Watching and Working
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. - (1 John 3:2–3)
C. H. Spurgeon said, “It is a very blessed thing to be on the watch for Christ, it is a blessing to us now. How it detaches you from the world! You can be poor without murmuring; you can be rich without worldliness. . . . untold blessings are wrapped up in the glorious hope.”
The Bible says that “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). If watching for the Lord’s return is the evidence of faith, then working is the evidence of faith in action. We are not only to be anxiously awaiting Christ’s return, but we are to be working. Watching will help us prepare our own lives, but working will assure that we bring others with us.
Jesus said there is a blessedness in living this way: “Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching” (Luke 12:37). Another way to translate the word blessed as it’s used in this verse is “happy.” In other words, “Happy are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching.”
In contrast to the servant who watches and works, there is the unprepared servant. Jesus continued, “But if that servant says in his heart, ‘My master is delaying his coming,’ and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and be drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers” (verses 45–46).
Watching and waiting for the return of Christ isn’t a miserable, repressive, or confining way to live. Rather, it is a happy, joyful, and purposeful way of life.
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