The Emperors sometimes made a tour of the provinces. Paul here thinks of
Christians as waiting for their Emperor to come across the seas to this
outlying corner of His dominions. The whole grand name is given here,
all the royal titles to express solemnity and dignity, and the character
in which we look for Him is that of Saviour. We still need salvation,
and though in one sense it is past, in another it will not be ours until
He comes the second time without sin unto salvation. The eagerness of
the waiting which should characterise the expectant citizens is
wonderfully described by the Apostle's expression for it, which
literally means to look away out--with emphasis on both
prepositions--like a sentry on the walls of a besieged city whose eyes
are ever fixed on the pass amongst the hills through which the relieving
forces are to come.
It may be said that Paul is here expressing an expectation which was
disappointed. No doubt the early Church looked for the speedy return of
our Lord and were mistaken. We are distinctly told that in that point
there was no revelation of the future, and no doubt they, like the
prophets of old, 'searched what manner of time the spirit of Christ
which was in them did signify.' In this very letter Paul speaks of death
as very probable for himself, so that he had precisely the same double
attitude which has been the Church's ever since, in that he looked for
Christ's coming as possible in his own time, and yet anticipated the
other alternative. It is difficult, no doubt, to cherish the vivid
anticipation of any future event, and not to have any certainty as to
its date. But if we are sure that a given event will come sometime and
do not know when it may come, surely the wise man is he who thinks to
himself it may come any time, and not he who treats it as if it would
come at no time. The two possible alternatives which Paul had before him
have in common the same certainty as to the fact and uncertainty as to
the date, and Paul had them both before his mind with the same vivid
anticipation.
The practical effect of this hope of the returning Lord on our 'walk'
will be all to bring it nearer Paul's. It will not suffer us to make
sense our God, nor to fix our affections on things above; it will
stimulate all energies in pressing towards the goal, and will turn away
our eyes from the trivialities and transiencies that press upon us, away
out toward the distance where 'far off His coming shone.'