Ephesians
4:8-10
The
apostle does not name the Person he is writing about – he does not need to; there
is only one Man that this passage could refer to. “He that descended is the same who has also
ascended up above all the heavens, that he might fill all things”: Jesus is the
only One that this could apply to. How
wonderful that we can speak of a Saviour who is glorified at God’s right hand:
‘On
His Father’s throne is seated
Christ the Lord, the Living One’ (Hymn 404).
There He
is, in His glory, ascended. I would like
to speak about descending and ascending in relation to the Lord Jesus. It is a wonderful fact that the theme of the
gospel is a Man who has descended, but also who has ascended, and is now at the
right hand of God. God is satisfied and
delighted with the Man at His right hand now.
That is the place from which the gospel is coming to you today.
The
gospel is coming from the glory, from the Man at God's right hand, who has satisfied
God completely in relation to the work He has done. Do you know Him as your Saviour and Lord? Do you know the One who is there at the right
hand of God? He has taken that place for
you. That place of exaltation depends on
the fact that He first descended. What a
contrast to man: men begin on the earth and try to get off the earth, sometimes
literally, or in self-promotion or whatever.
That is their bent of mind. Who do
they get that from? They get that mind
from Satan. Satan said, “I will ascend into
the heavens”, Isa.14:13. Satan
challenged God; he said, “I will ascend above the heights of the
clouds, I will be like the Most High” (v.14). But he fell: he did not descend; he fell
because it was beyond him; it was an act of wilfulness and sin that God could
not allow.
Then
when God brought in His creation, Satan tried again. When he spoke to Eve, he said, “… in the day
ye eat of it … ye will be as God, knowing good and evil”, Gen.3:5. He said, as it were, ‘Ascend! You take up this line of ascending that I have
been on’. It was a disaster then, as at
every other time when a person tries to ascend. We speak of it as the fall, the incoming of
sin, the fall of man. God made His
creation in its perfection and it was spoiled because someone desired to follow
Satan in ascending, setting aside God’s instruction.
How
wonderful that there is a Man who had in mind to descend. The passage in Ephesians properly refers to the
Lord Jesus in His Manhood, but we must remember who this Person is. He subsisted in the form of God. I do not think you can explain that, but there
was a Person, the Person we know as Jesus, who subsisted in the form of God. Eternally, in eternity past, He was there, outside
the scope of time as we know it; He was there, existing in glory. But that One was prepared to take another
position, another place, according to the divine mind, and it entailed that He
descended; it entailed a different kind of mind. This glorious Man had a mind to descend. His was a completely different mind from my
mind, or your mind, or each one of us. We
have ambitions and high thoughts; we would make much of ourselves, try to make
us appear better in other people’s view.
But this One had a different mind, a mind to come down, a mind to
descend. How beautiful it is to see that. The scripture says, “For let this mind be in
you which was also in Christ Jesus; who, subsisting in the form of God, did not
esteem it an object of rapine to be on an equality with God”, Phil.2:5,6. That is, it was true that He was equal with
God. That is how I understand that
reference, that when He said He was equal with God, it was true: He was not
stealing that position, He was not claiming something that was not His; it was
really His to be God. And yet,
subsisting in the form of God, He “emptied himself, taking a bondman's form,
taking his place in the likeness of men; and having been found in figure as a
man, humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of
the cross” (vv.7,8). His pathway was
entirely different from other men – from you, from me, from everyone else; how
wonderful that there is a Man who had that mind to descend.
Why
did He have to descend? Because of the whole
issue of sin, and of man's waywardness from God; and so that God should have an
answer and be able to secure persons, according to a different line and a
different way – not Satan's way of ascending in his own assumed right and
power, but descending so that men should be reached by the grace of God that
has come down to them, come down to us where we are. That grace has come down lower than men were. The Samaritan came up to the wounded man (see
Luke 10:25-37), a man who was wounded and half-dead. The Samaritan had been lower; the Lord had
taken a lower place than you have taken. Do you know that the Lord has taken a place
that is lower than you? He did that so
that you could be raised up, elevated, brought into the place God has in mind.
What
does that mean? Where we read in
Ephesians, it says, “But that he ascended, what is it but that he also
descended into the lower parts of the earth?”.
The Lord Jesus has been buried. He
has been in the grave; the Lord of glory, God in His own Person, has come into manhood
and taken a bondman’s form, and He lay in a grave, three days and three nights “in
the heart of the earth”, Matt 12: 40. Why
was He in the grave? He took the place for
you, the place that you deserve. He took
the place that you and I deserve on the cross, and He took the place that you and
I deserve in death, and He took the place that you and I deserve in the grave. We deserve to be placed out of God's sight,
because of what we are as sinners, and the Lord Jesus has taken these places so
we can come into blessing. Every step of
His blessed humiliation, as it has been called, was taking Him to death. It was the mind to go down. He never sought to rise up where it was God's
mind that He should go down. He took the
place of weakness, of humiliation, a place that was contrary to everything that
man according to flesh would desire. He
took “a bondman's form”; He was ready to serve.
