The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Romans 8:19-21
There’s lots of buzz in the church today about the Second Coming or Second Advent of Jesus. It’s referred to in a number of different ways (some biblically accurate and some not), but all the versions are trying to get at the doctrine held seriously by the early church that Jesus will someday (soon?) return to earth with power and great glory.
The truth is that in one sense Jesus has been arriving on the scene of this world ever since his ascension, for he and his angels have been coming and going between the very thin membrane separating heaven and earth. He’s had lots of work to do making himself known, helping and rescuing his people for centuries.
But what’s not so much heard from our pulpits is the New Testament teaching regarding our second coming. Yes, Jesus’ return to earth in great glory is real. But so is ours. We are coming back too. Our final destiny as believers is not to flit about the clouds as some sort of invisible gas (the “immortal soul”) doing heaven knows what for billions of years, but to live on a very physical earth in very physical bodies (immortal bodies) doing very interesting things in bodies like that of Jesus’ resurrection body.
And haven’t you heard that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard” what that will be like, that we can’t possibly imagine what that existence will be? At least that’s what I was told as a boy in Sunday School. But that’s not only an obvious mistake of interpretation (read that passage in 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 again), but it completely misses the point of what our blessed hope really is. Paul is saying that whereas we couldn’t imagine it before Jesus’ resurrection, we can now. So let’s get started.
The good news is that not only can we imagine what our Second Coming is like, but that we are given all the imagining material we need to get the point in vivid detail and in full color. How do we imagine it? We can start by looking around and seeing what’s right there in front of us. Do you see trees, meadows, waterfalls, lakes, animals, people, birds, rocks, flowers, and all the rest of it? Then that’s what we’ll see then. Everything we need to imagine it is right there. We can’t help but picture it. How hard is that?
The New Heaven and the New Earth is everything good that we can experience in this life, but somehow much more. If God made everything that is, and if he called it “very good” (Genesis 1:31), then he has no intention of tossing it all in the trash at the end. What he has in mind for all creation is not to annihilate it, but to redeem it and bring it all back in absolute perfection for us to enjoy (Romans 8:18-21). That’s what Easter is all about.
So (thankfully) our return will not be in the form of television’s colorless gauzy heaven, or the eternal church service (also what I was taught as a boy), or the everlasting funeral service (“resting in peace”). Where did all that stuff come from? No wonder many people, especially those who really love life, spend so little time thinking about the next life! If they had the slightest inkling of what it really was like, they’d be imagining and enjoying the thought of it all day long. It would be the theme of every book and film.
If everyone grasped what the astonishing, extravagant, over-the-top future in Jesus Christ really was, the big corporations would be trying to acquire it, the Mafia would be muscling in trying to steal it, governments would be attempting to control and tax it, and the peoples of the earth would be standing in line to hear more about it. It’s the best-kept secret of the church.
So let us joyfully race towards our final goal and recharge ourselves today in the electric power of Jesus’ resurrection.
May you and yours have a very blessed, high-energy Easter!
