Ascension - the forgotten one.
how the ascension of Christ is a critical part of the story and its impact on how we can live.
What is this day.
Without the ascension the story of Jesus is left unfinished.
Christ’s Exalted Place at God’s Right Hand
The importance of Jesus taking the place at Gods Right hand.
A six-year-old boy and his father were out walking one evening as the sun was going down. The sunset was breathtakingly beautiful, and the young boy had never seen anything like it before. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Isn’t that awesome! God must have painted that with his left hand.”
His father, puzzled, asked, “Why did you say his left hand?”
“Well, at church we say the Apostles’ Creed,” the boy answered. “And it says that Jesus is sitting on his right one!”
What is the importance of Jesus being seated at the right hand of God?
A six-year-old boy and his father were out walking one evening as the sun was going down. The sunset was breathtakingly beautiful, and the young boy had never seen anything like it before. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Isn’t that awesome! God must have painted that with his left hand.”
His father, puzzled, asked, “Why did you say his left hand?”
“Well, at church we say the Apostles’ Creed,” the boy answered. “And it says that Jesus is sitting on his right one!”
Seated at the right hand is a place Honour and of Available Power
Seated at the right hand is a place Honour and of Available Power directly to His church
Being seated at the right hand is a Standing in the Gap Position.
As our eternal high priest, now “he lives forever to intercede with God on [our] behalf” (Heb 7:25). Similarly, Paul declares that Christ Jesus, who was raised to life, “is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Rom 8:34 NIV).
Early in her ministry, Amy Carmichael (1867–1951), who spent over fifty years in south India, was given a deep burden for young girls who were dedicated to the Hindu gods and given to temple priests to earn money through prostitution. But as she began to take action in seeking to rescue these temple children, there came a point when the opposition—both human and demonic—became so intense she was ready to give up. Even some of her fellow missionaries stood against her. “You can’t ‘rock the boat’ like this,” they warned. “If you keep it up, the government authorities will make us all leave.”
As a result, Amy was ready to give up. “Lord,” she cried, “this burden you’ve put on my heart for these girls—I can’t carry it anymore.” Then one day she realized whose burden it really was:
At last a day came when the burden grew too heavy for me; and then it was as though the tamarind trees about the house were not tamarind, but olive, and under one of these trees our Lord Jesus knelt alone. And I knew that this was His burden, not mine. It was He who was asking me to share it with Him, not I who was asking Him to share it with me. After that there was only one thing to do; who that saw Him kneeling there could turn away and forget. Who could have done anything but go into the garden and kneel down beside Him under the olive trees?
Because our great high priest “understands our weaknesses” (Heb 4:15), his intercession is full of sympathy and compassion. “Made of flesh and blood” (Heb 2:14), fully human like us, he has “gone through suffering and testing” (Heb 2:18) and is able to help us when we are being tried and tested. “It is as our Brother, wearing our humanity,” T. F. Torrance reminds us, “that He has ascended presenting Himself eternally before the face of the Father, and presenting us in Himself.”
His intercession for us is also intensely personal. Aaron, the Old Testament high priest, wore a chest piece containing twelve gemstones, one for each of Israel’s twelve tribes, in order to “carry the names of the tribes … over his heart” as he entered into the Lord’s presence (Ex 28:29). Likewise, Jesus, our great high priest, holds each of us near and dear to his heart as he presents us to the Father.
If the ascended Christ is now engaged in this high priestly work of intercession on our behalf and on behalf of the world, the fact that we have been raised up and are seated with him (Eph 2:6) means that we too will find ourselves joining him in that work. As we “set our minds on things above” (Col 3:1), we too will be drawn into his work of intercession, assuming a priestly, standing-in-the-gap posture for others.
