BY THE LATE J. C. PHILPOT, M.A.
THE Scriptures afford the clearest proof of the triumphant manner in which the Lord of life and glory went up on high. In Psalm lxviii. there is a blessed description of the glorious convoy of angels which attended Him on His royal progress up to heaven’s gates; for as, when He shall “appear a second time without sin unto salvation,” He will be “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels” (2 Thess. i. 7), and shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels (Matthew xvi. 27), so thousands upon thousands of ministering angels attended upon Him at His triumphant ascension. “The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels; the Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the holy place. Thou hast ascended on high; thou hast led captivity captive; thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them” (Psalms lxviii. 17, 18). This triumphant ascension of the blessed Lord is also clearly intimated in Psalm xlvii., “O clap your hands, all ye people, shout unto God with the voice of triumph; for the Lord most high is terrible. He is a great King over all the earth. God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises unto our King, sing praises; for God is King of all the earth; sing ye praises with understanding” (Psalm xlvii. 1, 2, 5-7). Nor are we left without scriptural intimations even of the blessed Lord’s reception at the very courts of bliss. When He reached the gates of heaven the celestial courts were moved at His approach, for then was accomplished that memorable transaction recorded in Psalm xxiv. As thus represented to our faith, it was as if the attendant angels that formed His glorious convoy shouted aloud before Him, as the heralds of His approach, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.” But from within is made the inquiry, “Who is the King of glory?” The answer is given from without by the attendants of His train, “The Lord, strong and mighty; the Lord, mighty in battle.” Then comes forth the universal chorus, from without and from within, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, even lift them up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory.”
Nor were good angels the only attendants of His train. Ancient kings returning home after triumphant wars brought back conquered enemies as well as congratulating friends. In a similar way the blessed Lord is represented in Scripture as then manifestly triumphing over Satan and all his angels, as if in His glorious ascension, when He “led captivity captive,” He dragged at His chariot wheels the infernal hosts of hell, and openly showed them to all the holy angels as vanquished prisoners. Thus, at least, the Apostle speaks, “and having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,” that is, the cross, or, to adopt the marginal reading, “in Himself” (Col. ii. 15). The ancient promise was that “the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.” When Satan, by entering into Judas, and by instigating the chief priests and the people to demand that Christ should be crucified, had, as he thought, effectually succeeded in destroying Jesus, he little imagined that this was to be, by God’s eternal design, the very means of accomplishing that prediction. On the cross the seed of the woman bruised the serpent’s head, the seat of his poison-fangs, as well as of his infernal craft and cruelty. There Jesus spoiled principalities and powers, and cast them out of their usurped dominion. But when He ascended on high He “led captivity captive” (Psalm lxviii. 18; Eph. iv. 8); that is, He led captive those who had led poor fallen man captive, in the open sight of all the angelic host, that the elect angels might be eye-witness of the ruin and misery which had fallen on the heads of their apostate brethren in the defeat of all their schemes against the Holy one of Israel. The holy angels even now are waiting for further developments of the wisdom of God as therein displayed in the present grace and future glory of the Church of Christ. This was represented in the Levitical dispensation of the cherubim looking toward the mercy-seat of the ark, as Peter explains the figure, “which things the angels desire to look into” (1 Peter i. 12), and observe that the Apostle does not say “desired,” but that they “desire,” that is still desire, to look into these heavenly mysteries, to afford them renewed discoveries of the wisdom and glory of God; for it is not by creation with all its wonders, nor by providence, in all its displays, that the wisdom of God is made known to angelic minds, but by redemption. “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. iii. 10, 11).
With what surpassing and resplendent glory, then, was the infinite wisdom of God displayed to those bright angelic intelligences when, at the ascension of their Lord and ours, they personally witnessed how, in that very nature which was “made a little lower than the angels” in His state of humiliation, He had defeated all the designs of Satan, vindicated the honour of God, glorified His justice, magnified the law given by their ministration and made it honourable; revealed the grace, mercy, and love of the Father in the salvation of millions of redeemed sinners, and was now returning triumphant into heaven to reign and rule at the right hand of the Majesty on high.