The Man in Glory

The Continuing Incarnation of Christ and the Redemption of Creation

An address to the General Assembly of the RPCGA
June 17th, 2026

I. The Forgotten Hinge

Our Lord’s whole life comes to us in the Creed as a string of verbs, and you have said them a thousand times. Conceived, born, suffered, crucified, dead, buried. Descended, rose, ascended, seated. Then the Creed turns and looks forward. He shall come. He shall judge.

Nine verbs lie behind us, and the whole story leans on the last of them before it can reach the future at all.

He ascended into heaven.

Strike that line out and the narrative dies at the mouth of the empty tomb, because a resurrection without an ascension leaves the story without an ending. The tomb is empty, but the throne is vacant. There is no enthronement, no intercession, no return. And without the ascension, the resurrection is unfinished. Gerrit Dawson is right that the resurrection needs the ascension to finish it.

And here is the trouble with us. The ascension is the doctrine we confess on the Lord’s Day and misplace by Tuesday. We say it in the Creed and then let it quietly evaporate, and when a doctrine evaporates, the imagination does not leave the space empty.

C. S. Lewis put his finger on the thing we do in his book Miracles. “We also, in our heart of hearts, tend to slur over the risen manhood of Jesus, to conceive Him, after death, simply returning into Deity, so that the Resurrection would be no more than the reversal or undoing of the Incarnation.”

Beloved, that is not a harmless picture. It is the seed of every Christology that ever rotted, and it fuels a number of heretical ideas, not least full preterism, which we will come to later. So let me say plainly where we are going, and then let Paul prove it.

The Son of God did not rent our humanity for thirty-three years and hand it back. He took it, and he has it still. At this hour, on the throne of heaven, he is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And because he is still a man, the world he made still has a future.

His humanity and the redemption of creation are tied in one knot. Pull on either rope and the whole thing comes loose. Lose the continuing incarnation and you lose the redemption of creation, and the man who keeps only half of Christ has kept the half that cannot save him.

Half a Christ saves no one.

That said, please open your Bibles to Colossians 1.

II. Reading the Hymn

Hear the word of God, Colossians 1, verses 15 through 20.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

This section we just read is as concentrated as Paul ever gets, and we will not spend our entire time here, but I want to build from this text outward, because everything I have to say tonight is rooted in what Paul says in these six verses. Once you see how he built it, you cannot unsee it.

There are two movements here:

• The first runs through verse 17 and concerns the old creation.

• The second runs from verse 18 to verse 20 and concerns the new.

And Paul has bolted the two together with a single word, set at the head of each.

• Verse 15, firstborn of all creation.

• Verse 18, firstborn from the dead.

• One Son, firstborn in both worlds. That is the hinge of the passage, and it is the hinge of everything I have to say tonight.

Look at the title first. He is the image of the invisible God. The God no eye can see has made himself seen, and the place he chose to be seen is a man. Paul does not say the Son is rather like God. He says he is the image, and the rest of the chapter will not let us drain that into metaphor. The image is the man Christ Jesus. Now, keep that close by, because when the full preterist tells you the embodiment was a passing phase, Paul has already answered him in the first clause.

Then comes the phrase the cults have always loved. Firstborn of all creation. Arius read it as first created thing, and the man at your door with the magazine reads it the same way, as though Paul had signed the Son up as creature number one. The next word kills that reading dead. Verse 16 opens with one small word, “because.”

Why is he firstborn over all creation? Because by him all things were created.

You do not prove a man is a creature by saying that everything was made in him. The word translated “firstborn” is not telling you when he was born. It is telling you who is heir. It is the language of Psalm 89:27, where God says of David, “I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” David was not the first baby born in Israel. He was the son with the rights, the rank, the inheritance. So with Christ. He is firstborn over creation as its Lord, not firstborn inside it as its oldest item.

Then Paul stacks three little prepositions: All things were created in him, and through him, and for him. He is the one in whom creation was conceived, the agent through whom it was made, and the goal toward which all of it moves. Creation is not a machine the Son was later assigned to manage. It was built with him in view from the first line of Genesis.

And watch how wide he throws the net. Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities. He is naming the very spirit-powers the false teachers were busy flattering, and he stamps every last one of them with one word. Created.

James Ware offers us a help right here. Paul’s world, and ours, wants to file reality in two drawers, spirit on the top and matter on the bottom, the unseen prized and the seen despised. And if that is your filing system, then the thrones and dominions float up toward God while the dirt sinks down toward worthlessness.

