Mark 16:19

Here is, 1. Christ welcomed into the upper world (Mar 16:19): After the Lord had spoken what he had to say to his disciples, he went up into heaven, in a cloud; which we have a particular account of (Act 1:9), and he had not only an admission, but an abundant entrance, into his kingdom there; he was received up, received in state, with loud acclamations of the heavenly hosts; and he sat on the right hand of God: sitting in a posture of rest, for now he had finished his work, and a posture of rule, for now he took possession of his kingdom; he sat at the right hand of God, which denotes the sovereign dignity he is advanced to, and the universal agency he is entrusted with. Whatever God does concerning us, gives to us, or accepts from us, it is by his Son. Now he is glorified with the glory he had before the world.

2. Christ welcomed in this lower world; his being believed on in the world, and received up into glory, are put together, Ti1 3:16. (1.) We have here the apostles working diligently for him; they went forth, and preached every where far and near. Though the doctrine they preached, was spiritual and heavenly, and directly contrary to the spirit and genius of the world, though it met with abundance of opposition, and was utterly destitute of all secular supports and advantages, yet the preachers of it were neither afraid nor ashamed; they were so industrious in spreading the gospel, that within a few years the sound of it went forth into the ends of the earth, Rom 10:18. (2.) We have here God working effectually with them, to make their labours successful, by confirming the word with signs following, partly by the miracles that were wrought upon the bodies of the people, which were divine seals to the Christian doctrine, and partly by the influence it had upon the minds of the people, through the operation of the Spirit of God, see Heb 2:4. These were properly signs following the word - the reformation of the world, the destruction of idolatry, the conversion of sinners, the comfort of saints; and these signs still follow it, and that they may do so more and more, for the honour of Christ and the good of mankind, the evangelist prays, and teaches us to say Amen. Father in heaven, thus let thy name be hallowed, and let thy kingdom come.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Mar_16:19

He was received up into heaven.

The Ascension and its effects

The hidden source of the Christians spiritual life is with Christ in God. To Him he looks as his treasure-his treasure in heaven; thither does he endeavour in heart and mind to ascend; he sets his affections on things above; he seeks those things which are at the right hand of God, with Christ, to be dispensed by Him, according to His promise. The ascension was the great consummation of Christs work. Observe in this connection-

I. The period at which He ascended: after He has spoken to the apostles. He did not leave them until His prophetical work on earth was done, and He had provided for the continued application of the benefits He had secured for mankind.

II. Whence He was received: from the Mount of Olives. A favourite spot, and one hallowed by frequent communion with His Father, and close to the garden where He rendered His will to God. The valley of humiliation was changed into the mount of triumph.

III. By whom He was received: by the holy angels. What joy for them! They ushered Him into the Presence chamber of Jehovah, and there He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High.

IV. The purpose for which He ascended.

1. To prepare a place for His people.

2. To rule and order all things for the glory of God.

3. To intercede for all who come to God by Him.

4. To send the Holy Spirit to dwell with His people and guide them into all the truth.

That Blessed Spirit is the true remedy for all the wants we feel, for the coldness of our hearts towards Him, for our many departures from His will, our many shortcomings and turnings aside from Him. (Bp. F. Barker, D. D.)

Christs Ascension

O happy parting, fit for the Saviour of mankind. O blessed Jesu, let me so far imitate Thee, as to depart hence with a blessing in my mouth; let my soul, when it is stepping over the threshold of heaven, leave behind it a legacy of peace and happiness.

I. From whence did He ascend? From the Mount of Olives. He might have ascended from the valley; all the globe of earth was alike to Him; but since He was to mount upward, He would take so much advantage as that stair of ground would afford Him. Since he had made hills so much nearer to heaven, He would not neglect the benefit of His Own creation. Where we have common helps, we may not depend upon supernatural provisions, we may not strain the Divine Providence to the supply of our negligence, or the humouring of our presumption. O God, teach me to bless Thee for means, when I have them; and to trust Thee for means, when I have them not; yea, to trust Thee without means, when I have no hope of them.

II. Whither did He ascend? Whither, but home into His heaven? From the mountain was He taken up; and what but heaven is above the hills? Already had He approved Himself the Lord and Commander of earth, of sea, of hell. It only remained that, as Lord of the air, He should pass through all the regions of that yielding element; and, as Lord of heaven, through all the glorious contiguations thereof. He had an everlasting right to that heaven; an undoubted possession of it ever since it was; but His human nature took not possession of it until now. O Jesu, raise Thou up my heart thither to Thee; place my affections upon Thee above, and teach me to love heaven, because Thou art there.

III. How did He ascend? As in His crucifixion and resurrection, so also in His ascension, the act was His Own, the power of it none but His. The angels did attend Thee, they did not aid Thee: whence had they their strength, but from Thee? Unlike Elias, Thou needest no chariot, no carriage of angels; Thou art the Author of life and motion; they move in and from Thee. As Thou, therefore, didst move Thyself upward, so, by the same Divine power, Thou will raise us up to the participation of Thy glory. (Bp. Joseph Hall.)

Comfort from Christs Ascension

O my soul, be Thou now, if ever, ravished with the contemplation of this comfortable and blessed farewell of thy Saviour. What a sight was this, how full of joyful assurance, of spiritual consolation! Methinks I see it still with their eyes, how Thou, my glorious Saviour, didst leisurely and insensibly rise up from Thine Olivet, taking leave of Thine acclaiming disciples, now left below Thee, with gracious eyes, with heavenly benedictions. Methinks I see how they followed Thee with eager and longing eyes, with arms lifted up, as if they had wished them winged, to bare soared up after Thee. And if Elijah gave assurance to his servant Elisha, that, if he should have beheld him in that rapture, his masters spirit should be doubled upon him; what an accession of the spirit of joy and confidence must needs be to His happy disciples, in seeing Christ thus gradually rising up to His heaven! O how unwillingly did their intentive eyes let go so blessed an object! How unwelcome was that cloud that interposed itself betwixt Him and them, and, closing up itself, left only a glorious splendour behind it, as the bright track of His ascension! Of old, here below, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud; now, afar off in the sky, the cloud intercepted this heavenly glory; if distance did not rather do it than that bright meteor. Their eyes attended Him on His way so far as their beams would reach; when they could go no further, the cloud received Him. Lo, even yet that very screen, whereby He was taken off from all earthly view, was no other than glorious; how much rather do all the beholders fix their sight upon that cloud, than upon the best piece of the firmament! Never was the sun itself gazed upon with so much intention. With what long looks, with what astonished acclamations, did these transported beholders follow Thee, their ascending Saviour! As if they would have looked through that cloud, and that heaven that hid Him from them … Look not after Him, O ye weak disciples, as so departed that ye shall see Him no more; if He be gone, yet He is not lost; those heavens that received Him shall restore Him; neither can those blessed mansions decrease His glory. Ye have seen Him ascend upon the chariot of a bright cloud; and, in the clouds of heaven, ye shall see Him descend again to His last judgment. He is gone: can it trouble you to know you have an Advocate in heaven? Strive not now so much to exercise your bodily eyes in looking after Him, as the eyes of your souls in looking for Him. If it be our sorrow to part with our Saviour, yet, to part with Him into heaven, it is comfort and felicity: if His absence could be grievous, His return shall be happy and glorious. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly: in the meantime it is not heaven that can keep Thee from me; it is not earth that can keep me from Thee: raise Thou up my soul to a life of faith with Thee; let me ever enjoy Thy conversation, whilst I expect Thy return. (Bp. Joseph Hall.)

The enthroned Christ

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 Christs 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.)

Design of Christs Ascension

1. To confirm the prophecies.

2. To commence His mediatorial work in heaven.

3. To send the Holy Ghost.

4. To prepare a place for His people.

He went up as our Representative, Forerunner, High Priest, and Intercessor, and as the King of Glory. (G. S. Bowes.)

Manner of Christs Ascension

The manner of Christs ascension into heaven may be said to have been an instance of Divine simplicity and sublimity combined, which scarcely has a parallel. While in the act of blessing His disciples (St. Luk_24:50-51), He was parted from them, and was carried up, and disappeared behind a cloud (Act_1:9). There was no pomp; nothing could have been more simple. How can the followers of this Lord and Master rely on pomp and ceremony to spread His religion, when He, its Founder, gave no countenance to such appeals to the senses of men? Had some good men been consulted about the manner of the ascension, we can imagine the result. (N. Adams.)

Ascension Day, on earth and in heaven

I. On earth. Think of the marvellous day when the disciples once more followed the Lord as far as unto Bethany, now truly on His way home. All the glimpses of the forty days had pressed it upon them that, while truly the same Jesus, He was yet drawing away from them. Still loving and tender, He is hedged about with divinity that makes a king. He bends not again to wash their feet; Mary does not touch Him, John does not lie in His bosom. Nature is losing its hold on His humanity. Suddenly He comes and goes, scarce recognized at first, then quickly hailed with rapturous confidence. They see Him no longer bearing unweariness, hunger, or the contempt of men. Jew and Roman are now out of the contest. Satan dares no more assaults. He has no sighs, no tears, no nights of prayer, no agony with bloody sweat. And now as they watch, that chiefest force of matter on which the systems stand, slips away from the particles of the form He wears, and He ascends in their sight, out of their sight, until swathed in the splendour of a cloud of glory.

II. In heaven. Dare we imagine the scene? Angels unnumbered, their faces solemn with a new awe at the great work of God; the first woman beholding at last the Seed; the first man Adam, rejoicing to see his fearful work undone and the race left free to join itself to a new Head; the patriarchs no longer pilgrims; priests no longer ministering at temple and altar; prophets finding prophecy itself looking backward on fulfilment; the heroes of the Church; the babes of Bethlehem slaughtered about His cradle-can we imagine the scene as He passed through the midst of these? Did they gaze on His form, with print of thorn and nail and spear, which mark Him forever as the Lamb that hath been slain? Up He passes through the bowed ranks, among saints and elders and martyrs, the four mystical living ones, beyond the glassy sea, amid the spirits seven burning flames, beneath the emerald glittering bow, to that glory whose brightness jasper and sardius cannot express, and on this highest height of the supreme throne of the ineffable God, He takes His Own place. (C. M. Southgate.)

The tomb and triumph

Whenever you think of our Lords resurrection and ascension, remember always that the background to His triumph is a tomb. Remember that it is the triumph over suffering; a triumph of One who still bears the prints of the nails in His hands and in His feet, and the wound of the spear in His side; like many a poor soul who has followed Him triumphant at last, and yet scarred and maimed in the hard battle of life. Remember forever the adorable wounds of Christ. Remember forever that St. John saw in the midst of the throne of God the likeness of a Lamb, as it had been slain. For so alone you will learn what our Lords resurrection and ascension are to all who have to suffer and to toil on earth. (C. Kingsley M. A.)

Christ is living now

What good would it do to you if you were suffering from some peculiar accident to a limb, and someone came and told you of a surgeon who lived a hundred years ago, and who had been wonderfully clever in resetting the same bone after that precise kind of fracture? You might feel that he would have been able and willing to relieve you from pain, and to prevent all subsequent deformity. But if you were told of some living man who had shown the same skill, and if it were explained how it was that he had acquired his special experience, and how he had succeeded in one case after another when every other surgeon was helpless, you would say, Now I have heard all this I will send for him at once, and put myself in his hands. This is just what men have to be persuaded to do in relation to Christ … to realize that He is living still, and that He is not only willing but able to give every man who asks of Him forgiveness of all past evil and strength to do better in time to come. (R. W. Dale D. D.)

Jesus at the right hand of God

John Bunyan was walking one day in a field, in great trouble of soul at the discovery of his own vileness, and not knowing how to be justified with God, when he beard, as he imagined, a voice saying to him, Your righteousness is in heaven. He went into his house and took his Bible, thinking to find there the very words that he thus sounded in his heart. He did not discover the identical expression, but many a passage of Scripture proclaimed the same truth, and showed him that Jesus, at the right hand of God, is complete righteousness to everyone that believeth. (Handbook to Scripture Doctrines.)

The ascension of Christ

We cannot contemplate the characters of men who have benefited the world by the splendour of their talents or the lustre of their lives, without feeling a spirit of inquisitive solicitude to know how they finished their course, parted with their friends, and made their exit. We labour to catch the last glance of departing worth.

I. The period when Christ ascended.

1. After upbraiding His disciples with their unbelief and hardness of heart.

2. After assigning to them their work.

(1) The work was to preach the gospel, not false doctrines, not human opinions, not Jewish ceremonies.

(2) The sphere of their operation was all the world.

(3) Their commission was to every creature. Hence we infer that the gospel is suited to the circumstances of all-designed for the benefit of all-and that the ministers of truth should aim at preaching it to all.

3. After comforting them by the promise of a miraculous influence with which they should be invested.

II. The manner.

1. Christs ascension was accomplished by His own eternal power.

2. It was publicly witnessed by His disciples.

3. It was hailed with transport by ministering angels. St. Luke declares that a cloud received Him; who can tell what amazing scenes were unfolded beyond that cloud?

III. His subsequent situation. He sat on the right hand of God. This signifies-

1. The honour and dignity to which our Saviour is exalted.

2. The rule and government with which He is invested (Eph_1:20-22; Joh_3:35; Mat_11:27; Rom_8:34).

3. The tranquility and happiness of which He is possessed.

Conclusion: From this subject we learn-

1. Christ finished the work which He came upon earth to accomplish.

2. Christ has highly honoured human nature.

3. Christ is exalted for our sake (Heb_9:24).

This should give us confidence in our prayers, excite our emulation, and, above all, inspire our hopes. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)

Our Lords Ascension

I. The fact of the ascension. Christ was, according to His humanity, translated by the Divine power into heaven. As God, He transferred Himself, as man, thither: to sit, thenceforward, at the right band of the Majesty on high. This signifies-

1. Preeminence of dignity, power, favour, and felicity.

2. The solid ground, the firm possession, the durable continuance, the undisturbed rest and quiet, of His condition.

3. The nature, quality, and design of His preferment. He is our Ruler and Judge.

4. His glorification.

II. Confirmatory considerations.

1. Ocular testimony. The apostles witnessed Christs ascension.

2. Rational deduction. His arriving at the supreme pitch of glory, and sitting there, is deduced from the authority of His own word, and stands on the same ground as any other point of Christian faith and doctrine.

3. Ancient predictions.

III. The end and effect of the ascension.

1. Our Lord did ascend unto, and doth reside in, heaven, at the right hand of Divine majesty and power, that as a King He may govern us, protecting us from all danger, relieving us in all want, delivering us from all evil.

2. Our Saviour did ascend, and now sits at Gods right hand, that He may, in regard to us, there exercise His priestly function.

3. Our Lord tells us that it was necessary He should depart hence, and enter into this glorious state, that He might there exercise His prophetical office by imparting to us His Holy Spirit for our instruction, direction, assistance, and comfort.

4. Our Lord also tells us that He went to heaven to prepare a place there for His faithful servants. He has entered heaven as our Forerunner, our Harbinger, to dispose things there for our reception and entertainment.

5. It is an effect of our Lords ascension and glorification, that an good Christians are with Him in a sort translated into heaven, and advanced into a glorious state, being made kings and priests to God.

6. I might add that God did thus advance our Saviour, to declare the special regard He bears to piety, righteousness, and obedience, by His so amply rewarding and highly dignifying the practice thereof.

IV. Practical considerations.

1. It may serve to guard us from divers errors with regard to our Lords human nature. Our Lord did visibly, in human shape, ascend to heaven, and therefore He continues still a Man; and as such He abides in heaven. He is indeed everywhere by His Divinity present with us; He is also in His humanity present to our faith, memory, affection; He is therein also present by mysterious representation, by spiritual efficacy, by general inspection and influence on His Church; but in body, as we are absent from Him, so is He likewise separated from us; we must depart hence, that we may be with Him in the place whither He is gone to prepare for us.

2. Is Christ ascended and advanced to this glorious eminency at Gods right hand? Then let us answerably behave ourselves towards Him, rendering Him the honour and worship, the fear and reverence, the service and obedience, suitable and due to His state.

3. These points afford ground and matter of great joy and comfort to us. Victory over enemies; exaltation of Him who has stooped to become one with us-our Elder Brother; the possession of a Friend in so high place and so great power, etc.

4. The consideration of these things serves to cherish and strengthen all kinds of faith and hope in us. We cannot surely distrust the accomplishment of any promises declared by Him, we cannot despair of receiving any good from Him, who is ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of Divine wisdom and power, thence viewing all things done here, thence ordering all things everywhere for the advantage of those who love Him and trust in Him.

5. These points likewise serve to excite and encourage our devotion. Having such a Mediator in heaven, so good and sure a Friend at court, what should hinder us from cheerfully addressing ourselves by Him on all occasions to God?

