While much emphasis is laid upon the death
and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, it is not generally
realized that His ascension is no less important as a
truth basic to our life in Him and for His universal
purpose. In the fuller unveilings of spiritual life in
Christ which came progressively through the anointing of
the Holy Spirit much is said, on the one hand, about our
having been made to sit in the heavenlies in Christ, and,
on the other hand, we are reminded that we are strangers
and pilgrims here. This revelation interprets the whole
Bible along a certain line, and the key-declaration to
this sweep of the Word is that the seat and base of all
life and work, the place of the pattern, purpose, and
entire resource of our calling in Christ, is in the
heavens.
There are two words which represent or
signify two halves of one great truth - ascension and
translation; these are complementary to each other. The
one makes possible the other, and the other demands the
one. Ascension is an act, conclusive and definite.
Translation is a process culminating in a climax. When
the Lord Jesus ascended up on high and was "received
up" it was representative and relative, just as was
His death and resurrection. As the representative of the
many sons whom He would bring to glory, He immediately
and definitely transferred from earth to heaven the
source of spiritual life, the spring of spiritual being;
and in fact everything that pertains unto salvation,
sanctification, service, glory, is now in the heavens,
and cannot be found in the earth.
From the point of being "born from
above," everything implied and involved in both
nature and purpose is out from above. An exquisite cameo
of this is found in the eighty-seventh Psalm. The terms
are typical or illustrative. Here the partiality of God
is seen for the spiritual as against the carnal
habitations. Then the things of glory are related to this
spiritual city. Then the boasted nativities of men are
reviewed: they boast in having been born in Egypt,
Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, or Cush. But transcending all
boasts is His whose citizenship is of Zion and upon whom
Zion's franchise has been conferred.
The Lamb's book of life looms into view,
and the names are mentioned, and the all-inclusive
realisation of these heavenly citizens is that all their
fountains are there. Theirs is a heavenly calling, life,
vision, citizenship, walk, hope, country, kingdom, etc.
One of the most marked things in the pre-ascension
experiences of God's people is the failure of anything of
this earth - though given of God - to satisfy the vision
and expectation of His truly spiritually-minded people.
Abraham had promise of a country and a city; he moved out
with God, but it is quite clear that as his faith
expanded, the fullest possibilities of realisation on the
earth failed to fulfil his hope and the promise. He came
into the land but he was not at all satisfied that the
promise was fulfilled; in fact, though there was blessing
and increase he grew less satisfied. The truth is that
his spiritual life was expanding and with it his faith
demanded something more than that which was of the earth.
That to which he looked forward at first, as adequate to
meet the expectation through promise, he came by closer
fellowship with God to regard as altogether insufficient.
This led him to a series of refusals and rejections of
things of earthly glory. The Promised Land ultimately
ceased to be for him a thing of earth, and so writers
under the illumination of the same Spirit as was leading
Abraham tell us that he looked for "a better
country... a heavenly," and "a city... whose
builder (architect) and maker is God." (Heb.
11:16,10). Placing over against this such passages as
Matt. 3:9, John 8:56, Gal. 3:7, 4:26, Heb. 12:22, we are
surely compelled to recognize that Abraham's vision
became more and more "other-worldly" as his
faith became clearer. Simultaneously with this throwing
back of the horizon, and as a means to that end,
everything of earth was taken down into death, to pass
through and out on to resurrection ground by resurrection
life. It was then a thing no longer of this earth but of
the heavens. This applied to possessions, relationships,
prospects, vision, promise, faith, service, capacity.
An important principle is here revealed as
basic to all the accomplishments of God and to all
effective life and service in fellowship with God. We must come into every Divine thing as out from above, and not from the earth level.
Such phrases as "taking up Christian
work," "getting into Christian service,"
contain a very dangerous and false concept. Unless such
would-be workers have had their own works (even for God)
brought to death, and themselves also, any move into
things which are related to God will result in one of
three things - to be smashed by them, or to come sooner
or later to deadlock as in a cul-de-sac, or to go
on with a show and appearance of success, but really
effecting nothing in any heavenly sense, the thing
effected being of this world, though religious and well
meant.
Moses
undoubtedly had a heavenly revelation in Egypt. By
illumination of spirit he saw that the poor, oppressed,
crushed, distracted mob of Semites were the elect of God
(Heb. 11:25). He further saw that the Cross as the
reproach of Christ was the method of redemption (verse
26). Then he saw that sin, in his case, would be to
retain the pleasurable advantages of this world in denial
of that Cross and its objective. In the light of this he
made his decision; he refused, he chose, he forsook, and
feared not. But even when he had arrived at the position
in his spirit, he had to learn the main lesson of his
life, namely, that heavenly visions require heavenly
instruments for their realisation. He essayed to put his
revelation into effect from the standpoint of some
natural or earthly vantage ground. This jeopardised
everything, brought confusion, delay, shame, and fear. He
had to go out and be brought through discipline to his
famous "I cannot," and then come into the
situation as from above. The real effect was to have been
taken out and up, and then to come down on to it as from
above; for afterward Moses was a man linked with the
throne of God. It has ever been thus. For patterns,
commissions, and powers, a place of ascendency has been
the Divine method. In "the patterns of things in the
heavens" a mountain will do, but for the actual
things a spiritual union with the ascended Lord is
essential.
