The Nearness of the Day of the Lord

“For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand.” (Romans 13:11b-12a)

There is no doubt that the apostle Paul assumed that the return of Christ was within a few years of his own life. Paul thought it very likely that he would live to see the Second Coming; but if not, certainly he thought that some of those he knew would be alive to experience it.

At the same time, Paul never actually assigns a date, and never taught that the Second Coming would occur within such-and-such a time frame. Two millennia of history would have disappointed Paul, but not shaken his faith. Indeed, Paul would have looked at the events of history and noticed that they were fulfilling his own prophecy of a great gentile in-gathering, spoken of in Romans 9-10. New peoples, whom he had no knowledge of, still needed to hear the gospel, so it is only natural that the Second Coming must await their salvation.

This does not diminish the need to live for the end. The night is far gone and as Schreiner explains, “the reign of evil has almost expired and is in its last gasp” (Romans, 678). Such a realization demands that believers live a certain way. Because the Master could arrive at any moment, we must live as servants who are waiting for him to burst through the door (Jesus gave this as the point of several of his parables).

We often think differently, and we make plans differently. But what if we believed and lived that the end was near? That it was quite likely, even probable, that we might experience the Second Coming? Would that change the way that we live, the decisions we make, the retirements that we plan for?

We are not really told when the end will come, only that it is ‘at hand.’ Whether that means it is going to come in the next year or the next millennia, we know by faith that it is not all that long in the great scheme of things, and we are to live in a way that reflects that.

But doesn’t the church need to think long-term, to be prepared to play the long game? In God’s surprising economy, he has structured the world so that the people who live for the short term (those who live in light of the nearness of eternity) actually are most effective in the long term. The effect of missionaries like Adoniram Judson, Jim Elliott, and John Chau, who felt the urgency of the Great Commission, often has a greater effect in reaching the lost and inspiring the saved, than those who have taken no risks for God, because they were playing the long game. In God’s unique ways, he shall see to it that the future is provided for.

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