Well Paul throws the whole cabinet out.

His one great line does not run between spirit and matter. It runs between Creator and creature, and every contrast in the verse, heaven and earth, seen and unseen, throne and footstool, lands on the creature side of it. Only the Son stands on the far side, with God.¹

That is what makes the phrase “all things” so large. It is the whole of everything that is not God, the seen and the unseen together. Paul is not surveying a county. He is surveying the cosmos.

So, remember the width of that phrase, because in four verses he is going to reach for it again to measure redemption, and the two measurements have to match.

Verse 17 keeps him in the present tense. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And note the verb Paul chose, for it keeps right on working. The cosmos does not merely owe him its birth certificate. It is being held in one piece by him at this very second. Every orbit, every atom, every law that keeps the universe from coming apart at the seams is his ongoing labor. And here is what should stop your breath. The hand that holds the galaxies in place is a pierced hand, because three verses on, this same Son is the one making peace by the blood of his cross. The one in whom all things cohere has a body.

Now the hinge turns. Verse 18. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. Now we have crossed out of the first creation and into the second, and Paul reaches for the same title he used at the top. As he was firstborn over the old world, he is firstborn of the new, the head of a new race of men, the first man out of the grave who never has to go back into it. And you cannot turn firstborn from the dead into a figure of speech either.

That is resurrection, and resurrection in Paul means a body or it means nothing. The firstborn from the dead walked out of the tomb in the body that was carried in, changed but continuous, and he took that body up into the heavens. In everything he might be preeminent, Paul says. First in creation, first out of the grave, first in the church, first, full stop.

And then the last two verses give the reason and the goal. In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Turn the page and Paul says it again and in the present tense. In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col 2:9). Note that the present tense is clear: dwells, not dwelt.

Now, I am not unaware that various men have understand this differently. The word translated bodily has been read various ways. Calvin took it to mean essentially or substantially, pointing to the fullness and reality of the divine presence in Christ over against the partial, figural manifestations of the old covenant.

Beza, however, read it as anchoring the two natures in one embodied mediator, the second Adam who is both truly human and truly divine, the fullness of deity dwelling in real flesh.

The Heidelberg Catechism cites this very verse as proof that the Godhead, though beyond the bounds of the manhood, remains personally united to it.

And the Westminster Larger Catechism, question 36, cites Colossians 2:9 alongside Hebrews 7:24-25 as proof that Christ “continues to be God and man, in two entire distinct natures, and one person, for ever.” Continues. The Westminster divines read this verse as a text about the permanent, ongoing two-natured person of Christ, which is the continuing incarnation in confessional form.

I believe that is the reading the flow of the passage itself supports, but we can dive into those details some other time.

The main thing is this: The fullness of deity is permanently and completely at home in Christ, in a body, on the throne.

And the goal, verse 20. Through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. There is that phrase, all things, a second time. The same all things made in him are the all things reconciled through him, the whole created order brought back under his lordship…not every person saved without exception…but the cosmos itself redeemed from its bondage.

Redemption is cut to the exact measure of creation. And the instrument is as physical as a wooden beam and a man’s blood. Paul simply will not let redemption drift loose from the body any more than he will let creation drift loose from the Creator.

So hear the whole argument before we leave the text: The maker of the world became flesh. He died in that flesh and rose in that flesh, and as the embodied firstborn from the dead he reconciles the whole created order.

With that in place, now you can do a little experiment that exposes a counterfeit gospel every time. Reach into this passage and pull the standing humanity of Christ out of it, and watch what falls.

• There is no firstborn from the dead, because a ghost was never in a tomb.

• There is no blood of the cross with any lasting power, because the one who shed it has thrown away the nature that bled.

• There is no cosmos reconciled, because the Reconciler has walked out on half of what he came to mend.

• Take the flesh out of Colossians 1 and the entire hymn falls apart. Paul’s Christ is embodied, permanently, gloriously, with no expiration date.

Paul has established two columns: the continuing incarnation of the Son, and the redemption of the creation he made and keeps. Now let’s follow each in turn.

III. The Incarnation That Does Not End

If the Son peeled off his humanity somewhere past the clouds, then whoever is sitting on that throne is not the carpenter the disciples touched and ate fish with and watched rise into the air. He is the eternal Son who paid humanity a visit and has since moved on. The Judge who comes back would be no brother of ours, not the one tempted where we are tempted, not the man with the scars. He might be God. He would not be man. And if that is the case, Gerrit Dawson is right that we are lost, because our whole rescue hangs not only on the Son coming all the way down to us, but on his refusing to leave us behind when he went back up. A Savior who reaches the bottom of the pit and climbs out alone has saved no one.²

So what does Scripture say about where the Son went, and in what form he remains?

