Mark 16:19 So then after the Lord had spoken to them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. How strangely calm and brief, this record of so stupendous an event. Something sublime in the contrast between the magnificence and almost inconceivable grandeur of the thing communicated, and the quiet words, so few, so sober, so wanting in all detail, in which it is told. The stupendous fact of Christ sitting at the right hand of God is the one that should fill the present for us all, even as the Cross should fill the past, and the coming for judgment should fill the future. I. THE EXALTED MAN. In His ascension Christ was but returning to His eternal Home; but He took with Him — what He had not had before in heaven — His humanity. It was the Everlasting Son of the Father, the Eternal Word, which from the beginning was with God and was God, that came down from heaven to earth, to declare the Father; but it was the Incarnate Word, the man Christ Jesus, who went back again. And He went as our Forerunner, to prepare a place for us, that where He is we also might be. II. THE RESTING SAVIOUR. Christ rests after His cross, not because He needs repose, but in token that His work is finished, and that the Father has accepted it. III. THE INTERCEDING PRIEST. There are deep mysteries connected with the thought of Christ's intercession. It does not mean that the Divine heart needs to be won to love and pity; or that in any merely outward and formal fashion He pleads with God, and softens and placates the Infinite and Eternal love of the Father in the heavens. But it means that He, our Saviour and Sacrifice, is forever in the presence of God; presenting His Own Blood as an element in the Divine dealing with us; and securing, through His own merits and intercession, the outflow of blessings upon our heads and hearts. IV. THE EVER-ACTIVE HELPER. The "right hand of God" is the omnipotent energy of God. The ascended Christ is the ubiquitous Christ. Our Brother, the Son of Man, sits ruling all things; shall we not, then, be restful and content? (A Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. |
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