6. It may encourage us to all kinds of obedience, to consider what a high pitch of eternal glory and dignity our Lord has obtained in regard to His obedience, and as a pledge of like recompense designed to us if we tread in His footsteps.

7. The consideration of these points should elevate our thoughts and affections from these inferior things here below unto heavenly things (Col_3:1). To the Head of our body we should be joined; continually deriving sense and motion, direction and activity, from Him; where the Master of our family is, there should our minds be, constantly attentive to His pleasure, and ready to serve Him; where the city is whose denizens we are, and where our final rest must be, there should our thoughts be, careful to observe the law and orders, that we may enjoy the immunities and privileges thereof; in that country where only we have any good estate or valuable concernment, there our mind should be, studying to secure and improve our interest therein; our resolution should be conformable to that of the holy Psalmist: I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help. (Isaac Barrow, D. D.)

Christs ascension and cooperation

I. Contemplate these apostles witnessing the ascension of their Lord.

1. The place from which He ascended. Mount of Olives. Thither He had been accustomed to resort after the labours and fatigues of the day; there He had often spent a whole night in meditation and prayer; and now He Himself ascends from the same place. There His disciples had forsaken Him and fled; and there He was now parted from them, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.

2. The manner in which He ascended.

(1) Visibly. His disciples were eyewitnesses of His majesty, as He rose higher and higher from the mountain, till the cloud covered Him, and concealed Him from their sight.

(2) While He was in the act of blessing.

3. The place to which He ascended. Heaven. His own home. What rejoicings at His return!

II. Contemplate the apostles going forth to preach His Gospel.

1. The subject of their preaching. The gospel of Jesus Christ-the crucified, risen, and ascended Saviour.

2. They communicated this gospel to mankind by preaching.

(1) A Divine ordinance.

(2) A speedy way of teaching.

(3) A method admirably adapted for impressing the great truth of the gospel on mens hearts.

3. The extent to which they preached this gospel was universal. Everywhere. To every creature, was the command.

III. Contemplate the apostles experiencing their Lords cooperation with them in their labours. Wherever they worked as instruments, He worked also as the efficient agent; for His power is omnipotent; and the signs promised were the result.

1. These Divine influences qualified the preachers of the gospel.

2. These Divine influences confirmed the truth of the gospel.

3. These Divine influences ensured the success of the gospel.

A glorious conquest-a triumph over mind and heart. It was great and godlike even to plan the moral conquest of a world; but when the plan is all accomplished, when all the nations of the earth become one holy and happy family, then shall the world enjoy its millennial jubilee, and Christ the Mediator shall be Lord of all. (J. Alexander, D. D.)

An open way to heaven

When He ascended up on high, He opened and prepared a path, along which we may travel till we behold His face in righteousness. It has been said, that in the early ages an attempt was once made to build a chapel on the top of the hill from which Christ ascended into heaven; but that it was found impossible either to pave over the place where He last stood, or to erect a roof across the path through which He had ascended;-a legendary tale, no doubt, though perhaps intended to teach the important troth that the moral marks and impressions which Christ has left behind Him can never be obliterated; that the way to heaven through which He has passed can never be closed by human skill or power; and that He has set before us an open door which no man shall be able to shut. (J. Alexander, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Mar_16:19-20. Mark the antithesis. The Lord, for His part, was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God—the seat of power; and they, for their part, went forth into the world to do as He had bidden them, and, doing it, they were sustained and reinforced by His almighty aid.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_16:19-20

(PARALLELS: Luk_24:50-51; Act_1:9.)

Christ’s ascension and co-operation.—The words “after the Lord had spoken unto them” may refer primarily to the commission which He had just given to His disciples to “go into all the world and to preach the gospel to every creature,” and to the various instructions and promises with which that commission was accompanied. But the words probably refer also to all that Christ had spoken to His disciples after His resurrection from the dead; for we are told in His history that after His crucifixion “He shewed Himself alive by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” Eighteen hundred years have passed away since these events occurred, and we never saw either the Saviour or the apostles to whom they refer. But we believe the record that relates them to us, we make them the subject of devout and delightful contemplation, and we feel that we have an interest in them which will never cease to influence our hearts through time or through eternity.

I. Let us contemplate these apostles witnessing the ascension of their Lord.—

1. The place from which He ascended was the Mount of Olives—that part of it which was situated in the district of Bethany (Luk_24:50). It was the place to which He had been accustomed to resort after the labours and fatigues of the day, and where He had often spent whole nights in meditation and in prayer; and now He Himself ascends from the same place whence His nightly supplications had so often ascended to His Father and to our Father, to His God and to our God. It was the place over which He passed as He made His last entry into Jerusalem, where He was crowned with thorns; and from which He now passes to the heavenly Jerusalem, to be crowned with glory and honour. It was the place to which He repaired with His disciples, after they had partaken of the Last Supper; for when they had sung a hymn they went into the Mount of Olives. There His disciples forsook Him and fled, and there He was afterwards parted from them, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.

2. The manner in which He ascended is minutely recorded (Luk_24:51). His ascension was visible, and His disciples were eye-witnesses of His majesty, as He rose higher and higher from the mountain, till the cloud covered Him and concealed Him from their sight. But the most interesting fact connected with His ascension is that it took place whilst He was in the act of blessing His disciples. When the high priest among the Jews began to bless the congregation, he lifted up his hands and exclaimed, “The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord cause His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift upon thee the light of His countenance, and give thee peace.” And in like manner our Great High Priest lifted up His hands—those hands which had so often given bread to the hungry, health to the sick, life to the dead, salvation to the lost—those hands which had so lately bled upon the Cross, and in which the print of the nails was yet visible—those bountiful and wounded hands He lifted up, and then He began to bless His disciples. “And it came to pass, while He blessed them” (after His blessing was begun, but before it was concluded)—“it came to pass, while He blessed them” (for how often does it happen that a blessing precedes a bereavement!)—“He was parted from them”; and He rose from the mountain, with His hands still lifted up, and with the blessing still dropping from His lips, and brightening as He took His flight.

3. Having thus left the earth, our text declares that “He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.” As He had descended to earth in the likeness of men, and in order, through sufferings and death, to become the Mediator, He now, having procured eternal redemption for us, ascends in His mediatorial capacity, and rises “far above all principality,” etc. And what, think you, must have been the rapturous joy that thrilled through heaven, when the expectant and listening silence of its inhabitants was broken by the shout, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in”! And having thus entered, He was received by the Everlasting Father, who declared, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” “Let all the angels of God worship Him!”

4. Such an ascension into heaven, and such a reception there, is in beautiful harmony with the dignity of the Saviour’s person, and with the glory which He had acquired as the Author of man’s redemption; and it was also a pledge and a preparation for the triumphant spread of His gospel in the world.

II. Contemplate the apostles going forth to preach His gospel.—The ministry of the gospel is represented by the apostle as one of the first gifts which the Ascended Saviour acquired and bestowed upon the world (Eph_4:11-12). We therefore find that immediately after the ascension of their Lord these disciples “went forth, and preached everywhere.”

1. The subject of their preaching was the gospel of Jesus Christ, or “the Word,” as it is emphatically called in our text. And after what they had seen and heard and experienced themselves, on what other subject could they preach and what other name could they declare? It was not merely as an important fact that they contemplated His death, but as having essentially connected with it a moral meaning and design, as the only and the all-sufficient means of redemption to a ruined world. He was wounded; but it was for our transgressions. He was bruised; but it was for our iniquities. He suffered; but He suffered, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. He bled; but in His blood there is redemption, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace. He died; but through death He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. In preaching this doctrine the apostles warned sinners, as we warn you, to beware of rejecting Christ by trusting for salvation to your own works; and they exhorted sinners, as we exhort you, to go at once to Christ, and to go to Him laden with the full weight of all your guilt and condemnation, because “He came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost.”

2. They communicated this gospel to mankind by preaching. Nothing can equal the impressiveness of a living address from man to man, where numbers are assembled, where the place which they occupy is sacred, where the gospel is the theme, where the whole soul of the preacher feels and speaks, and where all are reminded that they are in the presence of God. Attention is awakened; emotions are excited; conscience is aroused; and the stream of sympathy flows from soul to soul, mingled with all those hallowed influences which render the gospel the power of God to our salvation.

3. The extent to which they preached this gospel was universal. They preached Christ first in the very place where He had lived, and died, and risen, and ascended. They preached His miracles to the very men who had witnessed them and experienced them. They preached His sufferings in the garden of Gethsemane and on the hill of Calvary where they had been endured. They preached His resurrection at the mouth of His deserted sepulchre. They preached His ascension on the very mount where He had been parted from them. But while Jerusalem was the centre of their operations the world was their circumference; and they went forth and preached everywhere, till they could say to the Colossians, “The gospel is come unto you, as it is in all the world.”

III. Contemplate the apostles experiencing their Lord’s co-operation with them in their labours.—Wherever His disciples worked as instruments He worked also as the efficient agent; for His power is omnipotent. And by this presence and this power He graciously fulfilled His own declaration (Mar_16:17-18).

1. These Divine influences qualified the preachers of the gospel. The change which took place in the sentiments and conduct of the apostles, after the reception of Christ into heaven, was most manifest and remarkable. To that same Divine Redeemer let every minister of the gospel look for the knowledge, and the holiness, and the energy, and the pathos, and the patient perseverance, and for every qualification which is necessary to render him a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth, and instant in season and out of season, watching for souls as one who must give an account.

2. These Divine influences confirmed the truth of the gospel. As He sat at the right hand of God, He baptised them with His miraculous influences and power to such an extent that they could heal the sick and raise the dead whenever they invoked the name of Jesus. These miraculous influences are now indeed withdrawn. But as we can prove that these miraculous powers then existed, we can appeal to them as a standing evidence in our day that the gospel of our salvation is the Word of God. But though the miraculous influences are withdrawn, the spiritual and sanctifying influences are still continued.

3. These Divine influences ensured the success of the gospel. Though its original ministers were only the twelve fishermen of Galilee—men without learning, without worldly wealth, and without worldly power—yet they became so mighty through God that heathen philosophers were confounded, heathen oracles were struck dumb, heathen temples were deserted, and so mightily grew the Word of God and prevailed that in about thirty years after the ascension of Christ the whole Roman world was conquered by the Cross. And it was a glorious conquest; for it was a triumph over mind and heart. And, thanks be unto God, the same Divine influences ensure the success of the gospel in every age; and many of you, my brethren, are living witnesses of its effectual working in the hearts of them that believe; “for our gospel has come to you not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance.” And believing as we do that the Ascended Redeemer possesses all power both in heaven and earth, we are sure that His moral government of the world will be productive of the purity and joy and universality of the Church, and that the time foretold by prophecy shall come, when to Him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.—J. A. Alexander, D.D.

OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Mar_16:19. The significance of Christ’s Ascension.—

1. It was the end of the work of redemption.

2. It was the final triumph of goodness.

3. It was the exaltation of humanity.

4. It told of the continuity of life.

5. It inaugurated the reign of blessing. Let us realise that all gifts, both spiritual and temporal, come from Him, and so live that His benediction may be able to rest on all that we do.—A. G. Mortimer, D.D.

“Received up into heaven.”—There is something remarkable in these words. We habitually speak of Christ as ascending, but Scripture more frequently declares that He was the subject of the action of Another, and was taken up. See Luk_24:51; Act_1:2; Act_1:9. Physical interference is not implied; no angels bore Him aloft; and the narratives make it clear that His glorious body, obedient to its new mysterious nature, arose unaided. But the decision to depart and the choice of a time came not from Him: He did not go, but was taken.—Dean Chadwick.

Why such slight mention of Christ’s Ascension?—It may seem remarkable that so great an occurrence should be so little noticed by the sacred writers; for it is mentioned by two only, St. Mark and St. Luke, and these two who were not witnesses of it. And yet we need not wonder at this, nor that it should have held a less prominent place in the minds of the apostles than the Resurrection; for, indeed, that He who had risen from the grave, who had laid aside His earthly body and put on the heavenly, that He should go up to heaven, that He who had so clearly shewn that He came down from God should return to God—this was but natural, and could not but appear natural to the enlightened minds of the apostles. What else could happen to Him who had risen from the grave, and clothed Himself with His “house that was from heaven”?—A. Grant, D.C.L.

Ascension joy.—Truly if we could ever live in this day all were joy; for the Ascension is the crown of all joys, the rapture of all creation, the wonder of the blessed angels, the union of all being, the finishing of the earthly course of the Son of God, His entrance into glory!—E. B. Pusey, D.D.

We ascend with Christ.—The Ascension of Christ is the great pledge and proof of our eternal state; our nature is for ever identified with His, so that as long as He is man we must be happy as one with Him. The great value of this transcendent fact is not merely that it is an example of our future ascension, but that it is our ascension begun—we in Him having risen to heaven—we in Him being at this time present before God—we in Him being united with the eternal plans and procedures of heaven, so that we are for ever blended with Christ—His property—His purchased possession—the very members of His body.—Prof. W. A. Butler.

Thou hast raised our human nature

in the clouds to God’s right hand,

There we sit in heavenly places, there

with Thee in glory stand;

Jesus reigns, adored by angels; man

with God is on the throne;

Mighty Lord, in Thine Ascension we

by faith behold our own!

Bishop Chris. Wordsworth.

Christ on the right hand of God as our Intercessor.—The Epistle to the Hebrews over and over again reiterates that thought that we have a Priest that has passed into the heavens, there to appear in the presence of God for us. And the apostle Paul, in that great linked climax in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, has it, “Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” There are deep mysteries connected with that thought of the intercession of Christ. It does not mean that the Divine heart needs to be won to love and pity. It does not mean that in any mere outward and formal fashion He pleads with God, and softens and placates the infinite and eternal love of the Father in the heavens. It at least plainly means this, that He, our Saviour and Sacrifice, is for ever in the presence of God, presenting His own blood as an element in the Divine dealing with us, modifying the incidence of the Divine law, and securing through His own merits and intercession the outflow of blessings upon our heads and hearts. It is not a complete statement of Christ’s work for us that He died for us. He died that He might have somewhat to offer. He lives that He may be our Advocate as well as our propitiation with the Father. And just as the high priest once a year passed within the curtain, and there in the solemn silence and solitude of the holy place sprinkled the blood that he bore thither, not without trembling, and but for a moment permitted to stay in the awful Presence, thus, but in reality and for ever, with the joyful gladness of a Son in His “own calm home, His habitation from eternity,” Christ abides in the holy place, and at the right hand of the Majesty of the heavens lifts up that prayer, so strangely compact of authority and submission: “Father, I will that these whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am.” The Son of Man at the right hand of God is our Intercessor with the Father. “Seeing, then, that we have a Great High Priest that is passed through the heavens, let us come boldly to the throne of grace.”—A. Maclaren, D.D.

Mar_16:20. The spread of Christ’s influence.—As the ages pass the influence of the love of Christ is conquering the selfishness of mankind. Even the statute-books of civilisation attest His growing power. The regeneration of a world is a slow process, but the healing rays from His glorified presence at the right hand of the Father—calling forth the verdure and fruitage of an ever wider imitation of His life—have in them the pledge of a future in which their influence will extend over all lands.—C. Geikie, D.D.

Christ with His Church throughout the ages.—He has been with His Church, keeping her from fainting, from decay, declension, so that she has gone on conquering and to conquer; so that the hundred and twenty became three thousand at Pentecost; and before the end of the century the three thousand had become probably (Lange) half a million; by the eighth century the half-million had become thirty millions; by the Reformation one hundred millions. And to-day four hundred and forty millions of men give Jesus the Name which is above every name; multitudes that none can number doing so, not with lips only, but from the heart. He is with us still. A hundred years ago Carey reckoned up the population of the world with great accuracy, and found Christendom was only one-fifth of the whole; now it is nearly one-third. What another century of missions may make it will probably exceed the hope and prayers of the most daring believer. We must remember He is most richly with us when we are “going into the world to preach the gospel,” i.e. when we are on the move of mercy. Let us, for our personal consolation, remember He will be with us to the end of life and work and need. Let us remember that, in all work done for Him, He still is with us, and is ever making the foolishness of preaching and teaching omnipotent to bring men into His fold.—R. Glover.

APPENDIX

[For this interesting review of the evidence for and against the Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark, I am indebted to my friend the Rev. F. W. Christie, M.A., Rector of St Mary’s. Aberdeen.]

