Lesson 27: The Great School of Grace

 Hope will be the mainspring of our loyalty to Him whom we long to see. We are exhorted to be “like servants who wait for their Lord” and are occupied for Him, that whether He come at morn, at noon, or at night, we may be ready always to meet Him, and so not be ashamed before Him at His coming. “Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he comes shall find so doing” (Matthew 24:46).

 No wonder this is called a “blessed hope,” as in Titus 2:11-14: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

It is not merely that we are now saved by grace, but we are also in the school of grace, here to learn how to behave ourselves in such a manner as to have the constant approval of Him who has made us His own. And so grace is here presented as our instructor, teaching us the importance of the denial of self, and the refusal of all that is contrary to the mind of God, in order that we may manifest by clean and holy lives the reality of the faith that we profess, while we hold before our souls that blessed hope of the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

At His first coming He died to redeem us from all lawlessness, that He might purify us to Himself a people of His own possession, zealously engaged in all good works. At His second coming He will redeem our bodies and make us wholly like Himself in all things. What a wonderful hope this is, and as we live in the power of it what assurance we have of the unchanging love of Him whose face we soon shall see!


 Often when the dead in Christ are being laid away, we are reminded that we commit their precious bodies to the grave “in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection.” And this is a most blessed truth. For when the hope of the Lord’s return is realized, the saints of all past ages who died in faith will share with those who may be alive upon the earth at that time, in the wonderful change that will then take place when “the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16,17). How bright a hope is this and who knows how soon it may be realized! Let us not falter, nor give way to doubt or unbelief, but give diligence in maintaining “the full assurance of hope” until it gives place to full realization.

It is better to be saved so as by fire than not to be saved at all, but surely none of us would desire to meet our Master empty-handed, but the rather to “come with rejoicing” into His presence, when our hope is fulfilled, bringing our sheaves with us. Let us then remember what we have.

 Thought Question:
 As we wait for the Lord’s soon return, what should we be doing?
Whom should we tell of our “Blessed Hope”?