the world seemed to be on top of them, made a vast impression. (It still does, when Christians are Christian enough to show it!) Three certainties were, and are, its secret.
The first concerns God’s world . It is that Christ really rules it, that he has won a decisive victory over the dark powers that had mastered it, and that the manifesting of this fact is only a matter of time. God’s war with Satan is now like a chess game in which the result is sure but the losing player has not yet given up, or like the last phase of human hostilities in which the defeated enemy’s counterattacks, though fierce and frequent, cannot succeed and are embraced in the victor’s strategy as mere mopping-up operations. One wishes that our reckoning of dates “a.d.” ( anno Domini , in the year of our Lord), which starts in intention (though probably a few years too late) with Jesus’ birth, had been calculated from the year of the cross, resurrection, and ascension, for that was when Jesus’ Lordship became the cosmic fact that it is today.
In a weary world in which grave philosophers
were counseling suicide as man’s best option,
the unshakable, rollicking optimism of the first
Christians, who went on feeling on top of the world
however much the world seemed to be on top of
them, made a vast impression. (It still does, when
Christians are Christian enough to show it!)
The second certainty concerns God’s Christ . It is that our reigning Lord is “interceding” for us (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25), in the sense that he appears “in the presence of God” as our “advocate” (Hebrews 9:24; 1 John 2:1) to ensure that we receive “grace to help” in our need (Hebrews 4:16) and so are kept to the end in the love of God (cf. the Good Shepherd’s pledge, John 10:27-;29). “Interceding” denotes not a suppliant making an appeal to charity, but the intervening of one who has sovereign right and power to make requests and take action in another’s interest. It is truly said that our Lord’s presence and life in heaven as the enthroned priest-king, our propitiation, so to speak, in person, is itself his intercession: just for him to be there guarantees all grace to us, and glory too.
An eighteenth-century jingle puts this certainty into words that make the heart leap:
Love moved thee to die;
And on this I rely,
My Saviour hath loved me, I cannot tell why:
But this I can find,
We two are so joined
He’ll not be in glory and leave me behind.
The third certainty concerns God’s people. It is a matter of God-given experience as well as of God-taught understanding. It is that Christians enjoy here and now a hidden life of fellowship with the Father and the Son that nothing, not even death itself, can touch—for it is the life of the world to come begun already, the life of heaven tasted here on earth. The explanation of this experience, which all God’s people know in some measure, is that believers have actually passed through death (not as a physical but as a personal and psychic event) into the eternal life that lies beyond. “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3; cf. 2:12; Romans 6:3-;4). “God... when we were dead... made us alive together with Christ... and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4ff.).
The prayer used on Ascension Day in the Anglican Prayer Book asks God to “grant... that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell.” May we be enabled, in the power of these three certainties, to do just that.
F URTHER B IBLE S TUDY
The significance of the Ascension:
Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 1:15-2:10
Q UESTIONS FOR T HOUGHT AND D ISCUSSION
In what sense did Jesus ascend to heaven?
To what did he return?
What is Christ doing now? What importance has this heavenly ministry for
The first concerns God’s world . It is that Christ really rules it, that he has won a decisive victory over the dark powers that had mastered it, and that the manifesting of this fact is only a matter of time. God’s war with Satan is now like a chess game in which the result is sure but the losing player has not yet given up, or like the last phase of human hostilities in which the defeated enemy’s counterattacks, though fierce and frequent, cannot succeed and are embraced in the victor’s strategy as mere mopping-up operations. One wishes that our reckoning of dates “a.d.” ( anno Domini , in the year of our Lord), which starts in intention (though probably a few years too late) with Jesus’ birth, had been calculated from the year of the cross, resurrection, and ascension, for that was when Jesus’ Lordship became the cosmic fact that it is today.
In a weary world in which grave philosophers
were counseling suicide as man’s best option,
the unshakable, rollicking optimism of the first
Christians, who went on feeling on top of the world
however much the world seemed to be on top of
them, made a vast impression. (It still does, when
Christians are Christian enough to show it!)
The second certainty concerns God’s Christ . It is that our reigning Lord is “interceding” for us (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25), in the sense that he appears “in the presence of God” as our “advocate” (Hebrews 9:24; 1 John 2:1) to ensure that we receive “grace to help” in our need (Hebrews 4:16) and so are kept to the end in the love of God (cf. the Good Shepherd’s pledge, John 10:27-;29). “Interceding” denotes not a suppliant making an appeal to charity, but the intervening of one who has sovereign right and power to make requests and take action in another’s interest. It is truly said that our Lord’s presence and life in heaven as the enthroned priest-king, our propitiation, so to speak, in person, is itself his intercession: just for him to be there guarantees all grace to us, and glory too.
An eighteenth-century jingle puts this certainty into words that make the heart leap:
Love moved thee to die;
And on this I rely,
My Saviour hath loved me, I cannot tell why:
But this I can find,
We two are so joined
He’ll not be in glory and leave me behind.
The third certainty concerns God’s people. It is a matter of God-given experience as well as of God-taught understanding. It is that Christians enjoy here and now a hidden life of fellowship with the Father and the Son that nothing, not even death itself, can touch—for it is the life of the world to come begun already, the life of heaven tasted here on earth. The explanation of this experience, which all God’s people know in some measure, is that believers have actually passed through death (not as a physical but as a personal and psychic event) into the eternal life that lies beyond. “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3; cf. 2:12; Romans 6:3-;4). “God... when we were dead... made us alive together with Christ... and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4ff.).
The prayer used on Ascension Day in the Anglican Prayer Book asks God to “grant... that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell.” May we be enabled, in the power of these three certainties, to do just that.
F URTHER B IBLE S TUDY
The significance of the Ascension:
Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 1:15-2:10
Q UESTIONS FOR T HOUGHT AND D ISCUSSION
In what sense did Jesus ascend to heaven?
To what did he return?
What is Christ doing now? What importance has this heavenly ministry for
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