Early in her ministry, Amy Carmichael (1867–1951), who spent over fifty years in south India, was given a deep burden for young girls who were dedicated to the Hindu gods and given to temple priests to earn money through prostitution. But as she began to take action in seeking to rescue these temple children, there came a point when the opposition—both human and demonic—became so intense she was ready to give up. Even some of her fellow missionaries stood against her. “You can’t ‘rock the boat’ like this,” they warned. “If you keep it up, the government authorities will make us all leave.”
As a result, Amy was ready to give up. “Lord,” she cried, “this burden you’ve put on my heart for these girls—I can’t carry it anymore.” Then one day she realized whose burden it really was:
At last a day came when the burden grew too heavy for me; and then it was as though the tamarind trees about the house were not tamarind, but olive, and under one of these trees our Lord Jesus knelt alone. And I knew that this was His burden, not mine. It was He who was asking me to share it with Him, not I who was asking Him to share it with me. After that there was only one thing to do; who that saw Him kneeling there could turn away and forget. Who could have done anything but go into the garden and kneel down beside Him under the olive trees?
We are seated with Christ in Heaven too.
The early Christians proclaimed the ascension, then, in order to say something crucial about Christ. But they also proclaimed it in order to say something about themselves and the nature of their life in Christ. Having professed faith in Christ and confessed Jesus as Lord, they believed they had been joined to Christ. As Paul repeatedly declared, now they were “in Christ.” Therefore the major movements in Christ’s life were now movements they were caught up in too.
Paul emphasizes this in Ephesians 2. “We were dead because of our sins” (Eph 2:5), he says, but we have been made alive through faith in Christ. Then he goes on: “He raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). Not only has Christ been exalted and seated at the Father’s right hand, but because we are in Christ, Paul says we are there too!
He says the same thing in Colossians 3:1: “Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand.” We have died to this life, Paul insists, and our “real life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).
That, then, is the second reason the New Testament writers keep coming back to Psalm 110:1. They believed that not only was Jesus seated on the throne at God’s right hand, but since they were now joined to him, they too were destined and invited to sit with him on the throne (cf. Rev 3:21).
Unfortunately, many Christians have little or no awareness of this. Consequently, they never learn to live in Christ from the seated-on-the-throne position that’s theirs. No doubt we can be “so heavenly minded we’re no earthly good.” But if we are going to be any earthly good, according to the New Testament, we must be heavenly minded. That’s why focusing on the fact and the significance of Christ’s ascension is so essential. As Andrew Murray maintains, “The knowledge of Jesus as having entered heaven for us, and taken us into union with Himself into a heavenly life is what will deliver the Christian from all that is low and feeble, and lift [us] into a life of joy and strength.”
In what follows, then, we want to consider the significance of the ascension and how we ought to proclaim it. As in previous chapters, our concern is to focus not primarily on the “what” (the fact and the manner of the ascension) but the “so what” (what implications it has for our personal lives and our congregations).
Closure
Christ know us intimately.
Psalm 110:1 was understood by devout Jews at the time of Christ to refer not only to Israel’s past Davidic kings but also to the Messiah who was to come. Convinced Jesus was that Messiah, the early Christians therefore boldly applied it directly to him. After his earthly ministry, they proclaimed, Messiah Jesus, Son of God and risen Lord, ascended and returned to his Lord and Father in heaven, who said to him, “Sit at my right hand until I make all your enemies your footstool.”
The New Testament writers therefore keep returning to Psalm 110:1 to proclaim the resurrected Christ’s exaltation to the place of honor at God’s right hand and his installation and enthronement as King. Paul sums it up, declaring that God’s power “raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else.… God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church” (Eph 1:20–22).
Proclaiming the ascension is therefore crucial in fully and properly exalting Christ. For Jesus is not only risen but reigning, not only alive but sovereign, not only central but supreme. As Douglas Farrow demonstrates in his insightful works on the ascension, whenever we fail to proclaim the ascended Christ, enthroned and exalted, something else—our personal agendas, the world’s agendas, the church’s agendas—moves in to fill the vacuum. Mark it down: when we fail to exalt and enthrone Jesus, something or someone else inevitably assumes the throne.