“Not to Fix Every Ill”: Jesus’ Two Comings and the Baseline for Judgment
Christians and skeptics alike often load expectations onto Jesus that the New Testament never promises. Some expect that if He is truly the Son of God, He should have ended war, disease, oppression, and every form of suffering in His first coming. When that does not match history, they conclude He is either not who He claimed to be or that God is indifferent to human pain.
Biblical Christianity answers differently: Jesus did not come the first time to solve all of humanity’s ills. He came to fulfill the law, save His own, and establish the moral and judicial baseline from which He will one day judge the world. That perspective clarifies both what His first coming accomplished and what His second coming will complete.
From the beginning of His ministry, Jesus framed His mission in relation to the law of God, not in terms of immediate social or political overhaul. He insisted that He did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, bringing to completion everything it required in righteousness, obedience, sacrifice, and promise.
This fulfillment happens in several ways. In perfect obedience, Jesus keeps God’s law without failure (in thought, motive, and deed), showing what a truly righteous human life looks like. In authoritative interpretation, especially in discourses like the Sermon on the Mount, He penetrates to the heart of the commandments, exposing hypocrisy and superficial obedience. In climactic sacrifice, His death satisfies the law’s demands concerning sin and judgment, offering Himself as the true sacrifice to which all earlier sacrifices pointed.
In all of this, He is not yet rearranging all the structures of a fallen world. He is establishing perfect covenant faithfulness in the place of His people. The law is not scrapped; it is honored and completed in Him.
The New Testament repeatedly describes Jesus’ mission in personal and redemptive terms: He comes to seek and save the lost, to give His life as a ransom, to call sinners to repentance, to gather and secure a people for Himself. The focus is salvation, not immediate social renovation.
Two important implications follow.
First, the cross addresses our deepest problem. Humanity’s greatest ill is not external (war, poverty, disease) but internal: our alienation from God, guilt, and bondage to sin. Jesus targets the root rather than merely trimming branches. He rescues people from judgment, reconciles them to God, and grants new life.
Second, partial healing now, complete healing later. Jesus does perform miracles, heal diseases, feed crowds, and confront injustice. These acts are real, compassionate interventions, but they are also signs: previews of the coming kingdom, not its fullness. They show what He will one day do universally, but they are not that universal transformation itself.
Thus, when someone objects, “If Jesus was really God, why didn’t He end all suffering?” the Biblical answer is: because His first-coming mission was salvation and revelation, not final renovation. The project is not incomplete because He failed, but because God has ordained a two-stage plan.
If Jesus fulfills the law and saves His own, what does that have to do with future judgment? Everything. His life, teaching, character, and redemptive work collectively form the baseline by which the world will ultimately be judged.
Without revelation, humans can speculate endlessly about what is “truly good,” “truly just,” or “truly loving.” But in Christ, the Christian claims, God has made the standard visible. In Jesus’ compassion and holiness, we see what love and purity look like in action. In His truth-telling and courage, we see what integrity looks like under pressure. In His submission to the Father’s will, even unto death, we see what perfect obedience is.
The standard by which humanity will be judged is not an abstract list of rules but a Person. The question becomes: How do you stand in relation to Jesus Christ? His character defines righteousness; His word reveals God’s will; His cross offers the only provision for our failures.
By revealing Himself, Jesus also creates a decisive line of accountability. Those who receive Him, trust Him, and are united to Him share in His fulfilled righteousness and stand in grace. Those who reject Him stand under the very law He fulfilled, measured against the goodness and justice He embodied.
In this sense, His first coming is not merely an offer of help. It is a public establishment of the criterion by which God’s final judgment will be undeniably fair. Humanity will not be judged by a hidden standard but by the light it has actually received.
If the first coming focuses on fulfilling the law and saving His own, the second coming focuses on consummating justice and renewing creation.
At His return, all wrongs are set right; every injustice, hidden or blatant, is brought into the open. Evil is decisively judged and removed; there will be no more hiding behind power, wealth, or propaganda. The broken creation is restored; suffering, death, and corruption are finally dealt with, not just symbolically but actually.
And crucially, this judgment is rendered by the One whose character is already known. The world will be judged by the same Jesus who walked among us in humility, who healed, forgave, wept, and bled. He is not a stranger; He is the moral and judicial baseline already displayed.
This means several things. The complaint “God has no right to judge” collides with the revealed goodness of Christ’s character. The fear “What if His judgment is unfair?” is answered by the life of the One who defended the weak, confronted hypocrisy, and willingly took judgment upon Himself for others. The hope “Will evil really be dealt with?” is anchored in the promise that the very One who bore injustice without retaliation will return to right every wrong.
Framing Jesus’ mission as “fulfill the law, save His own, and prepare the baseline for judgment” has several apologetic benefits.
It corrects false expectations. Critics often assume that if God came in the flesh, He would immediately end all suffering. When that doesn’t match Jesus’ ministry, they deem Him a failure or a myth. Explaining the two-stage pattern (salvation and revelation first, consummation later) shows that the New Testament never promised what they are demanding.
It grounds morality in a Person, not opinion. Jesus’ life gives flesh-and-blood content to words like “good,” “just,” and “loving.” The standard is not vague or shifting; it has walked among us. This allows Christians to ask, “On what basis do you call God unjust?” while pointing to the concrete character of Christ as the measure.
It reframes the problem of evil. The presence of ongoing evil is not evidence that God is indifferent; it reflects the fact that the story is between the first and second comings. God has already acted decisively against sin at the cross and will one day act decisively against all evil at the final judgment. We live in the tension of that “already / not yet.”
It highlights the urgency of response. If Jesus has already fulfilled the law, already provided salvation, and already established the standard, then His future judgment is not arbitrary. The question is not whether God will be fair, but whether we will receive the grace offered now before that fairness is fully enforced.
Jesus did not step into history to patch every wound, end every war, or erase every tear on His first visit. He came to perfectly fulfill God’s law, to save a people for Himself, and to reveal (once and for all) the character of the Judge who will one day set everything right.
That means our deepest need right now is not a temporary fix to the world’s symptoms but reconciliation to God through the One who fulfilled the law in our place. Our ultimate hope for justice is not in human progress but in the return of the same Jesus whose goodness and righteousness we can already see. The baseline for all future judgment is not hidden in heaven; it has already walked among us.
In that light, the Christian can say with confidence: Jesus did not come first to solve every ill, but to lay the unshakable foundation from which He will one day cure them all, and to offer mercy before that day arrives.