Famed twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth has claimed that this text, in which Jesus promises to be coming soon (vv.12,20), testifies to a present that looks back to Jesus and expects his final revelation. All time is the time of the man Jesus:

Can the Christianity and the church that really derive and are grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ ever be anything better than the place where, from out of and beyond all the required representations of Jesus Christ, the kingdom, the covenant, reconciliation and its fruit, men can only cry and call out: “Lord, have mercy upon us! Even so, come Lord Jesus?” Is not perhaps the surest test of genuine Christianity and church life whether the men united in it exist wholly in this expectation and therefore not at all in a supposed present p…