NOTE ON ST. Mar_16:9-20

THE great majority of modern scholars are agreed that with the eighth verse of this chapter the genuine work of St. Mark comes abruptly to an end, and that the twelve verses which follow are an addition by another hand in the earliest sub-apostolic age. Westcott and Hort insert these verses within double brackets, as an interpolation, “probably Western in origin, containing important matter apparently derived from extraneous sources”;[1] and Lightfoot ascribes them, together with the account of the woman taken in adultery (Joh_7:53 to Joh_8:11), “to that knot of early disciples who gathered about St. John in Asia Minor, and must have preserved more than one true tradition of the Lord’s life and of the earliest days of the Church, of which some at least had themselves been eye-witnesses.”[2] And so most scholars. On the other hand, such eminent critics as Dr. Scrivener, Dean Burgon, Prof. Salmon, Bishop John Wordsworth, and others, maintain, on grounds of external and internal evidence, that these verses are the genuine work of St. Mark. Dean Burgon’s elaborate monograph (The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark vindicated: Oxford, 1871) won the admiration of Lagarde,[3] and is acknowledged to have proved “that the external evidence against the passage has been greatly overstated … and that the patristic evidence resolves itself into that (perhaps ultimately of Origen, but immediately) of Eusebius.”[4] Without presuming to settle so difficult a controversy, it will be useful to review the evidence on which the decision depends.

[1] New Test., smaller edition, p. 583.

[2] On Revision of N. T.

[3] Expositor, September 1894, p. 226.

[4] W. H. Simcox, Writers of N. T., p. 11.

External evidence.—The verses are wanting in the two oldest MSS., the great uncial Bibles of the fourth century, Codex Vaticanus (B) and Sinaiticus (א). Tischendorf has, however, pointed out that these MSS. are here not independent witnesses, as in א the last leaf of St. Mark has been written by the scribe of B.[5] In B there is a blank column—the only one in the whole MS.—after Mar_16:8; and in א the letters of the last page of St. Mark, which might easily have been written in one column, are spread out so as to carry over a few lines to the second column, as if to avoid leaving it quite blank. Dr. Salmon infers from these facts that both MSS. had, as first copied, contained the disputed verses, and that the leaves were then cancelled and rewritten by the original scribe of B. The scribe was evidently aware of the twelve verses, and rejected them. Eusebius (Bishop of Cæsarea 315 A. D., died 340 A. D.) says of these verses:[6] “He that rejects Mark’s section as spurious will say that it is not current in all the copies. The accurate copies at least end with ‘afraid.’ For this is the end in nearly all the copies.” Eusebius himself, the great critic of that century, seems to have rejected this section, for the so-called Eusebian Canons were not carried beyond Mar_16:8. The words of Eusebius just quoted are almost verbally repeated by Jerome (circ. 400 A. D.),[7] Hesychius of Jerusalem (circ. 400 A. D.), and Severus of Antioch (circ. 500 A. D.). Doubts about the genuineness of this section were therefore familiar to them. The evidence of the important Armenian Version made in the fifth century is specially interesting. All MSS. prior to 1100 A. D. omit the verses. Later MSS. containing them have “Here ends Mark’s Gospel” after “afraid,” and then after a pause continue with Mar_16:9-20. There is, however, one old MS. in the Patriarchal Library at Etchmiadzin which not only gives the verses, but seems to throw light upon their origin. This MS. was examined by Mr. F. C. Conybeare in 1891, and in the Expositor for October 1893 he describes it and gives his conclusions. The MS. is an Evangeliarium written about 986 A. D., and purporting to have been copied from a true and accurate Armenian exemplar. St. Mark is written out to Mar_16:8. Then there is a space of two lines, after which in the same uncial hand, only in red—a distinction otherwise reserved for the titles of the four Gospels themselves—is written “Ariston Eritzou,” which means “Of the Presbyter Ariston.” This title occupies one whole line (the book is written in double columns), and then follow the last twelve verses, still in the same hand. This discovery of Mr, Conybeare’s is an important one. The heading no doubt embodies a very ancient tradition, and may meet with-verification elsewhere. Mr. Conybeare identifies this Ariston the Presbyter with the Ariston mentioned by Papias (Euseb., Hist. Eccl., iii. 39) as one of the elders who were disciples of the Lord. Dr. Resch[8] thinks he was Ariston of Pella, a Jewish Christian who wrote about 140 A. D., and who—Dr. Resch thinks after this discovery—also arranged the Canon of the Gospels. There are also MSS. which exhibit a duplicate ending. The uncial Codex L, eighth century, in the National Library at Paris, noted for its frequent agreement with א and B, breaks off after Mar_16:8, and then continues:[9] “The following also is current: ‘And they briefly brought word of all the things that were commanded them to Peter and his company: but after these things Jesus Himself also sent forth by them from the east even unto the west the holy and incorruptible preaching of the eternal salvation.’ But then is also current the following after ‘for they were afraid,’ ‘But when He was risen again,’ etc.” The same duplicate ending is also found in a fifth-century MS. of the old Latin, the Codex Bobiensis. The alternative ending is added in the margin of the Harklean Syriac (616 A. D.), and is found in various MSS. of the Memphitic and Æthiopic versions. In the recently discovered Sinai Palimpsest of the Old Syriac, allied to the Curetonian, the text of St. Mark ends with Mar_16:8, as in א, B (see Guardian, October 31st, 1894). On the other hand, the twelve verses are found in the other two great uncial MSS., the Codex Bezæ (D) and the Codex Ephremi (C), both of the fifth century; in all the other uncial MSS.; in MSS. of the old Latin (including the important Codex Colbertinus); in the Vulgate; in three Syriac versions (Curetonian, Peschito, Jerusalem); in the Gothic and various Memphitic and Æthiopic MSS. Irenœus (circ. 185 A. D.) quotes Mar_16:19 as St. Mark’s (Adv. Hœr., III. x. 6). Justin Martyr[10] seems to cite these verses; but “decision seems impossible.”[11] They are found in Tatian’s Diatessaron (160–170 A. D.). Victor of Antioch (400–450 A. D.) wrote a commentary on St. Mark which had a wide repute (see list of MSS, in Burgon). The last words of his commentary are these: “Notwithstanding that in very many copies of the present Gospel the passage beginning, ‘Now when [Jesus] was risen early the first day of the week,’ be not found (certain individuals having supposed it to be spurious), yet we at all events, inasmuch as in very many we have discovered it to exist, have out of accurate copies subjoined also the account of the Lord’s ascension (following the words ‘for they were afraid’) in conformity with the Palæstinian exemplar of Mark which exhibits the Gospel verity: that is to say, from the words ‘Now when [Jesus] was risen early the first day of the week,’ etc., down to ‘with signs following. Amen.’ ”

[5] Salmon, Introd. to N. T., p. 161.

[6] Quœst. ad Marinum, iv. 957, ed. Migne.

[7] Ep. 120, ad Hedibiam.

[8] See Thinker, October 1894, pp. 291, 292.

[9] McClellan, New Test., p. 681

[10] See Dr. Taylor’s article, Expositor, July 1893.

[11] Westcott and Hort.

Internal evidence.—Against the genuineness it is urged:

1. There is a want of connexion between this section and the foregoing. St. Mark would never have written consecutively ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. Ἀναστὰς δὲ πρωΐ, κ.τ.λ. Also Mary Magdalene is introduced in Mar_16:9 as if she had not been mentioned before in Mar_16:1.

2. The usual relation between St. Mark and St. Matthew fails in this section. Mar_16:1-8 is parallel with Mat_28:1-8, but there the connexion ceases. From Mar_8:7 we might have expected a mention in the sequel of this appearance in Galilee, such as we find in St. Matthew. The twelve verses contain no mention of it, and must therefore be from another hand.

3. The diction is unlike St. Mark’s, πρώτῃ σαββάτου) is unique; in Mar_16:2 Mark had written the usual μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων (cp. Gen_1:5, R.V.). ἐκεῖνος is never used elsewhere in St. Mark without a substantive; here it occurs four times without a substantive. θανάσιμος, μορφή, θεᾶσθαι, βλάπτειν, πορεύεσθαι, ἀπιστεῖν, παρακολουθεῖν, ἐπακολουθεῖν, do not occur before in this Gospel. On the other hand, arguments for the genuineness of these verses based on internal evidence are not wanting. Dr. Salmon traces in the first fifteen verses of this Gospel a resemblance in style to the last twelve. These opening and closing sections are, he thinks, the framework in which St. Mark set the Petrine tradition. He also finds the characteristic ideas of the Gospel in these verses. Thrice does St. Mark alone of the Synoptics record the unbelief of men (Mar_3:5, Mar_6:6; Mar_6:52), and thrice in this last section (Mar_16:11; Mar_16:13-14) does this thought appear. Westcott also notices this correspondence (Introduction to Study of Gospels, p. 334). But nowhere has it been stated so fully as in a university sermon of the present Bishop of Salisbury.[12] St. Mark, he thinks, depicts Christ as the strong Son of God, Lord of spirits and men and nature, contending with and overcoming evil and unbelief. Hence miracles occupy so large a space in this Gospel. Especially does St. Mark dwell on the moral resistance offered to Christ by the hardness of the human heart. These being the general lessons of this Gospel, the last chapter fits on to the rest with a perfect and exact harmony. “What do we read, in fact, in the last chapter? It describes with greater fulness than any of the other Gospels, how hopeless and weak in faith the community of disciples was left by the Crucifixion,—how slow of perception and hard of heart they still remained, notwithstanding all that had been done for them,—how the women, going to anoint the body, found the tomb empty, and fled in trembling and astonishment and fear at the angel’s message,—how the disciples disbelieved Mary Magdalene, to whom the Risen Jesus first appeared,—how the two who met Him in another form, as they were going into the country, failed to convince the rest,—how, at last, He appeared to all Himself, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart; and then, finally, and after a long and gradual process, gained a conquest over their wills. Then it was that He addressed them, bidding them to go and preach the gospel to the whole creation, offering salvation to those that believe and are baptised, foretelling the condemnation of those who reject the message, and promising fourfold miraculous powers, like His own, to His faithful followers and messengers. Then, and not till then, when He reveals His full majesty by the transfer of these gifts, does He receive the title of ‘Lord’ from the Evangelist’s own lips. The word, though found not unfrequently in the reports of speeches in this Gospel, is used twice only in it as an historical title, and that in these last two verses. The Lord, it is said, after He had spoken with them, was received up to heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they, thus conquered by Him, are no longer faithless, but believing. Having gained them, He has gained the instrument which He came down to earth to fashion, the only instrument which in His wisdom He thinks fit to use in the conversion of the world—the instrument of personal faith begetting faith. And thus endowed they go forth and preach everywhere, not in their own strength, but His; for the Lord works ever with them. And as in His own ministry He has supported and illustrated His teaching with appropriate miracles and mighty works, so now He confirms their word with signs following.”

[12] Sermon II. in University Sermons on Gospel Subjects: Parker, 1878. See also Addendum by same author to commentary on St. Mark, in Bishop Chr. Wordsworth’s Greek Testament.

Whatever we may infer from the internal evidence as to the genuineness of these verses, one conclusion is forced upon us. These verses are certainly authentic. They have the ring of truth. “This section,” says Dr. Resch,[13] “is free from all affectation, and from all legendary colouring—such as, for example, we meet with in the pseudo-Petrine Gospel. It is rather characterised by a compendious abruptness, such as shews that the author of it says less than he knows.” Compare the vague generalities of the alternative ending with the fulness of independent knowledge shewn in these verses. Although the statements that the first appearance was to Mary Magdalene and that she bore the message to the apostles might conceivably be derived from St. John’s Gospel, and Mar_16:9; Mar_16:12 seem to reflect expressions in St. Luke (Luk_8:2; Luk_24:13), yet the section taken as a whole is plainly not the work of a compiler. It adds to our knowledge by explicit statement and vivid detail. Here only in the Gospels is it stated that our Lord rose again on the first day of the week (Mar_16:9); that the disciples mourned and wept (Mar_16:10); that they disbelieved the tidings of Mary Magdalene (Mar_16:11); that He appeared to the two in another form (Mar_16:12); that the disciples again disbelieved the testimony of the two (Mar_16:13); that the eleven were at meat when He appeared (observe the undesigned coincidence with Luk_24:41-43); and that He upbraided them (Mar_16:14). The apostolic commission in Mar_16:15-16, though resembling that in Mat_28:19 in the two points universal mission and the injunction of baptism, is evidently independent. The promise of signs to follow believers as such is a new one. (cp. Mat_10:8). And the majestic closing verses (19 and 20) stand alone in the Gospels in their assertion of the Lord’s sitting at the right hand of God and His continued working with the apostles.

[13] Expositor, September 1894, p. 228.

Concluding summary.—After this review of the evidence, external and internal, it may be said by way of summary, that if these verses be from St. Mark’s pen and formed part of his Gospel from the first, it seems very difficult to account for the multiplication of copies without these verses in widely separate lands, for the obstinate doubts which clung to them (which Eusebius states and Jerome repeats), for the existence of an alternative ending, and lastly for the tradition which ascribes the twelve verses to the presbyter Ariston. To account for all that by an imagined accident which may have torn away from some MS. its last leaf, on which just these twelve verses were written, and so gave rise to a mutilated family of MSS., is to assign a very inadequate cause. But on the assumption, to which so much of the evidence points, that these verses are an appendage by another though still authoritative hand, in the earliest times, all the phenomena may be explained. St. Mark for some reason left his Gospel unfinished.[14] It may have been, as Godet thinks,[15] the breaking out of persecution and the death of St. Peter which caused the interruption. It was no wonder then that some early disciple should, it may be by request, complete the unfinished narrative with an account of the Ascension; so that this Gospel, as it began “from the baptism of John,” should extend to the “day that He was taken up,” and thus correspond to the requirement of the chief of the apostles (Act_1:22).

[14] ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ might very well be the end of a sentence or paragraph. Cp. Plato Protagoras, p. 328, D, where a chapter ends with νέοι γάρ But Plato did not end a Dialogue with a particle, nor would St. Mark end his Gospel with one. The reference to Plato is due to Prof. Marcus Dods in Expository Times, March 1894.

[15] Studies on N. T., p. 38.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 16

Mar_16:19.—It was an ancient myth that the Milky Way was the bright track made by the flashing wheels of the car of Phaethon, driving through the skies; but the Man of Calvary, ascending from the Mount of Olives to His celestial throne, has left across the heavens a brighter and more glorious pathway than the pale light of far-off stars. He has brought life and immortality to light, and millions who believe in His name have in all ages seen and rejoiced in His light, and by it been guided to the realm of everlasting day.

Mar_16:20. “The Lord working with them.”—That is a sweet legend hanging about an old church in England, and it tells the great truth well,—how centuries ago, when the monks were rearing it, a new temple for the worship of their God, there came among the workers a strange monk, unasked, who always took on himself the heaviest tasks; and how at last, when a particularly gigantic beam was needed for a position as important as that of the keystone of an arch, and when, with sweating strain and united effort, it was lifted to its place, it was strangely found to be some feet too short. No device of the builders could remedy it; they had tried their best with it, they had used the most careful measurement they knew, but how sadly they had failed! There it was, too short, and their utmost skill could not find remedy. The night closed in upon the tired workers, and they went to their rest with sore hearts, leaving only this unknown monk, who would go working on. But when the morning came, and the workers came forth again, they saw the sunlight falling on the beam exactly in its place, lengthened to the precise dimensions needed, and resting accurately on its supports. But the unknown monk had disappeared. Yet the workers knew Him now, and were certain they could carry the temple onward to its topmost turret. For He who had been working with them and supplying their lack of perfect work, they came now to know, was none other than the Lord Himself. They were not unhelped toilers. Nor are we.

God working with man.—When Robert Morrison went out to China, he stopped for a little while in New York, and one of the American millionaires turned to him, and in a supercilious way said, “Mr. Morrison, do you expect to make any impression on China?” Robert Morrison, in the kingliness of a consecrated manhood, replied, “I do not, but I do expect that the Lord Almighty will.”

Power of the Word.—Cæsar Malan found himself on the diligence at Angoulême in the company of a sprightly young gentleman from Paris. He proved to be a materialist, who, when his companion drew out the New Testament, treated it as “a book of fables, good enough for children.” Though tempted to expose to him by argument the folly of infidelity, M. Malan thought it better to let the Word of God, as he said, speak for itself. So he read several passages. The young man shewed vexation, and his fellow-traveller, judging by this that his conscience was troubled, read still more. The infidel became very angry, then biting his lips he took refuge in silence. After travelling in this way for about half an hour, he suddenly exclaimed: “I should like to have a book like that, for I begin to believe that what it contains is true, and that I have been deceiving myself.” M. Malan gave the young man his Testament; and meeting him afterwards at Bordeaux, he found that he was attentively studying it, and that in every way he shewed it had made a profound impression upon him. “When I saw this fruit of the Word of God,” said M. Malan, “I rejoiced that I had not spoken of myself and of my own reasons.”

