Many Christians have come to expect that they ought to be living their “best life now.” They see, though, that their lives remain fraught with problems. They feel as if they should not have such problems as Christians. But God never told us that we would not have tribulation in this world. Jesus told us that we would. And He also told us to be of good cheer, because He has overcome the world (John 16:33).
Once in Royal David’s City” is a poem written by Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–95). Alexander published it for the first time in 1848 in a book of children’s hymns, as part of a series of poems on the Apostles’ Creed (seeking in this hymn to address the affirmation “born of the Virgin Mary”). The last two stanzas of the hymn continue to draw forth the fullness of the glorified Christ in His incarnation. The earlier stanzas address Christ in His humiliation, both in His active and passive obedience (as Alexander also does in “There Is a Green Hill Far Away”).
The fifth stanza particularly focuses on us in our glorification, in which we join Christ, who has been in His estate of exaltation since His resurrection. There, “at last,” with fully renewed “eyes” in a fully renewed heavens and earth, we “shall see him.” Only then and there will we be able to see Him properly. No longer shall we see Him as we did when He was below with us—as in that “poor lowly stable”—but we shall see Him as He is “in heaven, set at God’s right hand on high.” We shall do so “through his own redeeming love”; the merits and mediation of Christ alone afford us heavenly entrance.
Christ entered His glorified state upon His resurrection from the dead. All God’s people, following after the Lord, will likewise enter a glorified state at the return of Christ, when the dead will be raised and His own will receive glorified bodies. Until then, we remain in a state of humiliation. This is true even for the blessed dead, who are “with Christ” (Phil. 1:23) and are better off than those who remain and continue to live in this present creation.