Jesus’ return does not surprise a Christian

Well, for all who have stepped out of darkness into light by trusting in Jesus, Paul concludes with an all-important statement—a statement that should change our attitude completely about the day of the Lord and the coming of Jesus Christ: But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief (1 Thessalonians 5:4). What is Paul saying? He is saying that everything I said about the world—and the danger of the world, and the peril of the world, and the experience of the world, and the ignorance of the world—is completely reversed once you have come to faith in Jesus Christ. For the world, it is completely unforeseen. They had no idea it was coming. But that is not true of the believer in Jesus Christ. We do know it. It does not surprise us. The last thing it does is surprise us—because we have been longing for it, have been expecting it, have been calling out for him to come, and have been living in a conscious awareness that this world is going to end in our salvation when Jesus returns. We are no longer ignorant now. We live in the light of the knowledge of the coming of Jesus Christ. And for the world, he comes as a thief in the night. He is going to take away all the idols, all the wicked things they have loved, all the carnal things—even good things that were raised up ahead of God—it is all going to be lost. But Jesus does not come as a thief in the night for a Christian. No, for us, it is the day of the unsealing of our inheritance.   This is why Jesus says, Why would you store up treasures on earth? Oh, it is okay to use the things of the world, but that is not what we are buying into. Let us store up treasures in heaven, because we are coheirs with God.

Here is what Paul says in Romans 8:17: that a believer is an heir of God and a fellow heir with Christ—provided we suffer with him in order that we might be glorified with him. No, it is not the day when we are despoiled. It is the day of our inheritance. What a great reversal will come! And the day of the Lord brings sudden destruction and defeat to all evil, worldly powers. But the believer looks to that day as a time of our vindication, our deliverance from all that plagues us now, our glorification, the restoration of all that we have lost—and even more—in this world. Though the ungodly will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, Paul says that Christ comes on that day to be glorified in the saints and to be marveled at among those who believe (2 Thessalonians 1:9–10). In fact, according to Paul, not only believers but also the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:21). Paul says the day of the Lord is the creation’s own deliverance from the curse of mankind’s sin. And therefore, Paul puts it this way in Romans 8:19: “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.”¹

Richard D. Phillips