Divine energy of Christianity.—Voltaire well said to Lady Chesterfield that the English Parliament patronised Christianity because no better system of religion had yet been found. Read the chronicles of Buddhism, Brahminism, Parseeism, and other heathen philosophies. Their logical work has been to quench the happiness of their devotees. Hours might be spent in portraying the transfigurations wrought by Christianity. She has recently lighted her vestal fires in Australia, Madagascar, and Liberia, and to-day each is a pharos of civilisation, shedding its radiance far out on the surges of domestic, civil, and moral gloom. Few benedictions of civilisation can be named that she has not pioneered. Over no acre has she waved her wand where the wilderness has not blossomed as the rose. Prejudiced sceptics speak of modern nations as being little improved over classic Greece and Rome. Look back to that period when the law of might was the law of right, when childhood and womanhood were in degradation, and when iron-hearted cruelty was enthroned in the metropolis of paganism. Read of the extensive butcheries of men in the sports of the Colosseum under numerous imperial monsters. Read of the successive massacres of the early Christians, from the coronation of Nero to the death of Diocletian, whose slaughter of God’s saints was so general that on his commemorative medal was impressed, “The Christian religion is destroyed.” Even such infidel essayists as Bolingbroke and Gibbon are pre-eminently brilliant in their eulogies of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Rousseau and Bonaparte penned as eloquent tributes to the achievements of Christianity as did De Tocqueville, Pascal, or Bacon. Macaulay describes a gorgeous window made from rejected fragments of glass. So Christianity has taken depraved communities and converted them into moral populations. It is because Divine energy is essential to the mental, social, and spiritual uplifting of all lands, because at their gates Jesus knocks to-day more earnestly than Henry IV. knocked at the gates of Hildebrand, and because history attests the regenerative influence of Christianity, that the ascending Redeemer commissioned His disciples to see to it that His kingdom shall finally achieve universal ascendency.

Progress of Christianity.—Arnobius, a heathen philosopher, who became a Christian, speaking of the power which the Christian faith bad over the minds of men, says: “Who would not believe it, when he sees in how short a time it has conquered so great knowledge? Orators, grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians, and philosophers have thrown up those opinions which but a little before they held, and have embraced the doctrines of the gospel!” “Though but of yesterday,” said Tertullian, “yet have we filled your cities, islands, castles, corporations, councils, your armies themselves, your tribes, companies, the palace, the senate, and courts of justice; only your temples have we left you free.”

Final triumph of Christianity.—Travellers tell us that in Arctic regions, when the six months of night are ending, and the long day of sunshine is about to begin, the inhabitants ascend the peaks and await the magnificent sunrise. When his ball of light has chased from the ice-fields the shadows, and he rests like a globe of flame on the rim of earth, ere he begins to climb the rounds of a ladder of glory more luminous than Jacob saw at Bethel, the people shed tears of joy, and, embracing each other, they cry, “The sun has come to us, and the long night is over.” So in fancy I see standing on the crests of all lands of heathenism the benighted races, looking for the appearance of the Sun of Righteousness to banish their long night of barbarism, idolatry, and cruelty, and usher in the unending day of Christ’s universal reign. I seem to stand to-day in this vast and solemn presence. In vision I see the countless millions, Caucasians, Mongolians, Africans, Malays, and Indians. They crowd the summits of all the mountains of pagan provinces in fearful vastness of multitude. From the standpoint of this commission, and with the telescope of this farewell pledge of the Ascended Redeemer, we can even now by faith see that splendid period in history when, from the tall tops of all mission provinces, the grand concerted acclaim shall ascend, “The Sun has come to us. and the long night is over.”—S. V. Leach, D.D.

Amen.—” My heart wishes it to be exactly so,” is the Chinese rendering of “Amen.” The value of this definition is that it is not a mere lip repetition of this blessed old Hebrew word, but a whole-souled, whole-hearted desire for the triumph of that which is good. Is there not danger that our “Amens” may become a mere head and lip endorsement of the truth, while the heart is not in it? Let us be sure that in everything excellent that is presented to us we can say of a verity, “Amen, my heart wishes it to be exactly so.”

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

THIRD SECTION

THE RISEN SAVIOUR IN HIS ASCENSION, AS CONQUEROR WITH THE CHURCH, GIVING POWER TO THE MESSAGE OF SALVATION THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE EARTH

16:19, 20

(Parallels: Luk_24:50-53; Act_1:4-12.)

19So then, after the Lord12 had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. 20And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Comp. the parallels in Luke and Acts; also the comments upon the conclusion of Matthew.—Mark’s account of the ascension possesses a noble simplicity; and so conveys to the mind a comprehensive idea of Christ’s majesty and rule, which consists most fully with the character of this Gospel. The ascension, described accurately by Luke, is here briefly sketched: the exaltation of Christ in the words, “and sat on the right hand of God,” implies the supreme rule of Christ, as related by Matthew; while the last verse is analogous to the end of the Gospel by John, and expresses in a word the essence of all contained in the Acts.

Mar_16:19. The Lord Jesus.—Term of reverence.—After He had spoken.—Augustine and the majority of commentators understand this to refer to the forty days; but Meyer will not concede this. According to him, this account and the lapse of forty days are quite irreconcilable. It is only when the Gospels are treated as mere chronicles, in which an exact sequence of all events in time is expected, that it becomes impossible to reconcile them with each other.

He was received up.—Taken up. Meyer properly combats the representation given by Strauss and Bauer, that Christ ascended to heaven from the room where they had supped. Yet, if we must not interpret this passage literally regarding the place, Meyer has as little right to insist upon a literal view as to the time. The account of the ascension is in every point to be supplemented by that of Luke, with whom Mark stands in no contradiction.—And sat on the right hand of God.—An account, resting partly upon the direct vision of the disciples (Act_1:19), partly upon a revelation (Act_1:11), partly upon the words of Christ (Joh_14:3), and upon the lively inference of faith, especially from the events occurring at Pentecost, Act_2:33. The fact is itself, on the one hand, local—that is, the being seated upon that throne of glory where the self-revelations of God take place, and in the midst of that majesty whence the manifestations of His power proceed; and, upon the other hand, is symbolic of Christ’s royal dominion, Php_2:10.

Mar_16:20. Everywhere.—As it is probable the Evangelist wrote in Rome, and had been in Babylon, he knew that the Gospel was extending over the earth.—The Lord working with them.—See Matthew, close; Eph_1:19.—With signs following.—The previously-promised powers to work these signs have been conferred; the miracles have appeared in striking forms, and conveying their symbolic import in their more general working. We see here the Gospel’s absolute power to conquer in the might of the Lord. From this we perceive how close the connection between the closing of this Gospel and its beginning, and its every statement. Each Evangelist concludes in a manner peculiar to himself, but with each the common topic is the glory and the kingly rule of Christ. The view peculiar to Mark is the forthputting of Christ’s power by His servants on earth, to free the world and remove all demoniacal powers by which the earth was polluted.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See the conclusion of Matthew and the parallels in Luke.—We find the explanation of the circumstance, that Mark has combined the ascension in his Gospel narrative, in the fundamental principle of his Gospel, viz.: Christ, the omnipotent conqueror bursting through all barriers, the Lion in His retreat and advance. On this principle he was led to briefly mention the last withdrawal of Christ, the ascension; but then, only as the basis for the last forthcoming of Christ in His people, in their preaching of the Gospel and their working of signs in all places. Matthew presents Christ as a spiritual, invisible, theocratic King, beneath whose jurisdiction the present and the future worlds both lie, and whose administration over His people is in this present world universal, and of a specially spiritual character. By John, the universality and the present manifestation of Christ’s glory are still more strongly emphasized. The typal form of this administration of Jesus is to be seen in the activity of a John and a Peter; that is, in contemplation and profound meditation combined with earnest labor and constancy in faith. Respecting Christ Himself, it is only hinted by John that He goes and comes again. According to Mark and Luke, Christ is with equal distinctness characterized as King of both worlds; but He works individually and personally from the other world outwards: and hence both these Evangelists present the ascension as a link, connecting Christ’s life on earth with His work in and from heaven. In addition to this, however, Mark, like Peter, makes the rule of the exalted Christ in and with His people to prevail, because it is a work of the exalted Jesus which success will certainly crown; while Luke, with Paul, makes this prevalence result from the exalted state of the working Jesus.

2. When we estimate the resurrection properly, and consider that it was not the return of Jesus to His old, His first life, but His exaltation to His second, His new life, we see at once that the ascension must be joined to the resurrection as its necessary consequence. Christ’s last departure from His disciples must have therefore, in any case, been termed His ascension; nevertheless, it consisted with His glory, that His return home should be an imposing and sublime ascension.

3. The doubts of critical writers as to the history of the ascension rest upon a mistake, often alluded to, regarding the nature of the Gospels, which are held to be memorabilia collected from various sources, instead of being received as individual, graphic life-pictures and views, organic in form, and Christological in character. The doubts of writers upon dogmatics are to be connected with their doubts regarding the resurrection itself, the divine dignity of Christ, the eternal continuance of personality, and the reality of a future state in heaven. In each of these two points the Apostles agree, as witnesses of the ascension, in their testimony with one another.

4. The theologians of the Lutheran school have thrown as much obscurity around the historical ascension, as those of the Reformed school around Christ’s descent into hell (the Heidelberg Catechism). The Reformed Church has gone too far in its teaching regarding the glorified Christ’s spiritual, omnipresent working; and the Lutheran, in its views upon the distinct localization and extension of Christ, now exalted. (Luther upon the Supper.) But the descent into hell and ascent to heaven must not be separated; and the localization of the exalted Redeemer in heaven must be held, along with His omnipresent manifestation. “That He reveals Himself in one way only in heaven amid the blessed, and that He in some other sense is everywhere present, are not contradictory propositions.” Spener, Katechismus-Predigten, 2 Bd. p. 914.

5. When we represent the ascension as the triumph of Christ and His Church, let us not forget the sad, earnest side for the Church in her human weakness. But as death is swallowed up in victory, so human sorrow is swallowed up in divine joy.

6. For the accounts given in Church history, and for the various traditions regarding the apostolic labors in preaching the Gospel, see Lange’s Apost. Zeitalter, 2 Bd. p. 401.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See Matthew and Luke.—Christ’s exaltation the great turniug-point in His life and work.—The exaltation of Christ to heaven, a sign of the completion of His work on earth (“After the Lord,” etc.).—The union of the Father and the Son seen in the ascension: as He had been sent, and yet came freely,—as He had finished the work given Him by the Father, and unfolded His own secret life, was given up to the death, and resigned His life,—as He was raised from the dead, and rose by His own power,—so He is exalted by the Father, and yet ascends by virtue of His own might.—The degrees of Christ’s exaltation shadowed forth in the ascension: 1. It points back to His descent into hell, and His resurrection; 2. it points forward to His being seated upon the throne of glory at the right hand of God.—Christ’s ascension: 1. A return home; 2. an exaltation; 3. a never-ending march of triumph.—The import of Christ’s exaltation for His people. It settles, 1. the ascension of the members in Him, as the Head; 2. the ascension of the members after Him, in the spirit; 3. the final ascension of the members at the coming of the Lord.—Christ’s seat at the right hand of God, the goal of His pilgrimage; or the point of rest between His two great careers: 1. His career through all the misery of the world; 2. His career through all the salvation of the world.—Because Christ is the highest above all heavens, He is the nearest to His people in all their depths: In their depth, a. of struggling, b. of suffering, c. of want, d. of death and the grave.—The Lord’s rest causes the activity of Apostles, and of the members of Christ’s body.—From the tranquil, rejoicing, divinely-human heart above, proceeds every pulsation of the new life throughout the entire world.—All Christ’s Apostles are Apostles of His royal authority.—The blessed consciousness of Christ’s glory, the motive power of the Gospel in the hearts of believers.—The preaching of Christ is a preaching for all places.—Human proclamation of salvation confirmed by the divine manifestations from the Lord.—The truth of the faith established by the signs of love.—The Lord was one with them in tiepower of the Spirit.—The ever-blessing and victorious efficacy of the Gospel, a witness for Christ’s everlasting administration of blessing and conquest.—Christ above all; Christ here, too, in His people.—Lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed!—Our faith is the victory which overcometh the world.—Christ’s seat, His throne: 1. The unceasing rest and festival in heaven; 2. unceasing work on earth; 3. unceasing rule in both kingdoms.—At the right hand of God, working in concert with Him; or, the revelation of the Trinity in Christ’s exaltation (as at His birth and baptism, in His death and resurrection).—Where the exalted Christ appears, there doth heaven appear: 1. Where He is throned, there is heaven; 2. where He works, thither heaven comes (the spiritual, glorified world; the inheritance incorruptible, undefined, that fadeth not away, 1Pe_1:4; 2Pe_1:4; 2Pe_1:11).—We are with Christ transferred to the heavenly state.

Starke:—Let each see that he hold his confifidential interview with Jesus, ere he leave the earth.—God is gone up with a shout, Psa_47:6.—The ascension of our Jesus is our after-ascension. Where the Head is, there are the members. “Where I am, there shall My servants be, that they may see My glory.”—The heavens stand open: we are certain of our salvation. Even so come, Lord Jesus!—The presence of Christ in the earth has not ceased with His ascension; it is rather established, being combined with His session at the right hand of God.—Hedinger:—Be faithful and industrious in thy calling; God will add His blessing and success.—If believers are not able to see Christ with their eyes, yet they feel His working in their hearts (proof sufficient that He is with and in them).—Osiander:—Jesus is to the present day with the preachers of the Gospel.—When the spiritually blind are enlightened, the spiritually dead quickened, the spiritually deaf and dumb made to hear devoutly and speak piously, the spiritually lame made to be righteously industrious and active, and the spiritually leprous are cleansed from sins, these are greater signs and wonders than physical changes.

Lisco:—He wished to depart from them in such a way that they, seeing whither He had gone, could not imagine that they had lost Him: rather should the thought that He lived and was in heaven be ever present to them, that they might testify courageously of Him, and labor for Him, as though they had Him by their side.—They should know Christ no more after the flesh (2Co_5:16), but as the exalted Son of God, whose glorious elevation filled them with the most blessed hopes and opened to them the most blessed prospects.—Braune:—A close of the activity of the visible, personal Redeemer, that corresponds perfectly with the beginning. Not more mysterious than the birth and resurrection of the Saviour is His ascension.—Christ, having conquered death, could not die, and so ascended to heaven.—Brieger:—Psa_68:19; Eph_4:8 : Christ, to manifest His victory over the devil and his angels, returns as a conqueror to heaven, Col_3:1-2; Heb_8:1.—We are the subjects of the Heavenly (the second Adam), who is transforming us more and more into His likeness.—Bauer:—Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.

Footnotes:

[7]Mar_16:14.—C., D. add δέ to ὕστερον.

[8]Mar_16:14.—Ἐκ νεκρῶν, supported by A., C., X., Δ., 1, 33.

[9]Mar_16:17.—The omission of καιναῖς by C., L., Δ. is not decisive against it.

[10]Mar_16:18.—Codd. C., L., M.**, X., Δ., the Coptic, Armenian, and Syriac versions, read before ὄφεις, καὶ ἐν ταῖς χερσίν. But it is probably a mere explanatory addition.

[11][These passages, however, speak only of human creatures.—Ed.]

[12]Mar_16:19.—After κύριος stands Ἰησοῦς in Codd. C., K., L., Δ. Lachmann adopts this reading. (Lange renders literally: “The Lord Jesus, after he had spoken thus unto them, was raised,” &c.—Trs.)

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mark

THE ENTHRONED CHRIST

Mar 16:19.

How strangely calm and brief is this record of so stupendous an event! Do these sparing and reverent words sound to you like the product of devout imagination, embellishing with legend the facts of history? To me their very restrainedness, calmness, matter-of-factness, if I may so call it, are a strong guarantee that they are the utterance of an eyewitness, who verily saw what he tells so simply. There is 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.

That 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. So for us the one central thought about the present, in its loftiest relations, should be the throned Christ at God’s right hand. It is to that thought of the session of Jesus by the side of the Majesty of the Heavens that I wish to turn now, to try to bring out the profound teaching that is in it, and the practical lessons which it suggests. I desire to emphasise very briefly four points, and to see, in Christ’s sitting at the right hand, the revelation of these things:-The exalted Man, the resting Saviour, the interceding Priest, and the ever-active Helper.

