While God’s judgment awaits his people, this judgment is not unto condemnation, but unto vindication in Christ (Deuteronomy 32:36; Psalm 50:4; 135:14; Romans 8:1; Hebrews 10:30). Beloved, we have been justified in Christ by his blood, more so, we shall be saved from the impending wrath of God on sinners (Romans 5:9-10; 1 Corinthians 1:18). However, it is not only the redeemed ones that are longing for redemption, but the whole creation itself is also longing to be renewed.

Niyi Osundare’s famous poem teaches that much wisdom lies in living today in anticipation of tomorrow. To ensure “tomorrow,” Osundare says, “it is meet to live on herbs and grains today.” Unfortunately, health and wealth gospel preachers stand as the “prodigals” portrayed in Osundare’s poem, whose belly is their god. They have led many to falsely believe that the gospel primarily attends to material benefits, rather than the restoration of holy communion with God that endures the various hardships and suffering of this present age. They exhort their people to get as much as they can now, instead of anticipating God’s glorious consummation of all things. 
The Bible teaches that this age is headed towards Jesus Christ’s second coming. But what are we to anticipate when Christ returns? How does it give hope today? In this article, I give a cursory view of three things that the Bible teaches concerning Christ’s return to consummate history. First, Christ will bring retribution against sinners. Second, he’ll redeem his people. Lastly, Christ will renew all things.
1. Christ Brings Retribution on Sinners
In the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that after Jesus Christ rose from the dead “he ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from there he shall come to judge the living and the dead” (see 2 Timothy 4:1). By his substitutionary atonement, Christ dealt with sin and death once for all (Hebrews 9:26b; 1 Peter 3:18). However, he is coming back in the fullness of his glory to judge unrepentant sinners. This judgment is righteous, true, just, impartial, and inscrutable (Psalm 7:11-12; 50:6; 96:10; Isaiah 33:22; Ecclesiastes 3:17; Matthew 25:31; John 5:30; 7:24; 2 Thessalonians 1:5; 2 Timothy 4:8; Revelation 16:7; 19:2).
Many arguments have been made concerning the nature of Christ’s thousand-year reign of judgment and the timing of Christ’s return (Revelation 20). It is, however, beyond doubt that God hates unrepentant sinners. And when Christ returns, they will experience the wrath of God in its fullness (Psalm 5:4-6; 11:4-7). And the clearest form of Christ’s retribution is casting them into the lake of fire (Isaiah 66:15-16; Matthew 25:41; 2 Thessalonians 1:7b-10; Revelation 20:15; 21:8). 
God is “holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3). The unrighteous will not escape God’s fire of fury at Christ’s second coming, for they are storing up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath by their unrepentant lifestyle (Psalm 1:5; Ecclesiastes 12:14; Romans 2:5). Therefore, believers must not envy the ungodly, because their supposed flourishing is short-lived, and Christ’s retribution awaits them at his appearing (Psalm 37; Proverbs 24:1-2, 19-20). But what hope is there on the day of retribution for us sinners who have sought refuge in Christ? Redemption!
2. Christ Will Redeem His People
The doctrine of the consummation can be understood in terms of ‘the already, not yet.’ The ‘already’ points to God’s redemptive work, accomplished in redeeming sinners through the suffering, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Read More
Related Posts:

Studying the writings of a pastor-theologian from a different historical context opened my eyes for seeing well-worn paths in new ways. The means of grace are not new or innovative concepts, but rather the ancient paths reinvigorated by considering them afresh through the lens of a joy-absorbed sage.

