Ascension: Gaining the High Ground

Many people think of the ascension of Christ as nothing more than the fact that Jesus, after His resurrection, spent some forty days on the earth giving new directives to His disciples, revealing Himself to many people to demonstrate the reality of His resurrection, and then it was time for Him to go back to heaven to be with the Father. That is about all that people think of in terms of the ascension of Christ. However, there is a lot more to the doctrine of the ascension of Christ and His session. The ascension only took a few minutes at most and then He was seated at the right hand of God the Father. Why? There is activity in being seated. He is there is a place of rest. Certainly there are ministries that He is involved in during this time but it is essentially a position of waiting.

It is in the set-up of Ephesians chapter four that Paul connects the giving of spiritual gifts to the ascension of Christ. So that raises the question: Why is it necessary that Paul had to go back to Psalm 68 in order to lay the groundwork for why Jesus gave spiritual gifts.

The word Shekinah comes from the Hebrew word shakan which means to dwell. It is not a permanent dwelling, it has the idea of a temporary dwelling. So the term Shekinah itself is a term that doesn’t emphasize the brilliance, the light, flash that we think of when we think of the manifestation of the glory of God, it simply means the dwelling presence of God. The term “glory” and the glory of God and the glory of the presence of God was a word that was used in Scripture that comes to mean the presence of God. It was a way the Scripture identified the presence of God; an idiom for that. So when we combine these two concepts what we see with Shekinah is that the emphasis is on the dwelling presence of God. In fact, when we read the words “the glory of God passed before Moses,” a simple word substitution, “the presence of God passed before Moses” catches the real impact of that sentence. So when a Jew would receive the account in Acts 1:9 that “a cloud received Him out of their sight,” it is reminiscent of the glory cloud, the Shekinah departure. It would also be a reminder of the Shekinah from the temple in Ezekiel.

Jesus left because there was another stage in the plan that was about to take place. This was the mystery doctrine that was not revealed in the Old Testament. When we come out of this study on the ascension where we are going to land is on the importance of the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. We are headed toward spiritual gifts. These are spiritual enablements provided by God the Holy Spirit who indwells every believer. Nothing like this has ever existed before in human history. There are similarities and parallels in the Old Testament but remember that among spiritual gifts are gifts such as prophecy, but prophecy is a spiritual gift given by God the Holy Spirit, and by definition a spiritual gift is a spiritual enablement or empowerment given at the point of salvation to a church age believer. There were prophets in the Old Testament and there will be prophets in the Tribulation period, but the function of prophecy in those dispensations is not the same, it is not a spiritual gift. Those people were different and operated under the dispensation of Israel. There were teachers under the Old Testament economy but they did not have a spiritual gift or enablement by God the Holy Spirit. Some prophets performed miracles—Moses, Elijah and Elisha—these were not the spiritual gift of miracles that occurs in the early part of the church age. We have to recognize that the central issue in the church age is going to be the Holy Spirit and His relationship to the believer.

In John 16:7 Jesus told His disciples: ^NASB “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” It is also seen from this passage that the sending of the Holy Spirit is seen as distinct from Himself. So He has to leave in order for the next stage in God’s plan to work out, because God is going to demonstrate certain things through church age believers that relate to our testimony and our role in the angelic conflict.

For the first time in history there is a human being at the helm of the universe, a human being controlling history, and a human being now who controls the angels. Ephesians 1:20, 21 ^NASB “which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly {places} [heavenlies], far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” So Jesus Christ has now been elevated over all of the angelic forces. One of the reasons this is important is because at the instant of our salvation we are entered into Christ. We are identified with Christ, we are made one with Christ, so that positionally we are over the angels. We have that not because of who and what we are but because of who and what Jesus Christ is and accomplished when he had His strategic victory over Satan. The difference between strategy and tactics: strategy is the overall game plan for achieving and objective; tactics are what are done in terms of individual struggles and involves tactics. Tactics primarily relates for us to the use of the ten stress-busters or problem solving devices. These are the tactics that we use in order to implement the victory that was achieved for us at the cross.

This overall strategy has a couple of phases. The first phase is the victory on the cross where Christ pays the penalty for our sins. The second phase is the recognition and affirmation of that, and approval of that by God the Father, which is indicated through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then the third element of the overall strategic victory is the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, so He is currently in heaven elevated above all of the angels. The terminology that is used here is loaded with a military background, and it is always important in the military in any kind of strategic situation to take the high ground. What happened in the ascension of Christ is that he took the high ground over Satan and the angels. He has taken the spiritual high ground.

Ephesians 4:7 ^NASB “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” The term there for grace is a reference to spiritual gifts, we get that from the context. You would think he would go right on into a discussion of what these gifts are, but no, that is not how Paul wants us to think. He says we have to go back and understand why we are given these gifts. He quotes and Old Testament passage in Psalm 68:18. [8] “Therefore it says, ‘WHEN HE ASCENDED ON HIGH, HE LED CAPTIVE A HOST OF CAPTIVES, AND HE GAVE GIFTS TO MEN.’” Paul shows us the Old Testament passage and then begins to exegete it for us. [9] “(Now this {expression,} ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? [10] He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.)”

Psalm 68:18 ^NASB “You have ascended on high, You have led captive {Your} captives; You have received gifts among men, Even {among} the rebellious also, that the LORD God may dwell {there.}” In Ephesians 4 it says He gave gifts to men; in Psalm 68 “You have received gifts among men.” That is a verse that ascribes honour to Yahweh, and in Ephesians 4:8 Paul ascribes this to the Lord Jesus Christ. This shows a recognition that Jesus Christ is the God of Israel, the God of the Old Testament, and the revelation, the person of deity that was revealed to the Jews in the Old Testament was the pre-incarnate second person of the Trinity. The whole picture here is of the Lord’s victory, Yahweh’s victory through Israel over Israel’s enemies and that as a result of that He had taken booty which is then distributed among the Jews. That is the same imagery that we have in Ephesians 4, that because of the ascension, the victorious military ascension, that it puts the Lord Jesus Christ in a position to distribute booty, defined in context as spiritual gifts.