[AI translation] In explaining the Apostles' Creed, we have come to the proposition which we confess in the Creed: "From thence shall come judgment of the living and the dead!" This is what I want to talk about now. I know that this is perhaps the least "popular" tenet of our creed. This is because, over time, a lot of fantastic fantasies have almost made the whole problem of Jesus' return unlikely, almost into the realm of fantasy. So let us try to think very soberly and grasp the essence of the news of Jesus' return in judgment.First of all, I would like to emphasise very strongly that the reason why the Creed speaks about it, and why we must speak about it, is because Jesus and the apostles also spoke about it. And very often! I could almost say that one of the most important things God says in the New Testament is that Jesus, who came into this world in the fullness of time, will come again at the end of time! Someone has counted that in the 280 chapters of the New Testament, the idea of Christ's second coming occurs almost 300 times. If the Spirit of God has seen fit to give so many revelations, warnings and teachings on this subject, it must surely be of great significance to us. Jesus and the apostles always speak of this Second Coming as the final act of the present age and the great opening of a new age. With this - with the coming of Jesus again - earthly history will come to an end and a new way of life will begin, a new heaven and a new earth. In the new crisis of the old past and the new one to come, Jesus Christ will rise in the full majesty of his divine power to judge and save!
The difficulty for our thinking is that it is here that we really come into contact with the eternal mystery of the person of Jesus, that is, that Jesus Christ was a man among us in whom God appeared on earth. Jesus of Nazareth - the man - is at the same time the Christ of God, the personification, the representative, the image of the living and powerful God for men. He is the man in whom the invisible God gave tangible proof of His reality, His love, His will, His goodness, His being. And it is this divine nature of that Jesus of Nazareth that human reason keeps running up against, because it is precisely that which we cannot grasp historically, that which we cannot fit into our schema of cause and effect, that which is beyond all human conceivability and possibility. In the person of Jesus, God reveals himself to us humans, but as it were incognito, that is to say: hiding his divine glory, dignity, heavenly goodness in the form of an earthly, historical man, inserted as it were into the servile form of the despised, suffering and doomed to death Jesus. The Pharisees, the scribes, Pilate, Herod, and many others saw only this historical person, the man Jesus; Peter and Andrew, Mary and Martha, James and Matthew, and many others, saw something else, what John put into words, "we beheld his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." (Jn 1,14) And they came to this realization not as a result of historical research, but by faith in Him. So they believed in Him!
So the great eternal mystery of the person of Jesus is that God reveals Himself in Him. The eternal God, who does not live in the forms of created life, in space and time, and who in Jesus entered, as it were, into the forms of created life, into human existence bound to the categories of space and time. This is why Jesus' words and actions always reveal something incomprehensible, something that breaks and explodes our human possibilities and thoughts. Of course, because in that man God speaks and works! That is why in the miracles, sufferings, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus there shines through, as if translucently, a kind of heavenly light, the glory of the Word, the reign and eternity of God, which, if one considers it without faith, with mere human logic, one sees as incomprehensible nonsense, impossibility and folly. So it is the divine nature hidden in Jesus that makes his life on earth always problematic for us! How can it not be incomprehensible and problematic for us when Jesus' return is a matter of this divine quality, divine power and authority coming out of hiding and revealing itself in its full unconcealment? His return means that the veil will be lifted and Jesus Christ will appear to all living as He now reigns in heaven at the right hand of the Father. He will return as the executor of divine omnipotence, holding our whole existence in His hands.
So, one day, in all its reality and awfulness, the full divine glory of the despised Jesus Christ will be revealed. It will be revealed in all its reality and horror that the child in the manger, and the mocked, mocked, enslaved wretch on the cross, and the mysterious One in Whom the army of Christians has believed invisibly for 2,000 years: truly the Lord of the world, truly the living and omnipotent God Himself! Behold, he appears as it were in the clouds of heaven, says the Scripture, so that, just as he was invisible when he ascended into heaven, so he now appears in eternity... Like the lightning that flashes from sunrise to sunset, it will be impossible to ignore his presence, his dazzling divine glory. It will be unveiled before the eyes of all, those who were expecting it and those who were not. It will be seen by those who hoped for it, but also by those who did not hope for it, by those who believed and those who denied it, by those who loved it and those who hated it! For now he comes not only as King of hearts, but as Lord of the world, pervading all power and all places!
