Luke 24:50-53

6. The Ascension: Luke 24:50-53.

The resurrection restored humanity in that one of its members who, by His holy life and expiatory death, conquered our two enemies the law which condemned us because of sin, and death, which overtook us because of the condemnation of the law (1 Corinthians 15:56). As this humanity is restored in the person of Christ by the fact of His resurrection, the ascension raises it to its full height; it realizes its destination, which from the beginning was to serve as a free instrument for the operations of the infinite God.

Vers. 50-53. The Ascension.

Luke alone, in his Gospel and in the Acts, has given us a detailed view of the scene which is indicated by Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:7, and assumed throughout the whole N. T. Interpreters like Meyer think themselves obliged to limit the ascension of Jesus to a purely spiritual elevation, and to admit no external visible fact in which this elevation was manifested. Luke's account was the production of a later tradition. We shall examine this hypothesis at the close.

The meaning of the ἐξήγαγε δέ, then He led them, is simply this: “ All these instructions finished, He led them...” This expression says absolutely nothing as to the time when the event took place.

The term συναλιζόμενος, having assembled, Acts 1:4, proves that Jesus had specially convoked the apostles in order to take leave of them. ῞Εως εἰς (T. R.), and still more decidedly ἕως πρός (Alex.), signifies, not as far as, but to about, in the direction and even to the neighbourhood of...There is thus no contradiction to Acts 1:12. Like the high priest when, coming forth from the temple, he blessed the people, Jesus comes forth from the invisible world once more, before altogether shutting Himself up within it, and gives His own a last benediction. Then, in the act of performing this deed of love, He is withdrawn to a distance from them towards the top of the mountain, and His visible presence vanishes from their eyes. The words καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν are omitted in the Sinaït., the Cantab., and some copies of the Itala. Could this phrase be the gloss of a copyist? But a gloss would probably have been borrowed from the narrative of the Acts, and that book presents no analogous expression. Might not this omission rather be, like so many others, the result of negligence, perhaps of confounding the two καί ? We can hardly believe that Luke would have said so curtly, He was parted from them, without adding how. The imperfect ἀνεφέρετο, He was carried up, forms a picture. It reminds us of the θεωρεῖν, behold, John 6:62. The Cantab. and some MSS. of the Itala omit (Luke 24:52) the word προσκυνήσαντες, having worshipped Him, perhaps in consequence of confounding αὐταί and αὐτόν. The verb προσκυνεῖν, to prostrate oneself, in this context, can mean only the adoration which is paid to a divine being (Psa 2:12).

The joy of the disciples caused by this elevation of their Master, which is the pledge of the victory of His cause, fulfilled the word of Jesus: “ If ye loved me, ye would rejoice because I go to my Father ” (John 14:28). The point to be determined is, whether the more detailed account in Acts (the cloud, the two glorified men who appear) is an amplification of the scene due to the pen of Luke, or whether the account in the Gospel was only a sketch which he proposed to complete at the beginning of his second treatise, of which this scene was to form the starting-point. If our explanation of Luke 24:44-49 is well founded, we cannot but incline to the second view. And the more we recognise up to this point in Luke an author who writes conscientiously and from conviction, the more shall we feel obliged to reject the first alternative.

The numerous omissions, Luke 24:52-53, in the Cantab. and some MSS. of the Itala cannot well be explained, except by the haste which the copyists seem to have made as they approached the end of their work. Or should the preference be given, as Tischendorf gives it, to this abridged text, contrary to all the other authorities together? D a b, which read αἰνοῦντες without καὶ εὐλογοῦντες; א. B. C. L., which read εὐλογοῦντες without αἰνοῦντες καί, mutually condemn one another, and so confirm the received reading, praising and blessing God. Perhaps the omission in both cases arises from confounding the two ντες. Αἰνεῖν, to praise, refers to the person of God; εὐλογεῖν, to bless, to His benefits. The disciples do here what was done at the beginning by the shepherds (Luke 2:20). But what a way traversed, what a series of glorious benefits between those two acts of homage! The last words, these in particular: “ They were continually in the temple,” form the transition to the book of Acts.

On the Ascension.

At first the apostles regarded the ascension as only the last of those numerous disappearances which they had witnessed during the forty days (ἄφαντος ἐγένετο, Luke 24:31). Jesus regarded it as the elevation of His person, in the character of Son of man, to that μορφὴ Θεοῦ (Php 2:6), that divine state which He had renounced when He came under the conditions of human existence. Having reached the term of His earthly career, He had asked back His glory (John 17:5); the ascension was the answer to His prayer.

