Christ’s ascension was the completion of His resurrection. It was not enough that He arose again from the dead with a new body; He still had to go to His Father to receive His approval of the finished work of redemption. Without the acceptance of the Father of His blood shed on our behalf, we could never have received justification or been eligible to receive the promise of the Father, the precious gift of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told Mary not to touch Him until He had ascended to the Father (John 20:17).
On this occasion Jesus demonstrated His deep identification with us in His going before God the Father, for He speaks of this as ascending to “my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” He is rejoicing in the certainty of reconciliation between God and sinners like us.
Jesus spent forty days upon the earth giving intensive instructions to His disciples.
The time of fulfillment was near; the Holy Spirit was soon to be poured out. But Jesus had to impart much spiritual understanding to His chosen men before they could carry out their commission to teach and disciple others. Much of this understanding they could not receive until the shocking reality of the resurrection had prepared them to think on another dimension than the restoration of national Israel in a political way. Spiritual things were becoming more real to them, but even so this idea of a national kingdom lingered in their minds until the ascension and outpouring of the Holy Spirit made the kingdom of Heaven more real than anything else to them.
Jesus visibly ascended in order to show them how He would come again.
Many people could believe in a purely spiritual coming again, but Jesus promised more than this. His coming again would be as personal and physical as His going away. Nor was He coming back in some different way. He would be the very same personable Jesus they had grown to love and trust. While they were yet watching Him ascend up into the clouds, the angels used this impressive moment to remind them to expect this same Jesus to come back exactly as He had left.
Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of His glorification; His ascension completed it.
Jesus experienced two opposite kinds of identification with man in order to bring us back to God. The first we call His “humiliation”. This included His laying aside the glory of being God in order to come to us in the incarnation. But He became more than man, He became a servant and died a criminal’s death. He descended into Hades to conquer death once and for all. Then He arose. The resurrection marks the beginning of the second aspect of His identification with man:
His exaltation. This exaltation included the restoration of all His former glory and His being seated at the right hand of the Father to take up active rule in the affairs of men. This made the ascension an absolute necessity. The wonderful thing about all of this is that Jesus identified himself with us in our death in order to take us with Him in resurrection and ascension! He did not return to heaven empty-handed. Redemption was accomplished.