Well, start with the resurrection itself. When the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples in Luke 24, he did not let them wonder about what they were seeing. “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). Flesh and bones. Not a vision. Not a symbol. The same body that was laid in the tomb, now glorified, but continuous with what went in. When Thomas doubted, Jesus did not argue with him. He showed him the wounds and said reach your hand here (John 20:27). The wounds were still there. They are still there now.

The man who ascended carried the marks of the cross into the presence of the Father, and they have not been erased.

Now consider what Hebrews says about what that man does in heaven. He holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them (Heb 7:24-25).

The argument of Hebrews is that the priesthood of Jesus is permanent precisely because his life is permanent, and his life is permanent in the body in which he lives it. A high priest must share the nature of the people he represents, which is why Hebrews 2 insists he was made like his brothers in every respect. Take away his continuing humanity and you have not improved his priesthood. You have abolished it. Take away his humanity and there is no high priest in heaven, only a divine Son who once knew secondhand what it was to be a man.

And Paul, writing a full generation after the ascension, still calls him a man. There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5). Not the one who was a man. Not the one who used to be a man. The man. Present tense, written decades after the clouds received him.

The mediator between God and us is, at this hour, one of us.

Then there are the two men in white at the ascension itself. This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven (Acts 1:11). This same Jesus, the text says, and in the same way. He left visibly, bodily, personally, with witnesses. The angels promise the return will match the departure. A bodily ascent demands a bodily return. The manner of the going determines the manner of the coming, and nothing in that promise leaves room for a Jesus who has slipped loose from his flesh somewhere above the clouds.

Scripture, then, is not ambiguous. The Son went up in a body. He remains in a body. He is coming back in a body. And the church has read these texts across sixteen centuries and confessed exactly that.

Knox confessed in the Scots Confession that Christ ascended in the selfsame body in which he was born and lived and died and rose.³ Barth said the Son holds our humanity to all eternity. It is a garment he does not take off, a temple he does not vacate, a form he does not lose.⁴ And long before either of these men, Clement of Alexandria saw the risen Lord enter the holy place clothed in a priestly garment of glorified flesh.⁵ Yes, Glorified flesh. Not flesh swapped for spirit. Flesh raised, flesh shining, flesh kept.

Calvin made the case with force, refuting those who argued that Christ’s human nature has been absorbed into the divinity after the ascension. Commenting on 2 Cor. 5:16 which reads, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.”

The meaning is—’Though Christ lived for a time in this world, and was known by mankind in those things that have to do with the condition of the present life, he must now be known in another way—spiritually, so that we may have no worldly thoughts respecting him.’ This passage is perverted by some fanatics, such as Servetus, for the purpose of proving, that Christ’s human nature is now absorbed by the Divinity. But how very far removed such a frenzy is from the Apostle’s intention, it is not difficult to perceive; for he speaks here, not of the substance of his body, but of external appearance, nor does he affirm that the flesh is no longer perceived by us in Christ, but says, that Christ is not judged of from that. Scripture proclaims throughout, that Christ does now as certainly lead a glorious life in our flesh, as he once suffered in it. Nay more, take away this foundation, and our whole faith falls to the ground; for whence comes the hope of immortality, except from this, that we have already a pattern of it in the person of Christ? For as righteousness is restored to us on this ground, that Christ, by fulfilling the law in our nature, has abolished Adam’s disobedience, so also life has been restored to us by this means, that he has opened up for our nature the kingdom of God, from which it had been banished, and has given it a place in the heavenly dwelling. Hence, if we do not now recognise Christ’s flesh, we lose the whole of that confidence and consolation that we ought to have in him. But we acknowledge Christ as man, and as our brother in his flesh—not in a fleshly manner; because we rest solely in the consideration of his spiritual gifts. Hence he is spiritual to us, not as if he laid aside the body, and became a spirit, but because he regenerates and governs his own people by the influence of his Spirit.⁶

See what he argues there? The “spiritual” is not the immaterial. The ascended Christ is not a spirit who once borrowed a body. He is the man in the glory, governing his people by his Spirit while remaining bone of our bone.

