“In his first Advent Jesus came not with glory and power but in grace and humiliation”

In his first Advent Jesus came not with glory and power but in grace and humiliation. He came in such a way to enter into our guilty human life and to heal it from within by His suffering and death on the Cross. God could have destroyed all evil by a single stroke of his hand, but far from saving or healing man that would have destroyed mankind altogether along with sin and evil. Therefore God took a different course altogether. In His infinite mercy and patience He stooped down in Jesus Christ, and entered into our sinful human life with all its proud self-sufficiency and incurable self-will, and when in enmity against God and in proud rebellion against His grace man crucified Jesus on the Cross, God took that Cross and made it the instrument for the healing of the nations. And so it is by the same Cross preached among all nations that God in Christ patiently seeks and saves the lost. It is because He wants all men to be saved that Christ has planted His Cross in the midst of history and through His Cross is still at work in the midst of history, so that in a very real sense all history is gathered into the passion of Christ. He has postponed His coming in power and glory because He wants to rule over the hearts of men from His Cross; He wants first to meet with every man at His Cross, there to release him from his sin and guilt, there to ask of him the love of his heart, and there to remake him as God’s dear child. But this time which God has given for the preaching of the Gospel to all nations, time for repentance and decision, does not go on for ever. It will have an end, for Jesus Christ will return in power to fulfill what He has promised, to undo the past, and to make all things new.

Thomas F. Torrance