Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Between Transfiguration and Ascension
For devotion in our Grace Notes practice today, we read Oswald Chambers' "His Ascension and Our Access" from his My Utmost for His Highest, and I found it very illuminating.
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His Ascension and Our Access
It came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven —Luke 24:51
We have no experiences in our lives that correspond to the events in our Lord’s life after the transfiguration. From that moment forward His life was altogether substitutionary. Up to the time of the transfiguration, He had exhibited the normal, perfect life of a man. But from the transfiguration forward— Gethsemane, the Cross, the resurrection— everything is unfamiliar to us. His Cross is the door by which every member of the human race can enter into the life of God; by His resurrection He has the right to give eternal life to anyone, and by His ascension our Lord entered heaven, keeping the door open for humanity.
The transfiguration was completed on the Mount of Ascension. If Jesus had gone to heaven directly from the Mount of Transfiguration, He would have gone alone. He would have been nothing more to us than a glorious Figure. But He turned His back on the glory, and came down from the mountain to identify Himself with fallen humanity.
The ascension is the complete fulfillment of the transfiguration. Our Lord returned to His original glory, but not simply as the Son of God— He returned to His father as the Son of Man as well. There is now freedom of access for anyone straight to the very throne of God because of the ascension of the Son of Man. As the Son of Man, Jesus Christ deliberately limited His omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. But now they are His in absolute, full power. As the Son of Man, Jesus Christ now has all the power at the throne of God. From His ascension forward He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.
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I have never seen it from that angle where Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection and ascension are related to his transfiguration. I know I have asked this question before: why was Jesus transfigured? What was involved in the transfiguration?
We die and resurrect with Christ and soon we will be ascended to be with him. How do we relate to him in his transfiguration?
pearlie
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It was Adam (man) who sinned and fell short of God. Christ came as man (the 2nd Adam) to show/prove that man could pay the price and not sin. Had he gone to Heaven at the transfiguration he would have not ascended as man, but as God, because in the transfiguration he was being shown to them as the God he is. He had to pay the price (the sacrifice once and for all) for sin as man. Praise God HE DID!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is hard to put into words but my Spirit does grasp it. In essence Christ, as man, was the first to ever be born again!!!!!
Thanks Susan - I get what you mean.
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