THE END

When we speak of the end of something we usually mean its termination. For example, as you read this page the end of the year is just a few days away. Once it has ended it will have gone for ever. However, that particular meaning is not applicable to the title of the Lord Jesus in today’s study. To understand the sense in which He is referred to as ‘the End’ we can look at the use of the same word in other Scripture passages. Paul writes to the Romans, ‘What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life’, Rom. 6. 21-22. Again, to Timothy he writes, ‘Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned’, 1 Tim. 1. 5. James says, ‘Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy’, James 5. 11. There are other such references, but these will suffice to show that the expression often means ‘the aim’, ‘the design’, ‘the outcome’.

Thus the Lord Jesus bears the title ‘the End’, because He is not only the first cause for all things but also the aim and final outcome of all that God has wrought in and through Him. God’s purpose in the ‘eternal state’, which is the setting of Rev. 21.1-8, is ‘That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus’, Eph. 2. 7. It is interesting to contrast this delightful prospect with Luke’s record of the Lord’s testing in the wilderness: ‘And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time’, Luke 4. 5. ‘A moment of time’ was all it took for the glory of the world’s kingdoms to be displayed, but the riches of God’s grace displayed in Christ will take the eternal ages of the ages to explore! To display the glory, majesty and intrinsic loveliness of His beloved Son is God’s purpose in eternity, and God’s ways of grace will be fulfilled in ‘the End’.