I. First, then, in that solemn and wondrous fact of Christ’s sitting at the right hand of God, we have the exalted Man.

We are taught to believe, according to His own words, that in His ascension Christ was but returning whence He came, and entering into the ‘glory which He had with the Father before the world was.’ And that impression of a return to His native and proper abode is strongly conveyed to us by the narrative of His ascension. Contrast it, for instance, with the narrative of Elijah’s rapture, or with the brief reference to Enoch’s translation. The one was taken by God up into a region and a state which he had not formerly traversed; the other was borne by a fiery chariot to the heavens; but Christ slowly sailed upwards, as it were, by His own inherent power, returning to His abode, and ascending up where He was before.

But whilst this is one side of the profound fact, there is another side. What was new in Christ’s return to His Father’s bosom? This, that He took His Manhood with Him. 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, that went back again. This most blessed and wonderful truth is taught with emphasis in His own words before the Council, ‘Ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power.’ Christ, then, to-day, bears a human body, not, indeed, the ‘body of His humiliation,’ but the body of His glory, which is none the less a true corporeal frame, and necessarily requires a locality. His ascension, whithersoever He may have gone, was the true carrying of a real humanity, complete in all its parts, Body, Soul, and Spirit, up to the very throne of God.

Where that locality is it is bootless to speculate. Scripture says that He ascended up ‘far above all heavens’; or, as the Epistle to the Hebrews has it, in the proper translation, the High Priest ‘is passed through the heavens,’ as if all this visible material creation was rent asunder in order that He might soar yet higher beyond its limits wherein reign mutation and decay. But wheresoever that place may be, there is a place in which now, with a human body as well as a human spirit, Jesus is sitting ‘at the right hand of God.’

Let us thankfully think how, in the profound language of Scripture, ‘the Forerunner is for us entered’; how, in some mysterious manner, of which we can but dimly conceive, that entrance of Jesus in His complete humanity into the highest heavens is the preparation of a place for us. It seems as if, without His presence there, there were no entrance for human nature within that state, and no power in a human foot to tread upon the crystal pavements of the celestial City, but where He is, there the path is permeable, and the place native, to all who love and trust Him.

We may stand, therefore, with these disciples, and looking upwards as the cloud receives Him out of our sight, our faith follows Him, still our Brother, still clothed with humanity, still wearing a bodily frame; and we say, as we lose Him from our vision, ‘What is man’? Capable of being lifted to the most intimate participation in the glories of divinity, and though he be poor and weak and sinful here, yet capable of union and assimilation with the Majesty that is on high. For what Christ’s Body is, the bodies of them that love and serve Him shall surely be, and He, the Forerunner, is entered there for us; that we too, in our turn, may pass into the light, and walk in the full blaze of the divine glory; as of old the children in the furnace were, unconsumed, because companioned by ‘One like unto the Son of Man.’

The exalted Christ, sitting at the right hand of God, is the Pattern of what is possible for humanity, and the prophecy and pledge of what will be actual for all that love Him and bear the image of Him upon earth, that they may be conformed to the image of His glory, and be with Him where He is. What firmness, what reality, what solidity this thought of the exalted bodily Christ gives to the else dim and vague conceptions of a Heaven beyond the stars and beyond our present experience! I believe that no doctrine of a future life has strength and substance enough to survive the agonies of our hearts when we part from our dear ones, the fears of our spirits when we look into the unknown, inane future for ourselves; except only this which says Heaven is Christ and Christ is Heaven, and points to Him and says, ‘Where He is, there and that also shall His servants be.’

II. Now, secondly, look at Christ’s sitting at the right hand of God as presenting to our view the Resting Saviour.

That session expresses the idea of absolute repose after sore conflict. It is the same thought which is expressed in those solemn Egyptian colossal statues of deified conquerors, elevated to mysterious union with their gods, and yet men still, sitting before their temples in perfect stillness, with their mighty hands lying quiet on their restful limbs; with calm faces out of which toil and passion and change seem to have melted, gazing out with open eyes as over a silent, prostrate world. So, with the Cross behind, with all the agony and weariness of the arena, the dust and the blood of the struggle, left beneath, He ‘sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.’

The rest of the Christ after His Cross is parallel with and carries the same meaning as the rest of God after the Creation. Why do we read ‘He rested on the seventh day from all His works’? Did the Creative Arm grow weary? Was there toil for the divine nature in the making of a universe? Doth He not speak and it is done? Is not the calm, effortless forth-putting of His will the cause and the means of Creation? Does any shadow of weariness steal over that life which lives and is not exhausted? Does the bush consume in burning? Surely not. He rested from His works, not because He needed to recuperate strength after action by repose, but because the works were perfect, and in sign and token that His ideal was accomplished, and that no more was needed to be done.

And, in like manner, the Christ rests after His Cross, not because He needed repose even after that terrible effort, or was panting after His race, and so had to sit there to recover, but in token that His work was finished and perfected, that all which He had come to do was done; and in token, likewise, that the Father, too, beheld and accepted the finished work. Therefore, the session of Christ at the right hand of God is the proclamation from Heaven of what He cried with His last dying breath upon the Cross: ‘It is finished!’ It is the declaration that the world has had all done for it that Heaven can do for it. It is the declaration that all which is needed for the regeneration of humanity has been lodged in the very heart of the race, and that henceforward all that is required is the evolving and the development of the consequences of that perfect work which Christ offered upon the Cross. So the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts the priests who stood ‘daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices’ which ‘can never take away sin,’ with ‘this Man who, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down at the right hand of God’; testifying thereby that His Cross is the complete, sufficient, perpetual atonement and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. So we have to look back to that past as interpreted by this present, to that Cross as commented upon by this Throne, and to see in it the perfect work which any human soul may grasp, and which all human souls need, for their acceptance and forgiveness. The Son of Man set at the right hand of God is Christ’s declaration, ‘I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do,’ and is also God’s declaration, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’

III. Once more, we see here, in this great fact of Christ sitting at the right hand of God, the interceding Priest.

So the Scripture declares. The Epistle to the Hebrews over and over again reiterates that thought that we have a Priest who has ‘passed into the heavens,’ there to ‘appear in the presence of God for us.’ And the Apostle Paul, in that great linked climax in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, has it, ‘Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.’ There are deep mysteries connected with that thought of the intercession of Christ. It does not mean that the divine heart needs to be won to love and pity. It does not mean that in any mere outward and formal fashion Christ pleads with God, and softens and placates the Infinite and Eternal love of the Father in the heavens. It, at least, plainly means this, that He, our Saviour and Sacrifice, is for ever in the presence of God; presenting His own blood as an element in the divine dealing with us, modifying the incidence of the divine law, and securing through His own merits and intercession the outflow of blessings upon our heads and hearts. It is not a complete statement of Christ’s work for us that He died for us. He died that He might have somewhat to offer. He lives that He may be our Advocate as well as our propitiation with the Father. And just as the High Priest once a year passed within the curtain, and there in the solemn silence and solitude of the holy place sprinkled the blood that he bore thither, not without trembling, and but for a moment permitted to stay in the awful Presence, thus, but in reality and for ever, with the joyful gladness of a Son in His ‘own calm home, His habitation from eternity,’ Christ abides in the Holy Place; and, at the right hand of the Majesty of the Heavens, lifts up that prayer, so strangely compact of authority and submission; ‘Father, I will that these whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am.’ The Son of Man at the right hand of God is our Intercessor with the Father. ‘Seeing, then, that we have a great High Priest that is passed through the heavens, let us come boldly to the Throne of Grace.’

IV. Lastly, this great fact sets before us the ever-active Helper.

The ‘right hand of God’ is the Omnipotent energy of God, and howsoever certainly the language of Scripture requires for its full interpretation that we should firmly hold that Christ’s glorified body dwells in a place, we are not to omit the other thought that to sit at the right hand also means to wield the immortal energy of that divine nature, over all the field of the Creation, and in every province of His dominion. So that the ascended Christ is the ubiquitous Christ; and He who is ‘at the right hand of God’ is wherever the power of God reaches throughout His whole Universe.

Remember, too, that it was once given to a man to look through the opened heavens {through which Christ had ‘passed’} and to ‘see the Son of Man standing’-not sitting-’at the right hand of God.’ Why to the dying protomartyr was there granted that vision thus varied? Wherefore was the attitude changed but to express the swiftness, the certainty of His help, and the eager readiness of the Lord, who starts to His feet, as it were, to succour and to sustain His dying servant? And so, dear friends, we may take that great joyful truth that both as receiving ‘gifts for men’ and bestowing gifts upon them, and as working by His providence in the world, and on the wider scale for the well-being of His children and of the Church, the Christ who sits at the right hand of God wields, ever with eager cheerfulness, all the powers of omnipotence for our well-being, if we love and trust Him. We may look quietly upon all perplexities and complications, because the hands that were pierced for us hold the helm and the reins, because the Christ who is our Brother is the King, and sits supreme at the centre of the Universe. Joseph’s brethren, that came up in their hunger and their rags to Egypt, and found their brother next the throne, were startled with a great joy of surprise, and fears were calmed, and confidence sprang in their hearts. Shall not we be restful and confident when our Brother, the Son of Man, sits ruling all things? ‘We see not yet all things put under’ us, ‘but we see Jesus,’ and that is enough.

So the ascended Man, the resting Saviour and His completed work, the interceding Priest, and the ever-active Helper, are all brought before us in this great and blessed thought, ‘Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.’ Therefore, dear friends, set your affection on things above. Our hearts travel where our dear ones are. Oh how strange and sad it is that professing Christians whose lives, if they are Christians at all, have their roots and are hid with Christ in God, should turn so few, so cold thoughts and loves thither! Surely ‘where your treasure is there will your heart be also.’ Surely if Christ is your Treasure you will feel that with Him is home, and that this is a foreign land. ‘Set your affection,’ then, ‘on things above,’ while life lasts, and when it is ebbing away, perhaps to our eyes too Heaven may be opened, and the vision of the Son of Man standing to receive and to welcome us may be granted. And when it has ebbed away, His will be the first voice to welcome us, and He will lift us to share in His glorious rest, according to His own wondrous promise, ‘To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My Throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His Throne.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 16:19-20 (Mar_16:19-20)

THE ASCENSION

"So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen." Mar_16:19-20 (R.V.)

WE have reached the close of the great Gospel of the energies of Jesus, His toils, His manner, His searching gaze, His noble indignation, His love of children, the consuming zeal by virtue of which He was not more truly the Lamb of God than the Lion of the tribe of Judah. St. Mark has just recorded how He bade His followers carry on His work, defying the serpents of the world, and renewing the plague-stricken race of Adam. In what strength did they fulfill this commission? How did they fare without the Master? And what is St. Mark's view of the Ascension?

Here, as all through the Gospel, minor points are neglected. Details are only valued when they carry some aid for the special design of the Evangelist, who presses to the core of his subject at once and boldly. As he omitted the bribes with which Satan tempted Jesus, and cared not for the testimony of the Baptist when the voice of God was about to peal from heaven over the Jordan, as on the holy mount he told not the subject of which Moses and Elijah spoke, but how Jesus Himself predicted His death to His disciples, so now he is silent about the mountain slope, the final benediction, the cloud which withdrew Him from their sight and the angels who sent back the dazed apostles to their homes and their duties. It is not caprice nor haste that omits so much interesting information. His mind is fixed on a few central thoughts; what concerns him is to link the mighty story of the life and death of Jesus with these great facts, that He was received up into Heaven, that He there sat down upon the right hand of God, and that His disciples were never forsaken of Him at all, but proved, by the miraculous spread of the early Church, that His power was among them still. St. Mark does not record the promise, but he asserts the fact that Christ was with them all the days. There is indeed a connection between his two closing verses, subtle and hard to render into English, and yet real, which suggests the notion of balance, of relation between the two movements, the ascent of Jesus, and the evangelization of the world, such as exists, for example, between detachments of an army cooperating for a common end, so that our Lord, for His part, ascended, while the disciples, for their part, went forth and found Him with them still.

But the link is plainer which binds the Ascension to His previous story of suffering and conflict. It was "then," and "after He had spoken unto them," that "the Lord Jesus was received up." In truth His ascension was but the carrying forward to completion of His resurrection, which was not a return to the poor conditions of our mortal life, but an entrance into glory, only arrested in its progress until He should have quite convinced His followers that "it is I indeed," and made them understand that "thus it is written that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day," and filled them with holy shame for their unbelief, and with courage for their future course, so strange, so weary, so sublime.

There is something remarkable in the words, "He was received up into heaven." We habitually speak of Him as ascending, but Scripture more frequently declares that He was the subject of the action of another, and was taken up. St. Luke tells us that, "while they worshipped, He was carried up into heaven," and again "He was received up . . . He was taken up" (Luk_24:51; Act_1:2; Act_1:9). Physical interference is not implied: no angels bore Him aloft; and the narratives make it clear that His glorious Body, obedient to its new mysterious nature, arose unaided. But the decision to depart, and the choice of a time, came not from Him: He did not go, but was taken. Never hitherto had He glorified Himself. He had taught His disciples to be contented in the lowest room until the Master of the house should bid them come up higher. And so, when His own supreme victory is won, and heaven held its breath expectant and astonished, the conquering Lord was content to walk with peasants by the Lake of Galilee and on the slopes of Olivet until the appointed time. What a rebuke to us who chafe and fret if the recognition of our petty merits be postponed.

"He was received up into heaven!" What sublime mysteries are covered by that simple phrase. It was He who taught us to make, even of the mammon of unrighteousness, friends who shall welcome us, when mammon fails and all things mortal have deserted us, into everlasting habitations. With what different greetings, then, do men enter the City of God. Some converts of the death bed perhaps there are, who scarcely make their way to heaven, alone, unhailed by one whom they saved or comforted, and like a vessel which struggles into port, with rent cordage and tattered sails, only not a wreck. Others, who aided some few, sparing a little of their means and energies, are greeted and blessed by a scanty group. But even our chieftains and leaders, the martyrs, sages and philanthropists whose names brighten the annals of the Church, what is their influence, and how few have they reached, compared with that great multitude whom none can number, or all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, who cry with a loud voice, Salvation unto our God who sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. Through Him it pleased the Father to reconcile all things unto Himself, through Him, whether things upon the earth or things in the heavens. And surely the supreme hour in the history of the universe was when, in flesh, the sore stricken but now the all-conquering Christ re-entered His native heaven.

And He "sat down at the right hand of God." The expression is, beyond all controversy, borrowed from that great Psalm which begins by saying, "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at My right hand," and which presently makes the announcement never revealed until then, "Thou art a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" (Psa_110:1; Psa_110:4). It is there for an anticipation of the argument for the royal Priesthood of Jesus which is developed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Now priesthood is a human function: every high priest is chosen from among men. And the Ascension proclaims to us, not the Divinity of the Eternal Word but the glorification of "the Lord Jesus;" not the omnipotence of God the Son, but that all power is committed unto Him Who is not ashamed to call us brethren, that His human hands wield the scepter as once they held the reed, and the brows then insulted and torn with thorns are now crowned with many crowns. In the overthrow of Satan He won all, and infinitely more than all, of that vast bribe which Satan once offered for His homage, and the angels forever worship Him who would not for a moment bend His knee to evil.

Now since He conquered not for Himself but as Captain of our Salvation, the Ascension also proclaims the issue of all the holy suffering, all the baffled efforts, all the cross-bearing of all who follow Christ.

His High Priesthood is with authority. "Every high priest standeth," but He has forever sat down on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens, a Priest sitting upon His throne (Heb_8:1; Zec_6:13). And therefore it is His office, Who pleads for us and represents us, Himself to govern our destinies. No wonder that His early followers, with minds which He had opened to understand the Scriptures, were mighty to cast down strongholds. Against tribulation and anguish and persecution and famine and nakedness and peril and sword they were more than conquerors through Him. For He worked with them and confirmed His word with signs. And we have seen that He works with His people still, and still confirms His gospel, only withdrawing signs of one order as those of another kind are multiplied. Wherever they wage a faithful battle, He gives them victory. Whenever they cry to Him in anguish, the form of the Son of God is with them in the furnace, and the smell of fire does not pass upon them. Where they come, the desert blossoms as a rose; and where they are received, the serpents of life no longer sting, its fevers grow cool, and the demons which rend it are cast out.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

Mar 16:19. Ὁ Κύριος, the Lord) A magnificent and suitable appellation, Mar 16:20 [ch. Mar 12:36].—μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς, after He had spoken to them) He furnished them with His instructions, not only on the very day of the resurrection, which has been so copiously described by Mark, but even throughout the succeeding days [Comp. note on Mat 23:19-20].

