Our Blessed Hope

Feature 2 – December 2020 — Grace & Truth Magazine

Our Blessed Hope

What Is “Our Blessed Hope”?
Titus 2:13 states that the believer’s blessed hope is the coming again of our Lord Jesus: “Awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” ( JND ). If, like me, you have been brought up on the King James Version of the Bible, you will know that it renders this verse: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” That is helpful, for it shows that there are two distinct parts to His second coming:

• First, He will come in the air for His Church at the rapture (1 Th. 4:15-17).
• Second, He will come again to earth at His appearing (Lk. 18:8; 2 Th. 2:8; 2 Tim. 4:8).

However, more accurate translations, such as Darby’s, show that believers are waiting for both events to happen. It is therefore better to view Christ’s second coming as consisting of these two events: the rapture followed by His appearing about seven years later.

Why Is It A Blessed Hope?
The word “blessed” means something is supremely good and full of great benefits. Paul described our hope as blessed because it resides in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Christ Jesus our hope” (1 Tim. 1:1 JND). He is the Living One, who is “alive for evermore” (Rev. 1:18 KJV). Therefore we have a living hope: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His great mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from among the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3 JND). Our hope is also blessed because it is the certain hope of eternal life, “the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the ages of time” (Ti. 1:2). Believers possess this certainty through faith in the Lord Jesus, who is “the hope set before us, which we have as anchor of the soul, both secure and firm, and entering into that within the veil, where Jesus is entered as forerunner for us” (Heb. 6:18-20). The hope is blessed because it is also sure and steadfast, guaranteed to us by His place in heaven!

Our Blessed Hope Is To Be With The Lord For Eternity!
For Christians, their blessed hope will be realized when they meet the Lord in the air – when He comes again to take us to heaven to be forever with Himself. He made this promise to the apostles in the upper room just prior to His going to the cross: “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe on God, believe also on Me. In My Father’s house there are many abodes1; were it not so, I had told you: for I go to prepare you a place; and if I go and shall prepare you a place, I am coming again and shall receive you to Myself, that where I am ye also may be” (Jn. 14:1-3). Yes, His sacrifice on the cross and the shedding of His blood have provided the way for us to go to heaven. At the present time, He is preparing our eternal home in the Father’s house by His presence in heaven as Man.

Two other occurrences in John’s gospel where the Lord spoke about “where I am” highlight two more aspects of our blessed hope:

• For faithful discipleship and service to our Lord in this world, He promised the eternal reward of being with Him where He is in heaven: “If any one serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there also shall be My servant. And if any one serve Me, him shall the Father honor” (12:26).
• The Lord spoke to His Father in terms of their intimate and eternal Father/Son relationship in John 17. As One equal to His Father, He can demand that those whom the Father chose out of the world to be His own special possession be with Him in heaven – to contemplate and enjoy His preeminent glory as Son, which will fill out eternity: “Father, as to those whom Thou hast given Me, I desire that where I am they also may be with Me, that they may behold My glory which Thou hast given Me, for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world” (v.24).

Our Blessed Hope Is To See Our Savior!
As the apostle John mused over the amazing fact that the Father has so loved us, he told of our family relationship to Him. He picked up on what the Lord had requested of the Father in John 17:24 and stated the certainty of saints seeing their Savior in heaven: “See what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God. For this reason the world knows us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we children of God, and what we shall be has not yet been manifested; we know that if it is manifested we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn. 3:1-2)

Our Blessed Hope Is To Be Like Our Lord For Eternity!
In Romans 8:29-30 we discover the secret of John’s statement “we shall be like [Christ].” It is the ultimate blessing we receive through believing the gospel and of predestination – that special blessing of being conformed to the image of God’s Son in heaven. “Predestined” simply means that He marked out that blessing for us before we existed and before He created the universe. His foreknowledge means He knew whom He had to predestine. Yet, He called us in time by means of the preaching of the gospel. Upon believing, every believer discovers the secret that he/she has been ordained, or appointed, to eternal life (Acts 13:48).

The calling of God cannot and does not fail (Rom. 11:29). This is what God has chosen to do and He will do it. God’s purpose will be accomplished when all believers are conformed to the image of His Son in heaven, which means we will have spiritual bodies fashioned like Christ’s to be permanently like Him. “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:20-21 ESV).2 What a blessed hope we believers possess!

Still, God’s will is for His Son to occupy the highest place in heaven. This is the reason for our predestination and the central issue of God’s purpose – to glorify His Son as the Firstborn among His chosen people. As Firstborn, He is the One who is supreme and takes the highest rank in heaven eternally (see Col. 1:18).

Our Blessed Hope Includes Being With Him At His Appearing
Titus 2:13 indicates our blessed hope finds a further fulfillment in “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” That is for three reasons:

1. At present our real life with Christ is not publicly seen for it is hidden in God. When He is manifested to the world at His appearing, we will come with Him to share in His glory. In fact, He will be glorified and wondered at in His heavenly people as the world sees in them the glory of His grace in their salvation. Moreover, we will be displayed to the praise of God the Father’s glory (see Eph. 1:12-14; Col. 3:3-4; 2 Th. 1:10; Jn. 17:21-22).

2. In the day of Christ, God will bring about His purpose to head up all things in His Anointed. The crowning day is coming when our Lord will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords – that is why His disciples were given the example to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Mt. 6:10 KJV). In this respect, our hope is that now every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the Father’s glory (see Eph. 1:9-11; Rev. 19:16; Phil. 2:9-11).

3. Despite the present doom and gloom about our planet, there is a wonderful future for our world. At His appearing, God will bring in the golden age of the millennium, “the times of the restoring of all things, of which God has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets since time began” (Acts 3:21 JND). The whole creation will be blessed, and mankind will enjoy enduring peace, safety and plenty under the dominion of the Son of Man (see Ps. 8, 72; Isa. 35; Hab. 2:14; Acts 17:31; Rom. 8:19-21).

Conclusion
Expectancy is the characteristic of the hope of believers: “We have been saved in hope; but hope seen is not hope; for what anyone sees, why does he also hope? But if what we see not we hope, we expect in patience” (vv.24-25). This endurance arises out of our “boast in hope of the glory of God” and our experience that current trials and suffering only serve to enhance that hope (5:2, see vv.3-5). We eagerly expect our Savior from heaven (see Phil. 3:20; Ti. 2:13).2 And the reality of our hope in Christ will manifest itself through our desires to live now in ways which please God: “And everyone that has this hope in Him purifies himself, even as He is pure” (1 Jn. 3:3).

ENDNOTES
1. Literally, “dwelling places”. See verse 23, where the word “abode” is also used.
2. “Awaiting the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 21 JND).

By David Anderson