Christ takes His rightful place (20:17)

“Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’ ”” (John 20:17)

Some liberal theologians hold that since the actual event of the Ascension is only described by Luke (Lk 24:50-53, Acts 1:9) that therefore it can’t have actually happened and must be something Luke invented!  But there are many other references to it throughout the Old and New Testaments, especially in John’s Gospel as we shall see.

The Jews expected that Messiah would ascend to God: after all, Daniel had prophesied exactly that, foreseeing ‘One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days’, and being given an everlasting, worldwide Kingdom (Dan 7:13,14).

But King David had also prophesied extensively about the event. After he and his people brought the Ark of God up to Jerusalem with tremendous celebrations and dancing (2Sam 6:12-19), the Holy Spirit showed him that this was just a foreshadowing of a day when a Messiah King much more glorious than he would ‘ascend unto the hill of the Lord’.   But it would come after Messiah had suffered horribly.

Psalms 22-24 represent a trilogy, written by David a thousand years before Christ. The first psalm describes the crucifixion in incredibly accurate detail, as we have seen in previous studies. The second describes the blessings of Messiah’s care for His people. But the third is all about Messiah arriving at the gate of Heaven, and demanding entry:-

“Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, Nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive blessing from the Lord, And righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face.
Lift up your heads, O you gates! And be lifted up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O you gates! Lift up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory. Selah” (Ps 24:3–10)

Later, David was shown more about it. “You have ascended on high, You have led captivity captive; You have received gifts among men, even from the rebellious, that the Lord God might dwell there.” (Ps 68:17) And then “The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” The Lord shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies!” (Ps 110:1–2)

The Jewish word for ‘ascent’ is ‘Aliyah’. Going up to Jerusalem to attend the feasts, is called ‘making Aliyah’.  David wrote a whole liturgy of ‘Psalms of Ascent’ (Ps 120-134), to help Jews to prepare their hearts for the Presence of God. Jews returning to Israel, are said to ‘make Aliyah’. The word has come to have built-in undertones of joy and celebration at coming to the place where God dwells.  But its full meaning is only seen, in the aliyah of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Jesus had spoken about His impending departure, prior to His death.  The Upper Room discourse (Jn 14-17) revolves around Him trying to help His disciples understand what was about to happen.  Like their fellow Jews, they had really struggled to grasp the fact that He had come from God.  He talks repeatedly about ‘going to the Father’ as being the second half of a return journey, eventually saying bluntly,

“I came forth from the Father, and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father” (16:28).

And at that point they seem to finally grasp that He had ‘come forth from God’ (16:30). But that’s as far as they could go. The return journey was still a mystery to them.

After the resurrection, the first thing Jesus wanted them to know, the one message that He wanted Mary to bring, was that He was ‘ascending to My Father and your Father, My God and your God’.  Why did He wanted her to convey this, when He Himself would see Peter later that day, and then meet the Eleven in the evening? I believe it was to prepare their hearts: they would be feeling deeply ashamed that they had deserted Him at Calvary, and had not believed His promise that He would be raised from the dead.  Mary’s message conveys that He is still fully committed to them: He has not rejected them because of their failings.

We’ll first deal with an apparent paradox, then pick out eight themes about the Ascension.

The paradox is that Jesus says “I have not yet ascended to My Father” and then in the next breath, “I am ascending to My Father”. How can these both be true?

Imagine you are flying home from Australia to UK, but you have a few days’ stopover in Dubai. You have started your journey, but not yet arrived in London. You have many friends in Dubai, and you happen to bump into one of them in the airport. You ask him or her to tell the others, “I’m in town just for a few days, but on my way to London’. That was Jesus’s situation.

His ascension started not from earth, but from Hell (Hades). Peter says, ““For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient” … but from there He “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to Him.” (1 Pet 3:22)

Paul quotes King David, to back this up: “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore He says: “When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And gave gifts to men.” (Now this, “He ascended”—what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.)” (Eph 4:7–10)

The Resurrection was merely Part 1 of the Ascension!

EIGHT THEMES ABOUT THE ASCENSION

Christ’s Incarnation and Ascension are matching bookends

Jesus clearly saw His ascension as returning home. He speaks of returning ‘to the One who sent Me’, or of having come down from heaven and ascending back there, or of returning to the Father (3:12-13; 6:33,38-39; 7:33-34; 8:21-23; 14:28; 16:28 etc etc).

When facing His detractors, He usually expresses this thought in terms of ‘returning to Him who sent Me’; whereas with His followers and disciples, He talks of returning to the Father. He knows that the Jewish leaders, whilst relying on being Abraham’s children are actually Satan’s, and do not know the Father. They are from beneath, but He is from above - they are of the world, He is not. They therefore cannot conceive of where He is going.

