John tells believers there are two possible faces at the appearing of Christ. Neither of them is produced by studying harder.
Most men who get serious about prophecy start by building a framework. Charts, sequences, a working theory of the seventieth week, a shelf of books. There is nothing wrong with that — the Scripture invites study, and a man who has never worked through the order of events will be shaken by every headline.
But the apostle John, writing to ordinary believers, raises a question the chart cannot answer. He does not ask whether you will be present at the coming of Christ. He assumes you will. He asks what your face will do when it happens.
And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. (1 John 2:28, KJV)
Read who that is addressed to. Little children. His own. The family. And to the family he holds out two possibilities at the appearing, side by side: confidence, or shame.
Two Faces, Not Two Destinations
This is the distinction to get straight before anything else, because missing it turns a comfort into a terror.
John is not raising the question of whether a believer is safe. He has already settled that in the strongest terms this letter contains — the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin (1 John 1:7), and if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1). Paul says it flatly: There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). The verse in front of us is not about your standing. It is about your countenance.
And that is a real thing, not a sentimental one. Two sons can both be legitimate heirs and the door can open on both of them very differently, depending on what each one has been doing with the last eighteen months.
The word rendered confidence in the King James is worth a moment. In older English it carries the sense of boldness and plain speech — the freedom of a man who can look you in the eye and say whatever is on his mind because there is nothing between you. It is not swagger. It is the absence of anything that needs hiding.
Its opposite, in this verse, is not damnation. It is the shrinking back. The instinctive step behind the doorframe.
The First Man Who Hid From an Appearing
We have a picture of that face, and it is the oldest one in the Bible.
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden… And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. (Genesis 3:8, 10, KJV)
Nothing about the voice had changed. It was the same voice, at the same hour, in the same garden — a sound Adam had welcomed every evening of his life. What changed was the man who heard it. The footsteps he had loved on Tuesday sent him into the trees on Wednesday, and the only variable was what he had done in between.
That is exactly the dynamic John has in view. The return of Christ is good news. Whether it feels like good news to you on any given Thursday morning is a different question, and it is a question about you.
The Prescription Is One Word
Here is where the verse corrects most of our instincts about readiness. Look at what John tells them to do in order to have that open face.
Abide in him. That is the whole instruction.
Not study harder. Not get your timeline right. Not brace yourself. Not even do more — though a man abiding will certainly do more. The verb is a verb of continuance. Stay. Remain. Keep living where you already live.
That is a quieter word than most of us want. We would rather be handed a project. A project can be completed, measured, and crossed off, and it lets a man feel he has gotten ahead of something. Abiding cannot be completed. It can only be continued, today, and then again tomorrow.
Which means readiness is not an achievement you reach and then hold. It is a condition you are in or out of right now. The man who is ready is not the man who finished preparing. He is the man who did not wander off.
Hope That Does Something
A few verses later John explains the mechanism, and it is one of the most practical sentences in the New Testament about how prophecy is supposed to work on a man.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. (1 John 3:2–3, KJV)
Notice the direction of the work. The hope is not the reward for purity. The hope produces the purity. Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself.
So hope, in John’s hands, is not a mood. It is an agent. It does something to the man who holds it. And that gives you a diagnostic far more useful than any chart: if your prophecy study has made you more informed and no cleaner, something has gone wrong in the wiring. The hope has become a hobby. A hobby has never purified anybody.
John says the same thing a chapter later, from the other side:
Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. (1 John 4:17, KJV)
As he is, so are we in this world. The boldness on that day is not manufactured on that day. It is the natural posture of a man who has been living, in this world, in the direction of the One who is coming.
What That Looks Like on a Tuesday
Let me make this concrete, because abide can float off into abstraction very easily.
Ask yourself one question: if the Lord returned before supper, is there anything in your life right now you would want ten minutes to deal with first?
Not a general feeling of unworthiness — that is always true and is not the question. Something specific. A browser history. A conversation you are two months overdue to have with your wife. A sum of money. A man you have not forgiven and have decided you never will. The thing you would reach for the remote to turn off.
Whatever that item is, it is the thing that would put your eyes on the floor at the appearing. You already know what it is; you thought of it before you finished reading the question.
And that is the whole pastoral point of the doctrine of the return. It is not given to frighten you. It is given to locate things. Nothing clarifies a priority list like a deadline no one can move.
The Man Who Had Every Reason to Hide
If this has found something in you, do not mistake what the verse is doing. John wrote it to be acted on, not brooded over, and the gospel is not stingy with men who have drifted.
Consider Peter. If anyone in the New Testament had earned a face on the floor at an appearing, it was the man who denied Christ three times in a courtyard and went out and wept. And then the risen Lord appeared on a shoreline, and there was a charcoal fire and breakfast, and three questions that matched the three denials one for one, and a commission (John 21:9–17). That is what an appearing looked like for a man who had failed badly and come back.
The door home is the same one it always was, and it is wide open today:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9, KJV)
Confess it, deal with the specific item, and the thing that would have made you look away is simply gone. Not managed. Cleansed. That is how a man gets his face back before the door ever opens.
Readiness Is a Face, Not a Chart
Keep studying. Keep reading the times soberly. The Lord did not rebuke His disciples for wanting to understand the sequence; He rebuked them for going to sleep.
But do not confuse the framework with the readiness. A man can hold an immaculate eschatology and still take a step backward when the sky opens, and another man with half the vocabulary can look straight up with nothing in his hands. The difference between them is not information. It is whether they stayed.
Abide in him. That is this morning’s assignment, and it is the only preparation the text actually asks for.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist