Mission : Life

The Importance of the Ascension

2008-02-28T16:52:00.000+02:00

Have you ever asked yourself: why is the ascension not mentioned very grandly in the gospels? It seems to occupy such a small few verses, and doesn't even exist in some gospels' accounts. Did it really happen then? Surely something that spectacular would've taken up MUCH of their remembrance and thinking and deserved much written record!
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 4:14-16). Jesus, our brother, has united divinity and humanity, and He is continually the contact point between God and man today. Jesus is our fit mediator today.

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 (CRC Publications, 2005)

K. Barth, Dogmatik, III/2, p. 544.

Malcolm Cunningham
+27 84 582 1151

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2007-10-18T05:57:00.001+02:00

Check out our latest newsletter at antics.wordpress.com/october-2007

Our Youth Team

2007-09-14T07:00:00.000+02:00

FInally! I've been waiting for this photo for ages. Here is most of theCORE leaderhip team. What a blessing to have them on board!

Wish u were here?

2007-07-12T09:40:00.001+02:00

Hey all, thinking of you and glad to be where the sun is shining warmly and the waves are crashing! We're at Umhlanga with Jacqui's family,
Mmm, holidays!
Malcolm and Jacqui

B-day

2007-01-13T19:43:00.000+02:00

Well the last while has been very eventful with Jacqui's pregnancy - we stayed at home over Christmas while the girls went to Jhb to stay with the grandparents. Jacqui was on medication to suppress the labour and contractions I had to be the runner so that she could remain lying in bed. Pto

Here we go

2006-12-18T18:50:00.001+02:00

Please pray for Jacqui and the baby. She has been confined to bedrest. There is a high probability of a prem birth. We desperately need this to hold off at least 2 weeks. We will also therefor stay in polokwane for Christmas.

2006-12-12T11:51:00.000+02:00

Who ya' callin' a Missionary?

I find the topic of missions very thought provoking. Missions is more than just, "We need to get the gospel out there..". It is actually very hard to define, because it strafes between a specific calling with a certain life-direction, and a universal calling to all God-followers in whatever path of lifestyle they find themselves.

Missionaries themselves seem to have many questions and debates on what exactly missions is, and how one measures the success of it. One magazine article highlghts that missions goes beyond planting churches - it also helps the community to strategize their local skill and infrastructure development, so as to create a healthy community that does not disintegrate. It talks about a South American community that has an established church, but has become such a broken community because there is no sustainable, feasible work, and all the capable workers, mostly male, have left their families behind to go and earn money in the US. This results in fatherless homes, and broken families, and a nominal battling church.

What is missions? I have just completed a course in it, albeit very quickly (5 months). We managed to touch on evangelism and church planting. But I still don't know whether I know exactly what it is, or how to measure my alignment to it.
The line between "missions" and any other ministry is so grey and yet the term "missionary" has aquired such a distinct picture in people's minds. Why has this happened? Is it all the romantic stories we hear from missionaries on the field, passing back their exciting antics to the rest of us?

In I.T., there is an age-old problem of projects being completed and hailed a success, yet down the line they are hardly ever measured to verify how well it achieved the goal. The same thing seems to happen in missions. At CBC, the mission is now revisitng a lot of past work and going back to strengthen and sometimes re-root the churches that were planted so long ago. Now, who are the missionaries? The ones who planted the church? The ones who are growing it now?

Most people wind up defining missionaries in 3 groups,
1. those who are ministering to 'unreached' people in very similar cultures as their own
2. those who are minsitering to 'unreached' people in slightly similar cultures
3. those who are ministering to 'unreached' people in very different cultures to their own.

Well, I'm not sure that this is a necessary distinction. We should mostly all be in group 1 sometime in our New Life, because we are all compelled to witness our faith to those around us.
Some of us find ourselves in group 2 or 3, based on where the Lord has led and placed us. Hey, if you want to call me a missionary, go ahead. Polokwane has a culture of its own ;-). But if the common missionary denominator is "reaching the unreached"... why is that unique to missions?

