1563 · Australia
All Lord’s Days

The Ascension of Christ

Questions 46–49

How do you understand these words: He ascended into heaven?

That Christ, in sight of His disciples, was taken up from earth into heaven, and that He continues there for our benefit, until He comes again to judge the living and the dead.

Is Christ not with us to the end of the world, as He promised?

Christ is truly human and truly God; with regard to His human nature He is no more on earth, but with regard to His divinity, majesty, grace, and Spirit, He is at no time absent from us.

If His human nature is not present wherever His divinity is, are Christ’s two natures separated from one another?

Not at all, for since the divinity is unlimited and omnipresent, it must necessarily follow that the same is beyond the limits of the human nature He assumed, and yet is nevertheless in this human nature and remains personally united to it.

How does Christ’s ascension into heaven benefit us?

First, that He is our advocate in the presence of His Father in heaven;

Secondly, that we have our flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that He, as the head, will also take us, His members, up to Himself;

Thirdly, that He sends us His Spirit as a guarantee, by whose power we seek the things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God, and not things on earth.

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