When things are neglected, left unattended, atrophy sets in. If someone sustains, say, a broken leg, it has to be in a cast for some weeks, and rehabilitative attention has to be given afterward to strengthen the muscles. As a guitar player, I can attest that when an instrument sits in its case for long periods of time, it will need to be retuned, as temperature, humidity, and time allow wood to expand and shift, thus causing the strings to go out of tune.
The church can atrophy when certain doctrines are ignored in our preaching and teaching. One key aspect of Christology that needs regular sounding in the hearing of our people is the ascension of Christ. We rightly center whole church seasons around the birth, death, and resurrection of our Savior, but was it not all unto the staggering spectacle of his glorious ascension and session at his Father’s right hand? Every aspect of salvation accomplished by Christ—from incarnation, to atonement,
to resurrection, to ascension, and return—explicates that key phrase in the Nicene Creed, “Who for us and for our salvation…” Yet, the doctrine of the ascension too often
receives too little attention. This, when New Testament scholar Brian K. Donne observed, “…theologically, the Ascension of Jesus Christ is at the very heart of the New
Testament.”
Doctor Luke was intentional in the way he wrote his Gospel. In the opening pages, we are in the temple, where Zechariah is told that his wife, Elizabeth, will give birth to a son, John the Baptist. In my study, on the shelves where my Luke commentaries are, there is a little statue of an exuberant Simeon in the temple, holding a little baby bundle, awed as his eyes have now seen the salvation of Yahweh. By the time you get to the end of Luke’s first volume (Acts being volume two), so much has happened since Zechariah heard his promise, since Simeon held salvation in his arms. By now, the eleven disciples have so much more to rouse their affections to worship: Jesus had lived for them, died for them, risen for them, and now he was about to send them back to where it all began—to the city and the temple, with an experience both beguiling and bewildering. His ascension would catapult them into joyful wonderment, joyful worship, and joyful witness.
The resurrection assured the disciples and assures us that our salvation is more than wishful thinking. I had a professor in college who urged me to have a faith that could remain genuine without having to believe in biological impossibilities, such as the special creation of Adam and Eve, the story of Jonah and the great fish, the virgin
birth, and certainly the bodily resurrection of a dead man. The resurrection of Jesus, it was explained, was simply when the principles of neighbor love and self-sacrifice
for the needs of others came to expression in the lives of the early followers of Christ. In that way, Jesus “rose up” from the grave. In other words, the resurrection
is a metaphor rather than a manifestation that Jesus had literally destroyed the devil—him who holds the power of death—and delivered all of us, who through our fear
of death were held in lifelong slavery (Heb. 2:10–18). A lot is at stake!
Paul says in Romans 4:25 that Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” If there is no resurrection, then there is no justification. How can that be? Well, what Paul is saying is that Jesus died for our sins, but his resurrection was the Father’s receipt: paid in full. In other words, the resurrection was the Father’s way of saying, “I accept all that my Son has done as sufficient for the salvation and justification of my people.” As Romans 3:25–26 makes clear, Christ died for God, and God was satisfied with Christ. Christ died to justify God in justifying us. The resurrection is proof that the Father was satisfied with Christ and is satisfied with us.
So, we emphasize the resurrection in our teaching and worship. We are, after all, resurrection people (Eph. 1:19–20)! As C. S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, “That is
precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.” We often shout out at the beginning of worship services, “The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed!” This is because the resurrection of Jesus actually changed the day of the week the people of God were to worship on, from Saturday to the first day of the week—the Lord’s Day! He proved that he was really resurrected from the grave. But the resurrection changes more than the day of the week we know as the Christian Sabbath; the resurrection changes everything! Again, Lewis writes in Miracles:
The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the “first fruits”, the “pioneer of life”. He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened.
Yet, we must recognize that we are not only resurrection people; we are also ascension people. We have been raised and seated with him in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:4–10). After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and ministered to people for some forty days. And inextricably bound to the resurrection of Jesus is the ascension of Jesus, wherein our Lord physically returned to his heavenly glory for which he prayed in the High Priestly Prayer:
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:1–5)
One popular worship song teaches us to sing, “You came from heaven to earth, to show the way. From the earth to the cross, my debt to pay. From the cross to the
grave, from the grave to the sky, Lord, I lift your name on high.” Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus ascended back to heaven. If I may be allowed to call just once more upon Lewis (Miracles):
The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. . . .
In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity . . . down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created.
But He goes down to come up again and bring the ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.
The ascension was so crucial to Luke’s presentation of the story of Jesus that, just as he concludes his gospel with the ascension of Christ, so he begins his second volume with an even fuller account of the ascension (Acts 1), right before he describes the glorious outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). In fact, in Acts 1:1–2 Luke
makes it clear that his first volume was intended to cover the life of Jesus until his ascension. Then, in the next few verses he rehearses that ascension. The ascension is a sort of literary thread, tying Luke and Acts together.
