Prof. David J. Engelsma
Knowing the truth of Scripture about the second coming of Jesus Christ, how then will we live?
Believing that His coming is near, how then will we live?
The end of an old year, century, and millennium and the beginning of the new markers of time speak to the heart of the true church of the coming of Jesus Christ. The passing of time has such a voice by virtue of Christ's Word, "Surely I come quickly" (Rev. 22:20). This Word presses time into the service of the second, bodily coming of Him who is now Lord of time as He is Lord of all.
The foolish world gapes at the dramatic, relentless, speedy march of time as a cow stares stupidly at a gate. The most that the world can make of a new millennium is that their computers might fail. Ignoring time's loud warning to seek righteousness (for the Lamb comes for judgment), the world anxiously stockpiles foodstuffs, empties the stores of generators, and makes a run on the banks.
The world is hopeless.
Not so the church.
On the first day of the new millennium, the year of our Lord 2000, the church eagerly looks forward to the coming of Jesus Christ.
As the editorial of December 1, 1999 explained, His coming is near. Belief of this nearness makes a difference in the life of the church. The biblical, Reformed, amillennial doctrine of the last things, embraced by a true faith, has powerful, practical effect on the church and her members. The gracious gospel of the coming of Christ for our public justification and perfect salvation calls us to live in a manner that befits this coming.
Christ is coming! Christ's coming is near!
How then will we live?
Scripture's instruction in the doctrine of the last things is always accompanied by a calling. The calling is that one who believes the truth about the last things live and behave in a way appropriate to the truth believed. If one does not live any differently from those who do not know the doctrine of the last things, he shows that he has no genuine knowledge of the doctrine at all.
Everyone who has the hope that he will see God and be like Him, when He appears in the coming of Christ, purifies himself (I John 3:2,3).
Those who look for the new heavens and earth that will be formed out of the dissolving of the present heavens and the burning up of the present earth in the day of God are exhorted to be the kind of persons who may be found of God "in peace, without spot, and blameless," in that day (II Pet. 3:10-18).
That Christian workingman who expects the coming of the Lord, which draws nigh, is called to endure patiently the unjust treatment he receives from his employer (James 5:7,8).
Live in Hope!
Fundamentally, the biblical truth of the end calls us to have the coming of Jesus Christ as our constant, lively hope. By constant, lively hope is meant that the coming of Jesus is always in our mind, as precious to us, and that it is always the desire of our heart. The coming of Jesus must be the one and only hope in our life. The coming of Christ is not merely one among many hopes. Nor is it even the greatest hope. But it is the hope that determines all other hopes and the hope to which all other hopes are subservient.
Scripture teaches that the coming of Christ is the one, great hope of the church.
Jesus' parable of the persistent widow teaches that the elect cry night and day for the coming of the Son of man, to avenge them upon their enemies (Luke 18:1-8).
Romans 8:23 teaches that everyone who has the firstfruits of the Spirit longs for the redemption, or resurrection, of the body, which is the outstanding blessing of salvation that Jesus will bring at His coming. Such is the intensity of the desire of every child of God for the resurrection of the body, and thus for the coming of Christ, that he groans for it. The importance of this powerful desire for the coming of Christ is nothing less than this, that we are saved by it (v. 24).
The preceding context informs us that the whole creation shares our hope: it is groaning for deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (vv. 19-22). This, of course, it will enjoy when Christ returns.
The Bible ends in Revelation 22:20 with the church responding to Jesus' assurance that He comes quickly by praying, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." Obviously, this is not a petition expressing a hope, but the central petition expressing the one, central hope of the church.
It is noteworthy that virtually every prayer of John Calvin at the end of his lectures on the prophets concludes with some expression of longing for the second coming of Christ and heaven. Calvin's own hope was fixed squarely on the coming of Christ. So he taught his students and the Reformed churches. Typical is this prayer at the end of Calvin's lecture on Zechariah 9:9-12, from which it also appears that Calvin knew absolutely nothing of an earthly kingdom of political power to be reared up by Messiah in history.
