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Expecting Advent

Peter F. Whyte, 30 Nov 2008

Do you live in hope or die in despair? It's a common enough saying, and in the light of the current credit crunch perhaps you feel more like it every day.

As we approach Nativity there is a sense of expectancy among younger children. Perhaps those of us who are older feel we have seen it all before. Christmas has become rather jaded. It's more about nostalgia now, for how it used to be, than expecting what it will be.

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That's not a new feeling. At the time of the first Christmas many who lived in Palestine felt the same. Deliverers had come and gone, and still the Jewish people lived under foreign occupation and domination. But hope was kept alive by a small number of expectant believers. When Mary took the infant Jesus to the Temple after his birth, Simeon and Anna were waiting, tipped off by God to the arrival of the Saviour. Luke records in his Gospel that Simeon was “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25). Hope was not disappointed. God had delivered on the promise that he had made long before: the long-expected Saviour had been born.

We live beyond Nativity, but not beyond Advent, for another coming is expected. Jesus promised he would return again. The consequences of that coming will not be the joyous birth of a Saviour, but the fearsome expectation of a Judge. The Apostle Paul told the Athenian philosophers that God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed: and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). That Coming Judge is none other than the Baby of Bethlehem.

But the expectation for that Second Advent need not be fearful. The Apostle Paul also wrote, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Our sin can be dealt with. Jesus' coming at Bethlehem is the means by which he condemned sin in the flesh. His death at Calvary over thirty years later satisfied God's righteous wrath against sinners. And his resurrection three days later is the confirmation that God can give new life to condemned sinners, that they can be counted “in Christ Jesus.”

This Christmas, when you think of Christ the Saviour who came, think also of Christ the Judge who will come. Place your trust in him to be your Saviour, that he might save you from your sins, and the coming judgment on sinners. Then you can truly live in hope. You can live in that unconditional certainty that knows for sure that “whoever believes in [Jesus] is not condemned.” (John 3:18)

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standard citation for this article:
Peter F. Whyte, ‘Expecting Advent’, 30 Nov 2008,
Gilnahirk Baptist Church Web site. http://www.gilnahirkbaptist.org.uk/resources/welcome/advent08-expect.php (accessed 31 Jul 2010).