7  Promise and  Warning  Concerning the  Second Coming  (16:27-28)

“For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and will then recompense every man according to his deeds. Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” (16:27-28)

Although the Old Testament contains more than 1,500 prophecies of the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, it was not revealed clearly to the saints of that era that His coming would be in two separate stages, thousands of years apart. The first stage would be characterized by suffering and sacrifice for sin, and the second by conquest and splendor. The central focus of the New Testament is on Christ’s first coming, but the second coming is also mentioned or alluded to once in every 25 verses, a total of some 320 times.

The Old Testament references to a suffering Messiah and Redeemer were frequently rationalized away by Jewish interpreters or spiritualized to the point of insignificance. In the minds of most Jews in Jesus’ day, the Messiah was to come but once, as the conquering King of the earth.

Therefore as Jesus moved closer to His time of suffering, He continued to prepare His disciples for what they all but refused to believe: that He, the divine Son of Man and the Messiah, rather than conquering His enemies and establishing His eternal kingdom on earth at that time, would first have to die at the hands of those enemies.

Matthew 16:27—17:6 contains one of the great highlights of the Lord’s ministry on earth. It looks ahead to His coming that second and last time, the time of His return in exaltation and glory, when all His enemies will indeed be placed under His feet and He will establish the long-hoped-for eternal kingdom. As He introduces this teaching (16:27-28), Jesus gives a promise, a warning, and then a repeat of the promise.

THE PROMISE

For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels; (16:27a)

Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man more than by any other designation. The name reflects His humanness and His incarnation, of His fully identifying Himself with mankind as one of their own, and in this prophetic context the ancient title has especially rich significance.

In his vision of the four beasts, Daniel looked, as it were, across the entire history of mankind and saw its awesome climax. “I kept looking until thrones were set up,” he says, “and the Ancient of Days took His seat; His vesture was like white snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne was ablaze with flames, its wheels were a burning fire.” It was a scene of God, “the Ancient of Days,” sitting on His throne of judgment. His white garments speak of His perfect purity and holiness, His pure wool hair speaks of His perfect wisdom, and the burning wheels speak of His sovereign authority. The “river of fire . . . flowing and coming out from before Him” portrays His consuming, purging divine judgment. With “thousands upon thousands . . . attending Him, and myriads upon myriads . . . standing before Him,” the court of divine judgment convened and “the books were opened” (Dan. 7:9-10).

After the beast, the supreme satanic world leader and the Antichrist, is destroyed, Daniel sees “One like a Son of Man,” who “came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed” (vv. 11-14).

It was about that time of fateful judgment that Jesus was here speaking to the disciples, who desperately needed a word of encouragement. Recently they had heard much of pain but little of gain, much of suffering but little of glory, much of the cross but little of the crown. Jesus therefore assured them that He was indeed the Son of Man whom Daniel saw come in the glory of His Father with His thousands upon thousands and myriads upon myriads of holy angels to receive the kingdom and execute judgment.

Here was Jesus’ first specific revelation to His disciples of His second coming. After just telling them that He was God in human flesh, that He was the promised Messiah, that He would build a kingdom that nothing could hinder or destroy—but that He first had to be rejected, killed, and rise from the dead—He now informed them that He will one day return in great glory and righteous judgment to establish His throne.

In Scripture, the word glory is often used to represent the totality of God’s nature, character, and attributes. When He came to earth as a man, Jesus’ deity was veiled (cf. Phil. 2:6-8), and there was nothing in His human appearance to mark Him as being different from other men (cf. Isa. 53:2). That very fact made it difficult for many Jews to acknowledge Him as the Messiah, whose divine power and glory they thought would be immediately manifest. But that was not God’s plan.

When Moses asked God, “I pray Thee, show me Thy glory!” the Lord replied, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion” (Ex. 33:18-19). To witness God’s attributes is to have a glimpse of His glory, all that the fullness of His name implies.

During the Olivet discourse, only a few days before His arrest and crucifixion, Jesus spoke again of His coming. “But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened,” He said, “and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other” (Matt. 24:29-31). He will then come in blazing, unveiled glory, and the entire earth will be filled with that glory, just as in Isaiah’s vision (Isa. 6:3; cf. Ps. 72:19).

The message that the Messiah would come in glory was not new. It was perhaps the messianic truth with which the Jews of that day were most familiar. Jesus now affirmed and gave a more complete perspective to that truth, a truth His disciples thought was being contradicted and frustrated both by His rejection by the Jewish leaders and by His own failure to assert His divine power and glory.

In Son of Man to Thee I Cry, an old and out-of-print hymn by an unknown author, we find these lovely truths:

He who wept above the grave,
He who stilled the raging wave,
Meek to suffer, strong to save,
He shall come in glory!

