That very morning as the high priest He had ascended to heaven, within the vail, and sprinkled His redeeming blood (how is not revealed) on the eternal throne, changing it from the throne of judgment to a throne of grace. That night He stood before them He was their high priest, not of earth, but heaven. He breathed upon them, imparted to them the Holy Spirit—the Comforter—linking them to His immortal body. He remained with them, going and coming, during forty days, operating with them officially by and through the Holy Spirit as His unseen executive; for we are told that, “until the day he was taken up he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles;” and then, finally, as this scene in the book of Acts shows us, ascended to His high-priestly function and unceasing service of intercession.
He is seated in heaven now, seated there as the same Jesus who met His disciples that first Sunday night, the same Jesus who ascended out of their midst from Olivet. This same Jesus! The same not only in realistic, human body, but the same in character, full of the same measureless compassion and grace as when He sat on the well curb in Samaria and though thirsting as a real man for real water offered to give to the sinful woman who by divine and eternal ordination met him there, the water that should be in her as a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
This same Jesus is coming again, not a phantom, not an impalpable spirit, not a ghost Christ, but a Christ who is a real man of real flesh and real bones.
This is the key-note of the book of Acts.
He who died for men, who has sanctioned the Holy Spirit to operate in His name, speak in His name, reveal to us the things that are His and show us things to come concerning Him, He is coming again, coming not only as very God, the Holy One of Israel, He who has been exalted to be both Lord and Christ, but as this loving, tender, compassionate Jesus, and in a body that may be seen and handled—a body of flesh and bones.
In Romans we have the promise the Lord is coming to bruise Satan under His feet and the feet of His saints; and according to the calendar of heaven and the way in which they measure time there this great event must come to pass, as it is written, “shortly.”
In First Corinthians the Lord is coming to raise the dead who shall be His “at his coming.”
In Second Corinthians He is coming to transfigure the living who believe in Him and thus clothe them with their “house from heaven,” give them the body that shall be the handiwork of God and not man.
In Philippians our citizenship is in a country which is in heaven from whence we are to look for a Saviour, even the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change this body of our mortal humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto His immortal and glorious body, a change which He will effectuate by that mighty power according to which He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.
In Colossians our life is hid with Christ in God, a double environment of security, and when Christ who is our life shall appear, we shall appear with Him also in glory.