It is beautiful to see Him bowing at the feet of His disciples to wash
their feet (see John 13:3-12). Where there
was something that needed Him to go down, He would do it.
It
is beautiful to see the pathway of the Lord Jesus, all leading to this time
when, He “having been found in figure as a man, humbled himself, becoming
obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross”. That was a bondman’s death: the Romans, who crucified Him, thought that was
suitable for a slave. I have my
responsibility in that, in what men did to the Lord. The superscription was written above the cross
in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (John 19:20), covering the whole of the known earth
at the time; all were engaged in that activity of dealing unrighteously with the
Lord of glory. Yet think of what God has
done. God has said, as it were, ‘If you
deal so despitefully, so terribly, with my Son, I will use that as the means of
bringing in blessing to you. If you put Him
on a cross of shame, then on that cross of shame He will suffer in your place
that you should come into blessing. If
you give Him everything that is contrary, I will use it to bless you.’ And that is God’s mind towards you; that is
His heart towards you.
If
you have not yet trusted in Him, it means that you have taken your place along
with a world that chose Barabbas and not Jesus (see Matt.27:20-23). And we have been in that place: every one of
us has been in that place at some time if we were not accepting Jesus. He says, ‘If you have taken that place, I will
take up your issues; I will take that matter on; I will take on your sins; you
only need to trust in Me, and repent and have faith in Me, and you will find
that every one of your sins was taken and born on that cross’. The judgment of God was executed at the cross,
and Jesus bore that judgment for me. The
judgment of God in its fulness – three hours of forsaking on the cross – was
borne for me. The grace of God has come out
in Jesus to me, a sinner who needs a Saviour, and He has borne the judgment for
me. I trust that every one here is
assured of the glory of the Saviour. Be
assured that He has gone to the depths for you. And further, there was that penalty upon you
and me as sinners, the penalty of death. He did not avoid death; it was the depths to
which He went for you. He went into
death for you; He died, Christ died for all. He descended into the depths.
There
on the cross something further took place. Even in battle, persons respect the body of a
dead man. There is something despicable
about harming the body of someone who is dead. But that is what they did to my Saviour: a soldier
took a spear and pierced His side, desecrating a dead body. What
does God do with men who do the most despicable thing they can to His Son? The blood of Jesus Christ was poured out, the
blood and the water poured from that side, so that every one of your sins can
be washed away. What a Saviour you can have,
what a Master, what a Lord! What a depth
He has been prepared to go into for you. Wicked hands put Him on that cross, but God
ensured that loving hands took Him down from the cross. Persons who loved Him took Him down, and they
cared for Him. Your Saviour took a place
in which, to put it simply, He could not care for His own body. It was in a sense as any other dead body; the
reality of death had come in; and God provided for Him. But He had to be buried, because, as it says
in the scripture we read, He had to be in the lowest place: “He also descended
into the lower parts of the earth” – lower than you have been, just for you,
and because of His love for you. It was not
just for a moment, but three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Why? Because of you, because of me – sinners who
are worthy only to be removed, cleared away from God's sight. Jesus took that place; He went to the grave, He
was covered, the great stone was rolled over; He was there in the heart of the
earth. Why? For me, because that was necessary for my
salvation and yours - a Saviour who would go to the lowest depths.
“He
that descended”: what a description of Jesus! No one else fits the description. And if He has gone that way, God is not going
to let the Saviour remain in the grave. He is going to vindicate that Man; indeed, He is
going to vindicate Him publicly in His time. But for the moment, God has said, ‘I am going
to show how great my approval of Jesus is’; and He has ensured that His lovers
will know where He is, and will be in the secret of the way He has gone. It says, “He that descended is the same who
has also ascended”. He came out from the
grave, He was raised from the dead, He stood on the earth again, He was here
for forty days and forty nights: that is part of His ascending movement. There is that reference in the poem, He was
raised
‘By
the glory of the Father, and His own inherent right’.
The glory
of the Father raised Him; the Father's approval was so great that at the
earliest moment when it could be said that He was three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth, the Father was there. Mary was early at the tomb (John 20:1), but
the Father was earlier. The reference to
His own inherent right reminds us that death could not hold this One. As He went into death, He burst its power. The power of death met someone who was greater
than it, who entered death having laid down His life of His own volition, and therefore
by the power that is in Him, He rose again from the grave.
He
walked among men: how beautiful to see the Saviour in resurrection. They said, “The Lord is indeed risen and has
appeared to Simon”, Luke 24:34. You
could say of Peter that he had just denied the Lord. Yet on the first resurrection day, He came to
Peter, and they say, He “has appeared to Simon”. The bond is not broken; the Lord resolves what
Peter had done in denying Him; that sin is washed away in the precious blood of
Jesus. That is the beginning, and every
day since then there has been that work of Jesus, to console, to help, to come
near people. Then, after these forty
days, He went out to Bethany, where so much blessing had come in, and from there
He ascended. In our passage it says, “He
that descended is the same who has also ascended up above all the heavens”. He had the right to ascend, He had the
absolute right and power to ascend, and to remain in a glorified position.