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mar_16:19-20. The Lord Jesus therefore (see the critical remarks). οὖν annexes what now emerged as the final result of that last meeting of Jesus with the eleven, and that as well in reference to the Lord (Mar_16:19) as in reference also to the disciples (Mar_16:20); hence μὲν … δέ. Accordingly, the transition by means of μὲν οὖν is not incongruous (Fritzsche), but logically correct. But the expression μὲν οὖν, as well as ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς, is entirely foreign to Mark, frequently as he had occasion to use both, and therefore is one of the marks of another author.

μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς] cannot be referred without harmonistic violence to anything else than the discourses just uttered, Mar_16:14-18 (Theophylact well says: ταῦτα δὲ λαλήσας), not to the collective discourses of the forty days (Augustine, Euthymius Zigabenus, Maldonatus, Bengel, Kuinoel, Lange, and others); and with this in substance agrees Ebrard, p. 597, who, like Grotius and others, finds in Mar_16:15-18 the account of all that Jesus had said in His several appearances after His resurrection. The forty days are quite irreconcilable with the narrative before us generally, as well as with Luk_24:44. But. if Jesus, after having discoursed to the disciples, Mar_16:14-18, was taken up into heaven (ἀνελήφθη, see Act_10:16; Act_1:2; Act_11:22; 1Ti_3:16; Luk_9:51), it is not withal to be gathered from this very compendious account, that the writer makes Jesus pass from the room where they were at meat to heaven (Strauss, B. Bauer), any more than from ἐκεῖνοι δὲ ἐξελθόντες it is to be held that the apostles immediately after the ascension departed into all the world. The representation of Mar_16:19-20 is so evidently limited only to the outlines of the subsequent history, that between the μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς and the ἀνελήφθη there is at least, as may be understood of itself, sufficient space for a going forth of Jesus with the disciples (comp. Luk_24:50), even although the forty days do not belong to the evangelical tradition, but first appear in the Acts of the Apostles. How the writer conceived of the ascension, whether as visible or invisible, his words do not show, and it must remain quite a question undetermined.

καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἐκ δεξιῶν τ. Θεοῦ] reported, it is true, not as an object of sense-perception (in opposition to Schulthess), but as a consequence, that had set in, of the ἀνελήφθη; not, however, to be explained away as a merely symbolical expression (so, for example, Euthymius Zigabenus: τὸ μέν καθίσαι δηλοῖ ἀνάπαυσιν καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν τῆς θεῖας βασιλείας· τὸ δὲ ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ οἰκείωσιν καὶ ὁμοτιμίαν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, Kuinoel: cum Deo regnat et summa felicitate perfruitur), but to be left as a local fact, as actual occupation of a seat on the divine throne (comp. on Mat_6:9; see on Eph_1:20), from which hereafter He will descend to judgment. Comp. Ch. F. Fritzsche, nova opusc. p. 209 ff.

As to the ascension generally, see on Luk_24:51.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mar 16:19-20 . The story ends with a brief notice of the ascension of the Lord Jesus on the one hand ( μὲν ), and of the apostolic activity of the Eleven on the other ( δὲ ). Lk., who means to tell the story of the acts of the Apostles at length, contents himself with reporting that the Eleven returned from Bethany, his scene of parting, to Jerusalem, not with sadness but with joy, there to worship and wait.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Christ having accomplished his office on earth, ascendeth into heaven, from whence (the doctrine of his Apostles being confirmed with signs) he will govern his Church, unto the world’s end.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 19. After the Lord had spoken] These things, and conversed with them for forty days, he was taken up into heaven, there to appear in the presence of God for us.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(19-20) So then after the Lord had spoken.—See Note on Luk_24:53. St. Matthew, it will be remembered, gives no account of the Ascension. (See Note on Mat_28:20.) St. Mark and St. Luke record it briefly. St. John implies it in his report of our Lord’s words (Joh_6:62; Joh_20:17). In Act_1:3-11 it is narrated with greater fulness.

The form of the last two verses, the use of the “Lord” instead of Jesus, suggests the thought of their being a later addition to the original records of our Lord’s life and teaching. (See Note on Luk_7:13.)

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

19, 20. The Ascension

19. So then after the Lord] Some MSS. here insert the word Jesus. Combined with Lord, it would be a term of reverence.

spoken unto them] This does not mean immediately after our Lord had uttered the last words, but after He had on different occasions during the “Great Forty Days” spoken unto them of “the things pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Act_1:3). The original word here rendered “had spoken unto them “has a much wider signification. It signifies to teach, to instruct by preaching and other oral communication. Compare its use in Mar_13:11; Joh_9:29, “We know that God spake unto Moses,” i. e. held communications with Moses; Joh_15:22, “If I had not come,” says our Lord, “and spoken unto them,” i. e. preached to them. So that here it denotes after our Lord had during the forty days fully instructed His Apostles by His oral teaching in all things appertaining to His kingdom and the planting of His Church.

he was received] The original word only occurs here in the Gospels. It is applied three times in the Acts (Mar_1:2; Mar_1:11; Mar_1:22) to the Ascension, and is so applied by St Paul, 1Ti_3:16, “received up into glory.”

into heaven] What St Mark records thus concisely in his short practical Gospel for the busy, active, Christians of Rome, St Luke has related at much greater length. From him we learn how one day the Lord bade His Apostles accompany Him along the road from Jerusalem towards Bethany and the Mount of Olives; how, full of hopes of a temporal kingdom, they questioned Him as to the time of its establishment; how their inquiries were solemnly silenced (Act_1:7); and how then after He had bestowed upon them His last abiding blessing, while His Hands were yet uplifted in benediction (Luk_24:50-51), “He began to be parted from them, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.”

and sat on the right hand of God] The Session at the right Hand of God, recorded only by St Mark, forms a striking and appropriate conclusion to his Gospel, and “conveys to the mind a comprehensive idea of Christ’s Majesty and Rule.” Our Lord was “taken up,” and bore our redeemed humanity into the very presence of God, into “the place of all places in the universe of things, in situation most eminent, in quality most holy, in dignity most excellent, in glory most illustrious, the inmost sanctuary of God’s temple above” (Barrow’s Sermon on the Ascension). There, having led “captivity captive, and received gifts for men” (Psa_68:18; Eph_4:8), He sat down on the right Hand of God, by which expression we are to understand that in the heaven of heavens He now occupies the place of greatest honour, of most exalted majesty, and of most perfect bliss, and that God hath conferred upon Him all preeminence of dignity, power, favour, and felicity. See Pearson on the Creed, Art vi.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And they went forth,.... After this the apostles went forth, from Galilee to Jerusalem; and on the day of pentecost, they appeared publicly, and preached the Gospel in divers languages; and after the death of Stephen, and the persecution raised upon that, they went forth from Jerusalem; see Isa 2:3.

And preached every where; not only in Judea, and in the neighbouring countries, but all over the world, in process of time:

the Lord working with them; making their ministry useful, for the conviction and conversion of large multitudes, and for the forming and settling abundance of Gospel churches, and for the comfort and edification of the saints; all which was done, by the power and grace of Christ, without whom they could do nothing; see Co1 3:9.

And confirming the word with signs following; the Arabic version adds "them"; or "which they did", as the Syriac and Persic versions render it; not by their own power, but, as the latter of these versions adds, "by the help of our Lord"; see Heb 2:4; to all which, the evangelist puts his

Amen; so let it be, or so it shall be, and so it was.

Next: Luke Introduction

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

Ver. 19. He was received up, &c.] This St Luke more fully sets forth, Luk 24:50-51 Act 1:9.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He was received up into heaven - In a cloud from the Mount of Olives. See Act 1:9.

The right hand of God - We are not to suppose that God has hands, or that Jesus sits in any particular direction from God. This phrase is taken from the manner of speaking among men, and means that he was exalted to honor and power in the heavens. It was esteemed the place of the highest honor to be seated at the right hand of a prince. So, to be seated at the right hand of God, means that Jesus is exalted to the highest honor of the universe. Compare Eph 1:20-22.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

By these words it is not to be understood that Jesus is to be confined to that particular posture of body, or that the Father has any hands, or any human shape; for God is a pure, incorporeal, and all-perfect Spirit. The image of God, as he is in himself, comes not within the reach of our mortal senses. When the Scripture, therefore, speaks of God, it uses such imagery of language as is adapted to our senses, that it may thereby convey to us some imperfect knowledge of those sublime mysteries, which are ineffable in themselves, and incomprehensible to our understanding. Thus we are informed that Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, to signify that, as man, our Lord is raised to the height of glory, and to that supreme beatitude, than which there is nothing higher, and nothing greater in the whole bliss of heaven; and that he moreover holds the same sovereign dominion with the Father over all creatures; because, as God, he is equal to the Father in power, in wisdom, and in all perfection. See Pouget, p. 256. ed. in fol. --- On the right hand of God. Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, was not man only, but truly God, the same God with his eternal Father: and hereby is signified that the person, who took upon him human nature, and became man, is equal in dignity with the Father: he, who, as man, ascended into heaven. [2] When St. Jerome says that most Greek copies wanted this chapter, he speaks not of chapters according to our present division, but only of the last 12 verses, which formerly made what was called a little chapter: yet these twelve verses must have been omitted in those manuscripts by some negligent transcribers. Now they are found in all, both Latin and Greek copies. They are found in the Canons of Eusebius on the Gospels; in St. Jerome in several places; in St. Ambrose, lib. iii, in Luc. tom. iii, p. 292. Ed. Paris, an. 1582; in St. Augustine, lib. iii, de consensu Evang. chap. xxv, tom. 3, part 2, p. 142, &c. (Witham) --- St. Gregory of Nyssa, (orat. 2. de Resurr.) says, that the best copies of St. Mark’s gospel finished with the 8th verse, a trembling and fear had seized them: Greek: En tois akribesterois to Kata Markon Euanggelion mekri tou ephobounto gar, echei to telos. It is the very generally received sentiment of the learned, that the last 12 verses were given by St. Mark; and the most probable reason yet offered for the omission of them in various copies is, that the transcribers followed a mutilated copy, where the last page was wanting. (Bible de Vence)

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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

St. Hieron.[St. Jerome,] Ep. ad Hebidiam, q. 3, tom. 4, part 1, p. 172: omnibus Græcis Libris pene hoc capitulum non habentibus.

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George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Matthew saith nothing of our Saviour’s ascension. Mark speaketh of it very shortly. Luke saith, And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And again gives us this part of this history most fully, Act 1:1-12. We shall in our notes on Luk 24:51-53 speak more fully to this. We are told, Act 1:3, that Christ was forty days upon the earth after his resurrection, and, Act 1:9, that a cloud did receive him. He is said to sit on the right hand of God, to distinguish him from angels, whose places are but places of ministration.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

19. He was received up into heaven — Of this ascension the fullest account of all the Gospels is given in Luk_24:50-52. And as if the ascension belonged less to the Gospel narrative than to the growth of the kingdom of God after that narrative closes, the fullest picture of all is given in Act_1:2-12.

The scene took place (not in Galilee, but) on the Mount of Olives near the verge of Bethany. Our Saviour led them to that spot, and while conversing with them, he lifted up his hand and blessed them. And as he blessed them he began to ascend. And as he ascended, the cloud gathering beneath his feet at once bore him upward and closed him from their sight.

Whither did the person of Jesus ascend? Into heaven. But where is heaven? We know not its locality in the immensity of the universe. Astronomers indeed tell us that there is a centre of our solar system, and that is the sun. But the sun is a member of a larger system, which has its centre or sun.

And this is member of a still grander system revolving around its centre. At last there is a centre of the whole universe. At that centre resides the great MOVER of the whole. There doubtless is the central residence of GOD. To that centre perhaps Jesus departed. At any rate heaven is away from this earth, and away from this earth is up. Wherever heaven is therefore it is up. The language of Scripture, the language of humanity, the language of our childhood, herein is true, and, strictly in accordance with the highest science.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven. Here is another interval. The evangelist has gathered up some few of the most important words and sayings of Christ; and now he takes his reader to Bethany, the scene of our Lord"s ascension. It has been well observed (see Bishop Wordsworth, in loc. ) that the fact of the Ascension is gradually revealed in the Gospels. St. Matthew does not mention it at all. St. Mark refers to it in this brief and very simple manner. But St. Luke describes it with great fullness, both in his Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles, throughout which book he leads his readers to contemplate Christ as ascended into heaven, and as sitting at God"s right hand, and as ruling the Church and the world from the throne of his glory.

Vers. 19, 20. Ascension.

Christ ascended on high. How could it be otherwise? He came into this world in a manner and with accompaniments so remarkable, he lived in this world a life so singular and unique, that it was but appropriate that he should quit this world as none other has ever done. What is meant by his being "received up where "heaven" is, this we do not know; our knowledge is limited, and our power of conceiving the eternity and infinity around us is feeble. One thing we do see, and that is, that Jesus finished his work on earth and then departed; and one other thing we see, almost as clearly, viz. that the moral, spiritual work which was the object of his mission, so far from coming to an end with his bodily departure, really then commenced, and has been proceeding ever since. How he interests himself in it and carries it on, we can only tell in general and scriptural language; that he does so, is plain to every spiritually enlightened man. St. Mark, who plunged at the outset so boldly into his task of relating "the gospel of the Son of God," here, with characteristic brevity, clearness, and vigor, tells the last portion of his narrative the ascension of the Savior into heaven, and the consequent continuation of his work on earth.

I THE ASCENSION IS THE COMPLETION OF OUR SAVIOUR"S EARTHLY MINISTRY. To those who believe that the Lord Jesus arose from the dead, the narrative of the Ascension can present little difficulty. It is impossible to believe that he who consented to die, and who conquered death, could again enter the grave. It remained for him to quit the earth without dying; and what we read of his resurrection-body leads us to believe that this was not only possible, but natural and easy. In fact, the Ascension may be regarded, not as the consequence so much as the completion of the Resurrection; and, in apostolic language, the two events are sometimes referred to in one and the same expression. How explicitly had Jesus foretold this great event! Early in his ministry he had declared, "No man hath ascended into heaven, save he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven." Expostulating with the cavillers at Capernaum at a later period, he had asked them, "What then if ye should behold the Son of man ascending where he was before?" And on the day of his resurrection he had directed Mary to take to his disciples this message: "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God." The foresight and authority of our Savior were proved by the correspondence between his words and the event which exactly fulfilled them. The Ascension implied that all the purposes of the incarnation and advent of the Redeemer were accomplished. What he came to do, to suffer, and to say, he had already done, suffered, and said. He did not leave the earth until on earth there was no more for him to do. In his recorded intercessory prayer, addressing his Father, he said, "I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

II THE ASCENSION IS THE COMMENCEMENT OF OUR SAVIOUR"S REIGN. We are too prone to think of human life as if it closes when the last breath is drawn and the heart beats no more. We forget that this is but the birth to the higher, the proper, the eternal life. Similarly with our view of the Redeemer"s ministry of service, his tenure of priestly, royal office. We are too prone to regard his life as closing with the conclusion of our Gospel narratives. We follow him in thought until the cloud, descending upon Olivet, receives him out of our sight, and then we say, "It is all over! His course is run, his work is finished!" But it is not so. The very contrary of this is the case. That Christ"s ascension draws a sharp line of demarcation, is true; but the one side is finite, the other is infinite. We can comprehend the one; the other baffles all our powers of penetration. The steps of Jesus through this earthly pilgrimage are steps which we can trace; but we lose sight of them, and faith alone can follow, when he ascends on high. This, however, is certain to us, that, with the ascension of Jesus, the second, the more spiritual, the more beneficent, the more enduring stage of this Divine ministry, commenced. He did much in his humiliation; he is doing more in his glory, tie came to found a kingdom; he went to administer it; and he must reign until his foes become his footstool. Contemplate the Son of man as he is here represented, no longer wearing the disguise of feebleness and submitting to the insults and the hatred of the wicked. His days of toil, of hunger, and of weariness, his nights of exposure and of mental conflict, are over. No more is he to endure the misrepresentations of the hypocritical and the malicious; no more to baffle the insidious snares of the crafty and the unscrupulous; no more to be patient under the cold mockery of the unspiritual and ungrateful. His deeds of mercy shall never again be attributed to the powers of evil; never again shall those he fain would benefit seek to cast him headlong from the precipice; nor shall he sigh because of the hardness of heart and insensibility of his foes. It is well that he has gone through it all; that he has been despised and rejected of men, that he has been overwhelmed with the baptism of suffering, that he has drunk to the dregs earth"s bitter cup of woe. All this is well. But it is better that it is past and over; that he takes with him into the unseen state the memory.of his humiliation, his obedience, his death; that he enters upon his purchased possession; that he sees "of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied;" that he is "received up into heaven, and sits down on the right hand of God." What are we to understand when told that Christ sat down" in heaven, and by the Father"s side? The evangelist speaks here in such a way as to convey to us important religious truth Christ"s earthly ministry had been one of unrest and homelessness; from the commencement of his public labors until those labors ended on the cross, few had been the intervals of repose. With the Ascension began the period of rest. The seat upon the throne is becoming to royalty: the monarch sits whilst the courtiers, guards, and attendants stand. So the expression implies the kingly dignity of Immanuel. He has exchanged the crown of thorns for the diadem of empire. On his head are many crowns." Further, a judge sits upon the judgment-seat, whilst the criminal stands at his bar. Jesus not long before had stood, as the vilest culprit might have done, before the malignant Caiaphas, before the vacillating, unrighteous Pilate. Now, no longer the accused, he is the just, majestic, and almighty Judge, ordained by God to be the Judge of quick and dead. How bold and plain, although metaphorical, is Mark"s language here! "The Lord Jesus sat down at the right hand of God." "The right hand of God" is one of those expressions, so frequent in Scripture, which are used, in condescension to our infirmities, to convey to us, in a striking and effective manner, truth otherwise not easily communicated. A courtier, when at the right hand of his sovereign, is near him, is readily addressed; is in a position either to give information or to receive instructions; can easily obtain a signature, or an authority or warrant under the sign-manual; is in a position to introduce to the king any applicant or petitioner; in brief, occupies a post of privilege, trust, influence, honor, and authority. And when our Savior is pictured as at the right hand of God, we are to understand that he is the Mediator, through whom the Divine power and guidance, favor and blessing, are bestowed upon those in whom he has shown himself interested by undergoing on their behalf the labors and the sacrifices of the earthly humiliation. No wonder, then, that the position occupied by Christians is described in language so rich, full, and inspiriting that all things are declared to be theirs, for they are Christ"s, and Christ is God"s.

