Glorious appearing
What is the glorious appearing in Titus 2:13?
Christians are a hopeful people. The Bible instructs us to be “looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).
The book of Titus is largely concerned with how people conduct themselves in the church—not the church service but in the community of believers known as the church. While chapter 1 gives instructions for church leaders, chapter 2 focuses on the individual members: instructions to older men (Titus 2:2), older women (verse 3), younger women (verses 4–5), younger men (verses 6–8), and finally slaves (verses 9–10). (We know that many of the early believers were slaves. In fact, slaves at times out-numbered free people in the Roman Empire, and ultimately everyone was considered a slave of Caesar.) Then verses 11–15 conclude with instructions that apply to everyone in the church.
Just before the mention of the glorious appearing of Jesus, we have a challenge to live in a godly manner: “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age” (Titus 2:11–12). However, living in a righteous manner in this present age is not just an endless grind. We live with an expectation of something to come—something that could happen at any time. We live with a “blessed hope”: the glorious appearing of our God and Savior. Jesus is coming again.
Of course, we know that, when believers die, their souls go to be with Christ in heaven, but that is only a temporary state (see 2 Corinthians 5:1–5). One day Christ will return, and believers who have died will be resurrected; those who are still alive will be given new, perfected bodies (1 Corinthians 15:50–52). This will happen at the glorious appearing of Christ.
This same glorious appearing is described in 1 Thessalonians 4:14–17:
For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
This event is also called the rapture. The word rapture, before it gained a theological usage, simply meant “to be caught up or carried away,” which aptly describes what will happen to believers when Christ appears.
The glorious appearing is when Jesus Christ appears on the clouds to rescue those believers who are alive and to resurrect believers who have died. This is the glorious appearing of our Great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Titus 2:13 describes Jesus as “our great God”—a strong statement of the deity of Jesus Christ. The way the verse is constructed in Greek, this cannot refer to two separate people as in one called “Our Great God” and a second person called “Our Savior Jesus Christ.” The glorious appearing is of one Person who is described as both “Great God” and “Savior,” and His name is Jesus Christ.
It is in view of the any-moment return or glorious appearing of Jesus that we can live the way required by the earlier verses in Titus 2. The final verse of the paragraph further clarifies who Jesus is and what He has done: “Who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” (Titus 2:14). We are redeemed and purified, even as we live in this sinful world, but that redemption and purification will be evident and perfected when Jesus returns. We live in the process now in light of the culmination then—the glorious appearing, which could be any time.
