Call attention to the fact that Christ remained forty days upon earth in His Resurrection body; then, after promising to send the “Comforter,” His Other Self, to them, He ascended to heaven, from which He told them that He would return in visible form, and requested them to watch for His appearing. (See Acts 1:9-11.)
Up through the realm of the defeated enemy-Satan, the usurper-the God-Man passed in triumph, having shaken off from Himself the hostile princes and rulers whom He “boldly displayed as His conquests, when by the Cross He triumphed over them” (Col. 2:15, Weymouth).
Up to “heaven itself,” the third heaven, went the God-Man, and having fully executed God’s Plan of Redemption, “He sat down at the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting, till His enemies be made His footstool” (Heb. 10:12-13).
God has corroborated the statement of Jesus upon the Cross- “It is finished,” by the display of His Resurrection and Ascension Power. God’s Plan of Redemption for the human race has been fully executed. Not a single thing remains to be done. Eternal Life and everlasting sonship are ready for any human being who chooses to accept the same.
There is not a being that’s under the sun,
Nor above it, nor anywhere in the wide earth
Nor in the whole heaven
Not God nor Christ even;
Not all these combined can do aught, for ’tis Done!
Done thoroughly, gloriously,
Superbly, victoriously
As God’s Self would have it,
Done! there we may leave it;
Christ’s work on the Cross is of infinite worth
Meeting sin in its root
And through all its fruit;
And God rests; and Christ rests; and the man who believes
May rest as secure and established as They
And as happy, though heaven and earth pass away;
May rejoice to the full in the Life he receives.
Malachi Taylor