Grant, Almighty God, that as we do not at this day look for a Redeemer to deliver us from temporal miseries, but only carry on a warfare under the banner of the cross, until He appear to us from heaven to gather us into His blessed kingdom,- O grant, that we may patiently bear all evils and all troubles: and … may we … never doubt but that He will be always propitious to us, and render manifest to us the fruit of His reconciliation, when after having supported us for a season under the burden of those miseries by which we are now oppressed, Thou gatherest us into that blessed and perfect glory, which has been procured for us by the blood of Christ our Lord, and which is daily set before us in the gospel, and laid up for us in heaven, until we at length shall come to enjoy it through the same, our Lord Jesus Christ.-Amen. (Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, vol. 5, Eerdmans, 1950, p. 263)
Titus 2:13 sums up the testimony of Scripture everywhere when it explicitly identifies the glorious appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who is the great God, as "the blessed hope": "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." The church has one hope: "the blessed hope." There is only one hope, because that event is uniquely blessed, and uniquely a blessing. The one hope is the appearing of Jesus Christ at His coming. This-the second coming of Jesus Christ-we are always looking for, or expecting, with ardent desire.
What is outstandingly blessed about the event, and the reason more than any other why it is our hope, is that in the coming of Jesus Christ our great God Himself will appear to us. By omitting the article "the" before the words "our Savior," the Holy Spirit of inspiration instructs us that Jesus Himself is the great God and that, when Jesus comes, the great God will appear in Him. The coming of Jesus will give us the sight of God, the blessed face-to-face vision of God, and that will be the greatest good.
How then, in view of the truth that Christ is coming, must we live?
By hoping for that coming!
If this hope is missing, or weak, in the life of a church or of a professing Christian, the condition of that church or individual is grave. In this case, there is no use of speaking any further of other practical implications of the doctrine of the last things.
In his commentary on Titus 2:13, Calvin correctly described the relation between the living hope of Christ's coming and a godly life:
Believers ought always to have their eyes fixed on it [the coming of Christ-DJE], that they may not grow weary in the right course; for, if we do not wholly depend upon it, we shall continually be carried away to the vanities of the world (Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Eerdmans, 1959, pp. 321, 322).
Threats to Hope
There is, according to Scripture, a real danger in the last days that churches and professing Christians lose, and even disdain, this hope, with disastrous consequences. In Matthew 24:37-41, Jesus warned that mankind in general will completely forget and ignore the end. They will be eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage right up to the time of Jesus' coming, just as in the days of Noah. They will be earthliminded, totally wrapped up in earthly life. This will be fatal. Just as the flood took them all away at the end of the old world, so the fiery coming of Christ at the end of this world will destroy all the naturalists and secularists.
But Jesus continued, in Matthew 24:42-51, to warn of evil servants in His own house. These are professing Christians who secretly think that "my lord delayeth his coming" (v. 48). They, therefore, begin to live wickedly in self-seeking strife and debauchery. At His coming, Christ will cut them asunder and consign them to the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Loss of the hope of Christ's coming, indeed, loss of the hope that that coming is near, results in godlessness and damnation.
Adding to the danger of the loss of hope in the last days is a direct and forceful attack upon Jesus' promise that He comes quickly. The apostle forewarned that scoffers will boldly challenge Jesus' promise and the church's hope: "Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (II Pet. 3:4). These scoffers appear within the churches. They are ministers, theologians, professors in the seminaries, and religious authors. Some are Reformed scoffers. Among them are Lever and Kuitert.
They bring the attack of evolution against the Christian hope right into the churches, into the seminaries, into the Christian schools, into the thinking of professing Christians and their children. The practical effect of this baptized ("theistic") evolution-theory is licentious living in the churches and schools. Fact is, the real motivation of Darwin, Huxley, and the others in the nineteenth century who promoted evolution was not scientific, but ethical. They wanted to free themselves from the authority and demands of a sovereign Creator-God, especially the demands for a life of sexual purity.
