How seriously and sincerely do you anticipate the return of Jesus Christ? Does it occupy your thinking, especially since we see our culture turn into a cesspool of immorality, indecency, inhumanity and idolatry? Or do you ever think about it? And what difference does it make if you do think about it?
You may not be a scholar of end times events. You may not care who the Antichrist is or will be. But do you long for Jesus’ coming?
Paul, at the end of his life, wrote to Timothy and said:
Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing (2 Timothy 4:8).
Do you “love his appearing”; do you long for it? Is it something you want to happen soon? I can remember in Bible college several us of not wanting Christ to return until after we had gotten married! Maybe there are some things you would like to do before that day. But I hope that you will tune your heart to wanting Christ to return.
Is your heart oriented in eager expectation of seeing your blessed Savior, Jesus Christ, face to face? Are you eager for your faith to become sight, and to enjoy daily intimacy with God through Christ? Do you wake up in the morning and think, “This could be the day”?
Here is our passage in Hebrews, chapter 9, verses 27 and 28:
27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Notice the structure of this sentence: “Inasmuch as it is appointed unto men . . . so Christ also. . . .” Notice the comparison, “as it is [with men], so Christ also…” The comparison is made between something we do, we die and later come into judgment, and something Christ does– He died and later come to save from judgment.
Christ’s experience of dying and appearing “a second time” has a definite and decisive impact on our lives. His experience of dying and returning utterly transforms our experience of dying and coming into judgment.
“His death and our death are not parallel. His utterly transforms ours. Our arrival at the judgment and his arrival at the judgment are not parallel. His rescues us. In other words, the parallel between our life and Christ’s life is designed to show how utterly dependent on him we are at every point of our lives, and how great he is. He is the strong saving one and we are the weak and desperate ones” (John Piper, https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/what-christ-will-do-at-the-second-coming).
These two verses encourage us to think about the two biggest issues of our lives: death and coming judgment. The reality is, we will be held accountable for how we lived our lives. But it does more. It shows how Christ has gone before us in death and judgment and transformed it into eternal life for us!
Let’s look at the first statement: “And just as it is appointed for man to die once…” Each one of us has an appointment with death that we cannot escape. W. Somerset Maugham rather humorously captures this in “The Appointment in Samarra.” In this short story, death is speaking.
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
Now, obviously we would not make an appointment with death. That would be absurd. No one wants to make an appointment with death. So who makes it? God does, of course.
When Adam and Eve sinned, human death entered the world. And God appointed the curse of death for every one of their ancestors. Romans 5:12 gives us the background. It says, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” God had warned this is what would happen, starting with Adam and Eve, and every single one of their offspring. Genesis 5 contains the constant refrain, “and he died.”
And our death is not simply by natural processes, but it is an appointment by God. God appointed the day of my birth and the day of my death.
Psalm 139:16 puts it like this: “And in thy book [O God] they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.” A certain number of days are ordained for me by God. God sets this appointment, not Satan and not my enemy and not cancer and not me. God not only set the appointment, but He makes sure we keep that appointment.
He plans it and he brings it to pass. You recall how Job said when his children were killed by the collapse of their home, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). So the Lord makes the appointment. And the Lord sees to it that death and we keep the appointment.
Far from being fatalistic, this shows that our whole life is governed by the all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving God, no matter what it may look like to us. God maps out and guides every single day of our lives with loving care.
You recall how Jesus spoke to the apostle Peter in John 21:9 that the day was coming (the appointment was made) when he would be crucified like Jesus.
And a few minutes later Jesus spoke to Peter about the apostle John and said, “If I want him to remain [alive] until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:22). In other words, Christ himself decides when and how his servants will die. “If I want him to remain, he will remain. If I want to take him, I will take him. You are all in my hands” (see Revelation 6:11). So Henry Martyn, the young missionary to Persia, was right to say, “If [Christ] has work for me to do, I cannot die.” (Journal and Letters, 460).
You can be confident that you will not die until you fulfill God’s purpose for your life. Satan doesn’t make that ultimate choice, neither does some disease or accident, but Jesus Christ.
But there’s something else to learn from this statement, “it is appointed for man to die once.” Along with the significance of the word “appointed,” there is the significance of the word “once.”
It may not have been upon the mind of our writer, but this rules out reincarnation. We will not live, then die, then live, then die, then live, then die over and over again. The point of our writer using the word “once” highlights the finality of death. It is over. Your life in this world is done. We die once.
Now all of this should have a profound effect on us. Samuel Johnson said, in 1777, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Moses put it like this in Psalm 90:12, “So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
Jesus knew that his days were numbered and encouraged his disciples, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4).
If you want to be wise and make something significant of your life, you will realize that you will not live forever and you need to get busy and get involved in God’s work now.
Now, it is true that some will not die. Some in Bible history did not die. Enoch (Genesis 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11) were taken up and did not die at all. They never died once. Those at the rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4 will be “caught up” with those who had died to meet the Lord in the air (4:16-17).
Some died twice. Several people in the Bible were raised from the dead (1 Kings 17:22, 2 Kings 13:20-21, Matthew 9:25, John 11:43-44, Acts 20:9-11). Yet the general principle is still true. We are born, we live, and we die. And not accidentally, but according to the plan of God.
And it is the next phrase that gives understanding our death its greatest urgency and importance. Hebrews 9:27 says,“It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.”
