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"When Christ Who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory."
The one hope of our calling is that we shall be manifested with Him in glory. The
hope of the One Body antedates the second advent. By the time the Lord descends
from heaven with a shout, and the saints of the Thessalonian company rise to meet Him
in the air, the one hope of our calling will have been realized. We have a prior hope
(Eph. 1: 12). The signs of the times thicken around us. The movements of the nations
and of the nation of Israel are trumpet-tongued. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.
If the hope of the parousia is near, so much nearer must be the one hope of our calling.
There have been some who have foolishly asserted that we deny the coming of the
Lord. We trust that no reader will give credence to such a statement. What we believe is
that the coming of the Lord to the air or to the Mount of Olives is not the hope of the
one body, which is a very different matter.
ONE LORD.--As we have seen, the Person and Office of Christ as the one Lord is
vital to the unity of the Spirit. The title Lord supposes resurrection.
"For to this end Christ both died, and lived again, that He might be Lord of the dead
and of the living" (Rom. 14: 9).
The great confession of things in heaven, things on earth, and things under the earth is
that "Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father". Here again the dominion over
both dead and living is manifest.
We do not embark here upon the fact that whoever bears the title "Lord" is the
Jehovah of the O.T., as too many and weighty matters arise out of this to be discussed
here. We have dealt with this subject in a series entitled "One Lord". We must not,
however, omit one passage, namely, I Cor. 8: 5, 6:--
"For though there be that are called gods, either celestial or terrestrial (as there be
gods many, and lords many), yet to us there is but one God, the Father, of Whom are all
things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by Whom are all things, and we by
Him."
To understand this passage we must make a digression. When Paul went to Athens
and preached the gospel, some said:--
"He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange (or foreign) DEMONS" (Acts 17: 18).
Now what was there in the gospel as preached by Paul that could have led to such an
idea? The Scripture says that the Athenians thought this:--
"Because he preached unto them Jesus, AND THE RESURRECTION" (Acts 17: 18).
What connection can there be between "Jesus and the resurrection" and "foreign
demons"? We must understand that among the Gentiles demons were supposed to be the
spirits of men who had died. These demons acted as mediators between men and the
far-off celestial gods. They were the "gods terrestrial" and the "lords many" of