Hidden in Christ, Then Revealed in Christ - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2025

When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.
Colossians 3:4

Hidden in Christ, Then Revealed in Christ
In this verse, it is not the Lord coming to meet His own and gather them to Himself in the air (1 Th. 4:17); but "every eye shall see him" (Rev. 1:7). When the Lord comes to translate the Church, it will be far otherwise. God has joined us even now by the Spirit to Christ in heaven, according to all the efficacy of His death and resurrection. As far as the spirit is concerned this is true now, and it will be true of the body itself when Christ comes.

The resurrection of Christ calls me to live thoroughly to God, as the death of Christ makes me as truly dead in principle to the world as if I were already buried. In practice, alas! we have to own sad falling short. It is the life of Christ you have received. As long as Christ is hidden, you are hidden also (3:3). But the time is at hand when this will no longer be the case. When Christ comes to receive the Church, no eye will see Him but those for whom Christ comes. When the world sees Christ, it will be when He comes in glory, bringing His saints with Him.

If the world were to see Christ coming alone in glory before the Church is caught up to Him, the inseparable association, of which the apostle Paul made so much to the Colossians, would cease to be true. The world can never see Christ coming to receive the saints, because then they must have seen Him without them and before them; whereas the same moment of His appearing is to be the epoch of our appearing with Him. He will come for us; and we subsequently come along with Him. And this does not merely rest on a word here and there; it is the doctrine of the whole passage. The same truth is shown and confirmed by other proofs throughout the New Testament.

W. Kelly