Death is not the end of our existence. We are not just material beings who cease to exist or just decompose when we die. We have souls that continue to live and will eventually come into judgment. The theory of evolution, of course, wants to deny this. They propose that life consists only of the material body and deaths ends it all. They do not believe in immortality or life after death.
They don’t want to face the terrifying thought that one day they will appear before the tribunal of God and have to give account of how they lived their lives—whether they loved God with all their hearts, believed in Jesus His Son and lived in obedience to His laws.
This verse is affirming that we have but one life to live and only one opportunity to believe in Christ and experience salvation. We also know that there is no second chance to be saved after physical death because our author says that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (v. 27). He doesn’t say that after death comes yet another opportunity to be saved.
But the Bible says, “after this comes judgment.” After we die, we will face judgment. “And it is the most terrifying prospect in the universe, that we might be met after death with a holy and angry and omnipotent God holding us accountable for whether we trusted him and worshipped him and followed his ways in this life. That is a fearful prospect” (John Piper, https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/what-christ-will-do-at-the-second-coming).
Hebrews does not leave us in the dark about what this means. In Hebrews 10:27 it says, “A certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries” awaits us. And three verses later it says, “We know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people’” (verse 30). So when our text says that we have an appointment with death and after death with judgment, it means that it will be terrifying and a furious fire and a great act of divine vengeance even on those who claim to be part of God’s people, but are only external Christians.
These are very sobering realities. The writer makes the comparison between our experience and Christ’s. “It is appointed to us to die once and after that comes judgment.”
But what about Christ? ’ “So Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await him.”
We both die. We both appear somewhere after death. Those are the similarities of experience. But the contrast is great.
We die because we sinned (Romans 6:23). Christ died because of our sins. He made an offering “once to bear the sins of many.” When Christ died he bore sins. He took sins not his own. He suffered for sins that others had done. Look back for a moment at verse 26 (from last week). The last line says, “He has been manifested at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” So verse 28 says that “he bore the sins of many,” and verse 26 says that the effect of this is that “he put away sin.”
In reality, the greatest problem of your life and mine is not death and judgment, but sin. It is because of sin that we die and because of sin that we will be judged. If something could be done about our sin, it would make a huge difference. And fortunately something has been done about it. Jesus “bore the sins of many,” He died for our sins. He paid the penalty so that we would not have to. He died the death that I should have died. I should have paid for my own sins. But out of God’s rich mercy He provided a sacrifice in our place, Jesus Christ His Son.
So I do die, or probably will. But my death is no longer a punishment for sin. My sin has been “put away” by the death of Christ. We still die because of the effects of the curse brought on by sin, but death is not a curse for us.
The death of God’s children is not wrath against them. Paul cries out in 1 Corinthians 15:55–57,
O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
In other words, the sting is taken away because the death of Christ satisfied the law’s demand and set us free from condemnation. Death becomes an entrance into salvation not condemnation, for those who have believed in Jesus Christ.
That is what the final phrase means. “Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin.” Again, there are two wonderful truths here.
First, is that the first coming of Christ, His life of total obedience and His substitutionary sacrifice was completely sufficient, doing everything necessary to erase our indebtedness. The penalty has been completely paid. The guilt of sin has been fully removed.
He came the first time to deal with sin, but when he returns, it will be “without reference to sin.” That much of the end-time salvation is past and done. “Once for all at the end of the ages” this great salvation happened. It cannot be improved on.
But there is more. This is the second great truth. We had to face the issue of death, and so Christ faced death and bore the guilt and punishment of it for us. Now, we must face judgment, and so Christ comes a second time for us, this time not to deal with sin, but to save us from judgment. That’s what it means in verse 28 when it says, “He shall appear a second time for salvation.” This is not an addition to the salvation that the death of Christ purchased; it is an application of the salvation that Christ purchased. This is what Christ bought in his death.
Christ came the first time and died to bear our sin and free us from condemnation, providing for us the asbestos shield he gives us to protect us in the “fury of fire which will consume the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:27; see 2 Thessalonians 1:7 and 1 Thessalonians 1:10). Paul referred to this in Romans 5:9-10.
9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
Now, to whom is He coming to save from judgment? To the “many” who “eagerly await him.” In other words, to believers who love Him and look forward to His coming.
“This eager expectation (says John Piper) for Christ is simply a sign that we love him and believe in him authentically. There is a phony faith that wants only to escape from hell, but has no desire for Christ. That does not save. And it does not produce an eager expectation for Christ to come. It would rather that Christ not come for as long as possible so that it can have as much of this world as possible. But the faith that really holds on to Christ as treasure and hope and joy is the faith that makes us long for Christ to come, and that is the faith that saves” (John Piper, https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/what-christ-will-do-at-the-second-coming)
Instead of judgment, Christ will come to save us and to bring us into glory. This is the final phase of God’s saving work through Christ: justification, which saves us from the penalty of sin; sanctification, which saves us from the power of sin; and glorification, which saves us from the presence of sin.
The work that Christ did when He came the first time finally and fully settled the issue of guilt and condemnation because of sin through the death of Jesus Christ as our substitute. We should look forward to the return of Christ, longing to be finally free even from the presence of sin, abundantly glad that we will not enter into judgment.
Let’s join Paul in loving His appearing and eagerly wanting His return. Look forward to seeing your Savior face to face.
Grace Still Amazes 