When I think about it, the Bible doesn't seem to describe the office of missionary. It talks about evangelists. Paul felt God's leading to reach the unreached, and off he went to look for these people. He traversed groups 1, 2 and 3. So did Peter. And Jesus didn't only hang around his hometown either. The apostles were "sent ones", like missionaries. But missionaries certainly aren't apostles!

The problem with labelling anyone as a missionary is that it creates a perception that that person is the one called to reveal God to the unreached. Therefore, if I am not a missionary, I'm not compelled to do it.

Isn't this true? Do you consider yourself a missionary? Why not?
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE IN THE PURPOSE AND MINISTRY OF A MISSIONARY TO ANY OTHER PERSON IN CHRIST, be it a pastor, a Sunday School teacher, or a Christian in a secular job. Each one has his vocation and his overarching goal.
Is there one defining difference between a missionary, and any other Christian? I don't see one yet.

Can you disagree? Post your comments.

Down in jhb

2006-12-03T13:12:00.000+02:00

We're in jhb this weekend. We came to see granny Jeanne who has an apparently agressive cancer. It is hard to see the real effects of a degenerating creation. I long for the new creation, and I long for people to know new life, both in this age and in the one we wait for.

Newsletter Out!

2006-11-11T12:05:00.000+02:00

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2006-10-31T21:30:00.000+02:00

Another story about lending!
if you haven't read the earlier blog about lending money, you might find it interesting to compare it with this actual account...

SCENE I
About a week ago, we were sitting in the garden during lunch. It was nice and restful. The next thing a guy appears at the driveway gate waving to us, calling us to come to him. I was very loathe to get up and hear his story. But his wording caused us to hear that he was from over the road. Thinking that he was the owner of the house there, I got up and briskly walked to him.

It turns out he was not the owner but the gardener. And here was his story: His child had just passed away. He was very stammering and apparently very desperate. He needed money to take his daughter's body to the morgue near his village! The owner was not at home and he needed money fast.
I was straining myself to work out the truth of this story, becuase if it was true, the guy just lost his child! That added a lot of pressure! I asked him a few questions about it, and he even told me his daughter's name. When I asked him the cause of death he kind of choked, so I left it.
"How much do you need?"
"Sorry?"
"How much money are you asking?"
"R200"
It seemed a lot to me, but he explained it was the payment for the transport of the body. It seemed a fair price, never having encountered such a thing.
Jacqui and I discussed it. That is rule #1. Always discuss money with Jacqui before commiting.

She was uneasy (although at the time I didn't realise it!) but I told her that I had a good feeling about it. So, I went to fetch some cash. He promised repayment the next morning 8h00. I doubted he would, especially with a daughter just passing away. But I attributed that rather silly promise to his desperation. I told him he need only pay it the next week. He persisted, the next morning 8h00 sharp. He works every day across the road and WOULD repay.

He thanked me and then asked if I might not have R50 for taxi!
Huh?, I thought. Wait a minute... this sounds fishy. I told him I would not give him money for that. He thanked me again and then said he was on his way to the taxi rank. And off he walked.

SCENE II
As he walked further away, I noticed at the house across the road (where he supposedly works) a lady sweeping the stoop. Here's my chance to confirm his story, I thought. I ran back, got the gate keys, and ran over the road and called the lady. To my dismay, she couldn't speak a word of English or Afrikaans. I stood trying to communicate with her for about 5 minutes. I mentioned the guys name, his daughters name and tried to see if she knew him. After a while I realised that she was showing no sign of recognition. I still wasn't able to tell his integrity for sure, but now it seemed doubtful.
I had to try catch up with him. So I ran back to our house, picked up the car keys and zoomed away toward the taxi rank, looking for him. My logic was that if I found him, I would offer to give him a ride, rather than him spending money on the taxi. But, sneaky me, on the way to where he wanted to go, I would divert to the house across the road and confirm with the lady whether he did in fact work there. It was the only option I could think of.

