Advent Words 2023
Day 6: Between
“For the
grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to
ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live
self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory
of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who
gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to
purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what
is good.” Titus
2:11-14
As we saw with the word “epiphany” on day 2, we live in this
present age between the two comings of Christ. His first coming brought the
promise of salvation to all people (Titus 2:11); his second coming will bring
our hope of glory (Titus 2:14). For now, we live in between what God has done
and what God will do.
In this in-between time, we are called to a specific way of
life. Right now, those who are in Christ already have every spiritual blessing
in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). It’s a done deal. In Christ we possess these
spiritual blessings which enable us to live for Christ. We just need to
discover and accept that we already possess them and allow them to enable us to
live the fullness of life God intends for us. This is the role of indicatives,
or statements of fact, in the New Testament. Indicatives point out what is
already true of you in Christ. Some of those indicatives are spelled out in the
rest of Ephesians 1:3-14: In Christ you are chosen, holy, blameless, adopted as
a child of God, you have redemption, forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, and an
inheritance.
One might say then, “since we already possess every
spiritual blessing in Christ, all we have to do now is to be happy and wait for
Christ to return”. Like I said before, it is true that we possess every
spiritual blessing in Christ now, but Paul points out in Titus 2:11-14, that
while we possess those blessings, the grace of God, it is intended that God’s
people will live in this current age in a manner that expresses to the world
around us that we are His very own people. In this present age God’s people “live
self-controlled, upright and godly lives… eager to do what is good”.
How we live in between Christ’s two epiphanies
matters. We live for Christ and as Christ’s representatives, His
ambassadors.
“For the love of
Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all;
therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might
live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was
raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no
one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a
human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is
in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new
has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to
himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God
was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses
against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we
are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech
you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to
be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of
God.” 2 Corinthians 5:14-21
(RSV)
In this time between
Christ’s two comings we are called to live by the grace God has given us,
living upright and holy lives, eager to do good, while we wait with our eyes
focused on the blessed hope – the appearing of the glory of our God and Savior
Jesus Christ.
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