This can
be traced in the case of Moses, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Paul, and others.
"Then
the Spirit lifted me up and brought me... (Ezek. 11:1,
etc.) is a clause which implies the Divine order. This is
not the elevation of the soul by imaginations, ecstasies,
idealism, or mental visions. Such, as well as false or
true presentations of great prospects, may be presented
by the Devil. The Master refused the elevations and
visions given by the enemy because the true prospect was
only by the way of the Cross.
Paul
called himself "a wise master-builder," but
this in his actual language only meant one who had been
allowed to look at the architect's plan and was working
according to it. For this look he had been "caught
up," but to be "in the Spirit" is always
to be caught up. The Lord Jesus said much about being in
heaven while on earth. "The Son of man who is in
heaven" (John 3:13) "What he (the Son) seeth
the Father doing... these the Son also doeth in like
manner" (John 5:19) His spirit had a heavenly union
by the Holy Spirit, and so He wrought. It is one thing to
take even the Bible as a manual or textbook - a system of
truth, teaching, practice, and order; it is quite another
thing to see the eternal, spiritual principles behind the
precepts, practices, and system. The one is to live and
work according to the transmission of truth through the
medium of human intelligence: that is, an infinite truth
has been shaped in finite terms to make it intelligible
to men. The other is to apprehend by a quickened and
renewed spirit the infinite significance of the
revelation. The transmission represents the human range,
the spiritual revelation infinitely transcends this, and
requires a heavenly mind - the mind of the Spirit as
against the mind of the flesh.
Only
such as have been made one with the ascended Christ have
His mind and can effectively serve Him. In so many ways
the fact, nature, and need of ascension-union with Christ
are emphasised in the whole Bible and especially in
the New Testament. He ascended with the keys of authority
in His possession. As man and for man He had wrested the
dominion from the prince of this world. As a mighty
conqueror He was "received up." This victorious
return was foreshadowed in the spirit of the Psalmist
when he sang:
"Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors: and the King
of glory will come in.... The Lord mighty in
battle..." (Ps. 24:7,8).
If it is true that Christ has taken our
humanity, redeemed, purged, sanctified, into the very
throne of God, and is reproducing this corporate union of
Himself with us and of ourselves with Himself in the
Church which is His Body, then ascension union means that
we now have a place in the place of His sovereignty: we
are to have dominion in Him over principalities and
powers. The safer way to state this is that His
sovereignty functions - or is meant to function - through
His Body and all its members.
There are other doors mentioned in this
connection besides the "everlasting doors."
There are the "gates of Hades," which mean the
counsels and schemes and judgments of hell. These are
represented as being against the Church. It is therefore
said that, because of the heavenly union with and in Him
Who has passed triumphantly through the everlasting
doors, these other "gates" shall not prevail,
because His sovereignty is in the Church and the Church
is in His sovereignty. Not to a Jewish group as such, or
to the nucleus of an earthly kingdom related to any one
age, but to the nucleus of His Church He addressed those
words about the building of that Church and its
ascendency over the counsels of hell (Matt. 16:18). To
them as such He also said, "Behold I have given you
authority... over all the power of the enemy" (Luke
10:19); this, in the light of His Cross which was the
abiding background of all His utterances and actions.
There can be no resting of the Holy Spirit in and upon
believers except as incorporation in Christ crucified,
buried, risen, and ascended has taken place. For Elisha
to receive the "double portion" of his master's
spirit he must pass through Jordan with him and be with
him in the place of ascension.
It is ever thus. The Holy Spirit mediates
the sovereignty of the Head to and through the Body, and
for this "holding fast the Head" heavenly union
is essential. The Church is a heavenly body, not an
earthly society, institution, organization. The
ecclesiastical systems of this world which call
themselves "the Church" and "the
churches" are too often a grotesque caricature.
There are no sects, denominations, "branches of the
Church," with God. Only one Church exists in the
mind and interest of God, and that "the church of
the first-born," and all this other welter is
because there has been an attempt made again and again to
set up something for God on this earth as of the earth.
God is not in this, but is leaving it to compass its own
end in confusion, or proceed apace in its delusion. He is
quietly, without sound of axe or hammer, putting His
elect stones into a spiritual temple, a heavenly house.
Only such as have the vantage ground of the heavenly
places will see this, discountenance the false, and find
full blessedness in doing what the Father is doing.
We now proceed to say a little about that
half of this truth implied in the word
"translation." At the outset we said that
"translation is a process culminating in a
climax." The climax is, of course, the appearing of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The whole course of
Christian experience when wrought out by God is one of
progressive transition or translation from earthlies to
heavenlies. Faith is the principle of translation, and
its very nature demands a basis which is spiritual and
not of the senses, which is heavenly and not of the
earth. The Lord's dealings with His people have ever
resulted in their losing all earthly ground of confidence
and assurance and being made utterly dependent upon
Himself.