It
also says that He “was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24 v.51). That is, He was carried up into heaven in the
fulness of the Father’s approval of Him and delight in Him. He went up through all the heavens, that He
might fill all things. Every intelligent
creature that there was in the heavens must acclaim Him as He went through. He “has been received up in glory” (1 Tim 3 16),
and there He is still at the Father’s right hand. The Father has given Him that place. He says, “as I have overcome and have sat down
with my Father on His throne”, Rev.3:21.
He is on the Father's throne, in
the place of greatness and glory. He remains
the same: He has the same mind; His spirit is the same; He has the same care for
you. He is interested in you, and now He
is at the Father's right hand. If you
give someone elevation and power in this world, they want to accrue all their
interests to themselves, and to be established in the glory they have been
given. But there He is on the Father's throne,
and He is interceding for you. If you
are a believer, He is acting there to represent you before the Father. A believer has One there who is the great
high Priest before the Father. He is
also your “patron with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”, 1 John 2:1. That One who has been given that place of
glory is occupied with you, dear believer; He is there for you who have trusted
in Him. And if you have not trusted in Him,
He is there for you, the sinner, as a Saviour. He is there for you as a believer, to sanctify
you, to look after your interests in heaven.
Scripture says we are to have our minds on the things above (Col.3:2);
they are your things – they belong to you up in heaven. Your name is written there. Have you thought of the fact that God has
taken the time to write your name down in heaven as one who has trusted in the
Saviour?
And
further in His care for you and His interest in you, having come into glory, Jesus
has sent another divine Person here. Himself
a divine Person, from that ascended Man the Holy Spirit has come. He descended on Jesus when He was here in the
form of a dove to show His approval, Matt.3:16. But then the Holy Spirit of God has come down
so He can dwell in you and help you, guide you, and guard you. He gives you that link with the risen and
glorified Man, so that you know that you are associated with the heavenly Man. How wonderful the Holy Spirit is. He is here as having come down. The Lord Jesus too came down. It shows the heart and the mind of God towards
you.
This
same One will come down again, close to the earth; He will come to the clouds,
1 Thess 4: 17. It is wonderful that He will
come so near that those who have trusted in Him will hear His voice. And we will see His face, and be like Him, and
be with Him through all eternity. You
will ascend with Him to the place where you belong, because He has secured that
place for you. He says in John 14, “for
I go to prepare you a place”, v.2. How
did He do that? He did that by taking up
that place before God for you. Then He
says, “and if I go and shall prepare you a place, I am coming again and shall
receive you to myself, that where I am ye also may be”, v.3. He who descended has ascended up to the
highest place, and will bring you into the elevated position He has prepared. He, as God in His Person, must have the
distinctive place, and the scripture speaks of that when it says that He has “also
ascended up above all the heavens, that he might fill all things”. We will be brought into the highest place in
the created sphere and will be with Him eternally.
He
will also descend again, after He has caught up the church, to assert God's
rights on the earth, and to be publicly vindicated where He was despised. The last men saw of Him was when they rolled
the stone over the door of the tomb (Matt 27 v.60); but they will see Him
again. There will be those who trust in Him,
and how wonderful it will be to enjoy a thousand years of perfect rule and
administration on this earth. The more
you look at the earth and all that surrounds it, the more you look forward to a
perfect administration under the Lord of glory who will claim and be given this
place, and will rule in equity, in peace and perfection. The world will flourish as it ought; corn will
grow on the tops of the mountains when the Prince of Peace is in control, Ps
72:16.
Believers
on the Lord Jesus will have been received up into glory before then, and they will
be an influence over this earth. Scripture speaks about that great vessel, the
assembly, as descending from heaven (see Rev.21:9-14). I do not think it is going to descend to the
earth, but it will be displayed, descending from heaven, and the world will see
the excellence of what God has in His assembly. It will influence the whole scene; it will be
part of that blessed administration that God will establish in Christ.
In
the meantime, what is your position? What
is your position in relation to this Man who has done so much for you? Have you trusted in Him? Have you believed in Him? Are you faithful to Him? Are you marked by the same spirit, and place
and attitude, that marked Him? “Let this
mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus”: the mind to go down, the mind to
descend, the mind to serve like He did: that is what He is looking for. In the meantime, know that believers in Him are
the most elevated persons walking in this earth, and yet walking in lowliness
of serving and blessing. I remember a
brother who used to speak about the brethren as ‘heaven’s aristocracy in
disguise’. That is your position. Another brother said that the royal family used
to try to go out in disguise, but they were easily found out because they always
paid in gold, and never asked for change. Is that your attitude? Are you providing blessing, serving in the way
that is in the divine mind? You can be washing
the feet of the saints, doing whatever is in the divine thought for you. That is what you have received by trusting in
Him, but as you trust in Him, He is looking for you to take after Himself, to
be like Him.
May
the Lord bless the word, for His Name’s sake.
Preaching
of the gospel, Linlithgow (Edited)
12 April
2026
David C Brown