I sped around, but didn't find him at the taxi rank. It really began to look as if he was lying after all.
I decided to go home, but prayed, "Lord, please show me where I should drive..". I was about to turn left, but felt led to drive straight. Turning down the next road, I saw him! There he was waving at cars driving past, trying to get people to stop. Still not sure, I thought. A car had pulled over for him up onto the pavement. Seeing my chance, I pulled up next to the car, in the middle of the road and stopped.
"Come, get in," I motioned quickly
"Do you want your money?", he asked, looking rather miffed
"No, come. "
My intention was to give him the lift.He looked pretty peeved.
"Come", I urged.
He took his wallet out, pulled the money I had given him, threw it in the window and walked away! The lady, looking very nervous, pulled away and drove on.The cars behind me were hooting to push me on. So I drove away.

As I drove, I thought, "That guy must be a fake. If his daughter had just died, and he really was so desperate, why would he throw the money back at me and refuse to come with me? Perhaps he thought I would take him to the cops." I was glad the lady got away.
"Thank you Jesus"

So, I arrived home with the money. Now that was interesting! What kind of a lesson was that?

SCENE III
Getting home, Jacqui told me she had prayed, "Lord please show us with this occasion how we should handle our money in giving." She felt like the lesson was the same as before: don't give to strangers, but rather to those we know are genuine. I coud see her point.

GRAND FINALE!
A few days ago I get home, and Jacqui tells me that she saw the same guy arrive for work across the road!
"Are you sure it was him?" I couldn't believe it!
She thinks so.
My goodness! What if he was genuine? I guess I need to go and try speak to him.

I guess giving requires faith. Not faith in the person you're giving to, but faith in God that He knows the story and will Himself hold every person to account, including us. Do you think he is genuine?

2006-10-31T21:15:00.000+02:00

Lending Money

Luke 6:34, "And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even `sinners' lend to `sinners,'"

How should a Christian lend? Is lending scriptural?

At seminary I interact with students who have very little of any material possesion. Even if they do have their own place and even a car, cash flow is extremely limmited, and the slightest unforseen circumstance can leave them stranded. I'm sure most of us would agree that people like this are prime candidates for receiving cash, lent or given.

Bad experiences

And what about the other people who come to our gate to ask for money? We had a bad experience last year. One chap came to ask for money. He looked a bit aged but as is my conviction, I decided to offer him work to earn the money. I asked him to help dig trenches for our sprinkler pipes. He agreed on a sum of money, and I lent him R50 up front to get to his "new job" that coming Friday. When he had come on the Saturday, he would do the work and receive the balance of the payment.
You can imagine how I felt when that Friday, Jacqui told me he had pitched (a day early) and had managed to wangle a loan through her, far exceeding anything close to what I spoke to him about. He had promised Jacqui that with his new job he could pay it back at the end of the month. His work owing us now escalated to about 2 months. Although he did pitch on Saturday, he managed half the trenching and then disappeared never to be seen again.

Some seminary students have asked me to lend them money. And thankfully, the experience has gone fairly well. However, having the stranger take (steal) our money, made us discuss the question of Christian giving and lending. The more people lend from us, the more risk there is in money not being paid back.

Is LENDING OK, or should we only give?And should we give to EVERYONE and ANYONE who asks?Are there any limmits?

Scripture references

These following verses come immediately to mind. I have not done an exhaustive study in the Word on this issue, so I might be missing some critical points.
Consider these principles from the referred verses:

Give from the abundance you have, and even out of the little if it seems right to you (2 Cor 8:3)
Be willing both to give and to lend (Matt 5:42)
Give with a glad heart, not reluctantly (2 Cor 9:7)
When you lend, do not expect to receve it back (Luke 6:35)

Not expect anything back when lending?

