These were some of my questions, and so a while back I chose the topic for an assignment on The Person and Work of Christ. I'm so glad I did. It has moulded my faith a lot more than most other studies I've done. I didn't do much of my own research besides referring to works already written on the matter, so I won't claim any new insight.
This topic has changed the way that I have seen and experienced Christ. The implications of the Ascension are fantastic.
Here are my closing comments from the paper:
The Ascension’s relevance today
There is personal application to the theological truth of Jesus Christ’s real ascension into Heaven. The assurance and purpose of it has been dealt with, but how should it affect believers today?
Peter Lewis observes that
when the ascension and exaltation that comes from it are not meditated on, the offices and work that Christ still actively performs is forgotten – and people are left with a humanitarian view of His person and a defective understanding of His purpose”
What is it about the ascension that fires up our hearts in the truth of Christ?
Jesus: Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh
Laura A. Smit says that today, people don’t understand their need for a mediator between them and God, because they neglect the “radical otherness” of God. We think of God in our terms, and see Him as “much like me”. But the ascension cannot properly be applied without understanding God’s otherness.
“God is more than able, but He is not fit for us like Eve was for Adam. He is Creator, we are creatures. He is the Maker of time and space, whereas we are finite and temporal. He is Spirit and we are embodied. He is unchanging. We are changing. God is not bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh.”
There is a vast gap between us and God. And it exists on the spiritual and physical realm. Not only are we desperately sinful and unable to attain to His righteousness, but we are far removed from Him in nature. There exists a problem in ever being able to relate to and know Him.
But Smit goes on to say,
“God has come to be with us through the incarnation. He has become like us in every way, except in sin.”
God Himself in Christ became flesh. He made His dwelling with us. He took on our nature. And in this instant, we have a bridging of a gap that for us was an insurmountable problem. But Christ’s incarnation did not end with his death, or even with the post-death life he walked before the ascension. Christ is not now spirit and removed from our nature. The ascension shows that the incarnation continues into eternity.
It is the incarnate Christ who has ascended, Jesus our human contemporary. He is no historical human, but rather He now stands in human bodily form in the presence of the Father. We have through Christ an everlasting complete physical, human, representation before God.
Today, we may approach the throne of God with boldness (Hebrews
Setting our minds on things above
Jesus’ ascension requires us to think about heaven and to live toward the new creation. Jesus left the earth in a glorious fashion. This is an event to be meditated on, feasting on the implications and significance of it. Dwelling on His ascension should make us want to speed the day when we will see Him face to face!
It reminds us that we live the in-between, and it encourages us to keep hope:
“The cloud that enveloped Jesus is still our longing until he comes. Yet because of the ascension, it is not an uncertain hope. As the empty grave makes us look down to see the end of one age, so the ascension makes us look up to see what is to come.”
Infecting our daily worship
Our lives are impacted by the ascension because it preaches to us that the world is not our home, and that our lives ought to be controlled by the greater reality of what awaits us.
Fact: the world is not our home
The world was not Jesus’ home, and neither is it ours. Christ the bridegroom is waiting for us. One day we too will ascend - there is a marriage feast expectation. In the light of this reality, the value of the material world is put in its proper place. We know that our present experience of materiality and physicality is not absolute. The anti-Christian culture cannot be accommodated because the world is not our home.
Effect: Daily worship is transformed
If this is the case, our daily living ought to be consumed with the longing for heaven. Our walk should be like that of pilgrims passing through a temporal place. We will not gather riches for ourselves or become obsessed with the offerings of this world. And when we put time aside to specifically worship Him, we will maintain a sense of the awe of God’s presence and nearness, achieved through Christ’s ascension.
Conclusion
We have successfully managed to answer the questions we set out at the beginning of this essay. The Bible is actually not loathing to point to Jesus’ ascension, and we can be sure that it did happen, as were those themselves who lived in that time.
We have seen that the ascension is absolutely integral to Christ’s work, and is in fact that final, “I told you so” by Jesus. It gives us hope in a fitting mediator and a glorious future in Heaven.
In the light of these wonderful truths, our lives should be transformed to become spiritual pilgrimages through this world, destined for Heaven. Jesus, our forerunner, has led the way. His ascension has set our eyes on Heaven where He awaits for us and the great marriage feast.
The ascension should be no puzzling event, but a fire in us that warms our hearts to the glory of the One and Only Jesus Christ, who having ascended into Heaven, will return one day in the same way.
P. Lewis. The Glory of Christ. (Moody Press, 1997), 396
L. A. Smit. The big deal about Jesus’ ascension (
K. Barth, Dogmatik,
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