The greatest works were done there for He tasted death for every man, took away the sin of the world and thus threw open the door of the Father’s house, now we are able to enter into fellowship with Him as His son’s and participate in the inheritance with Christ our elder brother. This was His first coming and it was not completed until the Father raised Him from the dead. He spent forty days appearing to those who loved Him, teaching them and showing Himself alive in His resurrection body whilst they wondered at all that had happened. He had come, they had handled Him, knew Him to be flesh and blood, He had died, they knew His body had been taken down from the cross, it had been laid in a tomb but now He was present amongst them, the same, and yet so different, they could handle Him, touch Him, He was alive! Then they saw Him ascend up to heaven having told them to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came. During those forty days He taught them many things, they knew He was King over death, the Father had raised Him, and it had no more dominion.
They were to receive His Life but now He had to ascend to His Father, be received in heaven and be enthroned there so that the works of His Father could be continued to their very end, His life, death and resurrection was the assurance that what had been begun would be finished. Now He ever lives to intercede that we shall be like Him in every way, glorified as He is, each of us with a glorious body like unto His glorious body. However, before the triumphant manifestation of the son’s of God can occur there must be another coming of Jesus, this time He who came in His own flesh through the womb of Mary must come in our flesh through the coming of the Holy Spirit. We could call this the spiritual coming of the Lord Jesus for the Holy Spirit brings Him into us and He brings the Father too. The Lord told His disciples to expect this coming; John’s gospel chapters fourteen, fifteen and sixteen record the conversation. He was explicit; the Holy Spirit Whom He named “The Comforter” would come IN them having been WITH them and when He came Jesus would come spiritually and indwell them.
When He came in the body of His flesh He walked WITH them, talked WITH them, worked amongst them, but now His coming was to be by the Spirit and He came IN their flesh, He was now WITHIN them and by His presence He would make them holy and enable them to continue in the Father’s works right up to the end of time as we know it. This spiritual coming of Jesus by which He indwells His own people continues until the end. Authentic Christianity is characterized by Spirit filled Christians in whom the Lord Jesus dwells and is glorified in their daily lives as in the body of their flesh with its frailties and weaknesses He changes them so that Christ likeness becomes increasingly recognizable. Christ IN us both as individuals and together is the hope of glory and so the church is comprised of those in whom Christ has come by the Holy Spirit, to do the Fathers works until all is finished according to His will. This is the second coming of the Lord Jesus and it is a spiritual one. However, all this points to the final coming of the Lord Jesus when He shall come in His glory, not unseen as on Pentecost but in His glorified body; every eye shall see Him then. When He comes all those who died righteous He shall bring with Him and they shall be like Him having glorified bodies like His and He shall change those who are looking in faith for His coming, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye they too shall have bodies of glory like unto His and so shall they will be with Him for ever. This coming of the Lord Jesus in glory is the climax towards which all history moves and is the culmination of all the works of God in His Son and by His Spirit through His church. All who have Jesus indwelling them are looking for His bodily coming, they long for it, they groan for it, as does the whole of creation. Great changes shall come for every creature when the son’s of God appear with their Lord Jesus sharing His glory, each creature shall be released from its bondage to corruption and shall be freed into its proper being as originally intended by God its creator. When the Holy Spirit brings Jesus into us and we begin to know His inward transforming power within we are enjoying something of what the New Testament calls “the earnest” which means “the down-payment” of this. The gift of the Spirit and the indwelling presence of Jesus is the promise that there is a fullness to come when Jesus shall come in bodily presence and we shall be forever with Him. We shall see Him and shall be like Him. We long for this and cannot be satisfied with the down- payment only, or tasting the powers of the world to come only, now we taste them, they are wonderful but they are not the full meal, that shall be ours only when He who is the Bread of Heaven shall appear in His glory.
The True Church, those indwelt by the Spirit and attending to the concerns of the Lord within them watch expectantly, earnestly desiring His glorious appearing. In the days of Jesus first coming amongst the Jews there were those watching for the coming of their Messiah, Mary was one of them and Simeon comes to mind, he said that he was now ready now to depart in peace because his eyes had seen God’s salvation, He for whom he had been longing had now come. So, we, who have the blessing of the Holy Spirit look for the coming of Jesus, we experience His quickening in our mortal flesh now and His renewing activity is real to us assuring us that He will surely come. “Lord Jesus, come quickly.” The apostle Paul says that he “longed to put off his earthly body, not to be unclothed but that all that was mortal would be swallowed up of life.” (2 Cor 5v4) Paul, who lived in a revelatory consciousness of the whole sweep of history, knew that God had predestined all the son’s for this, for he wrote, “Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.” (Romans 8v30).
John the beloved apostle wrote in His first letter chapter three that all he had known of Jesus in the flesh and knew now of Jesus in the Spirit was not enough, he says that although “now we are the son’s of God it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see Him as He is.” He then tells us that everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself as He is pure. These three comings of the Lord Jesus are the hinges of history. At His first coming in the days of His flesh on earth, He changed everything by overcoming sin, devil, death, yes, every enemy, in raising Him from the dead and setting Him at His own right hand the Father proclaimed that salvation is come to man and all the creation! The “second” coming of Jesus, in the Holy Spirit into the hearts of men and women at Pentecost is a hinge too for by it the church came into living existence, the new community of God’s sons doing His will from the heart. But the greatest change of all shall be the bodily coming of Jesus in glory, for it is the hinge by which the door shall swing wide and all things being made new. The Father shall bring all things to their perfection in His Son, He shall come and it shall be done. He shall appear in His glory and only thus shall we be glorified and the creation too.