Even though millennialism usually acknowledges a second coming of Jesus Christ and the future resurrection of the body, both of the main forms of this error direct the hope of the church elsewhere than to the coming of Christ and the resurrection of the body. Premillennialism fixes the hope of the church on the secret rapture and then, oddly (for the millennial kingdom of this view is the glory of the Jews, not of the church), upon the 1,000-year reign of Jesus from Jerusalem.
Postmillennialism, especially of the Christian Reconstruction brand, has its heart set on an earthly kingdom of Christ in the world before the end, on a "golden age" for the church in history.
In both cases, the result is that our hope is removed from the coming of Christ to something else, from the resurrection of the body to an earthly kingdom, from heaven to earth.
The loss of her hope-the biblical hope for the second coming of Christ and the resurrection of the body-would be fatal for the church. The weakening of this hope is grave spiritual sickness.
The church lives by her hope.
Her hoping is her life.
She must "hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto (her) at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (I Pet. 1:13). And she does, despite temptations, heresies, and doubts.
For her hoping is founded on the biblical doctrine of the last things, stretches toward Him who loved her and whom she loves, and is nourished by the promise of the gospel, "Surely I come quickly."
At the beginning of a new year, the church is reminded of the second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of all things. The reminder is especially forceful when the beginning of a new year is also the beginning of a new millennium. Jesus Christ is coming the second time. He is coming quickly. He is coming for the salvation of all who look for Him. He is coming to raise our bodies from the dead. He is coming to conduct the final judgment in which we will be publicly vindicated and in which His and our enemies will be publicly condemned. He is coming to renew the creation as our inheritance.
Since we believe these truths concerning the last things and since we eagerly expect the coming Lord and Savior, how then will we live?
How are we called to live?
And because this calling in the gospel is the sovereign call of us whom God has loved from eternity, for whom Christ died, and in whom the Spirit of Christ has worked belief of the truth of the last things, how will we live? How will we certainly live? How will we certainly live, regardless of the hopelessness and depravity of a world that now fills the cup of its wickedness to the brim? How will we certainly live, regardless of the mockery by churches and theologians who have fallen so far as to scoff at the hope of the true church that the coming of Christ is near?
We will live in hope, as the previous editorial showed.
The Holiness of the Church
This hope takes form as holiness.
What is the practical significance of the Reformed, biblical, amillennial doctrine of the end? What difference does knowledge of the truth of the last things make in the lives of those who know the truth?
Holiness!
The gospel of hope-hope as the living, ardent, day-in and day-out longing for the bodily coming of Christ, which is near-calls church and believer to keep themselves from the wicked world and its corrupt way of life and to devote themselves to the holy God in a life of obedience to His law.
This is the calling, first, of the church, the instituted congregation of believers and their children.
Preaching
For the church, holiness is faithful, zealous preaching of the Word both within the congregation and outside in missions. The main reason why the end has not yet come, the explanation why the Lord "tarries," is that all of us elect have not yet come to repentance. But the Lord is not willing that any of us should perish (II Pet. 3:9). Included among the elect who may not perish and who, therefore, must come to repentance are the covenant children of believers. As the church desires the coming of the Lord, she will preach the gospel by which Christ brings His own to repentance.
In addition to this gracious, saving purpose of God with the church's preaching of the gospel, by the hearing of the Word the whole world of the ungodly must be rendered inexcusable, so that God may be just when He judges in the final judgment.
In His great address on the last things in Matthew 24, Jesus taught, "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come" (v. 14). Thus did He call the church to her chief activity, her most glorious holiness, in light of His coming again.
