Living Coram Deo

R. C. Sproul, one of my favorite theologians, spoke often of living life coram Deo. He explained:

“The big idea of the Christian life is coram Deo. Coram Deo captures the essence of the Christian life.” This phrase literally refers to something that takes place in the presence of, or before the face of, God. To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God. To live in the presence of God is to understand that whatever we are doing and wherever we are doing it, we are acting under the gaze of God.¹

Other theologians stress the importance of this life-in-the-presence-of-God concept. David A. Renwick, for example, says,

In the Judaism of pre-70 Pharisaism and in the life of ancient Judaism in general there was a pervasive interest in concepts such as Jerusalem, the Temple, the Priesthood, and other matters relating to the cult, and that this interest was often symptomatic of a deeper interest: the quest for the presence of God.… It was the loss of the presence of God which was widely understood in Judaism as the fundamental problematic of life, a problematic for which various expressions of Judaism, including that of the pre-70 CE Pharisees and that of Paul, the Jewish Pharisee-turned-Christian, claimed to have a resolution.²

Renwick claims “that through faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the salvation Paul found was a mode of access to God that provided perfectly what the Law promised, and thus both fulfilled the Law and made it redundant. In this sense, in connection with access to God’s presence, to Paul the Pharisee Christ became the end of the law (Rom. 10:4).”³ Renwick provides the opinion of another theologian on this subject:

Samuel Terrien … formulate[s] a theology of “presence” from the Christian Bible as a completed unit. Indeed, Terrien sees the quest for God’s presence as dominant enough in the Biblical literature as a whole to argue that it should be the organizing theme for a new Biblical Theology.⁴

Renwick says, “Interest in locating and maintaining the divine presence, if not central, is at least one prominent and remarkably frequent issue in the life of the people who gave rise to the Biblical literature.”⁵

The reasoning behind these statements is clear: in the beginning, man—Adam and Eve—enjoyed the presence of God. Their conversations with their Maker were free-flowing and deeply satisfying. Man routinely “heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8). But Satan, through man’s sin, brought an end to this delightful relationship. The rest of the Bible shows God restoring man so he can once again enjoy the Divine presence without fear, condemnation, or hesitation. This restoration of man to the presence of God is a fundamental theme in the Scriptures. In the concluding Biblical revelation, man lives in “a new heaven and a new earth” in the “new Jerusalem,” and “the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Rev 21:3).

This theme of dwelling in the presence of God reverberates through the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. Moses knew it was useless for Israel to march toward the Promised Land without God’s presence: “And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence” (Exod 33:15). David said that God’s presence brings great joy: “Let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God [i.e., in his presence]: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice” (Ps 68:3). And God, through Ezekiel, promised that, in the messianic-age, his presence would dwell among his people intimately: 

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. (Ezek 36:25–27)

In our journey through 1 Thessalonians, we have seen Paul emphasize that his gospel of the kingdom shows how man can flourish now in God’s presence. In this post, we have come to another such passage; in it, Paul tells the Thessalonians of his goal for them as they endure tribulation:

And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: to the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming (Gk. en tē parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. (1 Thess 3:12–13)

The prevailing prophetic models⁶ restrict this statement regarding life lived in the presence of God in this kingdom age. They say Paul is thinking about Christ’s “coming” as a point-in-time event in his distant future—the Apostle wanted the Thessalonians, they say, to be holy because of something that will happen then.

Inmillennialism⁷ says this is a mistake. Paul wants Christians to be holy because of the present reality. His meaning is clear in Young’s Literal Translation:

And you the Lord cause to increase and to abound in the love to one another, and to all, even as we also to you, to the establishing your hearts blameless in sanctification before our God and Father, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. (1 Thess 3:12–13 YLT)

In the current messianic age, we live before God and in the presence of the Lord Jesus. This reality has a profound effect on how we live our daily lives.

The Revelation that God gave to John gives us a behind-the-scenes view of how we currently live “in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.” In the first vision—The Vision of the Seven Churches (Rev 1:9–3:22)⁸—John sees Christ holding “the angels of the seven churches” in his right hand and walking among “the seven candlesticks which … are the seven churches” (Rev 1:20).⁹ As members of one of these churches, we dwell “in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.” Christ walks among us; he assures us that he knows our situation. He rebukes us, recognizes our successes, warns us, encourages us, and tells us of the rewards he will give for our faithfulness. This is how we live our lives now.

This is the vision Paul wants the Thessalonians (and us) to embrace. We should understand his “coming of Christ” (1 Thess 2:13) to mean the “presence of Christ”—that is the primary meaning of the Greek word he uses (i.e., parousia). 

Christ has reversed the rupture between God and man; by him we now “draw nigh unto God” (Heb 7:19). Christ’s presence among us is a present reality, not just a future hope. Because this is true, Paul wants us to live faithful, obedient, and joyful lives now—coram Deo.

1. R. C. Sproul, “What Does ‘coram Deo’ Mean?,” Ligonier Ministries Blog, 13 November 2017, https://www.ligonier.org/blog/what-does-coram-deo-mean/.
2. David A Renwick, Paul, the Temple, and the Presence of God (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 4 (emphasis added).
3. Renwick, Paul, the Temple, and the Presence of God, 23 (emphasis added).
4. Renwick, Paul, the Temple, and the Presence of God, 26.
5. Renwick, Paul, the Temple, and the Presence of God, 26.
6. I provide a summary of these models here.
7. I document this prophetic model in my book, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days, available here. For a summary, see the PDF here.
8. My series of blog posts on Revelation begins here.
9. The image in this post is The Vision of the Seven Candlesticks by Matthias Gerung (1500–1570). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).