It's Easy to Miss

This morning I found myself read the Book of Mark. At the very end of this book, Mark 16:19 to be precise, I read;

"After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God."

While this seems pretty straight-forward, there is one little concept that I wanted to bring to your attention.

We all know that Christ came down from heaven and was born into the body of a man. The Son of God became the Son of Man. Of course, there is much discussion over the concepts of 'fully God and fully Man' but for our purposes here, we know that he was a man. And we further know that as a man, he died upon the cross, was entombed and on the third day, He rose again. Hallelujah for that!

In this passage though we are reminded that after He had finished His "post resurrection" work, "he was taken up into heaven..." What occurs to me is that He did not give up His human body but instead was completely taken into Heaven 'as is.' And we also know from this verse that 'he sat at the right hand of God.'

Now sitting at the right hand of The King is no small measure of significance. By his being placed at the right hand, a message that was 'loud and clear' was sent to everyone who could grasp it that God approved of the work of His Son, was fully satisfied in the work of His Son and that His Son was being rewarded, exalted to a place of power, honor and glory. But let's not forget that Christ came from this same spot.

The difference however is that originally, Christ sat in the place of power in his spirit state. After his resurrection, he was seated in the place of power in his glorified human state. I believe that means that among all the heavenly host and angelic beings, He is unique in this regard. Thus to see a 'human' seated at the right hand of God must have created quite a stir!

A thought that comes to me is that now, there is 'one of us' in Heaven at the right hand of God. In this manner, he represents all man and can be our effective advocate before God.

I just find it interesting that Christ the Spirit became flesh and that He never shed His flesh to return to His previous state. I had just never thought of that before because my mind keeps playing this trick on me; our spirit separates from our body at death. Some day I'll understand that fully but for now, I accept that Jesus in glorified human form is already in the throne room.

That reminds me of a question that a friend asked me once; "Is there anything man-made in heaven?" My reply "no, nothing." He replied "oh yes my friend, there is... there are the scars."

Thankful,
Carl