Truth Unites - Christ's Ascension is Stranger Than You Think

Starting point is 00:00:00 We often neglect to think about Christ's ascension to heaven. Sometimes we forget that this is a distinct event from his resurrection, separated by 40 days of teaching, referenced in Acts chapter 1, verse 3. And then it's a bit later in Acts chapter 1 when they're all gathered. After his final instructions, Acts chapter 1, verse 9 says that a cloud took him out of their sight. He is lifted up and a cloud hides him. Now clouds in the Bible are often associated with glory, but we can still wonder what exactly is going on here. You know, how high was he lifted up? Was it 30 feet or 300 feet, you know?

Starting point is 00:00:37 Um, was it a cloudy day? How clearly could they see him? How quickly did his body vanish? Was it just instantly? Cloud is there and he's gone. Did it take half a second, a few seconds? We can't know the answer to these questions, but I'm just asking questions to try to make us think about this. And here's the big one. What then happened to Jesus's body? And what does that teach us about the nature of heaven and the nature of salvation. There's a lot more to explore here than sometimes we realize. I hope this video would be edifying and interesting and helpful to people. By the way, if you want a good book on this topic of Christ's ascension, check out Patrick Shrinner's book. I'll put a link in the video description. It's great. I'll also link to an academic article of

Starting point is 00:01:16 mine that shows that it's Christ's exalted status wherein he executes his offices of prophet, priest, and king. That'll be in the video description as well. But here we're going to draw from Thomas Torrance. He's a Scottish Reformed theologian that I think, this is a great summation of a lot of his writings, this book by IVP Academic came out in 2009. He's got one on the, it's, this is on the atonement, there's one on the incarnation as well. But he helps us think about the nature of this event. And the goal here, we'll have three concluding thoughts at the end, but the goal here is that by the end, when we think about Christ's ascension in Acts chapter 1, we won't think of this as removing salvation and removing Jesus further away, but actually making our salvation in Christ

Starting point is 00:02:02 more certain and closer and intimate. So let's think this through. Now, one reason I love Torrance on this topic is that he interprets the ascension in relation to modern science. So he's thinking about the ascension in relation to Einsteinian physics. Without getting too much into the technicalities here of the theories of general and special relativity, we can simply focus on this one fact that Einstein taught us that space and time are interwoven. There's no such thing as absolute time. Seconds and minutes and hours don't just tick away irrespective of where you are, what place you are in. Similarly, space does not exist apart from time. Space is more than an empty container. It has a dynamic relation to the objects within it. Now, Torrance is drawing from that

Starting point is 00:02:52 to help us think about the nature of the ascension as well as other aspects of Christ's incarnate work, because in a sense, the ascension is a spacetime event. It happened at a particular moment there in the narrative of Acts, and it happened at a particular location. You know, if you were in South America, you would not be witnessing the ascension of Christ. And yet, in another sense, it transcends space time as Jesus' physical body departs this spacetime universe and goes to the father goes to heaven, God's place. And yet it does that without ceasing to be a body from this space-time universe. It's a physical body going to heaven. Think of it like that. So this makes it a very unique event. Now, some people question this. Some have denied that Jesus's body remained a physical

Starting point is 00:03:42 body when it ascended to heaven. For example, Murray Harris, as best I understand, I'm trying to be fair to him. There's a big dispute way back, I don't know, 30, 40, 35 years ago, maybe between Norman Geisler and Murray Harris about this point, and I don't think Geisler was necessarily very fair to him. I want to be fair to Murray Harris, but seems like he's saying that the resurrected body of Jesus was physical, but after his resurrection, his essential state was invisible and immaterial, but it could just assume physicality. And then at the ascension, he says Jesus' body permanently sort of dematerialized and became, in his term, non-fleshly. And I think this is problematic and sort of quasi-nostic.

Starting point is 00:04:26 All the text says, by the way, is a cloud hid him, which implies there's a body there to be hidden. But even apart from that, I think there's reasons why it's important to maintain Jesus' full humanity in his ascended state, and a physical body is part of that. Remember, by the way, we already have physical bodies in heaven because of Enoch and Elijah, and we will have resurrected bodies one day. and I've said a bit more about to defend the physicality of the ascension on the Truth United's website here with this article if you're interested. But here for now, let's just say this. If we reject Murray Harris's claim and recognize that the ascension of Christ is a physical event in the sense that Jesus's body, the flesh doesn't dissolve as he's ascending to