We will not be able to grasp the meaning of the ascension, until we have believed that He is God Incarnate. If we find it impossible to believe He is the bread of life, sent by the Father, we would not believe it even if we saw Him actually ascending! (6:58-64).

His incarnation and His ascension are the bookends of the gospel. If we preach that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, we must also preach that He has returned to the Father.

The Ascension connects heaven and earth forevermore

When Jacob was setting off to His uncle Laban’s place as a naive ‘mummy’s boy’, unaccompanied and unused to the rigours of trekking, God appeared to him in a dream. The Lord was standing at the top of a ladder from heaven to earth, and there were angels - spirits whose job is to look after those who are to inherit salvation - going up and down. God told Jacob he would inherit the covenant promises made to his father and grandfather. Furthermore, He, the Lord God, would shadow Jacob as he travelled, never leaving him until he returned home safely (Gen 28:10-17).

Jacob’s reaction was one of misplaced awe: he attributed his experience to the place, rather than the Person. But as well as renaming it Beth-El, ‘the house of God', he also recognised it as ‘the gate of heaven’.

Fast forward to Jesus’s calling of His first disciples, just after He’d been baptised and then spent forty days in the wilderness. Philip talks his skeptical friend Nathanael into meeting Jesus, and he is blown away by Jesus’s ‘word of knowledge’ about his character. Having previously said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”, Nathanael instantly recognises Jesus as the Son of God, and King of Israel (Jn 1:45-51).

This is an astonishing revelation, but (Jesus says) it pales into insignificance compared to what he will later see: the ascended Son of God, acting as the bridge between heaven and earth! He Himself is the ladder for the angels. He is our open Heaven.

In the Upper Room, Jesus says that as well as giving them another Comforter, He Himself will not abandon them. The world will not be able to see Him, but they will. Not only so, but both He and the Father will dwell with anyone who loves Him: they will be permanently in residence (14:15-23).

When He commissions His disciples to make disciples of every nation, He promises them ‘Lo. I am with you always, even to the end of the age’ (Mt 28:18-20). He will be present with each of us, wherever we are. ‘He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”’ (Heb 13:5,6).

Christ became incarnate as the Son of God, but He ascends as the Son of Man

When Jesus came from the Father, He came as the incarnate Son of God. ‘The Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father’ (1:14). In Mary’s womb, He took the body that the Father had prepared for Him, and experienced everything a human being can experience, from conception to the grave. He was born into a working-class family in a country under occupation and became a refugee while still a toddler. He had no privilege, no silver spoon in His mouth.

He identified totally with us, even being baptised when He had no sin to confess or repent of.   Eventually He ‘became sin for us, though He knew no sin Himself’. He bore our griefs, carried our sorrows, was wounded for our transgressions, beaten up for our iniquities, flayed alive so that we might be healed (Isa 53:4,5).  He became our fall-guy, offering His own blood in place of ours.

His total identification with us does not end when He returns to heaven.  In our text (Jn 20:17) Jesus emphasises His continued identification with His people, saying He is returning to ‘My Father and your Father, My God and your God’.  Though the ascension is the bookend to the incarnation, things do not go back to how they were before Christ came. Christ received a Kingdom, and a new ministry as our heavenly Advocate and High Priest. But He does not shed His humanity.

It is Jesus’s continuing manhood, His oneness with our humanity, that qualifies Him to be our heavenly High Priest. “Both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying: “I will declare Your name to My brethren” …In all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” (Heb 2:10–18)

Daniel saw Christ approaching the Father as ‘One like the Son of Man’. And John, on Patmos, says “Having turned I saw … One like the Son of Man” (Rev 1:12–17), clothed in priestly robes.  Just as in His earthly ministry, Jesus remains fully God and fully Man.

“We have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God … we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”  (Heb 4:14–16)

The Ascension brings us too into the heavenlies

Not only is He one with us despite His ascension, but we are one with Him in His ascension.

Anyone who has been baptised by immersion, knows that it symbolises our union with Christ in His death and resurrection. But the resurrection was merely part one of the ascension. How many realise that we are also ‘in Him’ in His ascension?

Jesus had prayed for His disciples ‘that they may be with Me where I am, to behold My glory’ (17:24). Now, in fulfilment of His prayer, He describes God as ‘My Father and your Father, My God and your God’. His ascension ‘brought many sons to glory’.

Paul makes this explicit in his letters to the Ephesians & Colossians:

“God … made us alive together with Christ .., and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2:4–7)

“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” (Col 2:11-12, 3:1–4)

Just as Christ was hidden from view as He ascended, our resurrection life is hidden with Him, in God.

