As far because the secular world is anxious, we are actually definitely within the Christmas season, but for Christians who still follow the Church’s traditional liturgical calendar we’re still within the season of Advent. The term ‘advent’ means ‘coming’ and from the sixth century onwards Christians have observed Advent within the weeks leading as much as Christmas not only as a time once they prepare to have a good time the approaching of Christ in humility at Christmas, but in addition as a time when they appear forward to the approaching of Christ in glory at the top of time to bring in regards to the resurrection of the dead, the ultimate judgement, and the brand new heaven and earth promised in Revelation 21-22.
Since New Testament times Christians have looked forward in hope to Christ’s coming in glory, but many individuals today, including many Christians, are unsure in regards to the nature of this hope. In the sunshine of this uncertainty, the aim of this text is to briefly explore the hope that Christians have as this is about out for us within the New Testament.
The very first thing to notice is that the Christian’s hope isn’t simply a hope that there may be life after physical death on this world. Now, orthodox Christians do imagine in what’s often known as the ‘general resurrection.’ That is to say, they imagine in the reality of the words spoken by Jesus in John 5:25-29:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now’s, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and people who hear will live. For because the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he’s the Son of man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who’re within the tombs will hear his voice and are available forth, those that have done good, to the resurrection of life, and people who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”
If we glance fastidiously at these words, we see that each one the dead will likely be raised by Jesus at the top of time. However, this isn’t something to which everyone can look ahead to in hope. This is because ‘those that have done evil’ (which in John means those that have refused to place their faith in Jesus and live accordingly) will face the ‘resurrection of judgement.’ In other words, they will likely be judged by Jesus and condemned to everlasting damnation. This will likely be a type of life after death, but it surely isn’t one which any rational person would desire.
As JI Packer explains, in describing the fate of the damned:
“Jesus uses His own solemn imagery – ‘Gehenna’ (hell in Mark 9:47 after which other gospel texts), the valley outside Jerusalem where rubbish was burned; the ‘worm’ that ‘dieth not’ (Mark 9:48), a picture, it seems for the countless dissolution of the personality by a condemning conscience; ‘fire’ for the agonising awareness of God’s displeasure; ‘outer darkness’ for knowledge of the loss, not merely of God, but of all good, and every thing that made life seem price living; ‘gnashing of teeth’ for self-condemnation and self-loathing. These things are, little doubt, unimaginably dreadful, though those that have been convicted of sin know just a little of their nature. But they should not arbitrary inflictions; they represent, fairly, a conscious growing into the state during which one has chosen to be. The unbeliever has preferred to be by himself, without God, defying God, having God against him, and he shall have his selection.”
To put it simply, in response to Jesus and the Christian tradition following Jesus, the damned will experience eternally the life that they’ve chosen for themselves, and it is going to be dreadful.
However, in John 5 Jesus also tells us that those ‘who’ve done good’ (that’s, those that have put their faith in Jesus and lived accordingly) will receive the ‘resurrection of life.’ According to the New Testament, this implies they are going to experience eternally a latest and infinitely higher sort of life which it describes by way of ‘glory’. As Paul explains to the Christians in Corinth, the ‘slight momentary affliction ‘ which they must undergo on this life will result in ‘an everlasting weight of glory beyond comparison’ (2 Corinthians 4:17).
If we ask what this ‘glory’ will involve, two helpful answers are provided by the Christian apologist CS Lewis and the New Testament scholar Tom Wright.
In his sermon ‘The weight of glory,’ which he preached in 1942, Lewis declares that the notion of heavenly glory:
“… makes no immediate appeal to me in any respect, and in that respect, I fancy I’m a typical modern. Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the opposite ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity. As for the primary, since to be famous means to be higher known than other people, the will for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and due to this fact of hell fairly than heaven. As for the second, who wishes to turn into a sort of living electric light bulb?”
However, he continues:
“When I started to look into this matter I used to be shocked to search out such different Christians as Milton, Johnson and Thomas Aquinas taking heavenly glory quite frankly within the sense of fame or good report. But not fame conferred by our fellow creatures—fame with God, approval or (I’d say) ‘appreciation’ by God. And then, once I had thought it over, I saw that this view was scriptural; nothing can eliminate from the parable the divine accolade, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ With that, a great deal of what I had been considering all my life fell down like a house of cards. I suddenly remembered that nobody can enter heaven except as a baby; and nothing is so obvious in a baby—not in a conceited child, but in a great child—as its great and undisguised pleasure in being praised. Not only in a baby, either, but even in a dog or a horse. Apparently, what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years. prevented me from understanding what’s in actual fact the humblest, essentially the most childlike, essentially the most creaturely of pleasures—nay, the particular pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure a beast before men, a baby before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator.”
Once we understand this point, we will then begin to assume what’s going to occur:
“…. when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns ultimately that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will likely be no room for vanity then. She will likely be free from the miserable illusion that it’s her doing. With no taint of what we should always now call self-approval she is going to most innocently rejoice within the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex for ever can even drown her pride deeper than Prospero’s book. Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the work could also be satisfied with itself; ‘it isn’t for her to bandy compliments together with her Sovereign.’ ….It is written that we will ‘stand before’ Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that a few of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be an actual ingredient within the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems unimaginable, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it’s.”
What the New Testament also teaches us is that the blessed is not going to only enjoy God’s approbation but may have a job to do. In Romans 8:29-30 Paul outlines the form of the Christian life as follows:
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he is likely to be the first-born amongst many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and people whom he called he also justified; and people whom he justified he also glorified.”
To properly understand the purpose Paul is making here we’d like to grasp that in Jewish thought the concepts of human beings possessing glory and their being appointed by God to rule over God’s creation (Genesis 1:26-28) go together. We can see this in Psalm 8:5-6 where the Psalmist writes concerning humankind:
“… thou hast made him little lower than God,
and dost crown him with glory and honour.
Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet.”
According to the biblical witness the Fall has meant that human beings have been unable to exercise this dominion in the best way God intended (‘all have sinned and fall wanting the glory of God’ – Romans 3:23). What Paul is saying in Romans 8 is that through the work of Christ the lost ability of human beings to exercise godly dominion will finally be restored. As a result “creation itself will likely be let loose from its bondage to decay and procure the wonderful liberty of the youngsters of God” (Romans 8:21).
As Tom Wright explains in his commentary on Romans in his Paul for Everyone series:
“God’s covenant faithfulness was all the time about his commitment that, through the guarantees to Abraham, he would someday put the entire world to rights. Now ultimately we see what this meant. The human race was put accountable for creation (as so often, Paul has Genesis 1-3 not removed from his mind). When human beings rebelled and worshipped parts of creation as a substitute of God himself (Romans 1:21-23) creation fell into disrepair. God allowed this state of slavery to proceed, not since the creation desired to be like that but because he was determined eventually to place the world back to rights in response to the unique plan (just as, when Israel let him down, he didn’t change the plan, but sent ultimately a faithful Israelite). The plan had called for human beings to take their place under God and over the world, worshipping the creator and exercising glorious stewardship over the world. The creation is not waiting to share the liberty of God’s children as some translations imply. It is waiting to profit splendidly when God’s children are glorified. It is waiting – on tiptoe with expectation in actual fact – for the actual freedom it is going to enjoy when God gives to his children that glory, that smart rule and stewardship, which was all the time intended for many who bear God’s glorious image.”
To put the identical thing within the words of Isaiah 11:6-9, the Christian hope is that in the brand new world that’s coming:
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the child, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and just a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw just like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the opening of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be stuffed with the knowledge of the Lord because the waters cover the ocean.”
It is that this hope Christians are called to recollect and share with others within the season of Advent.
Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
