The Life Side of Death.
Clearly Jesus' body had undergone changes through death and resurrection. It is the same to outer appearance, so far as personal identity is concerned. The doubting, questioning disciples handle His person, they know His face, they recognize His voice. He eats with them and talks with them and moves in their midst as before. Even the doubter, stubborn in his demand for tangible, physical evidence, is convinced by the feel of his hands that this is indeed Jesus back again. Further, He moves about among them unrecognized till He chooses to be known. Yet this may have been His power over them rather than any changed quality in His person.
But mark that the limitations of space and of material obstructions are gone after the resurrection. He no longer needs to get that body through space by physical strength or management, but seems to go where He will by choosing to be there. He is no longer affected in His movements by the walls of a building or other such material obstruction, but comes and goes at will. The arrangement of the linen cloths in the tomb, as marked so keenly by Peter and John, is significant. They are found lying as they were when enfolding that body, as though He had in rising risen up through them.
Clearly the body is the same so far as personal identity is concerned. But the limitations are gone. The control of spirit over body seems full, without any limitations. As one of us can, in spirit, be in a place far removed as quick as thought, so He seems to have been able to be actually, bodily, where He wanted to be as quickly. All the old powers remain. All the old limitations are gone, never to return. Jesus had moved over to the life side of death. He had gone down into death's domain, given it a death blow, and then risen up into a new Eden life, where neither sin nor death had power to touch. Those forty days were sample days of the new Eden life on earth.
Jesus has become the leader of a new sort of life lived on the earth, mingling in its activities, but free of its power, controlled from above. He asks every one who will to come along after Him. We can, for He has. It is possible, because of Him. We may, for He asks us to. It is our privilege. Let us go.
The Ascension: Back Home Again Until----
Tarry Ye--Go Ye.
One day the disciples and followers of Jesus had met in Jerusalem, when Jesus Himself came again in their midst and talked with them quite a bit. He said particularly that they were not to leave Jerusalem, but wait there. In a few days the Holy Spirit would come upon them, and they were to wait until He came. Then He asked them to go with Him for a walk. And they walk together along those old Jerusalem streets, out the gate and off past Gethsemane toward the top of Olives over against Bethany. On the way they ask Him if it was His plan to set up the kingdom then. He turns their thought away from Palestine toward the world, away from times and seasons toward telling a race about Himself.
And now they are standing together on the Mount of Olives. There is Peter, the new man of rock, and John and James, the sons of thunder, and little Scotch Andrew, and the man in whom is no guile, and the others. But one's eyes quickly go by these to the Man in the center of the group. These men stand gazing on that face, listening for His words. There is a consciousness that the goodbye word is about to be spoken. Yonder they can see the bit of a depression and the tops of some old trees. That is Gethsemane. And over beyond that is the city wall and the little knoll near by outside. That is Calvary. With memories such as these suggest they listen with eyes as well as ears. "Ye shall receive power," the Master is saying, "and ye shall be My witnesses here in Jerusalem and in all Judea, your brothers, and in Samaria, the nearby people you don't like, and unto the uttermost part of the earth, everybody else." They are held by the words and by that face. Then He lifts up His hands in blessing upon them. And as they gaze they notice He is rising, His feet are off the earth, then higher and higher. Then a shining glory cloud sweeps down out of the blue, and now they see Him no more.