Defending
Closely related is the church's task of defending the faith and, thus, holding on to all the doctrines of Holy Scripture, including the doctrine that Scripture is the God-breathed Word. An uncompromising, vigorous defense of the faith is a brilliant facet of the church's holiness. Again and again in Revelation 2 and 3, by positive exhortation and praise as well as by negative rebuke, Christ calls the churches to hold fast "my name," "my faith," sound "doctrine," "my word." This is the calling of the churches in their circumstances of end-time persecution: "Thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth" (Rev. 2:13). And this calling rests squarely on the churches' hope of the coming of Christ: "But that which ye have already hold fast till I come" (Rev. 2:25).
Lending a keen edge to the urgency of the church's calling to defend the faith is the apostasy of churches and nominal Christians in the last days. II Thessalonians 2:3ff. prophesies a great falling away, which has its source in this, that churches, officebearers, and members do not have "the love of the truth" (v. 10). In this context of departure from the truth and belief of the lie by much of professing Christianity, what is the charge to the true church ? "Stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle" (v. 15).
This counts for absolutely nothing in the estimation of many professing Christians today. What matters to them is that a church has a "progressive" style of worship, or a lively youth program, or an aggressive missions and evangelism "outreach" (never mind what is taught in this "outreach"), or opportunities for "ministry" for every member, or a friendly face. That such a church is swept away with every wind of doctrine that blows through Christendom and even with every politically correct notion that gains ascendancy in the world, so that it surrenders every tradition, does not concern them.
But the church's standing fast and resolutely holding the traditions counts with God. It is the very holiness of His church.
Contending
An essential aspect of this defense of the faith is the church's refutation of false doctrines and errors "that multiply exceedingly," to use the phrase of Article 55 of the Church Order of Dordt. These damnable and highly dangerous teachings are found in other churches, in books and other writings, and on the radio and television. The churches carry out this aspect of their defense of the faith mainly through the preaching of their ministers, the admonitions of their elders, and the teachings and writings of their professors of theology.
Strong pressures are put on the church today to tone down this refutation, if not to silence it altogether. Ominously, the state warns against "hate crimes." A favorite is "gay bashing." Note the carefully chosen pejorative! The state and the media do not speak of "opposition to homosexuality," but of "gay bashing." Within the church herself voices are heard that decry pointed, strong condemnation of false doctrines as unloving criticism of other churches. The impression is left that a church that criticizes other churches and their theologians for their false doctrines manifests a "holier-than-thou" attitude.
Fact is, a church that refuses or neglects to refute false doctrines and to sound the judgment of the gospel upon those who maintain them is unholy. Her unholiness is that she does not love the truth. Before long, she too will be carried away in the great apostasy. God will send her members a strong delusion that they should believe the lie which that church did not hate sufficiently to condemn.
Suffering
There is yet another activity of the church that is an outstanding aspect of the holiness that is hers by virtue of her hope in the coming of Christ. It figures prominently in Scripture's description of the life of the church in the last days. Both of the main millennial errors deny it, thus proving their utter falsity. Reformed amillennialism, on the other hand, does justice to it, thus showing itself true. This is the activity of suffering persecution patiently for Christ's sake.
The true church is always hated, always reproached, always persecuted. "As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter" (Rom. 8:36). This will intensify as the end approaches, until the beast "make(s) war with the saints and overcome(s) them" (Rev. 13:7). Playing a leading role in this persecution, whether of reproach or physical harm, are the apostate churches and their agents in the bosom of the true church.
Suffering for the sake of the truth-Christ's name!-is a calling. The church does not merely put up with this suffering as even a dog may submit to an unavoidable beating. The church is active in her suffering. She bears it patiently. She perseveres in confessing Christ faithfully, refusing to compromise the least of His doctrines or commandments. She rejoices in this suffering as a distinct blessedness. So Christ effectually calls her: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad" (Matt. 5:11, 12).
Suffering for Christ's sake is a privilege, as is every aspect of the church's holiness. "Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ ... to suffer for his sake," the apostle assures the church in Philippians 1:29.
