1. Don’t Stop at the Empty Tomb

Essentials

Christ's Exaltation: Ascension

1. Don’t Stop at the Empty Tomb

by Benjamin Dean

The resurrection was never the end of the story.

Even in the garden, on the morning of his rising, Jesus pointed his disciples beyond the empty tomb to what still lay ahead: ‘Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’

‘The apostle forbids us merely to stop with the resurrection.’

Calvin on Why Jesus Said That

‘in this way he [Christ] pointed out that the purpose of his resurrection was quite different from their fancy about it. He was to come to life again not to triumph in the world, but rather to ascend to heaven and to take possession of the Kingdom which had been promised to him; to reign over the church at the right hand of God, in the power of his Spirit … In short, with this word, the apostle forbids us merely to stop with the resurrection. He bids us to go forward until we arrive at the spiritual Kingdom, at heavenly glory, at God himself. … Now, Christ declares that he is about to ascend on high; therefore, let us also rise with him, if we would not be separated from him. Furthermore, when he adds that he will ascend, he quickly dispels the anxiety and sadness of his disciples because he was to leave them behind. He wants them to know that by his Divine power he will always be with them. Ascend indeed implies distant places; but even though Christ is absent bodily, because he is with God, his spiritual power, which works everywhere, shows clearly that he is present with us. Why indeed did he ascend to the Father, except seated at his right hand, to reign in heaven and on earth? Finally, with this statement Jesus intended to commend the Divine power of his reign, so that his bodily absence might not trouble his disciples.’¹

Notice what Calvin says the disciples’ problem was. Not doubt about the resurrection — a wrong idea of what it was for. They imagined a triumph in the world. But he was headed for a throne that was not earthly and limited, but heavenly, ruling over the whole universe.

Departure, or Enthronement?

The ascension is not merely Christ’s departure but the beginning of his enthronement — and with it, a new phase of his work on behalf of his people. It is person-centred.

As Gerald Bray summarises:

‘In the heavenly session, Christ has begun to administer the new covenant, incorporating, indwelling, instructing, and interceding for his pilgrim people. He makes a heavenly presentation of his once-for-all sacrifice, and he becomes the life-giving head of a new social body, reconstituting a remnant of Israel and incorporating gentiles.’²

‘It Is Finished’ — Finished What?

‘The words of Christ on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30) are often misinterpreted. They are used by many to emphasise that his atoning sacrifice is completed by his death, which is true, but they unfortunately leave the impression that his work is over at that point, when in fact his work has continued in another form. When he ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father, he took his sacrifice with him. In his heavenly state he uses it to plead for us before the Father’s throne, and it is on that basis that we gain admittance to the Father’s presence. It is nonsensical to suggest that this sacrifice can be repeated or “re-represented” by some priest here on earth who is empowered to bring Christ’s body back to us by the supposed miracle of transubstantiation. That view which was strong in the middle ages and is still the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, was rejected by the Reformers, and Anglican liturgies of holy communion have usually taken great care to avoid any such idea.³ But the reason for this is not that his sacrifice was a past event with no relevance to us now. On the contrary, it is an event that happened once in time and space but that has now been taken into eternity, where we too are “seated … in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6).’⁴

Two errors ruled out at once there. The sacrifice cannot be repeated — but neither is it merely past. It happened once, and has been taken into eternity, with massive benefits for us.

And It Secures Something for You

This heavenly ministry isn’t only a matter of Christ’s ongoing work for us. It also secures something for those united to him.

For ‘[t]he ascension is the sign that we have moved into another dimension of being and that our life is now hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3), making it safe from attack by hostile forces that might cause us to lose our salvation.’⁵

Forty Days of Transition

For forty days after his resurrection, Jesus underwent a period of transition.

He came and went, moving between earth and heaven, appearing on numerous occasions, proving himself alive by many means, preparing his disciples for his departure, and speaking to them about the Kingdom of God (Acts 1:3).

Then, as foretold, he physically left the earth — an event reported in Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:1-12, and predicted in John 6:62; 13:3, 33; 14:28; 16:5, 10, 17, 28.⁶

A Real Place, a Real Departure

The ascension is a change of bodily location, ‘defined as the local passage of the Person of the Mediator, according to his human nature, from earth to heaven.’