Modern criticism objects to the reality of the ascension as an external fact, on the ground of the Copernican system, which excludes the belief that heaven is a particular place situated above our heads and beyond the stars. Those who raise this objection labour under a very gross misunderstanding. According to the Biblical view, the ascension is not the exchange of one place for another; it is a change of state, and this change is precisely the emancipation from all confinement within the limits of space, exaltation to omnipresence. The cloud was, as it were, the veil which covered this transformation. The right hand of a God everywhere present cannot designate a particular place. Sitting at the right hand of God must also include omniscience, which is closely bound up with omnipresence, as well as omnipotence, of which the right hand of God is the natural symbol. The Apocalypse expresses in its figurative language the true meaning of the ascension, when it represents the glorified Son of man as the Lamb with seven horns (omnipotence) and seven eyes (omniscience). This divine mode of being does not exclude bodily existence in the case of Jesus. Comp., in Paul, the σωματικῶς, bodily, Colossians 2:9, and the expression spiritual body applied to the second Adam, 1 Corinthians 15:44. We cannot, from experience, form an idea of this glorified bodily existence. But it may be conceived as a power of appearing sensibly and of external activity, operating at the pleasure of the will alone, and at every point of space.

Another objection is taken from the omission of this scene in the other Biblical documents.

But, 1. Paul expressly mentions an appearance to all the apostles, 1 Corinthians 15:7. Placed at the close of the whole series of previous appearances (among them that to the 500), and immediately before that which decided his own conversion, this appearance can only be the one at the ascension as related by Luke. This fact is decisive; for, according to Luke 24:3; Luke 24:11, it is the παράδοσις, the general tradition of the churches, proceeding from the apostles, which Paul sums up in this passage.

2. However Mark's mutilated conclusion may be explained, the words: “So then, after the Lord had thus spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God,” suppose some sensible fact or other, which served as a basis for such expressions. The same holds of the innumerable declarations of the epistles (Paul, Peter, Hebrews, James), which speak of the heavenly glory of Jesus, and of His sitting at the right hand of God. Doctrines, with the apostles, are never more than the commentary on facts. Such expressions must have a historical substratum.

3. No doubt, John does not relate the ascension. But can it be said that he does not mention it, when this saying occurs in his Gospel (Higb6:62): “ What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before? ” The term θεωρεῖν, strictly to contemplate, and the pres. partic. ἀναβαίνοντα, ascending, forbid us to think of an event of a purely spiritual nature (comp. Bäumlein, ad. h. l.). Why, then, does he not relate the historical scene of the ascension? Because, as his starting-point was taken after the baptism, which on this account he does not relate, his conclusion is placed before the ascension, which for this reason he leaves unrelated. The idea of his book was the development of faith in the minds of the apostles from its birth to its consummation. Now their faith was born with the visit of John and Andrew, chap. 1, after the baptism; and it had received the seal of perfection in the profession of Thomas, chap. 20, before the ascension. That the evangelist did not think of relating all the appearances which he knew, is proved positively by that on the shores of the Lake of Gennesaret, which is related after the close of the book (Luke 20:30-31), and in an appendix (chap. 21) composed either by the author himself (at least as far as Luke 24:23) or based on a tradition emanating from him. He was therefore aware of this appearance, and he had not mentioned it in his Gospel, like Luke, who could not be ignorant of the appearance to the 500, and who has not mentioned it either in his Gospel or in Acts. What reserve should such facts impose on criticism, however little gifted with caution!

4. And the following must be very peculiarly borne in mind in judging of Matthew's narrative. It is no doubt strange to find this evangelist relating (besides the appearance to the women, which is intended merely to prepare for that following by the message which is given them) only a single appearance, that which took place on the mountain of Galilee, where Jesus had appointed His disciples, as well as the women and all the faithful, to meet Him, and where He gives the Eleven their commission. This appearance cannot be any of those which Luke and John place in Judaea. It comes nearer by its locality to that which, according to John 21, took place in Galilee; but it cannot be identified with it, for the scene of the latter was the sea-shore. As we have seen, it can only be the appearance to the 500 mentioned by Paul. The meeting on a mountain is in perfect keeping with so numerous an assembly, though Matthew mentions none but the Eleven, because the grand aim is that mission of world-wide evangelization which Jesus gives them that day. Matthew's intention was not, as we have already seen, to mention all the different appearances, either in Judaea or Galilee, by which Jesus had re-awakened the personal faith of the apostles, and concluded His earthly connection with them. His narrative had exclusively in view that solemn appearance in which Jesus declared Himself the Lord of the universe, the sovereign of the nations, and had given the apostles their mission to conquer for Him the ends of the earth. So true is it that his narrative must terminate in this supreme fact, that Jesus announced it before His death (Matthew 26:32), and that, immediately after the resurrection, the angel and Jesus Himself spoke of it to the women (Matthew 28:7-10). Indeed, this scene was, in the view of the author of the first Gospel, the real goal of the theocratic revelation, the climax of the ancient covenant. If the day of the ascension was the most important in respect of the personal development of Jesus (Luke), the day of His appearance on the mountain showed the accomplishment of the Messianic programme sketched Luke 1:1: “Jesus, the Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. ” It was the decisive day for the establishment of the kingdom of God, which is Matthew's great thought. Criticism is on a false tack when it assumes that every evangelist has said all that he could have said. With oral tradition spread and received in the Church, the gospel historiography did not require to observe such an anxious gait as is supposed. It was not greatly concerned to relate an appearance more or less. The essential thing was to affirm the resurrection itself. The contrast between the detailed official enumeration of Paul, 1 Corinthians 15, and each of our four Gospels, proves this to a demonstration. Especially does it seem to us thoroughly illogical to doubt the fact of the ascension, as Meyer does, because of Matthew's silence, and not to extend this doubt to all the appearances in Judaea, about which he is equally silent.