Our thinking, bound to the forms of space and time, already encounters difficulties when it encounters the divine revelation hidden in history, space and time. How much more can all our human concepts and ideas fail when it comes to the unveiled glory and power of God! It is a mystery that is almost impossible to speak of, for we simply lack the words and the capacity to comprehend it. Even Jesus himself, when he spoke of his coming again, almost stammered out what is almost impossible to put into words. That is why he used such images, such symbols, that "the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not shine, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken." (Mt 24,29), which means that the whole universe will be caught up in that last great judgment. These very perceptible features in the portrayal of the end times refer to the fact that the return of Jesus cannot be taken figuratively, metaphorically, and explained in such a way that the last judgment is ultimately nothing more than a heightened operation of our conscience. It is precisely what Jesus wanted us to understand by these words, that His person and redemptive death is indeed the standard by which the fate of all men is judged. And this is also a picture. And then shall all the families of the earth weep, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." (Mt 24,30) So a great confrontation is taking place: this world that condemned Christ is now being condemned by Christ himself! And one day, tears of bitter self-reproach will be shed by those who thought they could turn Jesus off, but tears of joy will fill the eyes of those who have already served Him as Lord. Yes: all the nations of the earth weep... The only question is, is it in the pain of belated repentance, or in the grateful joy of the reward of faithfulness that one weeps? Then it will also be that every knee will bow before Jesus, and every tongue will confess Him. The only difference will be that some will worship the Lord of all with the compulsion of despair, and others with the exultation of arriving at the goal!
Here on earth, our faith often falters. So incomprehensible things happen, so little of Christ's reign in heaven and earth is seen, so great is the triumph of the Evil One on earth, that we are tempted to wonder: is what we believe true, is redemption true, was not the cross of Calvary in vain? Is God still Lord of this world, does he care at all about earthly history, is there any meaning to a godly life? Well, that is what the return of Jesus means, that there will come a moment when it will be proven beyond doubt that those who believed in Him were right, when it will be proven that it was worth the sacrifice, the suffering, the persecution, for Jesus. It was worth it to deny oneself, to take up His cross and follow Him in love, goodness, service, selflessness, purity. Then all that He promised, all that He said, all that He did, will be found to be true! Then we will be amazed to see how true it is that His blood cleanses us from all sin, that my sins are forgiven because of His death. How true it is that His resurrection opened for me a way to eternal life, and how true it is that our momentary light suffering earns us great, eternal glory. Much truer than we could believe that there is a God, there is salvation, there is eternal life, there is heavenly happiness. There is meaning in faith, in Christian hope, in servant love! Happy indeed are those who cannot see and believe! For one day the veil will fall, and we will happily see, contemplate, perceive all that we have believed in the unseen.
The practical implications of all that we know about Jesus' return were summed up by Jesus himself in this single word of warning: 'Beware!' In heaven and on earth! Many may mock Him, may belittle the son of the carpenter of Nazareth, may even deny His reality, but we know that He who died on the cross and rose again on the third day is alive and reigns in spite of all appearances, and that everything is already serving His invisible glory in the universe. Take care to belong to Him! Take heed, that is, take seriously all that He has ever done and said! Not in vain did He do what He did for you on Calvary, not in vain did He entrust His Word and His Holy Spirit to you, not in vain did He send you among men with a new commandment of love. He will one day take all this from you! You cannot treat people as you like, you cannot spend your time as you like, you cannot do your work as you like, because you will have to give an account of everything! Take heed and live with the sense of responsibility that you will one day have to account for everything before Christ! So take care to always be ready to appear for that great, final reckoning before the Eternal Judge!
Do you know when you are ready? When, in the words of our beautiful creed, the Heidelberg Catechism, you can say with sincere joy, "In all my afflictions and warfare I look with lifted up head to my Judge, Christ, who stood before the judgment seat of God for me on Calvary and took away all condemnation from me!" (Reply 52) Behold, the One who comes to judge is the same One who stood before the judgment seat of God for us and in our place! This is our only hope that He will judge us! Be ready for this at all times, for you do not know at what hour your Lord will come!
Amen
Date: 25 June 1960.
Lesson
Mt 24,27-41