Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

by Fleming Rutledge

Advent, however, differs from the other seasons in that it looks beyond history altogether and awaits Jesus Christ’s coming again “in glory to judge the living and the dead.”14 In the cycle of seasons and festival days that takes the church through the life of Christ, it is Advent that gives us the final consummation; it is the season of the last things.

In a very real sense, the Christian community lives in Advent all the time. It can well be called the Time Between, because the people of God live in the time between the first coming of Christ, incognito in the stable in Bethlehem, and his second coming, in glory, to judge the living and the dead. In the Time Between, “our lives are hidden with Christ in God; when Christ who is our life appears, then we also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:3–4).

Advent contains within itself the crucial balance of the now and the not-yet that our faith requires.

The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.

When Jesus says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this kosmos” (John 18:36), his meaning is clear: the sphere of power belonging to God, who created the universe out of nothing (ex nihilo), has invaded the sphere of the Enemy, and in the most inconceivable way possible—the willed self-offering of God the Son to human wickedness in a scene of barbaric execution.32 Therefore, far from escaping the world, the Christian disciple finds his or her vocation precisely here: at the collision of the ages where the struggle of the Enemy against God continues, making a space for the conquering love of God for the world.

Suffering and Hope. The end-time exerts pressure on the present, creating an unbearable tension. The sign that God is near is marked by suffering. The book of Revelation is particularly oriented toward a Christian community undergoing tribulation.

The concept of justice is indeed central to the biblical portrait of the God who has revealed himself in his written Word and in the incarnate Word who is his Son. However, the current use of “justice” as a rallying cry for the church is reductive, because it is limited to particular political and economic issues without reference to the righteousness of God. A key to the biblical meaning of justice is found in the fact that the word translated “justice” and “righteousness” is the same word in Hebrew and in Greek.

The root of the word becomes, in both Testaments, both a noun and a verb, so that “justice” or “judgment” is the same thing as “righteousness” or “rectification” (making right).

All the references to judgment in the Bible should be understood in the context of God’s righteousness—not just his being righteous (noun) but his “making right” (verb) all that has been wrong.

I have personally been present when new names for the candles of the four Sundays of Advent have been proposed along the lines of Peace, Joy, Love, and Hope. This presents quite a contrast with the medieval Advent themes of death, judgment, heaven, and hell—in that order! As we have seen, hope is a central key to the meaning of Advent, but hope is a very meager concept if it is not measured against the malevolence and godlessness of the forces that assail the creation and its creatures every day in “this present evil age” (Gal. 1:4).

It can’t be said too often: the life of the church is poised in the Time Between.

Ever since Paul wrote to the Galatians, the church has constantly had to be on guard against the ever-present human wish to take the reins back into our own hands. It is a daily temptation to think that we and our works are going to supply something that God does not already have.

every biblical sermon should give a reason for hope, and every biblical sermon should contain a promise.

Sermons in the mode of promise, however, are uplifting and empowering for everyone. Every person in the congregation should feel that a promise has been made to him or her by the God who, unlike human beings, keeps his promises.