νόμοι Χριστοῦ) and awaits us. He sighs for this eavenly house; without stripping off the present body, he longs to ‘put on over it’ (ἐπενδύσασθαι) the other,—were it only possible for him to be found ‘not naked’ (bodiless), but still in the flesh at the Lord’s coming (vv.7*). Though weary of the earthly tabernacle, Paul’s Jewish imagination shuddered at the naked, houseless estate of the dead. But he has gathered a great comfort which dispels the dread af dissolution ; he is now ‘ well- eet to leave home in departing from the body,’ or he will be ‘at home with the Lord’ (vv.**). ‘The dead in Christ’ are His guests in Paradise (1 Th 4% 18; of, Lk 23%, 2Co 19). Thus the sense of indissoluble union with Christ delivered the apostle from the pangs of Sheol, which came upon him in the interval between 1 and 2 Co (2 Co 1" δ", 1 Th 5”, Col 1% 3'*; see p. 711"). The Advent and Judgment were as necessary to the consummation of the kingdom of God, in St. Paul’s belief, after he wrote 2 Co as before (see 5! Ὁ}, also Col 3*).
The chiliastic doctrine of a twofold resurrection has no support from Paul; when he writes (1 Th 415) ‘thed in Christ shall rise first,’ that means not, before the other dead rise, but before ‘the living’ are ‘caught up’ tojoin them. In 2 Co 5! bad and
ood appear side by side at Christ’s tribunal, as in is 17*-*! and in the scene of Mt 25", There is no reason to think that the apostle departed from the doctrine of his Master concerning the general resurrection and universal judgment.
(5) The second coming of the Lord Jesus closes the horizon of St. Paul’s Christian thought, and ushers in the end of all things. The Advent shines vividly in the first three and last three of his Epistles. The παρουσία of 1 and 2 Th and 1 Co becomes the ἐπιφάνεια of the Pastorals (also 2 Th 2*)—a glorious Divine manifestation, such as, indeed, the first coming was in its kind (Tit 2", 2 Ti 1). This expectation rested on the a ag promise of Jesus, and on the prophecies of the Messianic salvation and ‘the da a the Lord’ as yet unfulfilled (Ac 178, Ro 2515, 1 Th 5, 2Th 2, 1Co 15), but especially upon the sense of the glory due to Christ Himself (Ph 2"), The Parousia is ‘the mani- festation of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Christ Jesus’; therefore it is ‘the blessed hope’ (Tit 24, 2Th 2"), The great day of the Lord, the goal of prophecy, becomes ‘the day of
PAUL THE APOSTLE
Christ.’ His resurrection began, the triumphal advent of the Lord Jesus shall complete, His vin- dieation. He will descend from heaven in a visible ‘body of glory’ (1 Th 1”, Ph 3% 7), surrounded by angels, and ‘in fire of flame’ terrible and fatal to His enemies (2 Th 17-* 2°, 1 Th 416,1 Co 15%). At His word, uttered by the archangel’s trumpet, the dead rise, the living saints are transformed and lifted from the earth; all assemble before Him for judgment, and with body and spirit reunited ‘each shall receive the things done in the body, whether good or bad,’ ‘reaping corruption’ or ‘life eternal’ according as he sowed to flesh or spirit (2 Co 5", Gal 67°). So ‘we shall all be mani- fested’—‘the day shall disclose each man’s work, the fire shall test’ its worth (1 Co 3, Ro 2°").
It might seem—indeed it has been asserted— that Paul thus reverts at the end to the principle of salvation by works which he overthrew at the beginning. But, as we have seen (ii. 3 (c)), the faith that justifies, operating through love, is the spring of all worthy living, while ‘works of law,’ wrought under constraint and fear, are no ‘good works.’ Faith justifies the believer now; the ‘work of faith’ shall commend him then. God, who sees the fruit in the germ and ‘calls the things that are not as things that are’ (Ro 4"), judges according to truth both first and last.
The judgment-seat of Christ is the proximate
ὍΔ] of revelation. There the final settlement of uman affairs takes place, the dénotiment of the drama of history,—of the successive dispensations of God’s righteousness and grace to mankind. When death has been abolished and all Christ’s enemies, human or superhuman, have received sentence from His eimith: ‘then cometh the end’; He ‘yields up the kingdom to God, even to the Father’; and ‘the Son himself shall be subjected to him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all’ (1 Co 15*-*). For the mission on which the Father sent forth His Son is then fulfilled: the Lordship of Jesus is acknowledged throughout creation (Ph 2"); Christ lays at the Father's feet the homage of a reconciled universe rendered to Himself, the love of a multitude of obedient sons made perfect in Himself, the praise and service of the Church of the redeemed united with Himself forever. His own subjection as a Son to the Father displays the absolute one- ness of the Godhead, whose glory streams through all realms of being in unchecked and unbounded plenitude. Thus God the Father is eternally supreme, and ‘grace reigns through righteous- ness unto eternal life.’ See, further, under ESCHATOLOGY OF NT.