Hebrews 9:28

    So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

The first coming of Jesus and the second coming of Jesus are not for the same purpose.

The first time He came, He came to bear sin. He came to suffer, to be rejected, to bleed, to die. He came as the Lamb. And Hebrews makes it plain that this happened once. That means the matter of sin was handled at the Cross. It does not need to be repeated, improved, or supplemented. What He came to do there, He did.

So when He comes again, He is not returning to deal with sin a second time. He is not coming back to reopen what was already settled. He is coming for the completion of salvation for those who belong to Him.

That changes the whole feel of the verse.

The second coming is not Christ coming back under the weight of a Cross. It is Christ coming back in victory. The suffering belonged to His first appearing. The glory belongs to His second.

Think about a firefighter who runs into a burning house the first time to rescue those trapped inside. When he comes back out, he is not returning into the flames to prove again that he is willing. The rescue has already been made. Now the people he saved wait for him to bring them fully out to safety. In a far greater way, Jesus entered once into suffering and death to save His people. He will come again, not to repeat the rescue, but to finish it in full.

And notice who is looking for Him. It is not merely people interested in prophecy charts or arguments about end times. It is people whose hope is tied to Him. People who know this world is not enough. People who understand that the One who saved them is also the One they are waiting for.

Here’s the thing: what you wait for tells you a lot about your heart. Some are waiting for things to get easier. Some are waiting for life to finally settle down. But the believer, beneath all of that, is waiting for a Person.

Jesus.

So this verse is full of comfort. The sin-bearing work is done. The sacrifice is complete. And the next appearance of Christ will not be about judgment for His people’s sin, because that was dealt with at Calvary. It will be about salvation brought to its full expression.

He came once to carry our sin.
He will come again to carry us home.