Premillennial dispensationalism robs the church of this privilege by rapturing the church out of history before the great tribulation under antichrist. Postmillennial Christian Reconstruction is guilty of the same robbery when it thrusts all the New Testament prophecy of end-time persecution, of the great tribulation, and of antichrist into the distant past. Christ graciously gives us the privilege to suffer for His sake. Millennialism ungraciously takes the privilege away.
Foreign to the millennial errors is the attitude toward suffering for Christ's sake that is evident in Herman Hoeksema's profound description of those who stand on the sea of glass and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb in Revelation 15:2-4.
Truly, they have been in the thickest of the battle. It was for them to live at the time of Antichrist in all his power and fullness. The honor and privilege to live at that time was in store for them. For thus it is in reality: it will be a time of special privilege for the people of God to live at the time of Antichrist. It is much rather a cause of longing and yearning, than of fear and trembling, for the people of God to live at that time. Is not a soldier in the battle honored by being in the thickest of the battle? And shall not the soldier of the kingdom of Christ by faith deem it an honor to be in the thickest of the fight against the power of Antichrist and to show that he fears nothing even though he be hated of all men and of all nations? And therefore, it is a special honor to be deemed worthy to live at that time. God shall have His strongest children, His best forces, in the world at that last period. And therefore, to belong to those picked forces of Christ in the world at the time of Antichrist shall be the greatest honor conceivable. For that same reason I have no doubt but that there shall be a special place in store for them in the new heaven and the new earth,-a place which they alone can occupy. I have no doubt but that they are the leaders in the chorus which is here singing at the sea of glass (Behold, He Cometh! An Exposition of the Book of Revelation, RFPA, p. 522).
It is enough to make one regret that he is unworthy to be alive during the reign of the beast. It is also a healthy corrective to the unspiritual wish that Christians sometimes express when they study Scripture's prophecy of antichrist, that they may die before those days.
But the point is not simply that the church must, and may, suffer in the last days. Nor is it the point that the suffering of the church is part of her holiness. The point, rather, is that this suffering, which is the holiness of the church, stems from and is borne by the church's hope.
The body of Christ is filling up that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ its head (Col. 1:24). This explains the strange, even startling, response of heaven to the plea of the souls of the martyrs for justice on their murderers. "It was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled" (Rev. 6:11). And each member embraces his or her persecution in hope of Jesus' promise in Matthew 5:12: "for great is your reward in heaven."
This is the active, fruitful, splendid holiness of the church as she waits for God's Son from heaven.
How then, we must also ask, will the individual child of God live?
Believing the doctrine of the Bible that Jesus is coming and that His coming is near, the people of God will then live in hope of that coming.
For the instituted church, this living hope will take form in a holiness that consists, among other activities, of preaching, defending, contending, and suffering.
There is also the personal calling of the individual believer and of the children of believers. Hoping for the coming of Christ, each is called to a holy life. He is called to keep himself from the filthy, vile, depraved conduct of the world that increases in lawlessness at the end: revelry; drunkenness; drugs; fornication; adultery; homosexuality. This is the urgent call of the apostle in Romans 13:11-14: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness … rioting … drunkenness … chambering … wantonness … strife … envying."
Note the "therefore"! Because the Day of Christ is near, therefore we ought to cast off the works of darkness. Walking "honestly," or decently, in the light (which is holiness) is how we will live, because of our hope.
One evil to be as carefully guarded against as it is enthusiastically and pervasively promoted by the world is fornication. Fornication is any and every sexual relation with someone other than a man's one wife or a woman's one husband. It is sexual relations of the unmarried. It is sexual relations of the married man with a prostitute. It is sexual relations of a married man with another man's wife without recourse to divorce and remarriage. It is sexual relations of a married man with another man's wife even though they have divorced and remarried. It is all sexual relations of men with men and women with women, regardless whether a state that sinks away into the abyss of anti-Christian revolution against God's very law in nature decrees homosexual connections to be marriage.