During a particularly stressful period of pastoral ministry, I began to more intentionally seek out joy in God as the dire remedy for my own frayed and threadbare heart.
I had diagnosed myself as markedly joy-deficient when I searched for evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in my life (Galatians 5:22). At age 35, leading a midsize Presbyterian church was already wearing me out. I became stressed at home and frustrated in the office. My coworkers could see it on my face. I needed a deeper source of joy than the world could give, despite its barrage of empty-promise advertisements and panaceas.
So, for nearly three years, I plunged headlong into a deep study on eternal happiness from the theologian of joy, Jonathan Edwards. I surveyed large swaths of his major works and personal writings, mining for gladdening gold.
In my study, I learned at least three methods for maintaining joy in God that Edwards practiced in his own life amid the relentless trials and strains of pastoral ministry. Although most Christians are already familiar with these methods, I discovered that studying the writings of a pastor-theologian from a different historical context opened my eyes for seeing well-worn paths in new ways. The means of grace discussed below are not new or innovative concepts, but rather the ancient paths reinvigorated by considering them afresh through the lens of a joy-absorbed sage.
Creation: God’s Beauty on Display
First, Edwards rejoiced in the natural world and the beauty of creation. Edwards saw a strong connection between beauty and joy. Both beauty and joy are to be found in the “excellencies” of God’s nature, by which Edwards meant the praiseworthy attributes of his essential being. These include God’s holiness, love, power, mercy, and righteousness, just to name a few.
One of the ways that Edwards savored the excellencies and beauties of God was through engaging with, and enjoying, his natural creation. For Edwards, being in and among the creatures in the natural realm stirred his affections for God’s creative power and beauty, in turn stoking the fires of joy in his heart.
Edwards in the Woods
In his Personal Narrative, Edwards described what may have been the most ecstatic experience of his life, a vision of Jesus that he beheld in the woods when riding his horse:
Once, as I rid out into the woods for my health . . . as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer; I had a view, that for me was quite extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God; as mediator between God and man; and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension . . . which continued, as near as I can judge about an hour; which kept me, the bigger part of the time, in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 16:801)
Although Edwards was constantly in his study and among his books, he also greatly treasured the outdoors and drank in the beauty of God’s created world whenever possible. He drew upon natural themes for his sermon illustrations, and spoke often of the light of the sun, the taste of honey, water from spring fountains, and the like. Just as John Calvin wrote in the Institutes, Edwards saw the universe as the beautiful “theater” of God’s glory (1.6.3).
Walk Out of the Study
One of the very practical things that I learned from Edwards is to see vestiges of the gospel in the creation itself. In his notebook on Images (or Shadows) of Divine Things, Edwards constantly peered through creation to see the gospel everywhere around him.
For Edwards, “roses upon briers” are a type of Christ’s glory (the flower) wrought by suffering (thorns). In lightning, he saw a type of the wrath of God, threatening judgment. The rising and setting of the sun he viewed as a type of the death and resurrection of Christ. Even in the lowly silkworm, Edwards saw a type of Christ’s righteousness given to men (the silk) through the suffering and humiliation of Christ (the lowly worm). We too can begin to make these types of observations.
Almost every pastor or Christian leader would do well to spend more time in nature. We could start, for example, by using a day each month to take an intentional prayer walk through a local park, or even by doing some simple gardening in our own yard. I recently listened to the story of another pastor in my city who took a four-week sabbatical, not to study or write in a library, but to spend eight hours a day among the trees in a nearby nature preserve, thinking and praying. He came back refreshed and renewed for his third decade of ministry. At the very least, pastors could make it a regular practice to journal about spiritual insights gleaned from nature and creation in a journal similar to Edwards’s Images of Divine Things notebook.
Read More
Related Posts:

By hiding, Jesus, who is the Light, publicly dramatizes the truths John succinctly captures in the prologue: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not apprehend it” and “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:5, 11). Herein is his prophetic pronouncement of impending judgment. John seizes the occasion to present a narrator’s soliloquy to explain Jesus’s symbolic hiding as the appropriate climax to his public signs and teaching that have provoked such widespread unbelief among his own people. Indeed, Jesus performed his many signs in plain sight of his fellow Jews. John explains that they saw his signs, yet they did not believe, as Isaiah prophesied.