Talking about it, it became clear that there is nothing wrong with LENDING money and assuming the money SHOULD be paid back. However, note this: when you lend, lend with the agreement in your heart that this money might not come back to you. You may therefore consider it privately as "giving". DO LEND - People around you are in need, and God may have blessed you with capital that allows you to assist people in their trouble.

So what does this mean: "GIVE to everyone who asks you..." (Luke 6:30).

Must we just put our hand in the pocket and dish out to anyone who says, "Please give me!". Perhaps there is an element of trusting God and doing just that. But don't neglect other Biblical principles, such as loving and providing for your own family (i.e. don't rob your family). There is not enough room to go into this aspect now though, suffice it to say that what the Lord lays on our heart we should submit to.

But the words in scripture are pretty explicit: "GIVING to EVERYONE who asks".

Note that the context is about loving enemies. One aspect of giving is to not discriminate in your giving. "Give to EVERYONE who asks" also suggests that you must give to all KINDS of people, not just friends or those who you know for sure will pay you back.A complete stranger should not have assistance withheld based on that reason. We will all naturally rather lend to friends and family. This one tests my heart!

But let's talk specifically about lending and the issue that has affected so many of us:

What happens when you lend to someone and they don't pay back, even when you give them grace after grace and they keep on promising? The promise keeps coming, "Next month! Next week!..."
We would suggest these practical guidlines:

After repeated excuses, it gets pretty obvious that it isn't going to come back. If they however, as does happen, seem to have money to spend on other goods, challenge them on the integrity of their promise and tell them it is time to pay back NOW. Sometimes they need a stern push.
However, if this is not the situation, SIGN IT OFF. Let go of the debt, as you should've been ready to in the first place. You cannot afford to tie your happiness to the money you parted with. That's why you need to decide in your heart what you are able to give, and give cheerfully, not under compulsion.
So, you've signed it off. But DO arrange a talk with them. Don't sign it off leaving them hanging with the burden of unpaid debt over their head. Tell them you've concluded that they will not be able to pay back the money and so you're releasing them from the obligation. If they are determined and say that they will repay, let them know that you don't think so, but they are free to prove otherwise. From now on you no longer expect it back. This will show true love, and allow the relationship to continue on a good foot, without this "thing" between you. There's nothing worse than a once good friendship sinking because you can't talk easily.
Be genuine and remember Christ's example, forgiving as you have been forgiven, and freely giving just as you have received. I would expect that actually the friendship would blossom in this scenario. And if the person is an unbeliever, Christ's love will be practically illustrated. It may open a door to witness.

What if they come back a year later and ask to borrow some more money after you've signed the previous loan off?

First of all, I doubt that they would. My experience is that once you GIVE (not lend) someone what they ask, especially strangers, they don't return for more. Maybe I'm wrong. Anyhow, if they do...
Ask them straight out, in sincerity, "I'm doubtful you'll be able to pay it back, based on what happened last time. Aren't you really asking me to GIVE you the money? Let's be honest, last time you couldn't - what makes you think you can now?
Either they will admit, and say that actually do need you to "give" rather than "lend" or they will try to convince you that they will be able to pay back.
In the first case, decide whether you are willing in your heart to give the money away.
In the latter case, suggest that they need to prove first that they can repay. Perhaps they have a recent reference of money they paid back, or someone standing surety, or even a "downpayment/deposit". They should understand why you ask this. From this point on, you'll have to apply wisdom as you work out what happens next.

I hope this brief note will help you in this tough area of lending and giving. Post comments and questions if you wish...

I think I remember someone saying: "When I die, and I see that same man condemned by God to an eternity in Hell for a sinful and Christless life, the last thing I'll want to say to God is, 'Oh! That guy! Yeah, he didn't trick me. When he came to the gate I sussed him up straight away and sent him on his way without a penny! He never got a CENT out of me!"