The resurrection
of Jesus is reported in each of the four Christian Gospels in considerable
detail, but the ascension of Jesus, his return to the right hand of the Father,
is mentioned only briefly, and only in the Gospels of Mark and Luke.
It is in the
book of Acts, also written by Luke, where we find a more detailed description
of this crucial event in Jesus’ atoning work on behalf of humanity.
“The former account I made, O Theophilus,” Luke wrote in Acts chapter one, verse one,
“of
all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken
up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles
whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering
by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of
the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
And
being assembled together with them, He
commanded them not to depart from
And
He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father
has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit
has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in
Now
when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a
cloud received Him out of their sight.
And while they looked steadfastly toward
heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also
said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you
into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”
Our world is far
more familiar with astronauts than with angels, and with space shuttles
blasting off into the heavens than with Jesus’ ascension into heaven.
But the
ascension is a vital part of our understanding about Jesus, and about what he
is doing for us and in us moment by moment. The ascension tells us that Jesus
now sits at the right hand of God the Father. This is a poetic way of saying
that all power is in Jesus’ hands, and that Jesus and the Father dwell in
perfect unity and love. Jesus, not only reigns with
God the Father over all the Universe, he and the Father, with the Holy Spirit,
are one.
But perhaps even
more amazing is what Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:4-7:
In Jesus, God
has brought us into the loving relationship that the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit share. In Jesus, we are accepted,
wanted, and we are included.
No wonder we
read that after Jesus ascended into the heavens, his disciples returned to
It was so
important that more than 30 years later, Peter was still talking about it. In
Peter’s first epistle to the Christians in
In the first
century, every Roman soldier proclaimed his allegiance to the emperor by
saying, “Kyrios Kaisar! Caesar
is Lord!”
But the
Christians could not, would not, say that. They said instead, “Kyrios Christos! Christ is Lord!”
And many of them
paid with their lives for that faith, knowing they awaited a personal
resurrection into the new life of the
The ascension of
Jesus also declares to us that as a man, as God in the flesh, Jesus took our
sinful humanity and having redeemed it through his life, death and
resurrection, he presented it clean and perfect to his Father.
In Jesus, we
have fellowship with our Father in heaven, and just as Jesus sits at the right
hand of the Father, so we too, with Jesus our Lord, our Savior, our Friend, and
our Brother, dwell in the Father’s presence forever.
I’m Joseph Tkach
speaking of LIFE.