The Ascension of Jesus Christ
What Christians understand (or should)
So when they had come together, they asked Him, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when He had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as He went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, Who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven.”
- Acts 1:6-11
Today is quite possibly the most unrecognized and simultaneously, the most encouraging revelation of our salvation. How is that we do not know and celebrate Ascension Day? In all my years as a Christian, even – and perhaps, especially – as a child and youth growing up in the church, I never heard anything about the Ascension. Ascension Day is forty days after the Resurrection, meaning that it always falls on Thursday. As a pastor in the local church, I confess that I may have preached on the Ascension a few times, but whatever I preached was no doubt insufficient. I certainly did not hold any sort of worship on Ascension Day. Only in recent years have I come to understand the enormous significance of our Lord’s Ascension.
The Ascension is the completion of the Resurrection. When Jesus rose from the dead, human death was defeated. Death is not the final event of our lives, but rather, it is a passing, much like birth is a passing from one form of life to another. The Ascension reveals that passing. Human death was overcome, but Jesus does not still walk the earth. His physical Body was raised into our Father’s Kingdom and in so doing, the union of heaven and earth ruptured in the Fall is overcome. That is how His promise to ‘be with us always’ is fulfilled (cf. Matthew 28:20). The Ascension is the sign and promise that the new heaven and new earth are inaugurated, and one day, that union will be fully established.
As the Apostle John saw in the Revelation (21:3b-4):
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Thus, Ascension Day foretells the conclusion of this age, the full reign of Christ where there is no more pain or sorrow, crying or death. This is the day when Christians look to our destiny, the promise of the Kingdom of God for each of us. Moreover, this promised Kingdom entails some form of human physicality that is joined through the raising of Jesus’ Body into God’s Kingdom. That Kingdom is our true home, although it is a home we cannot really see from our viewpoint in a world run rampant with sin and evil.
As Paul wrote in his first letter to the church in Corinth (15:26), “The final enemy to be destroyed is death.” Death came into the world through Adam, and now, through Christ Jesus, death is destroyed and capitulates to life. Having gutted death of its power over us, God begins the process of reconstituting all that we forfeited for sin. He is rebuilding Paradise where He walked and talked with the man in the cool of the day (cf. Genesis 3:8), but He is bringing us to Him as His children, not simply as creatures in His Image. The difference between the first man and woman and the redeemed children of God is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit – the final decisive act of our salvation. But we turn to Pentecost without stopping to consider the Ascension, to dwell on it, to explore it, to marvel in awe at what God has done.
The Ascension decisively breaks the barrier between the Kingdom of our God and our world – our mundane, sin-ridden, laughter-filled, chaotic, confused, vulgar, and beautiful world. Moreover, it utterly repudiates the “flat-earth materialism” that prevails today. As written in the letter to the Hebrews (cf. 12:1), we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” Whether Saints Peter and Paul, a grandparent or parent, a child, sibling, or friend, all around us the host of heaven are acting and interacting with us in ways we do not recognize or understand. They are praying for us and interceding for us before the throne of Christ at the Father’s right hand. While we may not – indeed, we often cannot – discern their presence and activity, we can trust that those who have been raised from the dead with Christ Jesus continue to live and to love. As children of God, to whatever degree they reflect the Son of God, they can and do act on our behalf and for our blessing and guidance.
Such teaching is almost heretical in modern Christianity, but the fact is, the teaching is biblical. It is modern Christianity that is heretical here. We’ve set heaven off someplace at a distance, when in truth, the ‘Kingdom of God is within us’, (cf. Luke 17:21) within the community that constitutes Christ’s Body today. Additionally, we live daily surrounded by those who live with Christ in His Kingdom. One day, we will be wholly reunited to them if we strive to live obediently and faithfully, but today, we participate in the communion of saints (Apostles Creed).
We begin our own ascension as Christian disciples here and now. In fact, the whole trajectory of Christian life is progress toward and fitness for the Kingdom where Jesus Christ now reigns. Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking that what was inaugurated when Jesus ascended into heaven be made real here on earth through us. “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We are the bearers of Christ’s Kingdom, workers growing His Kingdom on earth. It’s truly amazing that the Kingdom has been entrusted to us. Our Father has given us His Spirit to imbue divine efficacy in our efforts to grow, to serve, and to love in Jesus’ Name.
The Kingdom of God becomes visible in us when we begin to pull away from the world, and here, I do not mean in a physical sense, at least not for long periods of time. Physically, we are in this world, and we must interact with others if we hope to spread the Gospel of salvation and the love of Christ to others. Rather, we “pull away” from the world by striving to live the new life given to us. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians,
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
The new self is the child of God born of the Spirit and participating in the divine life of Christ’s Kingdom. Daily, we are to strive to grow in righteousness and holiness that God’s likeness will be visible in us. How dramatically different we would appear to the world! The evidence of corrupted, darkened minds abounds around us. Mocking God, whole sectors of our culture are alienated and ignorant of God, treating others callously and selfishly, and are wholly given to sensual (physical) gratification.
In contrast, the children of God are called to be light to the darkness, as Christ brought light into our world. We are to love a sinful and broken world as Christ loved us before we ever repented a single sin - much less loved Him. That is our message to the world as well. The Ascension calls us to live out of that reality, the reality of the Kingdom, not the reality of this world. We are to grow in virtue and holiness with the help of the Spirit of God in us. Our soul is to begin its ascent toward the Kingdom while living in this mortal body.
As the two men told the disciples, we are not to invest ourselves in speculation about a finite kingdom that’s far smaller than God’s own. Nor are we to spend all our time gazing toward heaven and wondering about Christ’s return. He will come visibly as He departed visibly. Until then, we live lives that are the intersection between heaven and earth, hopefully in increasing degree as we mature in Christ Jesus.
Today, we stop and celebrate the Ascension. What we see is not all there is - not even close! The great cloud of witnesses is present to us. Those we love are nearer than we know. In due time, our relationships will be fully restored in divine beauty and glory. This is a magnificent promise! Today is day worthy of commemorative worship and rejoicing! Jesus’ Ascension opened the gates of heaven for human beings. Don’t miss the majesty, the wonder, the audacity of God to open His Kingdom to the likes of you and me.
In Christ…