The following passage from the letter of Barnabas has sometimes been used in evidence: “We celebrate with joy that eighth day on which Jesus rose from the dead and, after having manifested Himself, ascended to heaven.” The author, it is said, like Luke, places the ascension and the resurrection on the same day. But it may be that in this expression he puts them, not on the same day taken absolutely, but on the same day of the week, the eighth, Sunday (which no doubt would involve an error as to the ascension). Or, indeed, this saying may signify, according to John 20:17, which in that case it would reproduce, that the ascending of Jesus to heaven began with the resurrection, and on that very day. In reality, from that time He was no more with His own, as He Himself says (Luke 24:44). He belonged to a higher sphere of existence. He only manifested Himself here below. He no longer lived here. He was ascending, to use His own expression. According to this view, His resurrection and the beginning of His elevation (καὶ - καὶ) therefore took place the same day. The expression: after having manifested Himself, would refer to the appearances which took place on the resurrection day, and after which He entered into the celestial sphere.

In any case, the resurrection once admitted as a real fact, the question is, how Jesus left the earth. By stealth, without saying a word? One fine day, without any warning whatever, He ceased to re-appear? Is this mode of acting compatible with His tender love for His own? Or, indeed, according to M. de Bunsen, His body, exhausted by the last effort which His resurrection had cost Him (Jesus, according to this writer, was the author of this event by the energy of His will), succumbed in a missionary journey to Phenicia, where He went to seek believers among the Gentiles (John 10:17-18; comp. with Luke 24:16); and having died there unknown, Jesus was likewise buried! But in this case, His body raised from the dead must have differed in no respect from the body which He had had during His life. And how are we to explain all the accounts, from which it appears that, between His resurrection and ascension, His body was already under peculiar conditions, and in course of glorification?

The reality of such a fact as that related by Luke in his account of the ascension is therefore indubitable, both from the special standpoint of faith in the resurrection, and from the standpoint of faith in general. The ascension is a postulate of faith.

The ascension perfects in the person of the Son of man God's design in regard to humanity. To make of sanctified believers a family of children of God, perfectly like that only Son who is the prototype of the whole race, such is God's plan, His eternal πρόθεσις (Romans 8:28-29), with a view to which He created the universe. As the plant is the unconscious agent of the life of nature, man was intended to become the free and intelligent organ of the holy life of the personal God. Now, to realize this plan, God thought good (εὐδόκησε) to accomplish it first in ONE; Ephesians 2:6: “He hath raised us up IN CHRIST, and made us sit IN HIM in the heavenly places;” Luke 1:10: “According to the purpose which He had to gather together all things under ONE head, Christ;” Hebrews 2:10: “Wishing to bring many sons to glory, He perfected THE CAPTAIN OF SALVATION.” Such was, according to the divine plan, the first act of salvation. The second was to unite to this ONE individual believers, and thus to make them partakers of the divine state to which the Son of man had been raised (Romans 8:29). This assimilation of the faithful to His Son God accomplished by means of two things, which are the necessary complement of the facts of the Gospel history: Pentecost, whereby the Lord's moral being becomes that of the believer; and the Parousia, whereby the external condition of the sanctified believer is raised to the same elevation as that of our glorified Lord. First holiness, then glory, for the body as for the head: the baptism of Jesus, which becomes ours by Pentecost; the ascension of Jesus, which becomes ours by the Parousia.

Thus it is that each Gospel, and not only that which we have just been explaining, has the Acts for its second volume, and for its third the Apocalypse.