The Threefold Manifestation of the Redeemer.
I. The Redeemer's first appearance in the world was His Incarnation in the fulness of time as a member of the human race, to endure the death appointed to sinners, and to obtain for us eternal redemption.
II. The Ascension entrance into the presence of God was the glorious end and consummation of the Redeemer's atoning appearance on earth. There is a certain change in the word now employed by the writer that suggests a boundless difference between the humbled and the exalted state of our Lord Himself. He appears boldly and gloriously before God. His manifestation in time was throughout marked, not only by self-abasement, but also by visitation from above. But now is Christ risen and ascended back to His Father's bosom. He has returned from the far country whither His love carried Him to seek and to find the lost. It was a prelude of this eternal complacency that glorified Him on the Mount of Transfiguration. But though He received honour and glory there, He saw in the distance that other mount, and descended again into the valley of humiliation to reach it. He goes up to be glorified eternally. He "appears in the presence of God to go out no more." The emphasis rests on the words "for us." Our Lord is in heaven the accepted propitiation for human sin. He pleads the virtue of His atonement, which is the virtue of His Divine-human self, as the glorious Anti-type of the typical High Priest entering the holiest on the day of atonement. For all who are His He receives the heavens. His presence there is the security that they shall be there also.
III. The Redeemer will appear a second time, without sin unto salvation. Here it must be remembered that a long chapter of the Church's expectation is omitted. The millennial history that precedes His advent, the glorious circumstances of His coming, and many and wonderful events that derive their glory from it, are all passed by. The atonement is consummated, and that is all; it ends, for He comes without the cross: it is perfected in the salvation of His saints. Our Lord will appear, to those who have no other desire in heaven or earth but Himself, not for judgment, but for salvation. They died with Him, and they shall live with Him; they suffered with Him, and they shall reign with Him. Here, we are saved by hope. In this life, salvation is of the spirit; and that salvation is perfect, save as the spirit is the soul, encompassed about by the infirmities of the bodily organ. Many penalties of sin remain untaken away while we live below. In Paradise these are gone, but there remains the widowhood of the disembodied spirit. Not that the salvation is incomplete, but it is perfect only in part. When we receive Jesus, and are made partakers of Him for ever, then will salvation be full, "complete in Him."
W. B. Pope, Sermons and Charges,p. 84.
References: Hebrews 9:26. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiii., No. 759; vol. xvi., Nos. 911, 962; L. Mann, Life Problems,p. 55; Homilist,4th series, vol. i., p. 39; R. Thomas, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 330; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. x., p. 147.