III THE ASCENSION WAS THE PREPARATION FOR A NEW AND SPIRITUAL ECONOMY. The bodily absence of the Redeemer was the condition of a new dispensation of spiritual power and of world-wide extent. Hitherto the evangelizing journeys of the twelve had been restricted in scope and local in range; they had gone only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and they had directed attention to the speedy approach of the kingdom. But the aim of Jesus was one of universal benevolence; other sheep, not of the Israelitish fold, were to be brought in; he was to draw all men unto himself. This was to be done by spiritual agencies, which were dependent upon the removal of the Lord to heaven. In fact, the ascension of the Lord Jesus was, in the Divine counsels, the condition and the occasion of the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, in the manner and measure distinctive of the new, the Christian dispensation. He himself had put this with great plainness before his disciples" minds: "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you." This was a doctrinal statement of the nature of a revelation. What was the intelligible and manifest fact corresponding to it? Surely this that the earthly mission of the Savior being complete, the gospel was to be preached, and should be made, by a spiritual force acting on human natures, the means of awakening men to a new conscience of sin, a new yearning for holiness, a new purpose of an unselfish and unworldly life. It is no more unreasonable to attribute the fruits of the gospel to the Spirit of God, than it is to attribute human purposes to the spirit of man. It is a spiritual universe, and things material and outward actions are nothing but the garb and utterance of what is spiritual. If there be truth declared, revealed, and if there be a nature capable of receiving, feeling, responding to truth, there is one all-sufficient explanation of this wonderful and beneficent correspondence, and that is, the presence and the action of the Holy Spirit of God. The ascension of Christ changed the life of the apostles, and through them, the history of the world.

1. Now and henceforth there was an express theme for them to publish. This was the gospel, the good tidings, which only now was complete, and so divinely perfected by all that Jesus had done and suffered, that it was adapted to fulfill the purposes of Divine wisdom. Before, the disciples had directed attention to what was to come; now, to what had occurred actually and really. Christ had died for men"s sins, according to the Scriptures; he had arisen from the dead for their justification and salvation. Around the great central facts of Christ"s birth, crucifixion, and resurrection gathered all the Divine truths which constituted the gospel. Accordingly, in the first place, the facts were related as facts abundantly attested, and as facts of interest and precious moment to all" mankind. And, when these facts were believed, then they were explained, and (under the guidance of the Holy Spirit given from above) the inspired apostles taught their bearing upon the position and prospects of the sinful race of man. It should never be forgotten that our religion consists in something more than laws of life, sentiments of virtue, promises of help, hopes of immortality. In accordance with the constitution of things, all these depend upon and flow from the great central facts relating to the Lord Jesus Christ. Besides having a theme, the apostles of our Lord now had a commission which authorized them. They did not go unbidden, without instructions, without authority, upon this errand of mercy and blessing to mankind. He who had all power in heaven and in earth had given them their commission. He had said "Go!" and they went; not in their own strength and wisdom, but in his. The same warrant and authentication abides with the Church of Christ throughout all the ages. The apostles were, as the name implies, those who were sent; in this respect, as distinguished from personal endowment and equipment, an apostolic mission is entrusted to the whole body of Christ"s followers to the end of time.

2. The sphere within which this commission was to be executed was world-wide. "Go ye into all the world," Jesus had.said, "and preach the gospel to the whole creation." "Make disciples of all nations." A grand and noble design, worthy of the source whence it emanated, in the heart of him who is "the Savior of all men, specially of them that believe." The habitable globe is the field in which the Christian missionary is called to work; for the human race is the object of Divine compassion, the destined participant in the bounty of the Divine beneficence. None, however large-hearted and compassionate, can complain that the operations of mercy and benevolence are restricted and restrained.

3. In fulfilling this commission, the heralds of Christ"s gospel were assured that they should enjoy, not only personal assistance, but the assistance involved in undoubted credentials, by which they and their message should be commended to the attention of men.

(1) The Lord wrought with them. They were workers, but they were fellow-workers with him. What was to be done in the renewal of human hearts, and the transformation of human character, was not to be done by the exercise of merely human power. A Divine energy and operation were alone adequate to secure results so difficult, so glorious.

(2) Signs followed. Signs, i.e. of a Divine presence and energy. There were such in abundance, as is evident from the record in the Acts of the Apostles. Signs outward, manifest, obvious to every eye, as in the case of those miracles of healing which accompanied the ministrations of the first Christian preachers. Signs of a less obtrusive, but of an even more convincing character, as in the case of those Jews who were delivered from formalism, those Gentiles who were emancipated from idolatry, those flagrant transgressors of the moral law who were turned from darkness unto light, and from the service of Satan unto God.

(3) Thus the Word was confirmed. Miracles, preaching, all were means to an end, and that end the establishment and extension of a spiritual kingdom. For the Word of God was no mere instrument of music to charm the ear and captivate the imagination; it was and is "the sword of the Spirit." Its work is to conquer, to subdue, to govern; and this work it does with incomparable keenness of edge, with incomparable force and efficiency. It has been promised, "My Word shall not return unto me void." It has proved itself a Word of power, a Word of salvation, a Word of life.

APPLICATION.

1. In heart, let Christ"s people ascend with their ascended Lord and Leader. "Risen with Christ," "set your affection upon things above.

2. In life, let Christians seek to execute their Master"s parting commission. He has left them a trust to fulfill, a work to do; let them not be found slothful, but diligent and watchful.

3. In hope, let all who love his appearing," look forward to his return. For in like manner shall he come again, to receive his people to himself. "Even come, Lord Jesus!

Vers. 19, 20. The gospel the Word of the ascended Lord.

These words, at the end of Mark"s account, give the great sequence of our Lord"s manifestation. The Ascension was the divinely necessary result of the Resurrection; the gospel is the necessary fruit on the human side of the experience produced in the hearts of the disciples by his life and work. Such a series of events could not end in silence. As in life, so in death, resurrection, and exaltation, Jesus Christ "could not be hid." The preaching of the gospel is a result, therefore, of an express command and an inward impulse. The two verses are in sequence to the preceding account, and the one to the other, logically, spiritually, and potentially. Notice in this connection

I THE POINT AT WHICH THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL BEGINS. At the final withdrawal and exaltation of Jesus.

1. Its subject is a completed one.

2. The various portions of it are self-evidently connected, and mutually interpret one another. The final transcendent issues of the contest of Christ with sin and death are each representative and interpretative of what preceded and led up to them. The life and its relation to the Divine purpose, prophetic anticipation, and human yearning, would be incomprehensible without this glorious trinity of consummations: death, resurrection, and ascension.

II THE POWER IT REPRESENTS. The power of a finished work of atonement, a victory over death and hell, and an exalted, glorified humanity.

1. The highest exaltation has been reached by him of whom it speaks, He is invested with Divine power, and executive authority in the universe of God. Whether there be any such place as the "right hand of God" may be a curious question; that there is a state which such a phrase describes is a matter of spiritual revelation and experience. All power is given," etc.

2. Its tone is therefore authoritative in the highest degree. The gospel is a throne-word. Preachers are ambassadors. The dignities and pretensions of earth are nothing to them. The Lord through them "commands all men everywhere to repent." Herod is a sad illustration of what occurs when even a king attempts to patronize the gospel.

3. This pretension is confirmed by practical proofs. The works accompanying it and resulting from it are signs. " You cannot explain them unless on the highest ground. Although physical miracles have ceased, spiritual results are still more demonstrative and glorious. In changing the heart, renewing the nature, purifying the affections, the "Word of his power" achieves what nothing else can. And such signs are to be looked for whenever and wherever it is proclaimed. "The Lord working with them" everywhere, because ascended and glorified.

III THE PEOPLE IT CONCERNS. "And they went forth, and preached everywhere. " This was no accident or caprice of choice: he commanded it (ver. 15). But it is also divinely fitting that this should be so.

1. The gospel is intended for all men.

2. It is adapted to all men.

3. The work of Christ"s servants is to seek the salvation of all men.

Until all have had an opportunity we must continue to preach: that is our responsibility. It is not said that all will believe or be saved: that is the responsibility of those who hear. Only of this are we certain: "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance". M. (2Pe_3:9)

Vers. 19, 20. The Ascension.

And now after "he was manifested" many times, showing "himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days," and having taught to his disciples, in the new light of his resurrection, "the things concerning the kingdom of God," he the Lord Jesus received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God," "the heaven" receiving him "until the times of restoration of all things." Now the holy, earthly life of Jesus is terminated. He has "ascended on high;" now the luminous pathway to heaven is open; now the eyes of the disciples of the Lord Jesus are ever turned upward, and their steps tend to heaven. Now the great truth is exemplified; life ends not in a grave, nor even in a resurrection from the dead, but in an ascension into heaven. This is the true goal. This the final hope. The regained Paradise is not on earth, but on high. The home of the weary is in "my Father"s house." The world"s rest is in heaven. Now life is a pilgrimage; men "seek a. country," "a better country, that is, a heavenly;" and "God hath prepared for them a city." The typical life is a perfect one; the cycle is complete. He "came down from heaven." He has ascended up "where he was before." So is it with the revelations of Holy Scripture. They begin in an earthly paradise; they end in a heavenly one. Such is the cherished hope of all believers. We must consider the ascension of Jesus in its bearing upon his own life, and upon the life and hope of his disciples, and upon the aspect of human life generally.

I The Ascension into heaven is THE JUST VINDICATION OF THE LIFE AND CLAIMS OF JESUS. The position, which he assumed amongst men as the Son of God, as the Savior of the world, as the Judge of human actions; the call which he addressed to men to believe in him, to accept his teachings as of supreme authority, to trust in him for salvation and eternal life; and the great promises which he held out to men; all needed a demonstration of their validity. To the patient reader of the Gospels this demonstration is afforded again and again "by divers portions and in divers manners." But all would lack their crowning affirmation had Jesus remained enchained by death, or had he not ascended up on high. It were impossible to believe in. such a Mediator as still in the grave. The Ascension, which is the necessary consequence of the Resurrection, is the complement of the Incarnation. Such a life and such a death as Jesus" demanded a triumph and a vindication. It was, in the absence of the Resurrection, the failure of the truth. Sin, error, the world, conquered the truth and righteousness of heaven. So for the one brief sabbath the dead lull in the world"s active history it seemed to be; but the Resurrection, completed in the Ascension, is the effectual vindication of truth and of righteousness, as it is the vindication of the righteous One.

II Not less is the Ascension THE VINDICATION OF THE WORLD"S FAITH IN JESUS. They who accept a teacher as authoritative, who commit great interests into his hands, who have so great faith in him as to entrust their reconciliation with God into his hands, who accept him as a mediator between themselves and God, who depend upon him for eternal life, who concentrate all their hopes of the future upon his word, must be prepared to justify their conduct. That justification is found in the Ascension. Too great a confidence cannot be placed in One concerning whom it may be said, "The third day he was raised again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God." Jesus, who vindicated himself in every step of his progress, vindicates also the daily, humble, entire faith of "them that put their trust in him.

III There is a step further. THE CONDUCT OF THOSE WHO DEJECT CHRIST AWAITS VINDICATION. Where shall it be found? Given the facts of Jesus" life, his death, his resurrection, and ascension on high, where can any justify their repudiation of him? Precisely as faith and obedience are vindicated, so is unbelief and neglect condemned. The bearing of Christ"s ascension on the universal life is of so great significance, that its rejection imposes the heaviest penalties on the disobedient. Not only is their own life debarred the beneficent influences of so great a fact, and the long train of facts of which it is the completion, but the life of others surrounding is proportionately injured. He who has faith in a great truth throws the influence of his encouragement over the faith of all amongst whom he moves, while he who abides in unbelief tends to wither the confidence of those around him. His example is contagious, and his life is impaired in its character. It cannot, therefore, exert the same beneficial influence upon others that it might do if under the control of great truths. Men must sooner or later vindicate to their fellows their conduct towards them. If it be good, the world"s testimony will be joined to the Divine testimony. If evil, the world"s condemnation must be added to that of the eternal Judge. Man"s highest wisdom is to place himself near to great truths, that he may feel their power and elevation; and, by a thorough sympathy with them, be prepared to extend their influence far and wide. How greatly the world to-day needs men having faith! Such only can move the mountains which stand in the way of human progress and blessing. No truths have equal power for the uplifting, the ennobling, the appeasement, the satisfaction, the glorification of the human life, as have those which, beginning with the Incarnation, end with the ascension into heaven of the Lord Jesus Christ; "to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. G.

Vers. 19, 20. The Ascension.

I THE ASCENT OF CHRIST FOLLOWS FROM HIS DESCENT. His glory was conditioned and prepared for by his self-humiliation for our sakes.

II HE IS NOW IN THE SEAT OF SPIRITUAL POWER AND GLORY. The right hand of God is a figure of omnipotence. This power is felt in and through all the thought and development of the world.

III THIS POWER IS FELT IN HUMAN WORKS OF LOVE. Good signs ever are following the course of the good message. Faith working by love in us corresponds to power working by love in God. For us there is Divine encouragement to work for humanity in this last page"In dens of passion and pits of woe, To see God"s love still struggling through, To sun the dark and solve the curse, And beam to the bounds of the universe.

Vers. 19, 20. Parallel passages: Luk_24:50-53 Act_1:9-12. The Ascension.

I CIRCUMSTANCES IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING. Our Lord led the apostles out "as far as to Bethany," on the eastern slope of the mount of Olives, a mile, or somewhat more than a mile, below the summit of the ridge, whence they afterwards returned by the way across the mount to Jerusalem. The middle summit of Olivet, Jebel-et-Tur, is, however, the traditional place of ascent. He has led ourselves further than to Bethany, for he has led us all our life till now; while all the way by which he has led us has been strewn with blessings blessings temporal and spiritual. When he had led them as far as to Bethany (ewv eiv , or ewv prov , as far as towards Bethany, or the descent that led down to the village, or over against it), he lifted up his hands and blessed them. The high priest of the Aaronic order had three things to do offer Sacrifice, make intercessions, and bless the people in the name of the Lord. What a beautiful benediction was put into his lips and pronounced upon the people, "The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace"! Better and more beautiful, if that be possible, are the blessings which our great High Priest invokes on our behalf and commands upon us. Of these we have a specimen in his intercessory prayer, as contained in the seventeenth chapter of St. John.

II THE PARTING. "He was parted from them," or "stood apart from them (diesth)," as it is expressed by St. Luke. Amid certain cheerful tones one sorrowful note is struck, one sad word occurs, one painful sentiment is expressed. Some find the motto of this world in the words, "Man weeps;" others write it in the words, "We part; "a yet higher and better authority has expressed" one words, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." This last combines the other to his world is a vale of weeping and a place of parting. What tongue could tell the painful partings that from time to time take place? Who could count the bitter tears that are shed? Those partings ofttimes wring the stoutest heart and wet the manliest cheek. At the railway station, or before going on board the emigrant ship, many a sorrowful separation we have all seen. The separation caused by death usually lasts the longest, and is, therefore, in proportion sorrowful. Yet it is not all pain in the parting of a Christian; this passage suggests an element of pleasure. When our Lord was parted from his disciples, he was carried up to heaven; when the Christian is parted by death from friends, loving and beloved, he sleeps by Jesus, and them that so sleep the Lord will bring with him. The day, moreover, is coming when Christian friends, parted by death, shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with one another, and with our Lord.