He who sorrow’s pathway trod,
He that every good bestowed—
Son of Man and Son of God—
He shall come in glory.

He who bled with scourging sore,
Thorns and scarlet meekly wore,
He who every sorrow bore—
He shall come in glory.

Monarch of the smitten cheek,
Scorn of Jew and scorn of Greek,
Priest and King, divinely meek—
He shall come in glory.

He who died to set us free,
He who lives and loves e’en me,
He who comes whom I shall see, Jesus only—only He—
He shall reign in glory!

For those who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, His return in glory is a comforting and thrilling promise that fills them with great hope and anticipation. Like the saints under the heavenly altar (Rev. 6:9-10), they wonder how long the Lord will allow the world to go its sinful way before intervening in sovereign power and bringing righteousness, equity, and justice to the world. They wonder with the psalmist, “How long, O God, will the adversary revile, and the enemy spurn Thy name?” (Ps. 74:10; cf. 35:17). In response to Jesus’ promise, “Yes, I am coming quickly,” they pray with John, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).

At this point in Jesus’ ministry the disciples especially needed a word of hope from their Lord. He had just told them of His impending suffering and death and of the demanding conditions of true discipleship, of taking up one’s own cross and of giving up one’s own life in order to save it (Matt. 16:21-25). Perhaps for the first time it was becoming clear to them that the way of Christ is the way of self-denial, sacrifice, rejection, persecution, and quite possibly martyrdom. It was beginning to dawn on them that the way of Christ is the way of willing obedience at any price. It is saying no to ease, comfort, money, and pleasure and of saying yes to pain, struggle, persecution, and spiritual warfare for His sake.

THE WARNING

and will then recompense every man according to his deeds. (16:27b)

At His glorious coming Jesus also will then recompense every man according to his deeds. The believer looks forward to the second coming in the hope of sharing His Lord’s glory, whereas the unbeliever can look forward to it only in the fear of being condemned under the Lord’s judgment. Every man here is comprehensive!

In light of that twofold prospect, the Lord’s return is bittersweet for believers who are sensitive and loving. Like John as he tasted the little book he took from the angel’s hand (Rev. 10:10), they think of the second coming as “sweet as honey” regarding their own destiny but “bitter” regarding the destiny of the myriad lost souls who will have nothing of Christ. It was perhaps that truth that prompted Paul to declare, “Therefore knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11).

In speaking here of His recompensing every man according to his deeds, Jesus was speaking in general terms about the second coming, not about a specific event or element within it. He was simply pointing out that it will be a time of glory and reward for those who belong to Him and a time of judgment and punishment for those who do not. His coming will resolve the destiny of every man (cf. John 5:25-29).

On the day of judgment every man will be judged on the basis of his deeds. It is not that deeds are the means of salvation, which is by grace through faith alone. But a person’s outward deeds are the surest evidence of his inward spiritual condition. People are best known by their fruits, Jesus said (Matt. 7:16). James declared that “faith, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17).

Righteous deeds are not the source of salvation, but they are the objective verification that it has occurred. Jesus declared, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). Paul told the Corinthian believers in his first letter to them, “Each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it, because it is to be revealed with fire; and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work” (1 Cor. 3:13). In his second letter to them he said, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). To the church at Thyatira the Lord Himself declared, “I will give to each one of you according to your deeds” (Rev 2:23; cf. 20:13).

Among the last words of Scripture is Jesus’ declaration, “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done” (Rev 22:12). Throughout the New Testament it is repeatedly made clear that “each one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12), who “will render to every man according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, . . . but glory and honor and peace to every man who does good” (Rom. 2:6-10).

No genuinely righteous works can be manifest in the life of an unbeliever, because he has no indwelling Holy Spirit to produce them and no godly new nature through which the holiness of the Spirit can be expressed. The life of the believer, on the other hand, is characterized by righteous works, because he has God’s own life and Spirit within him as the source and power for those works. A person who has no evidence of righteous behavior in his life has no basis for assurance of salvation, no matter how long and vocally he may have professed being a Christian.

Yet the honest, humble believer knows that, no matter how faithfully he studies and obeys God’s Word and has fellowship with Him in prayer, he still falls far short of the Lord’s perfect righteousness. But he also knows that, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). He knows that, by God’s gracious Spirit continuing to work through him, even such confession is verification of his genuineness. His life is sure to produce more fruit that is pleasing to God, fruit for which the Lord will say, “Well done, good and faithful slave, . . . enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21). Because a believer has given his life to Jesus Christ, His own Spirit produces in us works that are worthy of God’s reward. For the believer, therefore, the truth that the Lord will then recompense every man according to his deeds is a wonderful promise.