In a powerful passage addressed to Christians who were living in a culture, like our own, that pursued and accepted fornication as freely as it did the gratifying of the belly by eating, the apostle grounded the call to flee fornication, not in the danger of sexually transmitted disease but in the resurrection of the body. I Corinthians 6:13, 14 flatly rules out fornication, whether for the young Christian or the old Christian, whether for the unmarried or the married member of the church, on the basis of our hope. "Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power."
The hope of the resurrection of his body will also then be the motivation, why the child of God flees fornication, for example, by avoiding the pornography readily accessible, we are told, on the Internet.
No warning of the believer who lives in the West at the beginning of the twenty-first century dare ignore the evil of earthlimindedness. This is the madness of an unbounded pursuit, whether by rich or poor, of earthly possessions and pleasures as the very purpose of life. According to Jesus, this is the great danger in the last days: eating, drinking, marrying, buying, selling, planting, building, as the main thing (Luke 17:26-30).
Usually this groveling in the dirt of the earth (by one originally made to know God!) is the source of every immorality. According to Ezekiel, it was the cause of Sodom's homosexuality: "pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness" led to "abomination" (Ezek. 16:49, 50). So is sheer earthlimindedness-the rejection of the Creator for the creature-the cause of homosexuality in Western civilization today. But it is possible that one be earthliminded, while decent in his conduct-and damned.
What keeps us from devoting ourselves to the earth, to earthly life, and to earthly pleasures, even as we live earthly life to the full? Hope for Christ's coming! We have a wife as though we had none, we weep as though we wept not, we rejoice as though we rejoiced not, we buy as though we possessed not, we use this world as not over-using it, because the time is short and the fashion of this world passes away (I Cor. 7:29-31).
This is negative.
One who expects the coming of Christ and the final judgment will also be active in a life of good works. My main purpose here is not to mention all kinds of good works that Christians are called to do, but to point out how the Bible grounds our life of good works in our hope of the coming of Christ.
Scripture makes our hope of Christ's coming, with the resurrection and the final judgment that accompany Christ's coming, the basis and incentive of a vigorously active life of holiness. Luke 19:11ff., the parable of the pounds, teaches that we must use our gifts, abilities, possessions, and position to get gain for Christ with a view to the judgment that He will conduct at His coming.
The same parable, and other passages of Scripture, motivate us to a life of good works with a view to the reward that we will receive at the judgment. Hebrews 6:10 specifies our labor of love to each other. God will not forget our work and labor of love that we show to His name by serving the saints. This includes our mutual labor of service in marriage and the family. Husbands may forget the service of their godly wife. Shame, shame, shame on them. Children may forget the labor of love of their believing parents. Shame, shame, shame on them. God does not forget one such act of service, whether in the congregation or in the home. Comes the day when it will be rewarded, including the least of the acts, about which we will say, racking our brain, "When did I ever do that?"
In view of the reward that we will get, we can be patient now as regards the seeming lack of fruit on our work, or recognition, or gratitude even by those whom we serve. There are husbands in the church who take their wife for granted, who never say "thank you," and who even treat her shabbily besides. They should be horsewhipped publicly. It is doubtful whether they have the living hope in them of Christ's coming. But the wife may not walk out, because "my husband did not appreciate me, because my husband abused me in this way." Nor will the Christian woman, though strongly tempted. She serves her husband with the hope of praise and reward from God in the Day of Christ.
The final judgment is also the incentive to us patiently to bear injustice in our life. James 5:7, 8, which calls the workingman to endure injustice from his employer in view of the coming of the Lord which "draweth nigh," applies as well to injustice at the hands of civil government, or an evil neighbor. There may be no retribution, no taking of matters into our own hands, no avenging of ourselves. There need not be. We wait for God to avenge us, as He will in the judgment.
Anticipation of the final judgment motivates us to live godly lives simply because our judgment will be according to our works.
