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5–6). Final salvation relies on the righteousness of Jesus as its sole basis. Only Jesus saves us for eternity.

That’s our deeply held confessional theology. But in our daily working theology, we may well rely more on what kinds of rightness we can generate. We can, often unconsciously, develop some self-salvation systems. No, not for final salvation, but for the immediate sense that we are doing well with God today. These are ways we reassure ourselves that we are okay. We can expose the futility of these soothing strategies by hearing how it sounds to substitute some of them for the riches of Christ alone.

In Ephesians 2, Paul reminds the church how alienated from God they had been. They were strangers to his covenants and promises, children of wrath, stuck dead in their trespasses. Then came an intervention: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4–6).

We were dead, but God made us alive through Christ alone. There’s no more relieving and joyful news. But the truth is, I rely on other stories to comfort me. How silly they sound when inserted into this salvation:

But God, in reviewing your résumé, was so impressed that he raised you with Christ.

But God, when he noticed how great you looked after changing your diet and working out regularly, raised you with Christ.

But God, because you got his attention by your acts of creative compassion, raised you with Christ.

Ridiculous! All my reliance for rightness based on self-generated worthiness gets incinerated in the fire of only Jesus, every moment as well as into eternity.

All of Jesus

Finally, Christ alone means God has nothing else to give us than what he gives us in Jesus. But getting Jesus is getting everything. Joined to him by the Holy Spirit through faith, we receive all that Jesus is for us. So Paul could exclaim that God has relocated us into “Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

This glory overwhelms the eyes; we struggle to take it in directly. We get a glimpse of what it means to have all of Jesus by looking at the benefits that flow from our union with him. We return to the treasury of Ephesians, specifically 1:3–14. Paul writes that in Christ we receive:

every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places
the joy of being chosen before the foundation of the world
the promise of being made holy and blameless
the eternal adoption to himself as sons
redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses
the lavishing upon us of the riches of his grace
the gift of knowing the mystery of God’s will: his purpose to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth
an inheritance in heaven
the blessed Holy Spirit in our hearts as a seal and guarantee

“In giving us all of Jesus, the Father makes us jewels in his crown of glory.”

In giving us all of Jesus, the Father makes us jewels in his crown of glory. We become reasons for the triune God to be praised.

Christ alone means just Jesus. But this particular man Jesus is God incarnate. He only is our righteousness and our salvation, not just in eternity, but now as we live and work, needy for a sense of rightness. He gives us nothing less than himself. Christ alone. Just Jesus. That’s everything we need.