Our own Standards seal this with precision. The Larger Catechism confesses he rose with the very same body in which he suffered, went up in our nature and as our head, and there he shall continue till his second coming (QQ. 52-53). As God-man he is raised to the highest favor with the Father (Q. 54). And the Confession ties the whole chain at 8.4: he rose with the same body in which he suffered, ascended with that same body, sits making intercession, and shall return to judge men and angels at the end of the world. One body. Risen, ascended, seated, returning.

Now I know some are already forming the objection; perhaps not anyone here but those who may listen to this online. If we say his body is in heaven, aren’t we denying his presence with us now?

Well, Beza stated it precisely in his confession: concerning his human nature, Christ has taken it into heaven where he will dwell until he comes to judge; but concerning his divinity and the working of the Holy Spirit, he is with his elect until the end of the world.

The Heidelberg Catechism addresses this directly in Lord’s Day 18:

Question 46: How dost thou understand these words, “he ascended into heaven”? That Christ, in sight of his disciples, was taken up from earth into heaven; and that he continues there for our interest, until he comes again to judge the quick and the dead.

Question 47: Is not Christ then with us even to the end of the world, as he has promised? Christ is very man and very God; with respect to his human nature, he is no more on earth; but with respect to his Godhead, majesty, grace and spirit, he is at no time absent from us.

Question 48: But if his human nature is not present, wherever his Godhead is, are not then these two natures in Christ separated from one another? Not at all, for since the Godhead is illimitable and omnipresent, it must necessarily follow that the same is beyond the limits of the human nature he assumed, and yet is nevertheless in this human nature, and remains personally united to it.

Question 49: Of what advantage to us is Christ’s ascension into heaven? First, that he is our advocate in the presence of his Father in heaven; secondly, that we have our flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that he, as the head, will also take up to himself, us, his members; thirdly, that he sends us his Spirit as an earnest, by whose power we seek the things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God, and not things on earth.

And there it is.

He continues there. He is no more on earth in his human nature. Yet, the two natures are not separated but remain personally united. And his ascension advantages us in three ways: he advocates, he pledges, and he sends. The Spirit binds us to the whole Christ, body and all, where he actually is.

We are not orphans. We are already seated with him, by the Spirit, in the heavenly places, and the flesh of our Forerunner is the receipt that says we will follow.

The man is still on the throne.

Now, follow what that means for the world he made, because the two are inseparable. A permanently incarnate Lord is a Lord who has not finished with matter.

IV. The Redemption of Creation

The world Paul preached to held matter in contempt. The body was the prison of the soul. The flesh was the wheel of suffering. Salvation meant getting the soul loose from the body and up and out. And the sad thing is how easily that pagan reflex slipped back into the church, until you have pews and even pulpits full of believers who assume that the goal of the gospel is to leave the body in the ground and float off somewhere nicer.

But Paul believed the very opposite, and the reason is creation.

The body is God’s own handiwork. Matter was his idea. The world, in and of itself is not a flaw to flee. And Death is no natural feature of it that the wise man just learns to accept. Death is a trespasser. Paul calls it an enemy, the last enemy, and you do not make your peace with an enemy.

And here is why this matters for everything we have been saying. A Savior who abandoned his body has no reason to redeem ours or the world’s. The continuing incarnation is the guarantee that matter has a future. Because the Son of God keeps his flesh, our flesh has hope. Because he holds our nature on the throne, the creation that groans beneath us has a destiny that is not the incinerator.

Now consider 1 Corinthians 15. When Paul says the body is sown a natural body and raised a spiritual body, the Platonist hiding in all of us hears immaterial body, which is very nearly nonsense, and then concludes that what rises is a phantom. But the word translated “spiritual” there does not describe what the body is made of. It describes what runs it.

Paul’s whole flesh-and-Spirit contrast is never matter set against non-matter. It is fallen human nature left to itself set against human nature carried by the Holy Spirit.⁷ A spiritual body is not a body made out of spirit. It is a body governed by the Spirit, a body so flooded with the life of God that death can never lay a hand on it again.

The same man, the same flesh, raised incorruptible and Spirit-driven. That is what came out of the tomb on the first day of the week. That is what we are promised on the last day.

Then the verse the full preterist waves like a flag is the next one. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50). But flesh and blood in Paul is a figure for weak, dying, perishable humanity, not a label for physical matter, and Paul tells you so in the very next breath. Nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

He is not sending the body home from the resurrection. He is saying that what is mortal in it must be swallowed up. The perishable does not stay behind. It is changed, it is transformed, and it goes on.

