F. G. Patterson
Matthew
Christ is presented in the gospel narratives in four distinct ways. In Matthew He is seen as Jehovah-Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham and presented to His people and rejected. In consequence, He passes to His higher glory as "Son of man," over all the works of God's hands (Psa. 8), through death and resurrection. Then He is presented as coming back as Son of man in judgment with the ensigns of Jehovah—power and great glory.
If you examine Matt. 24, you find the Messiah rejected by His people and cast out, then returning as Son of man in judgment, and delivering His people Israel. First dealing with Jews in the land of Judea (vss. 15-31), He appears for their deliverance. Then He gathers the "elect" of Israel from the four winds, from among the nations of the earth. (See Isa. 11:11-1211And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. 12And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. (Isaiah 11:11‑12); Zech. 2:66Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north, saith the Lord: for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, saith the Lord. (Zechariah 2:6).)
Before that day comes, there is an immense heavenly interval, during which Christians are in relationship with Christ. We have this presented under three parables: the good and the evil servant; the wise and foolish virgins, and the faithful and the unfaithful use of the spiritual gifts of Christ as ascended and gone away for the time from Israel, until He comes and reckons judicially with His servants.
Then when the time we are passing through is past and gone, you find that after having come and delivered Israel (Ch. 24:15-31), and dealt in the true appraisal of the work and watchfulness of His servants (Ch. 24:44-51; 25:1-30), He sits upon the throne of His glory. There before Him are gathered the Gentiles (or nations), and His brethren after the flesh, the Jewish remnant of that day. The former are judged as to how they had received the message of His coming kingdom and glory through the latter. Believing and bowing to it constituted them the "sheep"; the rejection of it, the "goats." It is the judgment of the "quick" which introduces the millennial kingdom, the thousand years of earthly blessing. It will be seen that there are three classes of persons in this scene: the sheep, the goats, and His brethren.
You must quite set aside the human thought of this scene being a "general judgment" -there is nothing so foreign to Scripture. God does not confound together the saved and lost in that world, when by the truth He has wrought to separate them here, much as man has blotted out the distinction. In the judgment of the great white throne of Rev. 20, after a thousand years there is not a living man seen; in that of this chapter not a dead man is seen!
Besides all this, the ground of judgment in this solemn scene would embrace only a small proportion of the population of the world. Comparatively few will have had the testimony addressed to them, which forms the ground of judgment here, or any testimony from God. They will be judged according to their works—a totally different ground of judgment. This precludes the thought of its being a general judgment. Nothing but most careless reading, or the bias of human thought, could have so interpreted the passage.
With this judgment of the living nations the Jewish mind was most familiar; with a judgment of the dead but little. To us as Christians, the judgment of the dead is a familiar thought, and the judgment of the "quick" very little known.
Mark
In the Gospel of Mark, the Lord Jesus is presented as God's servant in testimony, in His holy mission of service of love. At the close of it, when ascended and in glory, it is said, even then, "the Lord working with" His servants whom He had left to carry on His heavenly mission here below. He is still the worker as gone up.
In chapter 13 you find Him as one who has gone away, and gave to "every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch." Then He comes back to see if each is at his post of service and watching, whether at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning. Thus is the Lord's coming presented in keeping with the gospel of His service-His own work, or that of His servants. He comes back to see if each servant is at his post.
Here let me say to you that it is a very solemn thing for every soul to inquire, Am I filling up the little niche of service that He has given me? There are not only great gifts, but joints and bands, and the body of Christ is said to increase by the joints and bands, every joint supplying that which belongs to itself in the mutual and effectual working of the measure of each one part.
It is a great thing if each has found out his own path of service for the Lord. It may be by earnest prayer in one, by the use of his temporal means in another, of the spiritual gifts in a third. In one way or another, He has given us something to do for Him, and He is coming back to ascertain how each is discharging the duty given him, and "at an hour ye think not.”
Therefore, after giving to each his work, and commanding the porter to watch, He says, "What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.”
Luke
In Luke, who is the great moralizer, presenting things morally to men's souls, and looking for a moral state in them, we find another thing. If Matthew gives us the official glory of the Messiah, and Mark the mission of service of One who "went about doing good," Luke gives us Himself-Jesus the Son of man and dealing morally with man.
What, then, will he look for as he presents to us the Lord's coming? A moral state of soul in those who have such a hope. In chapter 12, "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning"—that is, not resting here. "Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted." If you compare every place in Scripture where you find girded loins spoken of, you will find the characteristic of the place is toiling and journeying on in a scene where your heart and affections must be braced up; they must not flow out here. It is a place of conflict and toil of some sort or other.
He speaks here of a "little flock." Ch. 12:32. He says, I have charged Myself with your circumstances; you need not be of a doubtful mind. "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord." Notice the word "like"—that the world might take knowledge of them. Nothing tests the heart like the coming of the Lord. I say there is nothing in Scripture that has such testing power with souls. If the Lord's coming is the horizon of the soul, see how little you will care for this scene, how little laying up for the future. The world would say, Well, it is plain what the man is doing. His hope is imprinting itself on his life, and acting itself out in all his ways. Of what value is this blessed hope if it be only held as a doctrine?
What is so blessed is that it brings a divine Person before the soul, and the heart is drawn out after Christ. It cultivates intimacy with Christ as we pass through this scene. Your heart is in the very condition that will welcome His return; it enjoys and cultivates a deepening intimacy with the One for whom it waits. Nothing brings Christ so personally before the soul as the hope of His coming.
John
John presents to us the divine Word manifest in flesh: the only begotten Son of the Father, the Son of God. And instead of a coming in power and glory, or in scrutiny of service, or as expecting a moral state of soul and heart to answer His own, He says in chapter 14, "I go"! I must take your heart and affections out of this place and all earthly hopes. I must lead them into the Father's house, where there are many mansions. David's kingdom and Messiah's glory must now fade away in your hopes and hearts. The day will come when all that earthly glory will be consummated. But your hopes are in another sphere. I am about to enter the Father's house as man. I have wrought out on the cross your title to be there. I enter it Myself in the title by which you will enter into it. Then "I will come again and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:33And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:3).
Thus His instruction deals with and supersedes the hopes of the Jewish hearts around Him, and, as a consequence, suits our hearts which have had no such hopes at all.
How blessed to find that the moment I am free in heart and conscience before the Father and in the knowledge of His grace, there was an abode in His house on high for me before ever the world was! Why is it that we never find any description of the Father's house in Scripture? You have the heavenly Jerusalem described in her wondrous glory and displayed as His bride, but never the Father's house. It is because you are supposed to be familiar with the Father's Son; the Father is revealed in Him. Then it is sufficient to know that He is there, and the heart rests content in peaceful joy in the sense that where Jesus is, it is enough! "That where I am, there ye may be also.”
There is only one other passage in John (Ch. 17:24) that brings you thus into heaven and the Father's house. This is suited to John, because he is occupied in unfolding God on earth in Christ, not as Paul who rather shows us Christ as a man gone on high, and our place in Him in glory.
Christ as seen in Each book of the New Testament
N. Berry