The Return of Christ

How Then Should We Live

The point of the whole hope is not speculation but readiness. Peter asks, seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness. The answer Scripture gives is not fear or date-setting but holiness, love, watchfulness, and a longing for Christ's appearing. To believe he is coming is to live now as people who belong to him and to the coming kingdom.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,2 Peter 3:11 (KJV)

The question the whole subject is meant to raise

After all the talk of comings and signs and thrones, the Bible itself keeps steering the subject toward a single practical question: given all this, how should we live now? The study of last things was never meant to make Christians experts in charts or full of fear. It was meant to change the way they live today. Peter, having written about the passing of the present order and the coming day of God, asks exactly the right question:

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,2 Peter 3:11 (KJV)

That is the whole point, put as plainly as it can be. If this world as we know it is not the final word, and if Christ is truly coming, then the fitting response is a certain kind of life now, a life of holy conversation and godliness. Everything else in this cluster exists to produce that. If the return of Christ does not make us more like Christ, we have missed why he told us about it.

Be ready

The first thing Scripture asks is readiness. Jesus told story after story about it, servants keeping their lamps lit for a master who might come at any hour, wise and foolish bridesmaids, a householder watching for a thief. The lesson is never to calculate the timing but to live so that the timing does not matter. The ready servant is simply doing faithfully what the master left him to do, so that whenever the master comes, he is found at his post.

Readiness, then, is not a special end-times activity. It is ordinary faithfulness kept up over time. It is being the kind of person who would not be ashamed or scrambling if Christ appeared today, because you are already living as one who belongs to him. This is why Jesus followed his warning that no one knows the hour with the simple command to watch. To watch is not to stare at the sky or the news; it is to stay awake in love and obedience while the world sleeps.

There is great freedom in this. Because you cannot know the day, you are released from the exhausting and fruitless work of trying to calculate it, and freed instead to do the good that is in front of you. The farmer plants, the parent raises children, the worker labors honestly, the friend keeps faith, and all of it counts, because any of these ordinary days might be the one the Lord returns, and none of them is wasted if it is done for him. Readiness turns out to be the least anxious way to live, not the most. It asks only that today be faithful, and leaves tomorrow, and the last day, in the hands of God.

Be holy, and be loving

The New Testament ties the hope of Christ's coming directly to holiness and love. John writes that we do not yet know all we shall be, but we know that when Christ appears we shall be like him, and then adds that every one who has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.1 John 3:2 (KJV)

The hope of seeing Christ and becoming like him is meant to draw us toward that likeness now. And the likeness of Christ, above all, is love. It is striking that when Jesus described the final judgment in Matthew 25, he spoke not of who had predicted the date correctly but of who had fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and visited the prisoner and the sick, doing it to him by doing it to the least. The way to be ready for the King is to love the people the King loves. Holiness and love are not the price of the hope; they are its natural fruit in anyone who truly holds it.

Long for his appearing, without fear or date-setting

There is a right longing at the center of the Christian life. Paul speaks of a crown laid up for all who love his appearing, and calls the return of Christ the blessed hope. The believer is meant to want it, to say with the whole Bible, Even so, come, Lord Jesus. That longing is the opposite of fear. Those who belong to Christ do not await his coming the way the guilty await a sentence, but the way a bride awaits a wedding or children await a father coming home.

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;Titus 2:13 (KJV)

This rules out two errors at once. It rules out fear-mongering, the turning of the blessed hope into a source of dread, which Scripture never does for those who are Christ's. And it rules out date-setting, which Jesus forbade and which always distracts from the actual work of watching and loving. The Christian neither cowers nor calculates. They live in glad expectation, keeping the lamp lit, doing the next faithful thing, and leaving the day in the Father's hands.

The sober hope that holds it all together

So this cluster ends where it began, on solid and shared ground. Christians may differ, sincerely and in good faith, over the rapture and the millennium and the sequence of events, and The Living Bread describes those differences rather than dictating them. But no one who follows Jesus is left in doubt about how to live in the meantime, because on that the whole church speaks with one voice: be ready, be holy, love one another, and long for his coming.

That is a life anyone can begin today, whatever they have concluded about the details. It does not require a chart or a prediction. It requires only that you belong to Christ and let that belonging shape your days. He is coming; that much is certain. The dead will be raised; that much is certain. There will be a judgment, and God will make all things new; those too are certain. Build your life on the certainties, hold the rest with humility and peace, and live each ordinary day as one who is glad the King is on his way home.

And if you are not yet sure you belong to him, that is the one thing worth settling, and it can be settled now. The whole point of his coming is that he does not want to come for strangers but for his own, and he has made the way open to anyone who will turn to him and trust him. You do not have to clean yourself up first, understand every doctrine, or resolve every question about the end. You have only to come to the one who is coming, the crucified and risen Jesus, and say yes to him. Do that, and the day of his return changes from a threat into the best news you have ever heard: the day your Lord comes home, and brings you home with him.

A note on the end times: on the questions where sincere Christians differ, chiefly the rapture, the millennium, and the timing and details of Christ's return, this platform is non-denominational and describes the main views fairly rather than declaring a winner. What all Christians share and hold as certain is this: Christ will return, the dead will be raised, there will be a judgment, and God will make all things new. We anchor on that, and hold the rest in peace.

Related: The signs of the times · The new heavens and new earth · Who is Jesus? · The Return of Christ