Faith always brings us into precarious and
difficult situations. Faith always demands a letting go
of things seen and temporal. Faith threatens, and carries
out its threat, to bewilder and confound our natural
judgments, wisdom, acumen, hope, confidence, and
security. Faith never fails to cut the ties of our
natural safety, and dry up the springs of our human
resource. All this must be in order to open up an entire
system of heavenly fullness. God makes revelation
indispensable and His own heavenly realities absolutely
essential to existence. Thus He meets us in some
challenge and demand, a crisis is precipitated, a step in
the obedience of faith is required, and when it is taken
it is a step upward which gives us some spiritual
vantage-ground where we see what we did not know before.
Thus by a succession of upward steps in faith we are
having the faith of God's elect wrought in us in
preparation for that climax in translation. It is
corporate faith in the whole Body of Christ - proving it
to be what it really is, a heavenly Body - that will
bring about the advent of Christ. "The Second Coming
of Christ," is not some merely historical event in a
Divine time-table of prophecy. It is the climax of faith
in the Body of Christ, which faith has severed that Body
absolutely from the world and merely earthly things, even
though they be religious things and systems. The
obedience of faith increases capacity for apprehending
the spiritual, eternal, and unseen principles of God's
eternal purpose, and thus makes possible the effecting of
that purpose. Surely this is the principle running
through Hebrews 11 as a summary of the nature and course
of faith. But it is "one faith," even "the
faith of the Son of God." This faith is a mighty
energy, spiritually militant, and the means by which the
battles of the Lord have ever been fought. Thus it is
that the final great conflict with the Satanic hierarchy
will be brought to a victorious issue by the faith of the
Christ triumphant in His Church (Rev. 12:11). Thus shall
the sovereignty of the heavens be established over
the "gates" (counsels) of hell by the Church,
and the earth will feel the impact of that triumphant
faith.
This kind of translation faith is rare and
few there are who will pay its price. Well might the Lord
ask if He shall find it on the earth at His coming. Let
it be emphasised once more that the transferring of all
things to the heavenlies, so that we are feeling more and
more the strangeness of strangers and the homelessness of
pilgrims here, and at-home-ness in spiritual and heavenly
things, is the natural course of a true life in God. When
the climax comes and we are finally translated, it will
be no great change for our inner man; there will be no
awkwardness or feeling of being strange and out of place.
It will be but the last phase of the spiritual journey
where the glory breaks upon us, and like Enoch, "we
are not, for God has taken us."
It only remains to be said that this is
the path of, and to, the glory.
The glory is always heavenly glory.
Ultimately it will be manifested in a perfected humanity.
At present it is secretly within the spirit of the
believer, and with each fresh step up in faith, that
which cannot be defined to others becomes more wonderful
to him. It would be a poor description of the Divine
glory to say that it is incorruption and
incorruptibleness, perfection of understanding,
perfection of harmoniousness, perfection of capacity,
perfection of graciousness. But almost imperceptibly the
movement of faith and the action of grace are leading on
to this. The incorruptible seed which makes possible the
incorruptible body is already in the sons of God by
faith. There is an opening of the eyes of their
understanding, and heavenly things for them are much more
real than the things seen. There is a "peace which
passeth understanding" realised in deep crises,
which is the fruit of a harmony in the will with God's
will. (The word "peace" would always be better
translated "harmony.") So also spiritual
capacity is that which transcends the limitations of time
and space, and which bounds the universe in effects and
issues. And it scarcely need be said that the
graciousness of Divine love, compassion, tenderness,
considerateness, humility, etc., are the glory of God.
These things, however, do not touch all
that His glory means. Perfection of character, capacity
and service, bring perfection of satisfaction. This is
but the basis of His glory. Here we have to stop short.
This glory can only be known in spirit and not portrayed
in words. We remind ourselves that it is written that we
have been called "unto his eternal glory" (1
Pet. 5:10), and that our salvation is "with eternal
glory" (2 Tim. 2:10) and that the light affliction
"worketh... an exceeding weight of glory" (2
Cor. 4:17).
Thus, as we have been crucified together
with Him, buried with Him, raised with Him, so we are
ascended and glorified together with Him.
May we have grace that every movement of
God by which He would make our ascension-union manifest
and experimentally real may find an "Amen" in
our hearts, cost what it may in the uprooting of our
lives from earth.
He would have us see the heavens open
always and the representative and inclusive "Son of
man" in the glory as us, even while we are on
the earth; everything in ministry here moving from and to
the heavens.
With these heavenly truths thus before us
let us find the meaning and force of familiar
exhortations, such as:
"Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon the earth... but lay up... treasures in
heaven" (Matt. 6:19,20).
"If then ye were raised together
with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ
is.... Set your minds on the things that are above, not
on the things that are on the earth" (Col.
3:1,2).
If we are to appear with Christ in glory
we must have a life already hid with Christ in God, and
ourselves be dead to things on the earth.
"For ye died, and your life is hid
with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3).