The truth of Christ's resurrection and the promise of our own resurrection at His coming cannot but move us to "abound" in the work of the Lord, knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord (I Cor. 15:58).
Even the reality of eternal hell plays a role in the active life of holiness of the individual child of God. Eschatology works holiness, and eschatology includes the truth about hell. In the struggles and temptations of his life, deeply conscious of eternal hell as he is deeply conscious of eternal heaven, the elect believer, without for one moment supposing that he might perish there, sacrifices whatever of pleasure or of self-fulfillment, indeed, whatever belongs to the necessities of earthly life, that would tend to bring him to hell. His motivation in painfully denying himself is the desire to be everlastingly with God in the bliss of heaven, rather than to be everlastingly cast away from God's presence in the torment of hell. "And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched" (Mark 9:43).
Let every Reformed Christian, indeed every Protestant, note well: There is no calling to church or Christian to "Christianize the world" before Christ comes. There is no calling to get the upper hand and dominate in society. I challenge anyone to find such a calling in all the New Testament Scriptures. Where among all the many exhortations by Christ and the apostles to the church and the saint is such a thing even hinted at?
Nor is our life of holiness based on the "success" of such a life in history, as though the church evangelizes because she expects the majority of mankind to be converted in some great revival and as though the individual Christian obeys the law because he expects that this obedience will eventually propel him and his cohorts into power.
On the contrary!
Insofar as the basis of our present holy life lies in the future, the basis is the coming of Christ, the resurrection of our body, the final judgment, and our reigning with Christ, first in heaven after death and then in the new world after the judgment.
The calling of the believer that follows from his hope is not only that he live a holy life, but also that he die a holy death.
There is a distinctively Christian way to die. This is to die at peace, falling asleep in Jesus with no more uproar in soul or behavior than when one falls asleep of an evening after a hard day's work. Abraham Kuyper described this Christian way of death, and called us to it, in his In the Shadow of Death.
He who can die bravely and in the power of faith must also do it. Also in dying you shall not be merely passive, but in holier sense be active. In dying, too, you have a task, a calling, a sacred duty to fulfill. Your last piece of work on earth. But a task, at your account; for which all your life long you have to prepare yourself; and of which you shall give account to the Judge of your heart and your thoughts. This task touches also your loved ones. Your death must leave behind a fruit for them. Presently your love can no more benefit them, but can still do so in your dying. For the impression of an heroic and believing deathbed always leaves behind a glorious preachment. An impression not easily wiped out. And thus likewise you have to die honorably for God's sake. For God's honor, over against Satan and his satellites, hangs by it; hangs by it, that also in the dying of His child the power of faith be manifest.
This is the way to die in view of being immediately with Christ as to the soul and in view of the resurrection of the body.
Nor is there any interest on the part of the Christian in the prolonging of his physical existence by the use of extraordinary medical measures. Even when he is in the prime of life, and healthy, he hardly knows what to choose, whether to be with Christ, which to him is far better, or to live for the sake of the service he may render to Christ in the world.
As the hope of the resurrection of the body at the Day of Christ results in a distinctively Christian way of dying, so it also produces a distinctively Christian way of conducting oneself at the death of a loved one who died in the Lord. We give the loved one a decent burial, as the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) requires:
The Scripture directs that the bodies of the faithful, as being temples of the Holy Spirit, which we truly believe shall rise again at the last day, should be honorably, without any superstition, committed to the earth; and, besides, that we should make honorable mention of those who died in the Lord, and perform all duties of love to those they leave behind, as their widows and fatherless children. Other care for the dead we do not enjoin.
We also display the comfort of the gospel by not grieving uncontrollably, as though we had no hope (I Thess. 4:13).
What a wonderful, motivating power is the hope of the gospel by the work of the Spirit of Christ in our lives. We live in holiness. We die in peace.
"Even so, come, Lord Jesus," come quickly.
The Standard Bearer Jan -Feb 2000
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