“This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11
Yesterday, we discussed the remarkable possibility that when Jesus stepped into human flesh, He may have done so permanently. Today, I want to move beyond the Ascension and explore the Second Coming, the resurrection of believers, the final battle at Armageddon, and humanity’s shared inheritance with Christ. It seems that Jesus is never again revealed as a disembodied Spirit; rather, He seems to be always, unmistakably, the God-Man.
I find this overwhelmingly comforting, and I think, at the end of this devotional, you will too!
Let’s start where the end of history begins: the return of Christ, as written in the Book of Revelation:
“Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him.” Revelation 1:7
What does God mean by “every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him?” Well, quite literally, it means that when Jesus returns, the soldiers who drove iron spikes through His hands and feet, and the man who opened His side, will look up and know it is the same man. You cannot recognize wounds on a spirit. You cannot mourn with that kind of gut-level, personal grief over a formless divine presence. John is describing every person seeing Jesus as a visible, scarred, identifiable person breaking through the clouds. Matthew’s account adds to this:
“Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Matthew 24:30
The Son of Man. That title is not an accident. Jesus chose it deliberately throughout His ministry—rooting His identity in His humanity even as He exercised His divinity. He used it approximately 80–88 times across the four Gospels: 30 times in Matthew, 14 times in Mark, 25 times in Luke, and 13 times in John—making it the single most frequent self-designation He ever used. It appears far more often than “Son of God,” a title others more commonly applied to Him. And every time He spoke it, Jewish ears would have heard the echo of Daniel 7:13–14, where one “like the Son of Man” comes on the clouds of heaven to receive eternal dominion from the Ancient of Days. This was not a title of humility alone—it was a Messianic claim of the highest order, wrapped in flesh.
Zechariah also prophesied, centuries before the crucifixion, of these very wounds being recognized:
“And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.” Zechariah 12:10
The mourning here is not abstract theological sorrow. It is the raw, crushing grief of recognition—of looking at a face and a body and knowing exactly what was done to it and who it belongs to. That recognition demands a body with wounds that have endured.
Perhaps one of the most singularly physically concrete images of the returning Christ is found in the Old Testament, in a passage that reads almost like a news report from the future. Zechariah writes:
“And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south.” Zechariah 14:4
Notice that it says Jesus will stand on His feet. Nowhere does the Bible mention that a spirit has feet. Several years ago, when I stood on the Mount of Olives, I imagined seeing Him land there and split the mountain, but I never considered Him being in a body. I don’t know how to read that passage and conclude that Jesus returns purely as a Spirit, do you?
Then, there is Revelation Chapter 19, which describes the Battle of Armageddon. As the battle approaches, we are given the opening scene:
“Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His EYES were like a flame of fire, and on His HEAD were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was CLOTHED with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His MOUTH goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His THIGH a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” (Revelation 19:11–16)
This is Jesus, and He has eyes, a head, and a thigh, and He is clothed. He sits on a horse. This is the glorified, sovereign, terrifying God-Man arriving to end the age, and John describes Him in thoroughly physical, embodied terms. The same Jesus who said to the disciples, “Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have,” rides out of heaven at the climax of human history as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The entire final chapter of this age is not executed by a formless divine force. It is executed by the Son of God in a body.
And then there is this truth: our resurrection is patterned after the resurrection of Jesus. The Bible says:
“But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead.” 1 Corinthians 15:20–21
The word “firstfruits” is a farming image that carries enormous theological weight. In ancient Israel, the firstfruits of a harvest were the first sample offered to God — and they determined the character and quality of everything that would follow. Christ’s resurrection is the firstfruit, which means our resurrection will be patterned after His. The harvest will match the firstfruit. Paul makes this even more explicit in Philippians:
“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.” (Philippians 3:20–21)
Conformed to His glorious body! Our eternal future is not a disembodied soul floating in a cloud somewhere. It is a glorified, resurrected, physical body shaped after the body Jesus chose, kept, carried to heaven, and is coming back in. Isn’t that interesting? If Jesus had returned to being purely a spirit after the Ascension, the firstfruits argument would collapse entirely. There would be no physical body to conform us to, right?
Finally, there is one more thread worth pulling out in this discourse. Paul writes in Romans:
“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.” Romans 8:16–17
Joint heirs with Christ. Not heirs of the same estate managed by a distant divine force — but co-inheritors alongside Jesus. It seems to me that an inheritance is inseparable from the one you share it with. You do not become a joint heir with someone who has ceased to exist in a recognizable form. The very structure of that relationship demands that Jesus remain a distinct, identifiable Person with whom we share something real. If He had shed His humanity after the Ascension and returned to a purely spiritual state, in what sense would our inheritance be with Him? We would be heirs of God, certainly—but the “joint” part would seemingly dissolve. There would be no human elder brother holding the title deed alongside us. The language of joint heirship seems to assume a permanent solidarity between Jesus and His people—a solidarity that is not merely positional or legal, but personal and embodied. He became one of us so thoroughly that He now shares an inheritance with us, as one of us, forever.
My friends, this is all very exciting. But to be clear, I am not stating this as settled doctrine. I find it to be a compelling piece of a bigger reason for us to rejoice and be filled with gratefulness. I want to close today by explaining why this idea is so important. All theology should move us to greater worship and glorification of God. To assist us, it’s helpful to go back several thousand years to the book of Job and read his observation several millennia before the crucifixion of Jesus:
“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall STAND at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my FLESH I shall SEE God.” Job 19:25–26
Notice, that Job is speaking in the present tense when he said, “I know my Redeemer lives.” Thousands of years before Christ’s death, salvation by grace through faith was a done deal. Job goes on to say, “In my flesh I shall see God.” Doesn’t this mean that the wounds of Jesus are not a forgotten memorial? Rather, they appear to be the eternal, visible, glorious record of everything it cost the Son of God to give us eternal life. Thomas fell to his knees and said, “My Lord and my God.”
My friend, this is still the only right response to Jesus. We have so much to be thankful for now, and someday, when we are as He is now, we will truly share in the grand fellowship of our Warrior Savior who gave all so we could be with Him. Oh, what a Savior. Let’s begin to celebrate Him right here, right now!
Prayer:
Father, as I read about the return of Your Son — feet landing on mountains, wounds still visible, nations mourning at the sight of Him — I am struck by the sheer, relentless physicality of it all. You did not give us a spiritual metaphor. You gave us a Savior with a body, scars, and feet that will one day touch the same earth He walked on in Galilee. I confess I have sometimes thought of eternity as something vague and weightless. But Your Word corrects me. It is solid and real and shaped after the glorified body of Jesus Christ. Lord, let that reality anchor me today. When I am discouraged, let me remember that the resurrected, embodied Son of God is interceding for me right now. When I am afraid of what is coming, let me remember that the One riding out of heaven on a white horse is the same Jesus who wept at a tomb and called a dead man back to life. He is not distant. He is not abstract. He is this same Jesus — and He is coming back. In His name I pray, Amen.