Scripture identifies the exact place from which he ascended: Bethany (Luke 24:50), or more precisely, ‘the mount called Olivet’ (Acts 1:12).

It was here, on that same hillside, that ‘the intersection between two states and two ages’ took place.⁷

There’s something worth pausing on in that geographical precision. This isn’t mythology, vague about where and when. A named hillside outside a named town.

The ascension accordingly marked the conclusion of Jesus’ earth-bound career, at the same time as repeating and reinforcing his often-promised future final return (Matt 16:27; 24:3, 27, 30-31; 25:31-46; 26:64; Mark 8:38; 13:24-27; Luke 9:26; 12:35-48; 17:22-37; 21:25-28; John 14:3, 18; 21:22-23).

Now, ‘Christ’s human body and soul are really located in the highest heaven.’⁸ He now rules over all.

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1
Calvin, Commentaries, Haroutunion ed., 169-70. ↩︎
2
Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 283. ↩︎
3
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1376 (Christ is present ‘truly, really, and substantially,’ in the Eucharist), and 1413 (‘By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about’). Article 28 of the Thirty-Nine Anglican Articles states that ‘Transubstantiation (or change in the substance of the bread and win) in the supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ [Scripture], but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthrows the nature of a sacrament, and has given occasion to many superstitions.’ For clear and detailed commentary on Article 28, ‘The Lord’s Supper,’ see Bray, The Faith We Confess, 158-166. For broader Reformed confessional teaching on the Lord’s Supper consult, refer to Belgic Confession (1561), 35; Heidelberg Catechism (1563), QQ.75-82; Second Helvetic Confession (1566), 21:1-14; Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), 29:1-8; Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), QQ. 96-97; Westminster Larger Catechism (1648), QQ. 168-174. Joel Beeke and Sinclair Ferguson offer an edited coordination of these (excluding the Anglican Articles) in Reformed Confessions Harmonized: With an Annotated Bibliography of Reformed Doctrinal Works (Baker, 1999), 220-29. ↩︎
4
Bray, Faith we Confess, 33-34. ↩︎
5
Bray, Faith we Confess, 34; Bray, God is Love, 596-98. ↩︎
6
Markus Bockmuehl considers some of the tensions between Jesus’ absence and presence following his resurrection in ‘The Gospels on the Presence of Jesus,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford University Press, 2015); online edition. On Christ’s ascension more broadly, see Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 379-385; John Calvin, ‘A Sermon on the Ascension, (Acts 1:9-11)’ in Crucified and Risen: Sermons on the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, trans. Robert White (Banner of Truth, 2020), 157-168; Crowe, Lord Jesus Christ, 281-82; Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 314-312; Horton, ‘Atonement and Ascension’ in Locating Atonement, 226-250; Peter Orr, Exalted Above the Heavens: The Risen and Ascended Christ (Apollos, 2018), 77-98; Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 282-288. Notice that Heinrich Bullinger includes Jesus’ ascension in his definition of the gospel (The Fourth Decade, Sermon 1, ‘Of the Gospel of the Grace of God,’ 3-4, 28; also see Bullinger’s exposition of the Apostle’s Creed in The First Decade, Sermons 7-9). Refer as well to Heidelberg Catechism, 49-51; Second Helvetic Confession, 11; Westminster Shorter Catechism 28; Westminster Larger Catechism, 53. A ground-breaking and (relatively) recent treatment of Jesus’ ascension is T. F. Torrance, ‘The Ascension of Jesus Christ’, in Space, Time, and Resurrection, 106-122. Also important (though technical) is Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (T & T Clark, 1999). Refer as well to the advanced treatments by David M. Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 141 (Brill, 2011); idem, ‘Atonement at the Right Hand: The Sacrificial Significance of Jesus’ Exaltation in Acts,’ in New Testament Studies, 62.4 (2016). ↩︎
7
Jensen, Life of Faith, 202. ↩︎
8
Beeke, Reformed Systematic Theology, 2:904. ↩︎