An Iris Awaits: The Waiting Christ

The Christmas season that we came out of just a few months ago is a time of emphasizing the humanity of Christ. We emphasize His deity during this time, as well, as we recognize Him as Emmanuel, i.e. God With Us. But as we think of the incarnation, or God becoming flesh, we marvel at the fact that the God of all there is willingly subjected Himself to becoming one of us, to putting on a body of flesh and blood, so that He could restore all things to their rightful design, including but not limited to our relationship with Him.

When we think of Jesus’ humanity, we often think of how he needed sleep, needed food, and felt emotions such as gladness, wonder, grief, and anger. But as I was reading Scripture one day, another way in which He is like us jumped out at me, one that I hadn’t thought of before. The verse can be found in Hebrews chapter 10. Verses 12 and 13 read, “But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool” (NIV). Did you catch that one little clause? He waits.

This verse speaks of the time after Jesus had completed the sacrifice, after He said, “It is finished.” And yet He waits. He has already achieved the victory, yet He waits for His enemies to be completely vanquished. Lest we think Him impotent or His victory ineffective, we see that He is sitting in a position of authority—at the right hand of God. So why does He wait? Well, as is the case many times, we don’t completely know, or at least we don’t fully understand. We know that He is waiting for the right time as is set by God’s own authority (Acts 1:7); why that time is the right time is beyond our understanding. Regardless of why, though, we know that He willingly waits until that right time arrives.

He does not try to usurp the Father’s authority by rushing into things or coming up with a different plan as Abram and Sarai did in waiting for their promised offspring (Gen. 16), or as we so often do. Instead, he submits to the Father’s plan and patiently waits until the time is right. The God who is outside of time uses it to accomplish His perfect plan in our world, and He waits.

This is not the only time we see Jesus waiting, though. In John 7, he waited to go to the festival until after His disciples had gone ahead because his “time ha[d] not yet fully come” (John 7:8, NIV). In John 11, after hearing that His dear friend Lazarus was ill, He waited two days before journeying to see Lazarus’s sisters and raise Lazarus from the dead.

Well of course Jesus could wait, you might be thinking. He’s God, so He’s all-knowing and all-wise, so He knows why it’s important to wait for the right time. That’s true. But it’s also true that because He is God, He is all-powerful and sovereign, and could just as easily change when the right time is. Yet He waits.

Okay, but so what? What does it matter to us? It matters a great deal, because it means that among all the other ways in which Jesus can identify with us, He also knows what it feels like to be patient and to wait for something expected to happen that just isn’t happening yet. Plus, He was tempted to gain the kingdoms of the earth on a quicker route, one that would avoid having to die, but one that would involve worshiping His Enemy rather than His Father. So He knows what it is like to face the temptation to take matters into our own hands, to speed up God’s timeline and try to change God’s plan.

So as we wait for things, whether things we might not be guaranteed to receive or witness, or things that are certainly coming, we can draw strength from the fact that we are not alone and we are not being forced to wait by an impersonal being who likes to torment us creatures. No, we are invited to wait by a loving God who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves, who in His perfect wisdom has crafted a beautiful story for our lives, who loves us deeply and eternally, and who chose to experience life as we do so that we can know He understands.

If you’re waiting for something today, even if you’ve been waiting for years and years, I pray that you will turn your eyes to Jesus who is at this very moment waiting too. As He is waiting for the final fulfillment of His kingdom, He is also interceding for you as you wait. Take courage in that, my friend, and worship the waiting Christ as you patiently wait as well.

To read the Arabic translation of this post, click here.

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