CHRIST ASCENDED
[p. 240] CHRIST ASCENDED
We have been looking on previous occasions at the Lord’s death and at His resurrection. We remember Him in the place where He has died and we have the privilege to apprehend Him as risen and our association with Him is as risen; but we do not get the full height of the place and blessing of the assembly until we know Him as ascended. So it is noticeable in this Gospel the Lord does not detain His lovers with the resurrection scene. He is risen, but He tells Mary not to touch Him; He is not to be touched even as a Risen One. The Lord would impress upon us in that way, blessed as it is to know Him in resurrection, that resurrection is a transitional thought — it is not a permanent one. Resurrection is a point of transition from the days of His flesh to His condition as ascended and glorified. So if we want to know the full and permanent thoughts of God in regard to the assembly we have to know Christ in ascension, and I think it is of great importance to see that we get the Spirit from an ascended Christ. We do not get the Spirit from Christ after the flesh or from Christ risen, but the Spirit comes from Him as ascended.
In the beginning of this gospel John the Baptist says, “He it is who baptises with the Holy Spirit”, as much as to say that that is the great service. All that the Lord did in the days of His flesh was not to be compared with the baptising with the Holy Spirit, and He did not do this until He was glorified. Every one who has the Spirit has a wonderful link with Christ in ascension. It is of the greatest importance to see that in John — especially in this chapter (20) — the Lord would not have us linger in the resurrection scene because He was going to ascend to the Father, and He brings this [p. 241] before us again and again. He is going to the Father and that is the terminus.
Resurrection is relative to what lies behind; ascension is relative to what lies before. Resurrection is relative to death, so it is the bringing out from the domain of death into life and is in contrast to death, but ascension leads to an entirely new scene where death never was, nor where there is any background of sin. Ascension is relative to all that lies ahead, so it brings into view the whole position of the blessing which divine love has purposed and has brought to us by the ascension of Christ. In chapter 20:17 “Father” comes before “God” and that, I think, is the right order in relation to what the Lord had before Him. It is this wondrous place with His Father that the Lord Jesus had before Him. It is the name of grace; it is the name that the blessed God has been pleased to take in His limitless grace — how He can be known in superlative grace by man, and He is Christ’s Father and Christ was going to Him. There is a certain limitation about the name “Father”, but there is no limitation about “God”, so He says “Father” first.
He was ascending, which takes us at once out of a scene where death has been; He was going up. It was a much more marvellous moment than when Jesus walked on the water which more represents the resurrection condition — but He is going up which is a far more extraordinary thing than walking on the water. For Him to ascend is wonderful. We ought to think of the greatness of it that He ascended in His own power. He was not carried up in this scripture; He ascends and goes up in the liberty and power of His own Person. Have we thought enough about this? There is moral elevation about it. He “lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father”. What elevation there is in the contemplation of this!
It is wonderful to think of His going up, and wonderful, too, to think of what it was to the Father — what a meeting;
[p. 242] what a greeting when he ascended to the Father! We think of Luke 15 and the greeting there, but the Lord would show us something greater than that; He would show us how He was received as the ascending One. He was ascending to the Father as One who had brethren, and He has brethren in a heavenly order of things. Now to get the proper worship of the assembly we must understand this. It is good to see it is a new place never before occupied by man, and therefore has never been forfeited and never can be forfeited. It is occupied by One who can ascend to the elevation where the Father is and from that elevation he claims His own as His brethren, and as associated with Him in that nearness of position and condition.
John does not stress the thought of relationship. What he stresses is the character and condition in which we take our place before the Father as brethren of the ascended One. But we are in Him now as having ascended and as claiming us for an order of association with Himself which is heavenly and glorious. It began with Jesus glorified and has no defect. There is a link with Ephesians 1:3, 4, but this is the way John presents the truth of it. One is outside all the rack and ruin of this world and out of the feebleness of earth.
It is wonderful to think of the delight of the Father in receiving Jesus. At the end of Luke’s gospel the Lord is carried up to heaven which relates more to the side of leaving His disciples behind. He ascends in the sense of taking them with Him. In Luke He led them out as far as Bethany, a place where resurrection is known, and they are to preach repentance and remission of sins beginning at Jerusalem — the commencement being from the platform of resurrection and intending to impress the disciples that they had a link with an ascended One. Resurrection is only a step and not a terminus. Christ is raised and the saints are to be raised. “And such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones”. Resurrection leaves us on the earth, so that [p. 243] when the Lord comes for us there will be for a brief moment saints standing upon the earth, and it is at that moment that death will be swallowed up in victory. No saint will be left in his grave from Abel onwards. What a wonderful moment!