Details are so important. Jesus led them out to the town of Bethany on the Mount of Olives—such a prominent and precious place in his ministry with the disciples, where Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave. He lifted up his hands and blessed them.
Lest we think of this blessing as a perfunctory bit of social etiquette, let’s step into the sandals of the disciples. Here we are with our Lord on such a familiar mountain. He lifts his hands, and as we hear his words of blessing, what do we see? The nail-prints, the precious wounds that speak to us of what he has done for us. His authoritative accomplishment on our behalf is complete. I love what John Blanchard once said, “When Jesus went back to heaven, his desk was clear.” Should you ever venture into my study, you would surely assume this could never be said of me.
Jesus accomplished his work for us . . . yes—nail-scarred hands lifted up in blessing over the disciples. Even in his resurrected, glorified, perfected body there remains unmistakable testimony, signs that preach the gospel: wounds, some forty days old, yet eternal, so we can gaze at them in adoration and assurance, singing with Charles Wesley,
Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me:
“Forgive him, O forgive,” they cry.
“Forgive him, O forgive,” they cry.
“Nor let that ransomed sinner die!”
Take peace in your hearts because Jesus is ascended to the Father’s right hand, the place of rule and authority. Your King is on his throne! How do we know? Luke tells us, “While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (24:51). Peter assures us Jesus has “…gone into heaven and is at the right hand of
God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him” (1 Pet. 3:22). The author of Hebrews says our ascended Prophet-Priest-King is seated at the
Father’s right hand (Heb. 1:3; 12:3).
So, Nicaea strings together these glorious pearls of Christ’s saving work, so that we would not think of the crucifixion without the resurrection, and we cannot think of the bodily resurrection without the bodily ascension in space-time-history. Because without the ascension, there would be no Pentecost and no Second Coming. For there to one day be eschatological descension, there had to have been eschatological ascension:
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (1 Thess. 4:14–16)
Thus, Nicaea’s grand sweeping statement reaches a crescendo, teaching us to proclaim that Jesus “ascended to the heavens, [and] will come to judge the living and
the dead.”
On very personal soteriological and eschatological levels, the ascension figures prominently in John Calvin’s theological program:
Indeed, we see how much more abundantly he then poured out his Spirit, how much more wonderfully he advanced his Kingdom, how much greater power he displayed both in helping his people and in scattering his enemies. Carried up into heaven, therefore, he withdrew his bodily presence from our sight [Acts 1:9], not to cease to be present with believers still on their earthly pilgrimage, but to rule heaven and earth with a more immediate power. But by his ascension he fulfilled what he had promised: that he would be with us even to the end of the world. As his body was raised up above all the heavens, so his power and energy were diffused and spread beyond all the bounds of heaven and earth.
For Calvin, when it comes to the throne of grace, our access point is an ascended Person:
From this our faith receives many benefits. First it understands that the Lord by his ascent to heaven opened the way into the Heavenly Kingdom, which had been closed through Adam [John 14:3]. Since he entered heaven in our flesh, as if in our name, it follows, as the apostle says, that in a sense we already “sit with God in the heavenly places in him” [Eph. 2:6], so that we do not await heaven with a bare hope, but in our Head already possess it.
Secondly, as faith recognizes, it is to our great benefit that Christ resides with the Father. For, having entered a sanctuary not made with hands, he appears before the Father’s face as our constant advocate and intercessor [Heb. 7:25; 9:11–12; Rom. 8:34]. Thus he turns the Father’s eyes to his own righteousness to avert his gaze from our sins. He so reconciles the Father’s heart to us that by his intercession he prepares a way and access for us to the Father’s throne. He fills with grace and kindness the
throne that for miserable sinners would otherwise have been filled with dread.
In a very real sense, the ascension didn’t take Christ from us; it made him more universally accessible to us. Our Ascended Advocate assures us we are not alone. Late in life, the aged Apostle John wrote, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:21). And, so, we sing, “Before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea, the Great High Priest whose name is love, who ever lives and pleads for me…”
To look at the wounds of the ascended Christ assures us he is no ordinary earthly priest. “For there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). The necessity of the hypostatic union for atonement cannot be overstated. Calvin says:
…It was his task to swallow up death. Who but the Life could do this? It was his task to conquer sin. Who but very Righteousness could do this? It was his task to rout the powers of world and air. Who but a power higher than world and air could do this?
…In short, since neither as God alone could he feel death, nor as man alone could he overcome it, he coupled human nature with divine that to atone for sin he might submit the weakness of the one to death; and that, wrestling with death by the power of the other nature, he might win victory for us.