And carry that back to Romans 8. The creation waits with its neck craned for the revealing of the sons of God. It was handed over to futility, that same weary word that haunts Ecclesiastes, and it groans, and it waits, because the creation itself will be set free from its slavery to decay and brought into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom 8:19-21).

Beloved, the creation is not scheduled for the furnace to be obliterated. It is scheduled for liberation. And James Ware, among others, has demonstrated that this is not a footnote in Paul’s theology. It is the shape of his whole understanding of what went wrong in the Fall and what the gospel puts right. The world is a good world spoiled.⁸ Redemption is not escape from it. Redemption is its restoration.

And that brings us back to Colossians 1:20. Through him to reconcile to himself all things.

Again, the reach of redemption equals the reach of creation, because the same embodied Son stands at the front of both columns. He did not come to evacuate us out of matter. He came to redeem matter, starting with the matter of his own body, moving to the matter of ours, reaching at the last to a whole groaning world.

Dawson puts it exactly. Because Jesus is still incarnate, this world is still the object of his love, and this earth he will free from its bondage to decay.⁹

The resurrection of the body is not a quaint leftover we tiptoe past on our way to going to heaven when we die. It is the hinge of the Christian hope, welded fast to the continuing incarnation of the Lord. He keeps his body because we are getting ours back. He holds our nature on the throne as the first installment on a new heaven and a new earth.

Deny the continuing incarnation and both promises collapse at once. There is no firstfruits if there is no harvest coming. There is no pledge if the one who made it has set aside the nature in which he made it.

The man on the throne has not finished with his world. But this now brings us to the men who say he has.

V. The Prosecution: What Full Preterism Forfeits

Full preterism, which DeMar and his sidekick prefer to call “consistent preterism”, makes one master move. It crams the entire hope of the church into the year 70. The general resurrection, they say, has already come and gone, and it was never the raising of bodies but some corporate, covenantal shift.

The second coming has already happened, and it was Christ arriving in judgment on Jerusalem.

No future raising of the dead. No future return in the flesh. No future for the creation. The whole consummation is behind us, finished invisibly inside one generation.

Well, set that claim down next to Colossians 1 and consider the cost.

Paul makes the Son the firstborn from the dead so that he might head a coming harvest of risen bodies. The full preterist says there is no coming harvest. Well, then the firstfruits is a harvest of one, and the backbone of 1 Corinthians 15, that his rising guarantees ours, is snapped clean.

Paul says all things will be reconciled through the blood of the cross. The full preterist says the cosmos mentioned there is some metaphorical creation and it got whatever reconciliation it is ever going to get back in the first century, meanwhile the actual creation of Romans 8 goes right on groaning under our windows. And apparently, it’s going to groan forever because no one is coming.

Paul says the fullness of deity dwells in Christ bodily, present tense. The full preterist system requires that the purposes for which the body was kept have already been fulfilled and closed.

No resurrection left to be the firstfruits of. No return to make in the nature he left in. No creation to redeem in the flesh that made it.

And this is exactly where the system shows its hand.

Friend, if you thought Gary DeMar’s latest book was merely about a few time texts and a Jewish revolt, you’d be wrong. It is a complete reworking of the Bible.

When a man has to get rid of Christ’s future bodily return, he sooner or later has to get rid of Christ’s present bodily humanity, and when he does that, then he begins to speak of the flesh as something that belonged to a chapter now closed and laid aside.

And this is exactly what Gary DeMar does in his book. He and his sidekick state plainly that “The days of Christ in the flesh on earth are long over.” And again: “The institutional Church has made a serious mistake by teaching that the parousia of Christ is going to take place in His same physical, material, visible, and bodily form.” His reason is that the parousia belongs to the New Covenant order, which is spiritual rather than fleshly, and therefore “Christ will come, just as He was careful to teach His disciples in John 14 and 16, in the person of the Holy Spirit, not again in the flesh.”

Do you see what is going on here? Flesh, in this system, is being equated with the physical, material creation, and that is now a category of the Old Covenant that the ascended Christ has permanently left behind.

And so not only is the creation left to pot, Christ Himself is redefined!

Chalcedon, in tune with Scripture, confessed Christ in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of the natures never once erased by the union.

Yet, a humanity that gets transcended and set down is a humanity changed and divided and taken away, the very thing the council anathematized!

Now, I do not know that Gary DeMar sat down meaning to go wrong about the person of Christ. He probably sat down meaning to be clever about a date. But, and here is one of the main lessons I want you to take away from this, his eschatology reached over and dragged the Christology down with it, just as Dawson warned.

