Our Hope is the Personal Return of our Redeemer
The Hope of the believer is clearly set forth in Titus 2:13- “Looking for that blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (R.V.). Our Hope is the personal Return of Christ when He shall come back again to receive us unto Himself. Our Hope is to be taken out of this scene of sin and suffering and sorrow to be where Christ is (John 14:1-3). Our Hope is to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and be for ever “with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16, 17). Our Hope is to be “made like” Him, and this hope will be realized when “we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). This is the “one hope” of our calling” (Eph. 4:4). This is the only Hope for everything else has failed.
“Jesus Christ our hope” (1 Tim 1:1). Jesus Christ is the believer’s “all in all” (Col. 3:11). He is “our peace” (Eph. 2:14). He is “our life” (Col. 3:14). He is “made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). And, we repeat, He is “our Hope.” But hope always looks forward. Hope has to do with the future. “We are saved in hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it” (Rom. 8:24, 25). This means that what we hope for is that which we do not yet posses. As another has said, “Man was not made for the present, and the present was not intended to satisfy man. It is for the future, not the present, that man exists” (W. Trotter).
While our Lord was here upon earth He gave His disciples a pattern prayer saying, “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come” (Matt. 6:9, 10). The Redeemer taught His saints to look forward to the future, to be occupied of His Kingdom, i.e., the Millennial Kingdom. Thus we learn that our hope has to do, not with the present kingdoms of this world, but with the coming Kingdom of God, which hope will be realized at the return of the Redeemer Himself. It is clear from a number of Scriptures that the coming of God’s Kingdom synchronizes with the Return of Christ (see Luke 19:12; Rev. 11:15, etc). The Hope of the Church centers in Christ and has to do with the future rather than with the present, for “hope” always looks forward. Therefore it is that the prayers of the Church must conform to and correspond with its hope.
The last promise ever made by our Lord, made some fifty or sixty years after His ascension, given to the beloved John on the Isle of Patmos but recorded for the encouragement and joy of all His people throughout the Christian dispensation, was “Surely I come quickly” (Rev. 22:20). The response to this promise is the prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” As this dispensation draws to its close and as the Return of Christ is daily coming nearer, the Holy Spirit is causing many to make this prayer their own. As the result of the recovery of the “Blessed Hope” which throughout the Dark Ages was lost to the Church, and as the result of the proclamation which is now being sounded forth far and wide, “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him,” companies of God’s saints all over the earth are now daily crying, “Even so Come Lord Jesus.” And our God is a prayer-hearing and a prayer-answering God! He who has taught so many of its members to long and pray for the Return of their Savior must satisfy that longing and answer that prayer. Therefore we say that the expectations and supplications of the Church of God which He purchased with His own Blood necessitate the personal Return of our Redeemer.
Taken from The Redeemer’s Return by A. W. Pink, pages 38-40 and pages 53-54.
