The Ascension as the visible sign of the acceptance of the Redeemer.
If the secret of the Redeemer's life on the earth be this—that he was working out for us a man's obedience to God in a human body and human spheres, then the closing scenes of the record of that life may be thus represented. In the struggle of Gethsemane our Redeemer's soul won a full triumph of trust, submission, and obedience. This inward soul-triumph was tested and proved, and came off perfectly and triumphantly victorious, in the bodily shame and suffering, and even in the death-agony, of Calvary. As a "man," his spirit and purpose of obedience, and his actually doing and beating in obedience, were thus perfectly tested and proved. What remained necessary to constitute him a perfect and all-sufficient burnt offering, to be presented to God for us? Manifestly this alone, that God himself should give some adequate and visible sign to us that with Christ he was infinitely well pleased, and that he would accept him as our Sacrifice. And just this we have in the Resurrection and Ascension. God raised him from the dead. God received him to his own right hand in the heavenly places. Disciples saw him go up to God; and if Enoch was manifestly accepted of God because of his translation; and if Elijah was declared to be God's prophet by his wondrous fire-journey into the unseen world; much more was the Lord Jesus declared to be the "Son of God," and the accepted Sacrifice, by that breaking of grave-bonds, and passing, to mortal vision, up within the clouds. Our Redeemer's work may be said to lack completeness until his soul-triumph of trust and submission, and his bodily act of obedience, in enduring the cross, as God's will for him, have manifestly and in some open way gained the acknowledgment and acceptance of God. The Ascension properly completes the Resurrection, and both together are the Divine acceptance of the perfect Son, and the acceptance, be it remembered, of humanity in him who was its Head and Representative. Then two thoughts may be unfolded and illustrated—
I. THE RESURRECTION IS THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MAN'S VICTORY. That is of Christ, as man, for man; of man in Christ. It is his victory over self, the evil power; and over sin, the evil Consequence. Christ mastered self, and obeyed perfectly, as a Son. Christ broke the bonds of death; for the penalties of transgression cannot lie on One who is infinitely acceptable. Now, in Christ, serf is no unbeaten foe; and "death hath no more dominion over us." We have hope in the struggle with self. We have security against the penalties of sin. In Christ death cannot hold us.
II. THE ASCENSION IS THE BEGINNING OF GIVING THE VICTOR THE VICTOR'S PLACE AND HONOUR. He is "highly exalted, and given a name above every name." He is "glorified with more than the glory which he had with the Father before the world was." Exalted to position of highest honor, to a place of power and authority; entrusted with the "bringing on of sons to glory;" empowered to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins; set on God's right hand, our one Mediator and Intercessor; and "Head over all things to his Church." In heaven we may not conceive him as dissociated from the place, relation, and work of earth, but occupying these still in relation to us, only in altogether higher, more efficient, and spiritual modes. He is the "Captain, or Author, of salvation." Able now, as the ascended Lord," to save unto the uttermost all that come unto God by him."—R.T.
Christ's coming again.
The scene needs sympathetic description. Effort should be made to realize the state of mind of the disciples on thus a second time losing their Master, and this time losing him in so strange and surprising a manner. It would seem that they had been prepared for the Ascension by the singularity of our Lord's movements during the forty days. Again and again he seems to have closed a time of communion with them by "vanishing out of their sight." On this occasion he not only" vanished," but" ascended," went up from them heavenward. As the disciples gazed upwards they may have expected an immediate reappearance out of the cloud; it seemed to them some surprising display of their Lord's power and glory. And so the truth must be gently broken to them, that they had now finally lost their Lord out of visible and sensible apprehension. This was the mission of the angels, who may be identified with the two who attended our Lord on his resurrection morning (Luke 24:4-7). The point of their message is, "Your Lord will come again some day, but not now. He will come in suddenness and in unexpected ways, 'in like manner as ye have seen him go away; and, until he comes, your duty is not 'gazing,' but carrying out, in simple and loving obedience, the commands he has left." Evidently the angels, while assuring the fact of Christ's "coming again," design to correct the mistaken thought of that coming which was in the minds of the disciples. The parts of their message may be thus set forth.
I. THE SAVIOR WAS, FOR THE PRESENT, GONE OUT OF THE SPHERE OF THE SENSES.
For three years the disciples had enjoyed sensible fellowship with their Lord. All that time he had been trying to teach them the deeper truth concerning himself and his relations with them. For forty days after his resurrection the sensible fellowship had been renewed, hut under conditions which should have prepared the disciples for their Lord's spiritual presence without the aid of sensible manifestations. At the Ascension they were plainly taught that the sensible helps were removed; for them there was no more "Christ in the flesh." Show how this bore on the culture and training of the disciples; and how it recalled the Savior's own words, "It is expedient for you that I go away." In all training, and not least in religious training, it is well for crutches and helps to be presently removed, that we may try our own feet. Illustrate how this is still done for us in the ordering of Providence, as for the disciples in the Ascension. "Looking," "gazing," "expecting" visible appearances of Christ out of the clouds, is declared by the angels not to be the appropriate duty of the hour.
II. THE SAVIOR HAD MADE EVERY PROVISION FOR THEM IN HIS BODILY ABSENCE.
They are recalled to consider the commands he had left. An immediate duty was before them—to wait together at Jerusalem for the gift of the Spirit. A great work was entrusted to their charge: they were to be Christ's witnesses through the whole world. An all-sufficing promise had been made them—they should "receive power" for the efficient carrying out of their work, in the energy of the Holy Ghost.
III. THE SAVIOR WOULD NOW COME TO THEM, BUT IN X TRANSCENDENT AND SPIRITUAL WAY. This is really the meaning of the angels' words "in like manner," "in a like glorious and surprising manner," not "in a like bodily manner." And, according to Christ's own promise, he did at once come again spiritually, to abide in his people; to be "with them always." No conceptions of future sensible manifestations of the Son of God should be permitted to weaken our conviction that Christ is now with us. He has come, he "makes his abode with us." And the present spiritual Christ is a present sanctifying power. The coming of Christ again to his Church in some sensible form is intended to be a secondary thought; bearing relation to Christian culture as holding out before us a high and ennobling object of hope. But it is properly to be regarded as "the sweet light away yonder" which cheers us while we set heartily to the doing of Christ's work in the world, under the daily inspirations and leadings of Christ's spiritual presence.—R.T.