For unbelievers, however, that truth is a dire warning, because at Christ’s judgment seat they will have no acceptable deeds to present to the Lord as evidence of salvation. Many professed Christians will say to the Lord “on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then [Christ] will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:22-23).

For the unsaved, that day will be one of unrelieved fear as they finally realize that the good works on which they had been relying to make them right with God were nothing more than filthy garments (cf. Isa. 64:6) that leave them totally unfit to stand before the righteous King and Judge. The term Isaiah uses in that passage (usually translated “filthy rags” or “filthy garment”) literally means menstrual cloth, a graphic figure used to represent the best that human goodness can produce. At Jesus’ second coming, Paul warns, He will deal out “retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day” (2 Thess. 1:8-10).

For all men there will be a day of accounting, a day of reckoning. For the cross-bearing, obedient Christian it will be a day of great rejoicing and glory, because he will have evidence that the life of God is within him by faith in Jesus Christ. But for the unrepentant, Christ-rejecting sinner, it will be a day of great terror and torment, because he will have had no evidence of divine life.

THE PROMISE REPEATED

Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. (16:28)

In light of Jesus’ growing opposition by the Jewish religious leaders and His predictions of impending suffering and death, it was no doubt with some skepticism that the disciples heard their Lord’s promise of one day returning in glory. “If we were so confused about His first coming,” they may have reasoned, “why should we get our hopes up about a second coming of which we know so little?” All they seemed sure of at the present time was that their Lord’s work appeared to be an utter failure, that He was facing imminent death, and that He had commanded them to willingly accept the same fate. Therefore, understanding the disciples’ bewilderment and weak faith, Jesus repeated the promise, adding that “some of those who are standing here . . . shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”

Taste death was a common Jewish expression that referred to drinking the cup of death, in other words, to dying. Jesus assured the Twelve that, before death, some of them would see Him coming in His kingdom.

Because all the Twelve have long been dead and Jesus still has not returned after nearly 2,000 years, many people have stumbled over this text. But because Jesus was incapable either of lying or of being mistaken, it should be obvious He was not saying that some of them would not physically die before His actual second coming.

To understand correctly what Jesus meant, it is first of all helpful to know that basileia (kingdom) was often used as a metonym to mean “royal majesty” or “regal splendor”—in much the same way that scepter has long been used figuratively to represent royal power and authority. Used in that way, basileia would refer to a manifestation of Jesus’ kingliness rather than to His literal earthly reign. His promise could therefore be translated, “until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingly splendor.”

At the beginning of his Pentecost sermon Peter quotes an extensive passage from the prophet Joel (Acts 2:28-32), a passage that specifically relates to events that “shall be in the last days” (Acts 2:17; cf. Joel 2:28). Referring to the dramatic events that had just occurred on the Day of Pentecost, Peter said, “This is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16). Yet it is obvious that all of those events did not transpire at Pentecost. God’s Spirit was not poured out on all mankind; there were no “signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke”; and the sun was not “turned into darkness” or “the moon into blood” (Acts 2:17-21). The events of that day, wondrous as they were, did not signal the second coming. The day of Pentecost was not “in the last days” of which Joel spoke.

Nevertheless, the Pentecost events were a glimpse and foretaste of the last days, as Peter declares in verse 16. The “noise like a violent, rushing wind” that “filled the whole house where they [the 120 believers who had gathered for prayer] were sitting,” the appearance of “tongues as of fire” that “rested on each one of them,” and their being filled with the Spirit and enabled “to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance” (2:2-4) were foreshadows of the Lord’s second coming glory. To some extent, all of Jesus’ divine teaching and miracles and the teaching and miracles of the apostles were a glimpse of the kind of phenomena that will characterize that future glory. They were a taste of “the good word of God and the powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6:5) that countless thousands, unbelievers as well as believers, had been privileged to hear and see.

Yet it seems that Jesus’ promise to the Twelve about seeing the Son of Man coming in His kingdom was more definite and immediate than those general glimpses.

It was not uncommon for Old Testament prophecies to combine a prediction of a far distant event with a prediction of one in the near future, with the earlier even prefiguring the latter. Such prophecies would thereby have near as well as distant fulfillments. The fulfillment of the near prophecy served to verify the reliability of the distant one. It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that Jesus verified the reliability of His second coming prophecy by giving a glimpse of His second coming glory to some of the disciples before they would taste death.

In light of that interpretation—and because in all three gospel accounts the promise of seeing His glory is given immediately preceding the account of the transfiguration (see Mark 9:1-8; Luke 9:27-36) and, as mentioned above, basileia can be translated “royal splendor”—it seems that Jesus must here have been referring specifically to His unique and awesome transfiguration before Peter, James, and John only six days later (see 17:1). Those three disciples were the some among the Twelve who would not die until, in a most miraculous preview, they would see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.