The Importance of the Ascension

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

Get Skype and call me for free.

 

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Our Youth Team

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?

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

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

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.

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.