Fixating on Christ’s Return
As Evangelical Christians, we love the cross. We sing about the cross. We hang crosses on our walls. We wear crosses around our necks. We love the cross—and for good reason! The cross is where the wrath of God was satisfied by Jesus’s sacrificial death. It’s where our sins were covered and peace with God was made available to us. We would not be able to live if Christ had not died on that “old rugged cross.”
We also love the empty tomb. We may talk about it less frequently than we do the cross, but we love to celebrate Easter—again, for good reason! Jesus’s resurrection proved the effectiveness of his sacrifice. His resurrection serves as a beautiful testimony of what’s to come for those who trust in him. The empty tomb mocks Satan and his demons for thinking they could silence the King by killing him on a cross. Without the empty tomb, our faith is worthless.
The early church loved the cross. They also loved the resurrection. But there’s one event that shows up more often in their writings than those two: Jesus’s second coming.
We talk about the return of Christ, but often only out of fascination in the details—when he might return, how to correctly interpret Revelation, what the days and months leading up to the return might look like. The early church, on the other hand, clung to the hope of Christ’s return. They eagerly awaited the day when their suffering and persecution would end, when God would deal with the wickedness of the world, and when they would receive the fullness of their inheritance.
I firmly believe we need to re-capture this fixation on Christ’s return. For centuries, it has been relatively easy to be a Christian in the United States. And in that ease, we have busied ourselves with activity in this life, often losing sight of the kingdom that awaits us. We have lived somewhat removed from the fullest extent of this world’s evil, so we have not yet had to cling to the second coming as our source of daily hope.
I praise God for the Christian influence that has shaped the United States for centuries—but I also know it will not last forever. In that realization, I find comfort in the return of Christ. When the world is dark, know the fullness of the light of Christ is just beyond the horizon. Let’s fixate on that day, eagerly awaiting its arrival.
In Christ,
Pastor Britton