In part one, we saw that John 1:5 harkens back to the Light’s penetration into the darkness on creation’s first day. In this verse, John succinctly condenses and anticipates a dominating theme in the Gospel’s plotline. Light versus darkness (e.g., John 8:12; 11:10; 12:34, 46) invokes a cluster of imageries: day–night (e.g., John 9:4) and sight–blindness (9:1–40), all present in Isaiah’s prophecies to which John’s prologue alludes (Isa. 9:2; 42;6–7; and 60:1–3). The Evangelist masterfully compresses profound theological claims concerning the commanded Light on the first day of creation. He foreshadows the arrival of the True Light—the Messiah—in the Last Days, the Light that shines and cannot be extinguished. Consider, then, how this one verse in the prologue condenses the storyline of John’s Gospel even more densely than 1:9–11.[1]
With luminary imagery harking back to Genesis 1:3, the Evangelist subtly but unmistakably speaks of the Word’s advent (John 1:5). He shrewdly prepares attentive hearers and readers for the much more explicit announcement of the Word’s incarnation in John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”
Modern English Bibles translate 1:5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [katalambanō] it” (emphasis mine). As one reads and studies the Greek text of John’s Gospel, one sees that on occasions, John uses words with two meanings, intending both. The KJV’s “comprehended it not” hints at this, but the ASV’s “apprehended it not” effectively captures John’s intended dual sense of katalambanō. The darkness neither understood the light nor overpowered the light.[2] Thus, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not apprehend it.” A minor expansion on this assists in showing how the plotline of John’s Gospel is compressed in 1:5—“As day emerged from night when the Word spoke Light into darkness in the beginning, so the darkness did not apprehend the True Light, the Word incarnate.”
Twice, Jesus explicitly presents himself as “the Light of the world”: once publicly at the Festival of Tabernacles (John 8:12), and again privately to his disciples while still in Jerusalem following the festival (just before he gave light to the blind man when he gave him sight in John 9:5). During Israel’s festival commemorating the Lord’s covenant mercies in the wilderness with water from the rock and the protecting pillar of fire at night, Jesus presents himself as greater than the rock, the one who quenches true thirst and banishes darkness (John 7:37–38; 8:12; cf. 1 Cor. 10:4). Similarly, with the lighting ceremony, Jesus boldly announces that he displaces the ball of fire in the sky, “I am the Light of the world. The one who follows me will not walk in the darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Belief acknowledges that Jesus is the one who gushed water and provided protection day and night. Later, Jesus privately repeats this bold claim while still in Jerusalem, when he and his disciples come upon a man living in darkness from birth, for he was born blind. About to perform an uncommon miracle, Jesus prepared the Twelve by announcing, “We must accomplish the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. When I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:4–5). Yes, the sun that lights the world is but a created imitation of the original— the True Light shining in darkness.
Clustered imagery in two prominent passages develops John’s light-darkness motif, echoing John 1:9, “the True Light was coming into the world,” and John 1:5, “the darkness did not apprehend it.” In both, Jesus ascribes to Light a titular function as in the Gospel’s prologue; Jesus is the Light. The initial passage, John 3:19–21, echoes the phrasing of John 1:9 as it announces,
Now, this is the judgment: the Light has come into the world, and humans loved the darkness instead of the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who practices evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds be exposed. But the one who does what is true comes to the light that it may be obvious that his deeds have been brought about by God. (emphasis added)
Jesus, “the Light of the world,” divides, prompting evildoers to retreat into darkness and doers of good to embrace him, the Light, testifying that what they do “has been done through God” (John 3:19–21).
In chapter 12, the culmination of the light-darkness theme (John 12:35–36, 46) coincides with the climaxing of three other core themes with their own supporting images:

“glory”–“glorified” (John 1:14; 2:11; 5:44; 7:18; 8:50, 54; 9:24; 11:40; 12:41, 43),
“my hour” (John 2:4; 4:21, 23; 5:25, 28; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27), and
“lifted up” (John 3:14; 8:24; 12:32, 34).[3]

Chapter 12 is the structural and theological hinge on which the entire Fourth Gospel turns. Here, John reflectively summarizes the escalating conflict between Jesus and his religious opponents in Jerusalem, the zealous guardians of Israel’s traditions and Temple, throughout chapters 2–11, the “Book of Signs.” This conflict intensifies when Jesus’s giving sight to a blind man on a Sabbath day blinds those who claim to see.[4] The blind rulers threaten to banish all who believe in Jesus from the synagogue (John 9:22). Jesus, after he raised Lazarus from the dead, returns to Bethany, where he is anointed for his own burial (John 12:1–8). Drawing a large crowd, the tension intensifies such that the chief priests conspire to put Lazarus to death in addition to Jesus (John 12:10). With hostilities peaking against him, Jesus carries out his final public prophetic act, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, an act even his disciples did not comprehend (John 12:12–19) but which increases the Pharisees’ ire and jealousy over his popularity (John 12:19).
Likewise, in chapter 12, John’s account anticipates and foreshadows chapters 13–20. When Philip and Andrew tell their teacher about Greeks who want to see Jesus, he explicitly announces, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23).
Read More
Related Posts: