Tuesday
Tuesday
The Two Comings of Christ
If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me…. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
John 14:3, 18
At the beginning of John 14, and again near its end, Jesus tells his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (vv. 1, 27). He is alluding to a form of heart trouble from which the whole world suffers and that no cardiologist on earth is able to cure. What John records in this chapter is the Great Physician’s diagnosis and prescription. One might even entitle the chapter “Spiritual Heart Trouble: Its Causes and Cure.” Its cause was the imminent departure of the disciples’ Master; it was this prospect of being abandoned by Jesus that gave them heart trouble, and the cure was faith in his promised comings.
Christ’s ultimate coming on the last day is the topic of the first fourteen verses, although they are also applicable to our death. Jesus promises, (1) “I am going … to prepare a place for you” (v. 2) so that death for believers is like going home, (2) “I will come back” (v. 3), (3) “I will … take you to be with me” (v. 3), and (4) “I am the way and the truth and the life” (v. 6). It is a beautiful thought that he who is our destination is also our forerunner, our escort, and our path.
Verses 15–26, however, refer to Christ’s intermediate coming. The fact that he was coming in the future did not imply that he would abandon them meanwhile. On the contrary, he would send the Holy Spirit, or, better, he would come himself in the person of the Holy Spirit. But to whom would he come? He would show himself to his lovers, and his lovers prove their love by their obedience (v. 21).
In the last five verses (vv. 27–31) John returns to the theme of Christ’s imminent departure. Again Jesus tells them not to be troubled or afraid. Instead, he said to them “Shalom!” “Peace!” Matthew Henry wrote of this with his customary charm:
When Christ was about to leave the world he made his will; his soul he committed to his Father; his body he bequeathed to Joseph of Arimathea; his clothes fell to the soldiers; his mother he left to the care of John. But what should he leave to his disciples, that had left all for him? Silver and gold he had none; but he left them that which was infinitely better, his peace.
For further reading: John 14:1–31