Thank you Jason, I appreciate your response. However, I am grappling with whether Jesus' "return" or His "coming back" is His actual setting foot on earth. Paul (1 Thes 4:16-16) says He will descend from heaven (bodily? no problem), then the dead in Christ followed by those who remain will meet Him "in the air," and we will forever be with the Lord. Simply saying He will return or come back doesn't address the latter. Thoughts?
Excellent. I believe ad70 satisfied everything except the final judgment and bodily resurrection. When you and many many say Christ bodily returns, are you saying, to set foot on earth? If so, for what?
To return is to go back to a place that was left. At the ascension, what departed was not Christ’s divine nature. As to his deity, he is omnipresent and says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20, ESV). The absence is with respect to his human nature. According to his humanity, he is in heaven, as Acts 3:21 teaches.
Acts 1:11 makes this explicit: “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (ESV). The same Jesus who ascended bodily will come again bodily. If the departure was visible and embodied, the return must be as well.
The incarnation was not temporary. Paul writes long after the ascension, “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5, ESV). He remains the God man. Therefore, a meaningful “return” is the personal, visible reappearance of the incarnate Son in glory. Anything less empties the word of its plain meaning and blurs the permanence of his humanity.
Thank you Jason, I appreciate your response. However, I am grappling with whether Jesus' "return" or His "coming back" is His actual setting foot on earth. Paul (1 Thes 4:16-16) says He will descend from heaven (bodily? no problem), then the dead in Christ followed by those who remain will meet Him "in the air," and we will forever be with the Lord. Simply saying He will return or come back doesn't address the latter. Thoughts?
Excellent. I believe ad70 satisfied everything except the final judgment and bodily resurrection. When you and many many say Christ bodily returns, are you saying, to set foot on earth? If so, for what?
A “return” only makes sense if it is bodily.
To return is to go back to a place that was left. At the ascension, what departed was not Christ’s divine nature. As to his deity, he is omnipresent and says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20, ESV). The absence is with respect to his human nature. According to his humanity, he is in heaven, as Acts 3:21 teaches.
Acts 1:11 makes this explicit: “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (ESV). The same Jesus who ascended bodily will come again bodily. If the departure was visible and embodied, the return must be as well.
The incarnation was not temporary. Paul writes long after the ascension, “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5, ESV). He remains the God man. Therefore, a meaningful “return” is the personal, visible reappearance of the incarnate Son in glory. Anything less empties the word of its plain meaning and blurs the permanence of his humanity.