Starting point is 00:05:12 heaven. This raises a fascinating question, and that is, how does the translation of a physical body from this spacetime universe to heaven affect our understanding of what heaven is and what salvation is. Now, one way to conceptualize this is in correspondence to the incarnation. Torin says, the ascension is the reverse of the incarnation. As in the incarnation, we have to think of God, the sun, becoming man, without ceasing to be transcendent God. So in his ascension, we have to think about Christ as ascending above all space and time without ceasing to be man, or without any diminishment of his physical historical existence. And he basically calls this the

Starting point is 00:05:53 other poll of the question that gives rise to the extra Calvinisticum. Some of you have heard of that term extra Calvinisticum before. I have a whole video about that, if that's of interest. Essentially, it means that the Son of God remained fully God during the incarnation. So, for example, he's omnipresent in the year 10 AD. And I give a defense in that video of that, trying to explain that. But Torrance is saying, basically, this is why, by the way, Torrance argues that this is why some of the Lutherans reject the extra Calvinisticum is because they're operating with a receptacle view of space rather than a relational view of space and time. But just think of it like this for now. Just like the incarnation was not a geographical movement from heaven to earth, such that now

Starting point is 00:06:38 heaven is vacant. He went from point A to point B. So neither is the ascension, an abandonment of Jesus' physical, earthly, resurrected body. In my book, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, here's how I sum it up. Try to boil it down to this little chiastic sentence. At the incarnation, the word enters a body without leaving heaven. At the ascension, the word enters heaven without leaving a body. In other words, the extra is trying to protect the deity of Christ in his descent,

Starting point is 00:07:10 and this bodily and space-time nature of the ascension is trying to protect his humanity in his ascent. So I'll put up a graphic like that on the screen. God remains God as he comes into the world. God then leaves the world without ceasing to be man. So what does that mean for us? And why does this even matter to think about? Let me highlight three things. First, paradoxically, this signals Christ's presence with us now via his spirit. We shouldn't think of the ascension purely in terms of departure and distance. Rather, in a real sense, Jesus is more present now with us than ever during his incarnate state. Torrance goes so far as to say, in our real sense, he comes again in the ascension. Kind of paradoxical, right? But the reason has to do with the pouring out of the

Starting point is 00:08:04 Holy Spirit. It is specifically the ascended Christ who pours out the Holy Spirit. The incarnate ministry of Christ transitions into the continued work of the Spirit. Spirit of Christ from the day of Pentecost moving forward. Sinclair Ferguson's amazing and wonderful book on the Holy Spirit unpackes this. He helps us understand how the ministries of Christ and the Holy Spirit converge. You can just sum it up like this for practical purposes. Jesus is close and available right now because he ascended. Second, the ascension signals God's care for physical reality. I don't know what to make of every single sentence that Torrance says in his treatment of this point, but he raises a fascinating question for us to wrestle with because he argues that the ascension of Christ represents the confirmation.

Starting point is 00:08:55 It begins at the incarnation, of course, but this is the confirmation of creaturely reality before God. He even speaks of it in terms of the healing and restoration of space-time reality. He says, the ascension of the incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus Christ, inevitably transforms heaven, something quite new has been affected in the heavenlies which must alter its material content in our understanding of what heaven is. Again, I'm not sure about that verb alters. At least this much we can say, we can understand now more clearly that heaven, that is the realm of God, is a place that is friendly to creaturely existence, that is bodily and spatiotemporal existence. Don't think of heaven.

Starting point is 00:09:41 Heaven is incapable of housing and receiving the real you. Third, the ascension signals Christ continued saving work. This is the most basic point. Remember that Jesus is saving us right now. Sometimes we forget this, right? We think we have someone who saved us, and we forget that we have someone who is saving us. He is our Savior right now.

Starting point is 00:10:04 He is our prophet, priest, and king, reigning from the throne of the universe. What he did on the cross, He's applying to you continuously now. That's Christ's intercession. I have a video on Christ's intercession of that's of interest to you. We have a man in heaven working to save us. Now, he's God as well, but he's still man.

Starting point is 00:10:24 In other words, Jesus did not shed his humanity in the way a lizard sheds its skin. We have, and actually Bovink and others argue, Bovink, a great reformed theologian, argues, Christ will retain his human nature for all eternity. The incarnation affected a permanent change. And therefore he lives always to make intercession for us. He is subduing the nations to his kingly rule. He continues to pour out his spirit, not just once on Pentecost, but throughout the church age.

Starting point is 00:10:53 It's so wonderfully encouraging to think about this triumphant event. Hope that is edifying and fills your heart with some hope today. For more on this, I'll link to Patrick Schreiner's book and my article in Jets. Those are the only two things I'll link to, but I referenced other things. Hopefully you can find them. Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks for watching, everybody.

Truth Unites - Christ's Ascension is Stranger Than You Think

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