Lo! in heaven Jesus sitting

"He wears our nature on the throne."

Another hymn is #132, which is also on praising the Lord for His humanity. This hymn is full of life, full of the Spirit, and full of experience. Stanza 1 says,

Lo! in heaven Jesus sitting,
Christ the Lord is there enthroned;
As the man by God exalted,
With God's glory He is crowned.

Then stanzas 4 through 6 deal with life, the Spirit, and experience:

He as God with man is mingled,

In every meeting there is always the operating of the Spirit; nevertheless, the Holy Spirit still needs an outlet. Sometimes the outlet is through prayers and praises, and other times it is through the hymns. Last year in a training in Irving, Texas, we had a bread-breaking meeting. In that meeting I sensed that the Spirit was operating, and I waited, but no one made a move. Therefore, I called Hymns, #132: "Lo! in heaven Jesus sitting, / Christ the Lord is there enthroned; / As the man by God exalted, / With God's glory He is crowned." As soon as this hymn was sung, the entire meeting was released, and we were in the heavens.

God is the Spirit, and the Spirit is God Himself, but when God became flesh, He passed through man and put on humanity. From that day on, God had no way to put off His humanity. Hymns, #132 says that today in heaven God still has humanity. Today our Savior God still has humanity in heaven (Acts 7:56). How do we know this? We know this because He passed through humanity and put on humanity, and after His death and resurrection, He entered into ascension with this humanity (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:51; Acts 2:32-33).

Some Christians, even some Christian workers, have argued that Christ died as a man but that after He was resurrected and ascended to the heavens, He was no longer a man. They claim that the Jesus in the heavens is no longer a man. According to this concept, when Jesus was resurrected, He stripped off His humanity. Because such arguments were directed against me, I purposely wrote the hymn that contains the lines,

Lo! In heaven Jesus sitting,
Christ the Lord is there enthroned;
As the man by God exalted,
With God's glory He is crowned.
(Hymns, #132)

In reply to these arguments, I asked, "If Jesus in the heavens is no longer the Son of Man, how could Stephen have seen Him as the Son of Man?" (Acts 7:56). Furthermore, Matthew 26:64 shows us that He is the Son of Man now sitting in the heavens and coming back in the future. Moreover, Revelation tells us that He is the Son of Man among the local churches (1:13) and that He will return as the Son of Man (14:14). Hence, 1 Timothy 2:5, written after His ascension, still calls Him "the man Christ Jesus." Our Savior is a man. Although He is resurrected, Jesus is still a man, a resurrected man, an uplifted man, a man who, in ascension, is on the throne in the heavens. Jesus is qualified to be our Savior because He is both God and man. This is why His salvation is "so great"—great not only in the element of God but also in the element of man. All the divine attributes and all the human virtues are the ingredients of "so great a salvation." In this "so great a salvation" we enjoy the fullness of the Godhead and the uplifted humanity of the man Jesus. In this "so great a salvation" we possess both the divine nature and the human nature of Christ. With what wonderful elements is this "so great a salvation" composed! No human words can utter it adequately. No wonder that the writer says that it is "so great"!

However, many Christians have the concept that Christ was a man only from the time of His incarnation until the time of His burial. Then, according to their understanding, after His resurrection He was no longer a man. Perhaps you held this concept before you came into the Lord's recovery. Others may never have given this matter serious thought. They may have been satisfied to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior, and the Redeemer, and that, since His resurrection, He is now in the heavens.

Once a brother, a seminary graduate, told me how surprised he was when he first sang the following words from a hymn on the exaltation of Christ (Hymns, #132):

Lo! in heaven Jesus sitting,
Christ the Lord is there enthroned;
As the man by God exalted,
With God's glory He is crowned.
He hath put on human nature,
Died according to God's plan,

The four Gospels speak of the Lord Jesus on earth. But where is Christ in the book of Acts? In this book Christ is in the heavens. Acts does not unveil to us a Christ on earth; it reveals a Christ who is in the heavens. Concerning the Lord's ascension, we do well to consider the following stanzas from Hymns, #132:

Lo! In heaven Jesus sitting,
Christ the Lord is there enthroned;
As the man by God exalted,
With God's glory He is crowned.
He hath put on human nature,
Died according to God's plan,

Stephen saw the heavens opened up and the Son of Man—Christ—at the right hand of God (Acts 7:56). Stephen saw this after Christ's ascension to the heavens. This indicates that Christ is in the heavens still as the Son of Man. Concerning this, Hymns, #132 says:

Lo! in heaven Jesus sitting,
Christ the Lord is there enthroned;
As the man by God exalted,
With God's glory He is crowned.

Christ's being a man is altogether related to God's economy. His humanity, therefore, means a great deal. He has been exalted by God as a man, and as a glorified man He is now sitting in the heavens. At this point, I would ask you to consider a hymn on His exaltation as a man (Hymns, #132):

...

I would call your attention to the lines which say that the church is identified with the "the Glorified in heaven." Christ has been glorified and exalted as a man, and we are identified with Him.

God put on humanity in His incarnation. Some think that after He resurrected and ascended, He put off humanity. They think that Jesus is no longer a man. This is wrong. The Lord Jesus is still a man. He did not put off His humanity when He resurrected and ascended. In Matthew 26 the Lord Jesus was judged by the high priest who said to Him, "I charge You to swear by the living God to tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God" (v. 63). The Lord Jesus answered by saying, "You have said rightly. Nevertheless I say to you, From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven" (v. 64). The high priest asked the Lord if He was the Son of God, but He answered with "the Son of Man." The Lord has been the Son of Man in the heavens at the right hand of God since His resurrection and will be the Son of Man even at His coming back on the clouds. When Stephen was being martyred, he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God" (Acts 7:56). Stephen said this after the Lord had ascended to the heavens.

Hymns, #132, concerning the Lord's exaltation in His ascension, shows us this intrinsic revelation...

Although God became a lowly man, His intention was not to remain a lowly man for eternity. His intention was to bring His humanity up to the level of His divinity. Romans 1:3-4 tells us that our Savior is of two sources: the flesh and the Spirit. According to the flesh, He was out of the seed of David. For Him to become flesh was like Solomon's going to the countryside as a 'country man' to gain a wife. God made Himself a man in the flesh. Then in His resurrection He uplifted His humanity into His divinity according to the Spirit of holiness, and in His humanity He was designated the Son of God. He had the capacity to uplift His humanity into His divinity because He was of two sources: the source of the flesh, humanity, and the source of the Spirit of holiness, divinity. Humanity surely cannot pull down divinity. Instead, His divinity uplifted His humanity into His divinity.

Through the divine power in the Spirit of holiness, Jesus' humanity was uplifted into the divine sonship, into divinity. By this He was born of God not as God's only begotten Son but as God's firstborn Son (Rom. 8:29), which indicates that many sons would follow. Today our Christ is God in the divine sense and man in the human sense. He is a God-man. We need to stress that our God is not only God but also a man. We wrote a hymn which says, 'Lo! in heaven Jesus sitting, / Christ the Lord is there enthroned; / As the man by God exalted, / With God's glory He is crowned' (Hymns, #132).