Then there is the heavenly One, not only the risen One. It is that heavenly One whose image we shall bear. Resurrection is for a moment but we shall not remain there, for we are to bear the image of the heavenly One — not the risen One, and I think there is a difference of conditions. There is a difference in knowing Jesus as in resurrection and knowing Him as glorified. I wonder if it is really in our souls that we come to His Father in that condition spiritually now. What an elevation it would give to the worship of the assembly if we had in our souls that we go to the Father in the light and in the power of the eternal condition which is substantiated in Christ ascended.
There is no type in Scripture of Christ ascended to the Father, and if we do not learn it in Christ we shall not know it at all. He refers again and again to His going to the Father — an entirely new thing to Him and to the Father. It was something quite new that He should go to the Father; there had never been anything in heaven like that: a new condition of manhood even with Christ, and He is the model. What an education for us in the morning meeting! We have not the condition but we have the Spirit which has come from an ascended Christ. He has come from that place with the Father where Christ is. We have something better than the condition; a divine Person is greater than any condition and the saints are to be in the power of the Spirit. It connects persons here with Jesus glorified and with the Father.
“Whatsoever he shall hear he shall speak”. What does the Holy Spirit hear? “All things that the Father has are mine”, and those things are connected with ascension. In chapter 14 it says the Spirit “will bring to your remembrance”, but when we come to chapter 15 it is a question of witness-bearing [p. 244] and the Spirit is the witness with the apostles. Chapter 16 is connected with the whole realm of the Father’s things and the Holy Spirit is given as One who has received these things. The Comforter has become the Vessel to bring them to us, and He brings things from that realm where Jesus is the ascended One. The Spirit is conversant with things. It is wonderful to think of a divine Person in heaven getting communications from the Father and coming down here to announce them.
Resurrection has to do with the condition where sin and death have been, but when we come to the thought of the Father and the Father’s realm, we are outside the thought of sin and death altogether. There never was a man in heaven until Jesus ascended but now there is a Man there and He has brethren, and the Spirit comes from there to make us acquainted with things in that realm. Every day I wonder at the marvellous character of Christianity!
It is for us to come into line with the Comforter who will make things real to us, and if we gave more place to the Comforter we should get enlargement as to what to speak to the Father. “Abby Father” is through the Spirit of Christ ascended, not only as risen. It is the Spirit of His Son as glorified and now in our hearts crying, “Abba Father”, the Spirit of God’s Son giving us the impulse in that direction. Think of a spiritual brother in the morning meeting; there are young believers present, and that brother gets up and speaks to the Father as understanding the Father’s realm and the Father’s things: this gives an impulse and prompts in that direction. The Spirit cries “Abba Father”; it is not, to begin with, that we cry “Abba Father”; we have the Spirit of sonship which leads us to this.
The Holy Spirit has taken a place of service, “Whatsoever he shall hear he shall speak”. Christ after the flesh in His beautiful life here, marvellous to the heart and to the eye of God, and charming us, is no more. Paul says, “Yet now we know him thus” (according to flesh) “no longer”, 2 Corinthians 5:16. The resurrection scene is brought to an end, but in ascension Christ is in the eternal condition and nothing is ever going to change His condition again, and the Spirit would link us, in a special way, with the sphere of ascension. Elijah, just before his departure, says to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for thee”, and Elisha asks that a double portion of Elijah’s spirit be upon him. He wanted the portion of the firstborn, and if Elisha saw him taken it was to be granted to him. This is a beautiful type of ascension and the double portion was linked with that. The Spirit is specially linked with Christ in ascension.
Jesus did not ascend in the condition of flesh and bone but in a body of glory, and that is the body He has as having ascended to the Father. It goes beyond the resurrection condition. In connection with 1 Corinthians 15, “It is raised a spiritual body”, the body in which the Lord was seen in resurrection was a spiritual body. We read that He came through closed doors. The Spirit of God uses different terms and we, too, must differentiate. Christ after the flesh did not end at the cross: it was in the grave that Christ after the flesh ended. But He came out of the grave into a new order and He was seen for forty days in that resurrection condition, and yet this did not represent the full thought of God. But now He has gone to the Father, reaching the terminus, and we are His brethren and soon we shall be actually like the ascended One. In His going to the Father there is a Man in heavenly conditions and in a heavenly relationship superlatively great. No other family of saints will ever have this; they will not be conformed to the image of the heavenly One. This should enter into our worship.
In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul speaks of the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit amongst the saints in the place where Christ died. Then in the fifteenth chapter we get the resurrection order followed by the heavenly order. That is [p. 246] the line indicated as to the progress in our morning meeting. It is like Solomon’s ascent; and if we want to please the Father we must be occupied with the Son ascended to Him in this new condition of manhood. The Father was never so delighted and He will be delighted with us too.