Having accomplished redemption through his suffering on the cross, the risen and exalted Christ now applies the salvation he has won, by granting the gifts of repentance and forgiveness of sins. The ascended and enthroned Christ applies the blessings of salvation. That’s why Peter connects Jesus’ exaltation and the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts 2:33:īeing therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.Ģ. The Spirit descended on the church with power, inaugurating a new age in the history of salvation. And that’s exactly what happened on the Day of Pentecost, ten days after Jesus’ ascension. Jesus himself had told his disciples that it was good for him to go away, because only then would he send them another Helper, the Spirit of truth ( John 16:7-16). The ascended and enthroned Christ pours out his Spirit on the church.
Difficulties arising concerning these clear declarations as to the ascension of the Man of Nazareth must not be allowed to create disbelief in them.Īdapted from The Crises of the Christ, Book VI, Chapter XXVII, by G. At this moment the Man of Nazareth, the Son of God, is at the right hand of the Father. Forevermore in the Person of the Man of Nazareth, God is one with men. That humiliation was a process in the pathway, by which God would lift into eternal union with Himself all such as should be redeemed by the victory won through suffering. The stoop of God to human form was not for a period merely. Jesus ascended in bodily form to heaven, being Himself as to actual victory First-born from the dead. This, however, is not so, any more than it is true that Abraham, Moses, and Elijah have ceased to be men. It is by no means uncommon to hear persons speak of what He did or said "in the days of His Incarnation." Such a phrase, even when not used with such intention, does infer that the days of His Incarnation are over. That there is an unconscious questioning of this fact of ascension is evident from the way in which reference is sometimes made to the Lord Jesus. For the ascension of Jesus was also the climatic, crowning event of his exaltation, and the necessary precursor to his continuing work through the Spirit and the church. “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 1:11).īut there’s more to it than that. The ascension also foreshadowed the final event in salvation history: Jesus’ personal, physical, glorious return. resurrection & ascension) as the salvific event.” įor one thing, the ascension accounts for why the appearances of Jesus during the forty days following his resurrection ceased. And the ascension was so important for Luke, that he ended volume one with it ( Luke 24:50-51), begins volume two by reporting it again ( Acts 1:9-11), and then refers back to it several times in the book of Acts.Īs Joel Green, a New Testament scholar who specializes in Luke’s writings, comments, “Luke presents the exaltation (i.e. Volume one is the gospel that bears his name. Luke wrote a two-part history of the origins of Christianity. But the ascension is pivotal, especially in the writings of Luke. Usually we focus on the crucifixion and the resurrection. My guess is that you probably haven’t read any books about it or heard many sermons on it. But though it occupies a vital place in Scripture, it doesn’t get a lot of attention today, even among Christians. The ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven is one of the most important events recorded in the New Testament.
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