He shall Come to Judge

Christ has died!
Christ is risen!
Christ will come again!

The Return of Jesus Christ

There is no general agreement among Christians, not even among Evangelical Christians, about the details of Christ's return but most Christians, and all Evangelicals, are agreed that Jesus certainly will return. The belief of the writers of the New Testament that Jesus would return is often repeated in the pages of the New Testament. Somebody has estimated that the doctrine is mentioned on an average of once every thirteen verses. While recognizing that frequency of reference is not the only criterion, it would be foolish to ignore a doctrine so often mentioned.

This is a doctrine, however, that one must always handle with care. It is safe to declare that Jesus will come again. It is entirely unsafe to place a date on the event - "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." ( Matt. 24:36 ) We must be careful to base our doctrinal stance only upon scripture, and not on visions or prophecies or denominational biases. And within Scripture we must not take isolated texts and fit them to our theories. As Archdeacon Hammond once wrote,

Much harm has been done by well meaning but incautious zealots who have allowed their enthusiasm to run riot in wild and dogmatic assertions upon points where dogmatism is impossible. Still more harm has been done by those who have seized upon certain isolated texts and woven around them doctrines which are inconsistent with the rest of Scripture.
( T. C. Hammond, In Understanding Be Men )

Titus 13 sums up the Christian view of the return of Christ in these words:

"we wait for the blessed hope - the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ"

It is a "Blessed hope" of a "Glorious Appearing".

From thence

The Apostles' Creed places this future event into the context of all that goes before. Christ has lived among us and died, been raised and has ascended . Now he sits at the right hand of God the Father and it is from that position in the Glory of the Father that he will return, not this time as a helpless baby but as King and Judge, as Lord and as Bridegroom.

He shall Come

There are a whole range of theories and timetables attached to this Momentous Event. It is not my intention in this short article to tackle them. That must be left for another article (a long one!) . Suffice it to say that he has promised that he will return. His return will be visible for we are told that:

"This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."
( Acts 1:11 )

And in Revelation:

Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him.
( Rev 1:7 )

To Judge

The Creed says that he is coming to Judge. The whole concept of judgement can be rather frightening. We tend to think of the Day of Judgement in terms of punishment, hell fire and Doom. Yet Christians should remember that a judge also has powers to acquit. After all, since this Judge has been our advocate ( 1 John 2:1 AV ) for the last two thousand years it is unreasonable to assume that he will suddenly become a terror to us. He himself has paid the penalty. For those who have accepted his salvation there is no terror, for the price is paid and there is no longer a case to answer. For Christians, then, the judgement will be "in the nature of an assessment of their stewardship, and the giving of rewards for faithfulness". ( Hammond op cit )

The Creed suggests that his coming is to judge. We must not assume that judgement is the only purpose for the Second Coming. Scripture indicates other, equally important, aspects of his Coming but since this article is based on the creed we will leave discussion of these other aspects for a further article.

The Living and the Dead

Finally it is important to recognize that the Judgement is a universal Judgement. He will judge those who are still alive when he comes but those who have already died will be raised in time for the Judgement. There is no evidence that any person, living or dead, Christian or Pagan or Atheist will be left unjudged. The terms of judgement are in the hands of the Judge. It is not for us to ask, "What about those who never heard?" We must be content with the knowledge that the Judge is the only completely just judge there has ever been and leave the rest to him. It is not for us to pre-empt that judgement, although it is our duty to bring the Gospel to all we can and to make disciples of all nations.

(All full biblical quotations in this article are taken from the New International Version and have been inserted into the text using "QuickVerse for Windows" from Parsons Technology .)