Spiritualize the ascension, get Jesus safely dissolved into the sky, and you are left with a Christ who threatens no one, because he is no longer anyone in particular.¹⁰ He is a principle. And a principle has no nail-scarred hands.

And again, Calvin’s warning is worth setting directly against this system. He said that those who deny Christ’s continuing flesh cause us to lose the whole of the confidence and consolation we ought to have in him. Take away this foundation and it’s over. There is no Gospel. There is no hope. It’s done. Pack your bags, go home, live it up while you can, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.

Gary DeMar and the rest of the full preterists, whatever their intentions, delivers exactly that loss.

And that is the whole burden of my title today. You cannot pull the eschatology and the Christology apart, because the man and his coming are the same man. Deny his future in the body and you deny his present reign in the body. Deny his present reign in the body, and deny the redemption of creation with the Redeemer Himself.

Half a Christ saves no one.

I’m very thankful for the heritage that we have, of men who knew their Bibles far better:

The Shorter Catechism walks the four steps of the exaltation and ends with Christ coming to judge the world at the last day (Q. 28). The Larger Catechism describes that coming in great power, in the full blaze of his glory, the very same Christ once unjustly condemned now returning to judge the world in righteousness (Q. 56). And the Confession ends its chain on the same word. The body that suffered and rose and ascended and sits shall return to judge men and angels at the end of the world (8.4).

One body. Risen, ascended, seated, returning.

VI. The Man in Glory

Well, let me end where the doctrine wants to land us, which is not in the heat of an argument but in the comfort of the gospel.

Beloved, there is a man on the throne of the universe, and he is one of us. The hand that keeps the galaxies on their tracks is the hand that took the nails, and it is human still.

When you pray tonight, your prayers do not disappear into a fog of bare divinity. They go up through a brother who knows what it is to be tempted, and to weep, and to bleed, and who lives forever to carry them in to the Father.

Frederic Farrar stood in front of painting after painting of the ascension, every one of them a failure, and finally understood why no brush could ever manage it, and what the thing actually meant. That Christ has taken our manhood up into the Godhead forever. A face like our own waits for us. A hand like our own will swing the gate of life wide open.¹¹

That is why we are not, in the end, citizens of this passing age. Paul finishes the thought in Philippians 3. Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we are waiting for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body (Phil 3:20-21).

Hear what he does not say. He does not say the Savior will spring our souls from the jail of the body. He says the Savior will transform our bodies to match his own.

The hope is not escape. The hope is a body made glorious, and the same power that raised him will haul the whole creation up out of its bondage along with us.

So we will not run from the world in a fright, and we will not fall down and worship it as though it were all there is. We live as the people of the Man in glory. We hold the things of this age with a loose hand, because home is where our Forerunner has already gone. And we love the things of this creation with an honest love, because the Lord who made them in his own person means to redeem them. We lay our dead in the ground in sure and certain hope, not of some bodiless survival, but of the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.

He is the firstborn of all creation. He is the firstborn from the dead. He is preeminent in everything. He holds the whole of it together in his hand, and he is bringing all of it home, in the flesh he took and the flesh he keeps.

Nine verbs behind us. The throne occupied. Two verbs still ahead. He shall come. He shall judge. In the same body, in the same flesh, as the same man. And on that day, every knee will know what we have been saying this hour.

To him, the man on the throne, the God-man who is not ashamed to call us brothers, be glory and dominion now and to the ages of ages. Amen.

1. James P. Ware, Paul’s Theology in Context: Creation, Incarnation, Covenant, and Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), chap. 1.

2. Gerrit Scott Dawson, Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Christ’s Continuing Incarnation (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing; London: T&T Clark, 2004), Introduction.

3. John Knox, The Works of John Knox, vol. 2, ed. David Laing (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1854), 102, as cited in Dawson, Jesus Ascended.

4. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), 100-101, as cited in Dawson, Jesus Ascended.

5. Clement of Alexandria, as cited in Douglas F. Kelly, Foreword to Dawson, Jesus Ascended.

6. John Calvin and John Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, vol. 2 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), on 2 Cor. 5:16.

7. Ware, Paul’s Theology in Context, chap. 2 and chap. 10.

8. Ware, Paul’s Theology in Context, chap. 2.

9. Dawson, Jesus Ascended, Introduction, on Romans 8:20-21.

10. Dawson, Jesus Ascended, drawing on Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).

11. Frederic W. Farrar, The Life of Christ as Represented in Art (New York: Macmillan, 1895), 455, as cited in Dawson, Jesus Ascended.