III THE ASCENSION ITSELF. The expressions employed to describe our Lord"s ascension are, "He was received up into heaven," St. Mark; "Carried up into heaven," St. Luke; while in Acts we read

(1) that "he was taken up," an expression similar to that of either Gospel; and again,

(2) that "he went up" or "he went" (Revised Version). Here, then, we have the power of the Father and the Son. As he rose by his own and his Father"s power, he ascended by the same. Further, it may be implied that he went up with joy- fullness to those realms of glory whence he had descended while the Father welcomed him home, and took him to that paternal bosom where he had been before all worlds. It must have been a splendid sight to witness. Some time ago we stood where many thousands were assembled to see an aeronaut ascend. With gradual ascent the aerial machine rose; upward and upward it glided; higher and higher still it mounted, while majestically and magnificently it moved. At length a silvery cloud received it, and screened it from the view; again, on emerging from the cloud, it pursued its way along the sky till it dwindled to a dark spot in the distance, and then passed out. of sight. How grand, we thought, must have been the sight, apart from every other consideration, of our Lord"s ascent from that spot where his feet last stood on Olivet! If, when our Lord was transfigured, his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment became white as the light if on that occasion his face and figure assumed somewhat of heavenly splendor equally or more resplendent and heavenly, we may well suppose, was his appearance as he rose from earth in his journey through the sky. The glory of heaven was round about him; that glorified body shot upward with wondrous buoyancy. Enoch was translated we are not told how; Elijah was borne up amid a whirlwind by a chariot. of fire and horses of fire; Jesus, who had walked upon the waves, now mounts upon the winds, making the cloud his chariot and upborne on the wings of the wind. Glorious in his appearance, glorious in his motion, glorious in all the indescribable grandeur of his heavenward ascent, he proceeded on his way till a cloud a bright cloud, a cloud silver-lined and beautiful coming underneath received (upelaben) him as in a chariot, and hid him from their eyes.

IV HIS ATTENDANTS. Neither went he alone; thousands of invisible beings formed his escort and carried him aloft. To this perhaps the psalmist, foreseeing it in prophetic vision, may allude when, in the sixty-eighth psalm, he says, "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels." No conqueror ever enjoyed such a triumph, no monarch ever had such a train. At length they reach the high battlements of heaven; the accompanying angels demand admittance; standing without the portals, they raise the voice like the sound of many waters as they say or sing, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in." The angels within respond, making inquiry," Who is this King of glory?" Then both, uniting in full chorus together, sing, "The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory." The Father everlasting takes him by the hand, and sets him at his side, and there he sits for ever at the right hand of the Majesty on high. "Who is this King of glory who? The Lord, for strength renown"d; In battle mighty, o"er his foes Eternal Victor crown"d. "Who is this King of glory who? The Lord of hosts renown"d, Of glory he alone is King, Who is with glory crown"d.

V THE WITNESSES OF THE SCENE. The witnesses of the scene were men on earth and angels from the sky the one to testify that he rose from earth, the other to bear witness that he entered heaven. The former fact may perhaps be expressed by the other by anelhfyh ; while his intermediate progress and journey between may be expressed by anefereto , imperfect, and poreuomenou , participle both marking his gradual ascent. The human spectators, struck with the grandeur of the scene, stood as if riveted to the spot, and continued gazing up into heaven as though they would never be satisfied with seeing such a sight; or perhaps the surprise it occasioned was blended with sorrow, as if their Lord and Master had gone from them never to return. But two angels, apparelled in white, comforted them with the assurance that "this same Jesus, which is taken up from them into heaven," shall come again in like manner through the riven sky visibly and gloriously. The human witnesses of the Ascension felt personally interested in the result, the angelic looked pryingly into the things connected therewith. The sorrow of the disciples was succeeded by great joy, for though they had lost his bodily presence, his spiritual presence nearer, closer, in every place, and at all times is promised them instead.

VI THE PLACE WHENCE HE ASCENDED. The place of the Ascension suggests a lesson of instruction and comfort. A garden on the western slope of Olivet had been the place of his sorest trial and the scene of his deepest tribulation prior to the Crucifixion; an upland on the eastern side, or near the summit of the same hill, was the place of his triumph. On one side was the dark enclosure, still noted for its sombre aspect and gloomy olives, where the Savior agonized, sweating great drops of blood, and praying for the bitter cup, if possible, to pass; on the other side was the spot whence he ascended. There, too, men and angels met men asleep from sorrow and oblivious of sympathy, an angel ministering strength and succor to the suffering Son of God; hero men are rapt spectators, and angels swell his train. On one side of the mount were sorrow and suffering, on the other glory and triumph. May it not to some extent be the same with ourselves? The valley of Achor, which means "trouble," has often proved the door of hope. "We glory in tribulation also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope." Humiliation goes before exaltation; the cross precedes the crown: "If we suffer with him, we shall also be glorified together;" while our trials here shall enhance our triumph hereafter.

VII THE PURPOSES SERVED BY THE ASCENSION. One purpose was triumph over his and our enemies. Having spoiled principalities, or reft them from him, he made a show of them openly. It was a custom of antiquity for a conqueror on the day of his triumph to have captives bound to his chariot and dragged along at his chariot-wheels. So with Christ. When he led captivity captive, he bound to his chariot-wheels sin, Satan, death, and hell. Sin he buried in his own grave, having borne its penalty. As for Satan, the old serpent, he has bruised his head, destroying his works. Death he overcame by dying, and through death he has destroyed him that had the power of it; while in him and by him we can adopt the tone of triumph and say, "O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?" Of the grave he has said, "I will be thy destruction;" and the day is hastening on apace when the earth shall cast forth her dead. Another purpose of the Ascension is the bestowal of gifts. On the day of a triumph the conqueror distributed many and costly gifts, sometimes dealing them out deliberately, and sometimes throwing them broadcast among the multitude. We read of Julius Caesar, on the occasion of a great triumph, bestowing munificent donations on his soldiery, and distributing many gifts of grain and gold to the people as they crowded around. A greater than Caesar or Solomon is here. Jesus, on the day of his triumph, having receiving gifts for triumphal distribution, "gave gifts unto men... he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." Even on the rebellious he has conferred his favors," that the Lord God might dwell among them." From the day of his ascension until now he has lavished on his people, with unstinted generosity and most bountiful hand, the benefits of salvation and the results of his redemptive work.

VIII PREPARATION ABOVE. Having made provision for us when he was here below, he is gone to prepare a place above. He ascended to provide a place for us; and, having prepared it for us, he is now preparing us for it. In his Father"s house are many mansions; he is gone to prepare one of those mansions for each of his followers. A mansion! Here is a word that denotes stability and implies duration. The most solid structure that ever man reared shall yield to the tooth of time. The pyramids of Egypt shall one day, we doubt not, be levelled with the sands of the desert that blow around them. The Roman Coliseum shall perish. The Parthenon of Athens shall be left without one pillar standing. St. Peter"s and St. Paul"s shall become heaps of rubbish. The castles of kings, that seem to defy decay, shall moulder. Earth itself shall be removed, and its everlasting hills shaken. But all the many mansions in glory shall be durable as the throne of God himself, and stable as the pillars of the universe. "O Lord, thy love"s unbounded So full, so vast, so free! Our thoughts are all confounded Whene"er we think on thee: For us thou cam"st from heaven, For us to bleed and die, That, purchased and forgiven, We might ascend on high?

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Lord - How seasonable is he called by this title! After he had spoken to them - For forty days. Luke xxiv, 50.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The ascension of Christ:

v. 19. So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

v. 20. And they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the Word with signs following. Amen.

At the end of the time which He had set for Himself, forty days after His resurrection, after He had given His disciples all the instructions which they needed for their work, He was taken up into heaven, He ascended into the glory of the heavens, and He sat down at the right hand of God, He now, according to His human nature, as our brother according to the flesh, occupies the place at God’s right hand. He has full dominion over all creatures in heaven and earth and under the earth. With this assurance the disciples went forth. They preached the Gospel everywhere, in all places, throughout the world that was then known. And Christ worked with them; they did not stand alone, but had Him at their side always, in their entire ministry. And wherever a confirmation of the Gospel was necessary in the form of some external sign, such miracle was forthcoming, according to His promise. Christ’s presence is with those that preach the pure Gospel today as surely as it ever was. If our faith but trust in Him, the great Champion of His Church, who works in and with us, and therefore in and with the Gospel, then the great miracles which He has always performed through His Word will be done today as they ever were: Hearts polluted beyond all resemblance to human hearts will be made whiter than snow; souls that were lost and sold into the power of the devil will be redeemed and be given the liberty of the children of God; people whose entire nature is sick with the fearful disease of sin will be made whole and strong to fight the Lord’s battles, all through the power of the Gospel. And the Lord’s hand has not waxed short with reference to other miracles, which are fully obvious to all that have open eyes.

Summary.The resurrection of Jesus is announced to the women by an angel; Christ appears to several persons and finally to the apostles, to whom He gives the great missionary command, assuring them, incidentally, of His cooperation and support in the preaching of the Gospel until the end of time.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Here we have the grand article of our Christian faith asserted, namely, our Saviour’s ascension into heaven, together with his exaltation there, expressed by his sitting at God’s right hand; he ascended now to heaven in his human nature, for in his divine nture he was there already; and it was necessary that he should thus ascend, in order to his own personal exaltation and glorification.

When he was on earth, his humility, patience, and self-denial, were exercised by undergoing God’s wrath, the devil’s rage, and man’s cruelty; now he goes to heaven, that they may be rewarded; he that is a patient sufferer upon earth, shall be a triumphant conqueror in heaven; also with respect to his church on earth, it was necessary that our Lord should ascend up into heaven, namely, to send down the Holy Spirit upon his apostles, which he did at the feast of Penticost. "If I go not away, says Christ, the Comforter will not come; but if I depart, I will send him unto you;" and likewise to be a powerful advocate and intercessor with his Father in heaven; on the behalf of his church and children here upon earth. Christ is entered into heaven itself, there to appear in the presence of God for us Heb 9:24.

Finally, Christ ascended into heaven, to give us an assurance, that in due time we should ascend after him, I go to prepare a place for you Joh 14:2.

Hence, the apostle calls our Saviour, our forerunner Heb 6:20. Now if Christ in his ascension, was a forerunner, then there are some to follow after.

To the same purpose is that expression of the apostle, He hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Eph 2:6; that is, we are already sat down in him, and ere long, shall sit down by him as his members. The only way to this, namely, to ascend unto, and sit down with, Christ in heaven, is to live like him, and to live unto him, here on earth: If any man love me, he will follow me, and where I am, there shall also my servant be Joh 12:26.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CXLIV. The Ascension].

CXLIV. THE ASCENSION. (Olivet, between Jerusalem and Bethany.) bMARK XVI. 19, 20; cLUKE XXIV. 50-53; eACTS I. 9-12.

b19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, e9 And when he had said these things, che led them out until they were over against Bethany: and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. 51 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he parted from them [it is significant that our Lord's gesture, when last seen of men, was one of blessing], and eas they were looking, he was taken ccarried breceived cup into heaven. aand a cloud received him out of their sight. band [he] sat down at the right hand of God. c52 And they worshipped him, e10 And while they were looking stedfastly into heaven as he went, behold, two men [angels in human form] stood by them in white apparel; 11 who also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven? this Jesus, who was received up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going into heaven. [Thus the angels add their testimony to the sureness of our Lord's promise that he will return.] 12 Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, cwith great joy; 53 and were continually in the temple, blessing God. b20 And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen.

[FFG 766]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

19. After the Lord had spoken unto them. The words above, and other words recorded in the other Evangelists. He was received up into heaven. In Acts it says, “a cloud received him out of their sight.” He did not fade away from sight, but a cloud came as a veil between him and the eyes of the gazing disciples. The cloud can be pierced by the eye of faith, and our Lord seen interceding for us at the right hand of God.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

he was taken up into heaven and sat

This can be stated in active form. AT: "God took him up into heaven, and he sat" (See: Active or Passive)

sat down at the right hand of God

To sit at the "right hand of God" is a symbolic action of receiving great honor and authority from God. AT: "sat in the place of honor beside God" (See: Symbolic Action)

confirmed the word

This idiom means they proved that their message was true. AT: "showed that his message, which they were speaking, was true" (See: Idiom)

translationWords

lord

heaven

God

disciple

preach

miracle

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

19, 20. THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD AND HIS COOPERATION WITH HIS DISCIPLES

Luk 24:50-53. Act 1:9 f

19. Ὁ μὲν οὖν κύριος. The οὖν (rare in Mk) refers to what precedes, the μέν (also rare in Mk) anticipates the δέ in Mar 16:20. The Lord did one thing, those whom He had addressed did another.

ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς. In Luk 24:3 this combination is possibly a very early interpolation; it is freq. in Acts and Epistles, but is found nowhere else in the Gospels. Even if we omit Ἰησοῦς we have an expression which is not found in Mk or Mt., but is coming into use in Lk. and Jn. The use in Mar 11:3 is different.

μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς. This need not be confined to the condensed summary of Christ’s farewell addresses given in Mar 16:15-17. It may mean “After all His communications with them.”

ἀνελήμφθη. Cf. Act 1:2; Act 1:11; Act 1:22 and 1Ti 3:16, where the same verb is used; also Act 1:9, where ἐπαρθῆναι also regards the Ascension from the side of the Divine power rather than that of Christ’s own will and act. But the latter is also recognized; ἀναβαίνω, Joh 6:62; Joh 20:17 (bis), Eph 4:8; πορεύομαι, 1Pe 3:22; διέρχομαι, Heb 4:14. As we might Suppose it is the former view that is taken of Elijah; he “was taken up” (2Ki 2:11; Sir 48:9; 1Ma 2:58). In the Greek Church the regular name is ἡ Ἀνάληψις, i.e. the Assumption rather than the Ascension.

ἐκάθισεν ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ θεοῦ. A highly metaphorical phrase to indicate the transcendent glory of the Ascended Lord. In this glory He was revealed to the dying Stephen, not, however, sitting to rule and judge, but standing to succour and save (Act 7:55-56). The sitting is mentioned Eph 1:20; Col 3:1; Heb 1:3; Heb 1:13; Heb 8:1; Heb 10:12; Heb 12:2. This session at God’s right hand signifies permanence, rest, and dominion,—in glory, majesty, and felicity (Psa 110:1)—after the toils, humiliations, and sufferings of life upon earth. Τὸ μὲν καθίσαι δηλοῖ ἀνάπαυσιν καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν τῆς θείας βασιλείας· τὸ δὲ ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ οἰκείωσιν καὶ ὁμοτιμίαν πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα (Euthym.). Excepting Mar 16:5, the regular phrase in Gospels and Acts is ἐκ δεξιῶν (Mar 10:37; Mar 10:40, Mar 12:36, etc.), but in the Epistles ἐν δεξιᾷ, which [3593][3594] have here, prevails. Pearson, On the Creed, Art. VI. 275 f., gives many quotations to illustrate the metaphor.

[3593] Codex Ephraemi. 5th cent. A palimpsest: the original writing has been partially rubbed out, and the works of Ephraem the Syrian have been written over it; but a great deal of the original writing has been recovered; of Mark we have Mar 1:17 to Mar 6:31, Mar 8:5 to Mar 12:29, Mar 13:19 to Mar 16:20. In the National Library at Paris.

[3594] Codex Sangallensis. 9th or 10th cent. Contains the Gospels nearly complete, with an interlinear Latin translation. The text of Mark is specially good, agreeing often with CL. At St Gall.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

19. μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς—after speaking to them. This can refer only to the words spoken by our Lord at the supper in Jerusalem. If it had been after the entire event, and not a part of the event coming after the discourse, something less specific than this μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι would have been given as the mark of time. The ascension therefore, according to this, was on the evening after the resurrection. So Lk., even supposing that the omission of καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν (Tisch. omits, and WH. RV.marg. double bracket) is accepted.1 Mt., however, gives the appearance to the disciples on a mountain in Galilee.2 καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ—and sat down on the right hand of God. This belongs to the creed, not to history.

Insert Ἰησοῦς after ὁ Κύριος, Treg. (Treg. marg. WH.) RV. CKL Δ 1, 22, 33, 124, mss. Lat. Vet. Vulg. Syrr. Memph.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.