In Lewis’s “central miracle”—the incarnation—Jesus took on a human nature yet did not cease to be God. Hence, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1643–1647), echoing the Chalcedonian (451) formulation, insists on the language, “So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably
joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man” (VIII.2; emphasis mine). Likewise, in the ascension, Jesus did not cease to be man. As with incarnation, the ongoing necessity of Christ’s hypostasis in the ascension cannot be overstated. Jesus is eternally incarnate. Our heavenly High Priest is of necessity, for our salvation, a human High Priest. Again Calvin says, “Since he entered heaven in our flesh, as if in our name, it follows, as the apostle says, that in a sense we already ‘sit with God in the heavenly places in Christ’ (Eph. 2:6), so that we do not have a bare hope, but in our Head already possess it.”
Hence, as with his disciples, the Savior sends us to the temple: the true inner sanctum! The good news of the ascended incarnate Christ, whose tent is yet pitched with us (John 1:14, ἐσκήνωσεν) in the heavenly holy of holies, ensures intimacy and extends invitation:
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:14–16)
The doctrine of the ascended Christ, with all of its eschatological weight of our being currently seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:6), offers the embodied
welcome of supplication. This is nowhere set forth with more theological horsepower and joyful anticipation than a sermon by Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), The
Most High, a Prayer-hearing God. The year, per Edwards’s own notation, was 1735/36. The fuse for the First Great Awakening had just been lit a year earlier in the Connecticut Valley, with his February 1734 discourses of justification by faith alone. This sermon on prayer by Edwards, drawn from Psalm 65:2, weaves together the
doctrines of the Trinity, the pactum salutis, and the ascension—all to make the call to prayer believable and irresistible for the Christian.
This summer, after a week of teaching at WTS, my wife and I made the drive to New Haven, CT to visit the Beinecke Library Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. There, I realized a three-decades-long dream of holding in my hands the original manuscript of this sermon.
For Edwards, the ascended Christ makes the throne of grace a place where the “prayer-hearing God is the Most High, [who] graciously manifests himself as conquered by it.” In other words, the Father’s posture toward us is that of wanting to be “overcome,” Edwards says, by our prayers. He then grounds this reality of our ascended Mediator having done three things for us in prayer:
1. He hath by his blood made atonement for sin, so that our guilt need not stand in the way, as a separating wall between God and us, and that our sins might not be a cloud through which our prayers cannot pass. By his atonement he hath made the way to the throne of grace open. God would have been infinitely gracious if there had been no Mediator, but the way to the mercy-seat would have been blocked up. But Christ hath removed whatever stood in the way. The veil which was before the mercy-seat “is rent from the top to the bottom” by the death of Christ. If it had not been for this, our guilt would have remained as a wall of brass to hinder our approach. But all is removed by his blood, Heb. 10:17, etc. (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2:116)
2. Christ, by his obedience, has purchased this privilege, viz. that the prayers of those who believe in him should be heard. He has not only removed the obstacles to our prayers, but has merited a hearing of them. His merits are the incense that is offered with the prayers of the saints, which renders them a sweet savor to God, and acceptable in his sight. Hence the prayers of the saints have such power with God. Hence at the prayer of a poor worm of the dust, God stopped the sun in his course for
about the space of a whole day. Hence Jacob as a prince had power with God, and prevailed. Our prayers would be of no account, and of no avail with God, were it not for the merits of Christ. (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2:116)
3. Christ enforces the prayers of his people, by his intercession at the right hand of God in heaven. He hath entered for us into the holy of holies, with the incense which he hath provided, and there he makes continual intercession for all that come to God in his name, so that their prayers come to God the Father through his hands, if I may so say, which is represented in Rev. 8:3, and:
4. “And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar, which is before the throne. And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God, out of the angel’s hand.” This was typified of old by the priest’s offering incense in the temple, at the time when the people were offering up their prayers to God, as Luke 1:10, “And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense.” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2:116)
May a fresh marination in the ascension raise us up, strengthen places that have atrophied in our hearts, and tune our affections for what is true of Christ and true of
us. Indeed, for us and for our salvation, Christ ascended and is seated on high. Let us rest with him until we reign with him. As Herman Bavinck so eloquently reminds us:
This, accordingly, is the sum of the things of which the Letter to the Hebrews says that we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven (1:13; 8:1; 10:12). He who is the liturgist of the heavenly sanctuary (8:2), a high priest, therefore, who is at the same time the king whose throne is established forever (1:8), who is crowned with honor and glory (2:9), subjects all things under him (2:8), and is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them (5:9; 7:25; 10:14). The Apocalypse, finally, loves to picture Christ as the Lamb who purchased us and washed us by his blood (5:9; 7:14) but also as the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth (1:5), the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who with the Father sits on the throne, has power and honor and glory, even the keys of Hades and death (1:18; 3:21; 5:12–13; 19:16). Clothed with such power, he rules and protects his church (2:1, 18; etc.) and will one day triumph over all his enemies (19:12f.). (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:424)