This ‘setting our mind on things which are above’ is not some mystical ‘centring down’ process, some kind of transcendental meditation. Paul goes on to explain that it involves putting off a fleshly mindset of “fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness”.  And in their place, putting on “tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; …and love, which is the bond of perfection” (Col 3:5,12,14). These all come from spending time seated with Christ in the heavenly realms.

Being seated with Christ in the heavenlies, gives us a totally different perspective on life: what you might call a helicopter view, watching the battle from above.  It is the view Moses had, as he prayed for Joshua during the battle with Amalek (Gen 17:8-13).  It reminds us that ‘the battle belongs to the Lord’, and that “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Eph 6:12–13)

Because of this heavenly perspective, our hearts are kept in peace, and our spirits experience unspeakable joy in the midst of life’s trials and tribulations.

The Ascension brings us into restored relationship

We saw how Daniel and David focussed on the triumphal aspect of the Ascension, but that is not Jesus's focus.  He says He is ascending ‘to My Father and your Father, My God and your God’.  His focus is on a restored relationship.

As the Son of God, He could say “He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone” (Jn 8:29).  But as the Son of Man, He cried out “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mt 27:46).  He had tasted death, and knew its terrible impact on our relationship with the Father.

Most of us will have experienced broken relationships where, although we have forgiven the person, we have not been reconciled.  Forgiveness is unilateral, whereas reconciliation is bilateral, requiring apology. Sometimes a mediator is essential, as in the present hostage negotiations between Israel & Hamas. But “Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1Pet 3:18). The purpose of the Cross goes beyond forgiveness, to reconciliation - restoration of relationship.

Paul saw his whole ministry as one of reconciliation. “God … has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” (2 Cor 5:18-21)

A child coming home after school, will tell their parents everything that happened. When two people are reconciled, the barrier of blame and guilt between them is removed, and they start talking to each other again. This restored relationship is not just about our legal standing before God, but about sharing our day with Him. Relationship that is not limited to functional prayer, but involves reflecting on life, with Him. This is what we see in David’s psalms, where he pours out his heart to God - and then regains the helicopter view of his life, as seen from the heavenlies.

The Ascension assures us of God’s Father heart towards us

In our text, Jesus tells Mary to go to His brothers. Though He had previously redefined the concept of family (Mt 12:48-50), this is the first time He has called them that. He has previously called them disciples, servants, and even friends - never brothers. There is an old saying, ‘Blood is thicker than water’ - family loyalties trump all other bonds.

The brotherhood of believers is something very precious. You may have experienced visiting fellow believers in other countries: even when there is a language barrier, there is an immediate sense of being welcomed by family members.

Brotherhood comes from having the same Father. John says, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren” (1Jn 3:14); and again, “Anyone who sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (1Jn 3:17). ““If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 Jn 4:20)

Jesus always was and will be the unique, only-begotten Son of the Father. He will always be “the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom 8:29).  But to us who have believed in Him, He gave the right to become children of God, born again by the Spirit of God (1:12). And it is by our union with Him through faith, that we become His brothers, and children of God.

“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! … Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.  And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” (1Jn 3:1–3)

We have this unfathomable privilege, not because we chose Him, but because God chose us. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who … chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself” (Eph 1:3–6)

Children rarely appreciate their father’s qualities, but they know the feeling of security when they are cuddled up against him, or the delight of being carried on His shoulders.  I used to love when Dad would occasionally pick me up from school, instead of having to catch the bus home! Or during holidays, when he took us camping. Somehow, spending time with him affirmed my identity.

What wealth of meaning there is in this one word, Father!

• He’ll provide everything we need - clothing, food, drink (Mt 6:25-34)

• He will always take pity on us (Ps 103:13) - forgiving our misdemeanours, making us better, getting us out of trouble, treating us with special care (Ps 103:3-5)

• He will always respond to our prayers, and will never deliberately harm us by giving us something damaging when we are trusting Him for something good (Lk 11:9-13)

• He will discipline us, not letting us run feral like a fatherless child, training us into righteousness just as the vine-dresser trains the vine to the trellis (Heb 12:5-11).

As we grow into adulthood, we eventually become able to see our parents as people, and appreciate their qualities. (Unfortunately I can’t really say I appreciated my father’s courage, unselfishness, faith or generosity until after his funeral. Sometimes it takes someone else’s eulogy to help you see them without any of the baggage from childhood.) But Jesus knew His Father’s ways from eternity past:-

• The enemy wants us to believe that He is absent or uncaring; but Jesus knew Him to be continually present, and called Him the “living Father” (5:26, 6:57).

