The Ascension of our Lord, 101

Today especially we celebrate the ascension of Jesus, a date marked out 40 days after his resurrection, when he departed from earth and returned bodily to heaven (Luke 24:50–53, Acts 1:9–11). Three helps in learning/relearning/delighting in the this wondrous part of Christ’s redemptive work.

1.) On first glance, Jesus rising up in the clouds may seem like something out of a Monty Python skit. It’s perhaps a little difficult to understand, maybe even a little bizarre to grasp, and even more difficult to apply. And yet the ascension of Jesus carries with it a full range of implications for our lives, something we discover in today’s episode of the Authors on the Line podcast.

2.) Jim Packer (dude was en fuego when he wrote Concise Theology)

While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. LUKE 24:51

Jesus’ ascension was his Father’s act of withdrawing him from his disciples’ gaze upward (a sign of exaltation) into a cloud (a sign of God’s presence). This was not a form of space travel, but part two (the Resurrection being part one) of Jesus’ return from the depths of death to the height of glory. Jesus foretold the Ascension (John 6:62; 14:2, 12; 16:5, 10, 17, 28; 17:5; 20:17), and Luke described it (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:6-11). Paul celebrated it and affirmed Christ’s consequent lordship (Eph. 1:20; 4:8-10; Phil. 2:9-11; 1 Tim. 3:16), and the writer of Hebrews applied this truth for encouragement of the fainthearted (Heb. 1:3; 4:14; 9:24). The fact that Jesus Christ is enthroned as master of the universe should be of enormous encouragement to all believers.

The Ascension was from one standpoint the restoration of the glory that the Son had before the Incarnation, from another the glorifying of human nature in a way that had never happened before, and from a third the start of a reign that had not previously been exercised in this form. The Ascension establishes three facts:

1. Christ’s personal ascendancy.     2. Christ’s spiritual omnipresence.     3. Christ’s heavenly ministry.               (Ascension article by Packer)

3.) A prayer