A television commercial advertising a soft drink says, "Sprite is what you want the world to be - clear and clean and good." Whether or not Sprite deserves such praise, certainly that is what we want the world - and our own lives - to be, clear and clean and good. And it is precisely in these terms that the apostle describes what the coming of Christ means to us.

The apostle uses the word epiphaneia, the original for our word epiphany, to describe both the first and the second coming of Christ. He tells us, "the grace of God has made its epiphany for the salvation of all men," and now we are "awaiting our blessed hope, the epiphany of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ."

Epiphany means appearance, becoming visible, the coming into view of what was hidden. Thus when Luke p…