• The enemy wants us to distrust His motives, like the Hebrews did during the Exodus; but Jesus knew Him to be utterly pure, calling Him the “Holy Father” (17:11),

• The enemy wants us to believe that He is harsh and even cruel, but Jesus knew Him to be utterly just and fair in all His ways, and called Him “Righteous Father” (17:25).

Let us meditate on how different our heavenly Father is from even the best of earthly fathers. He is ‘the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’, exactly reflected in the character of Christ.  And where our fathers have failed to mirror His nature (as all earthly fathers do) let’s forgive them and repent of any judgement of them; but not let their character flaws block our seeing Father God for who He truly is.

The Ascension makes us worshippers

Jesus calls His Father, “My God and your God”. What can He mean by this, if He is Himself God?

Wikipedia defines a god as "a spirit or being believed to have created, or to control some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is worshipped”. Some cultures believe there are many gods, each with different areas of power: gods of thunder, of rain, of fertility and the like. But Jesus taught that God is One (Mt 19:17).  He alone is the Creator of all things (Mt 6:28-30), transcendent, omnipotent, good.  Therefore we are to worship Him with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength.

How did Jesus worship His Father as God?

Before ever He was born, Christ worshipped His Father as God: “When He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come … to do Your will, O God.’ ” … By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Heb 10:5–11). And throughout His ministry, He could honestly say, “I always do those things that please Him” (Jn 8:28,29)

Paul tells us to ‘offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship’ (Rom 12:1).  Who could he possibly be thinking of, as our role model?!

The essence of Jesus’s worship in His earthly life was not hymns and songs; not liturgy; not observances, nor sacrifices; but obedience, out of a desire to please God.

How should we worship?

After the eleven Apostles had seen Jesus ascend, their response was that ‘they worshipped Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the Temple praising and blessing God’  (Lk 24:52,53).  This might sound like they were in a state of bliss, utterly unconcerned with anything else.  But an angel told them to get on with what He had told them to do, not just stand there staring up into the sky! So they went back to the Upper Room, and spent ten days in united prayer - as Jesus had commanded them. The eleven, plus the Galilean women in Jesus’s entourage, plus Jesus’s immediate family, were all completely of one mind. It seems that gradually others joined them, until there were about 120 in the room (Acts 1:11-15). They pleaded earnestly with God for the promise of the Spirit, until Pentecost came as Jesus had promised.

While they waited for God to move, they also studied the scriptures. The Holy Spirit drew them to a psalm about a false accuser, and showed them that they should appoint a replacement for Judas (Ps 109:8). The apostles specified that it must be someone who’d followed Jesus as long as they had, so that he could be a witness to all Christ had done. Two names were put forward; the final choice was made by asking God to indicate His choice through casting lots.

Finally, the day came when they were all baptised with the fire of the Holy Spirit, just as John the Baptist had foretold (Mt 3:11). Jesus had said this sign would be the starting gun for their mission to be His witnesses - in Jerusalem, Judaea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).  So ‘they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs’ (Mk 16:20).

So we see that the disciples’ worship involved:

• Joyfully praising and blessing God, in public worship

• Waiting on God, actively seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit

• Preaching and witnessing boldly: and baptising the converts

• Teaching, pastoring, sharing communion and praying with the new believers (Acts 2:42)

• Carrying the message to all four corners of the world

• Eventually becoming martyrs, witnessing by dying for Christ

Public worship, private waiting on God, meditating on the word, building each other up - these are all important: but carrying on Jesus’s life work of bringing men to God is central to our obedience, our worship.   In heaven we will spend our time singing, ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain’.   But while we are in this world, we must sing the same song to a different audience!

Jesus’s command to be His witnesses is costly, as it inevitably leads to ostracism and hostility from the world. But in terms of our worship, it is up there with ‘Love God with all your being’, ‘Abide in Me’, ’Love your neighbour as  yourself’, ‘Love one another as I have loved you’, and ‘Forgive one another’.  It is a front-rank component of  our worship.

The Ascension underlines the urgency of preaching the gospel

Jesus had told the disciples, “It won’t be long till you’re filled with the Spirit, and receive power to be My witnesses”. You can almost sense the excitement in the disciples’ minds as they ask, “Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”  And then they watch in astonishment as He is beamed up by the power of the Spirit, to rejoin His Father.

The angel’s comment, “Why are you standing around gazing at the sky?" Is immediately followed by, “This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will also come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The ascension should embed within our hearts, that Jesus is coming back soon; and meantime, His instruction is, “Occupy, till I come” (Lk 19:13). There will be a day of reckoning, when we give account of what we have done with our talents.

Peter’s preaching has that sense of urgency about it. “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the Presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom Heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:19-21).

Christ’s second coming will stop the clock on the ‘Day of Salvation'.