Introduction

The ascension of our Lord is one of the cardinal doctrines of the New Testament, but curiously it is often a neglected area of biblical preaching and teaching. In part this may be due to the fact that it is like yeast in the New Testament letters: present in every bite, but not the substance of the loaf in its own right. While the ascension may not be the subject matter of direct doctrinal instruction in the New Testament (as is, for example, the doctrine of justification in Romans or Galatians), the reality and effects of Jesus’ ascension are present in every part. Indeed, neither the mission nor the hope of the New Testament Church could be understood without it. For our first century brothers and sisters in Christ, the ascension was not so much discussed as an item of doctrine, but lived in as a current and ever present reality. The New Testament communities lived in the shared reality of life under the hands of the ascended Lord, who reigns at the right hand of the Father. In this series of short essays, we plan to give attention to the fact and significance of the ascension, for the edification of our own hearts and the glorification of the Son of whom we speak.

The key passages in which the actual ascension of the Lord Jesus is recorded are both penned by Luke, in Luke 24:50-51 and Acts 1:9-11, though it is also referred to in Mark 16:19. Of course, each of these passages has its own context, and all fit into a bigger picture. In Luke 9:51 we read ‘When the days were approaching for His ascension, He was determined to go to Jerusalem’. We see that the ascension is part of a larger journey in which Jesus is engaged. In Luke’s gospel, the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem (which takes up the bulk of the narrative) is part of the larger journey that the Son of Man has made, a journey understood by all the New Testament writers. He has come from heaven, through the incarnation, death, and resurrection, back to heaven, but retaining human nature and with him bringing many sons to glory.

Jesus was not simply heading to Jerusalem to be crucified for the sins of many, but he was heading through Jerusalem (and its crucifixion at the hands of godless men) to return to the Father, having accomplished all that the Father had given him to do (see, for example, John 6:22; 20:17). Having accomplished all things by the power of the Holy Spirit, he would also pour out this same Spirit on his people that they too may share in his mission and in the benefits of his completed work.

The mission in the book of the Acts, therefore, does not lie in the hands of the Church or even of the Apostles. It lies firmly and securely in the hands of Jesus, ascended to the right hand of the Father. Luke is able to say to that his second volume (Acts) is a direct continuation of his first volume (the Gospel of Luke), and that the continuity is completely bound up with the ongoing mission of Jesus. Thus he says that ‘In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach’ (Acts 1:1), implying that his second volume is none other than what Jesus has continued to do and to teach.

This means that we must read the whole of the New Testament through the lens of Jesus’ ascension. He is indeed the exalted king of Psalm 2, who is reigning at the right hand of the Father, and who is exercising his Lordship over the nations of the earth. In the book of the Acts he directs the mission of the gospel; he empowers its servants; he brings about the defeat of the evil powers who rule over the nations through that gospel; and he releases the captives so that they might glorify the name of the Father. All these things and more he does through the ministry and agency of the Holy Spirit, but nonetheless it is his work, not that of the apostles directly.

Likewise, the New Testament letters all alike have the reality of the ascension as the matrix in which they write. One could not really understand any of the great New Testament themes such as the assurance of hope; the ongoing intercession of the Son; the gift and ministry of the Spirit; the active sovereign rule of the Son over all things; the nature and meaning of the resurrection; or the goal that God has set for the entire cosmos, without taking as ‘given’ the reality of Jesus’ bodily ascension. The ascension is a concomitant part of a great body of New Testament teaching which Christians have treasured for millennia.

As we consider the theme of the ascension a number of different and important facets will come to the fore. However, at the very outset we must stress that the New Testament teaches the ascension was a bodily event. When we talk about the ascension we are not speaking of a disembodied, spiritual or even conceptual event. This is not a ‘wishful thinking’ doctrine, and certainly not a ‘spiritual enlightenment’ doctrine. The New Testament descriptions of the ascension describe clearly the bodily ascension of the man known as Jesus.

The bodily nature of the ascension has some important concomitants, about which we will comment later, but for now we need simply to note that the emphasis given to the actual nature of Jesus’ resurrection body. In Luke 24:36-43 the nature of Jesus’ resurrection is clearly set out. The disciples themselves had not understood all that Jesus had repeatedly taught them about his own death and its coming resurrection (e.g. see Luke 9:22; 9:43-45; 18:31-34 compared with Luke 24:6-7 and 24:44-49), so that when he appeared among them, they ‘were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit’ (Luke 24:37). Jesus had to assure them that he had indeed been raised, bodily, from the dead, and that he himself stood there. This was no ghostly apparition, but the same Jesus whom they had seen crucified and buried just days before. ‘He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet’ (Luke 24:38-40). Not only did he show them his hands, but also he asked for food (Luke 24:41), which he took and ate before their very eyes (Luke 24:43). This was indeed Jesus standing before them!

The other Gospels and the New Testament letters all assume the bodily nature of the resurrection. Paul gives some evidence of the widespread attestation that Jesus gave to his own resurrection and to the significance of this for the apostolic doctrine that he and others preached (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:1-19), and there is no real indication that the New Testament understanding of the resurrection could be collapsed into some merely ‘spiritual’ interpretation. Such interpretations are more the product of western enlightenment rationalism than any acceptance of the New Testament testimony on its own terms.

Likewise, when we consider the ascension (and it would be fair to suggest that in the New Testament the resurrection and ascension are two sides of the one new reality), we can have no doubt that the New Testament portrays this as a real, bodily event. Jesus was ‘received up’. He, i.e. the same Jesus who had been crucified, is the one whom God has made to be both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). When we speak about the spatial aspects of this we must be careful. Jesus’ whole life is a novum. Never before has there been (nor will there ever be again!) the Incarnation of the eternal Son; nor his sacrificial death; nor vindicating resurrection; nor his exalting ascension. All these events redefine space and time. From our perspective Jesus has been taken ‘up’ into heaven, but we should not consider this as something speaking of physical ‘upness’, as though heaven were physically a very great distance above the earth. And where is ‘up’ from a sphere in any case? The idea of transcendence is indeed best represented by the idea of being ‘over’ or ‘above’, and Jesus was taken ‘above’ the disciples to be hidden from their view, but he does not reside at some infinite distance above the stratosphere. The cloud which ‘received him out of their sight’ (Acts 1:9) is the glory cloud of God’s direct presence, which takes him from our view, but not from our world. He is ever with us (Matt. 28:20), but at the same time hidden from us. This is why his second coming is really an ‘unveiling’ or an ‘appearing’, rather than a return from a great distance.