20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: 21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. (Acts 3:20-21 KJV)
William Burkitt’s Commentary
Here St. Peter enforces his exhortation to repentance with a strong motive; namely, the certainty of Christ’s coming to judge the world. God shall send Jesus, this Jesus whom we preach to you, visibly, to justify and glorify all penitents and pardoned sinners, whom yet the heaven must contain till the restitution of all things; that is, to the end of the world, when the whole creation which now groaneth will be delivered, and man particularly restored to God, to himself, and to a blessed immortality.
Learn hence, That Christ, being ascended into heaven in our human nature, shall abide and continue there until the restitution of all things, and his corporal presence here on earth is not to be expected, until he has put all his enemies under his feet. Now if his body be, and must continue in heaven, surely then it is not in the sacrament, and the Papist’s dream; who ascribe to Christ’s human nature the property of a Godhead; namely, to be in ten thousand places at one and the same time, contrary to the nature of a human body. If the heavens must contain Christ, Christ must be contained in heaven, and then his presence in the sacrament doth not draw him from heaven; his bodily presence is in heaven, his spiritual presence with his people in the sacrament.