The Jesus Trifecta: Savior, Victor, King
Why the Ascension Matters Today
Eastertide is ending. On May 29, we mark Ascension Thursday, celebrating the day Jesus ascended to heaven after spending forty days appearing to his followers after his resurrection. It marks the end of his earthly ministry.
It’s the kind of feast day that flies under the radar. When I was a kid growing up in Catholic school/church, we hardly paid attention to the Ascension. Am I the only one who thought of it as the bookend to Jesus’s time on earth? Like, “Ok, Jesus, bye! Now we’re on our own.”
Once I moved into Protestant circles, the Ascension became an afterthought. Almost no one was writing or talking about it. Easter was the highlight of the year—as it should be—and the Ascension was just a blip on our way to Pentecost (which, honestly, doesn’t get much press either since few churches bother to check the church calendar).
What if the Ascension is not meant to be a blip on the Christian calendar? What if the Ascension is actually the culmination of Jesus’s mission? What if we can’t fully understand the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection without the Ascension? Let’s go there.
“He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”
— The Nicene Creed
Jesus’s Winning Trifecta
Let’s start with the reason the Son of God became human. He came as the Messiah, the long-awaited savior king of Israel, sent from the Father to rescue his people and establish his kingdom. He did so by sacrificing himself on behalf of his people. But he returned victorious over death and sin, then returned to the Father as the triumphant king.
The Incarnation and Cross
You can argue that these are two separate steps in the redemptive process, but I’m merging them for the sake of simplicity. Jesus became human (the Incarnation) to fulfill the prophecies of old, which called for Israel’s king to come and deliver his people (the Cross).
Born into the right Jewish family (Matt 1) via a human mother and the Spirit of God (Luke 1), Jesus inaugurated his ministry by “proclaiming the good news of God: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:14–15).
“Now Jesus began to go all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom” (Matt 4:23).
He taught his kingdom ethic (Sermon on the Mount, Matt 5–7), then demonstrated the benefits of following the king (him) through his healings, parables, miracles over nature, and interpersonal relationships. This is what the kingdom looks like, he showed—whole, healthy, righteous, loving. He called the lowly and the exalted, the rejected and accepted, the women and the men, the sick and the mentally challenged, the ethnic outsider and the ultimate insiders. Not all accepted his invitation, of course, but all were (and are) invited.
His kingdom encompassed more than the strategically significant strip of Middle Eastern land that God had promised Israel’s patriarchs. Jesus is king of the world. And he knew his people needed deliverance, not just Israel from Rome in the first century, but everyone everywhere from the power of sin and death. He was thinking on a different plane from most of his fellow rabbis. His death was an act of sacrifice, the ultimate expression of love.
And love always wins.
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Col 1:19–20.
The Resurrection
“The king is dead. Long live the king.” I think we can use this historic phrase, albeit differently, to hail King Jesus. As he predicted, he did not stay in the tomb but was raised up by the Spirit of God. In rising, he defeated sin and death, the two powers humans are unable to conquer on their own. He claimed to be king, and now he can prove it. He came to bring life, and now all who call him their king will live with him forever.
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:1–2).
Most discussions on Jesus’s work end here. He came, he died, and he rose. But his story isn’t complete yet.
The Ascension
Jesus remained with his followers only forty days after his resurrection. He gave them just enough time to witness his physical presence among them, to confirm his call on their lives and restore those (ahem, Peter) needing restitution. They had seen what they needed to see: a man died and rose from the dead, and this man was their long-awaited “anointed one”—an ancient phrase depicting a royal king being anointed with oil (still used at coronations today). Anointed One = Messiah = Christ = King.
So when Jesus departed into the clouds, he returned to the Father.
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb 1:3).
He’s still Israel’s king, but “Israel” now includes all who declare their faith or allegiance (same Greek word, pistis) to him. We need not be Jewish by ethnicity to be included in the kingdom. It was never that way—Israel was meant to welcome the stranger, shine God’s light to the nations, show the world who God really is. Ask Zipporah, Rahab, Ruth, and others like them—foreigners grafted into Israel because they chose Yahweh as their God. Similarly, Jesus brought Jew and gentile (any of us not ethnically Jewish) together into one people, the church (Eph 2).
The common denominator is faith, which involves loyalty and allegiance. Not just a declaration, but an abiding faithfulness to the King of kings.
“This is how the kingdom is being restored in Israel: by its representative Messiah, being enthroned as the world’s true Lord.” (NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God)
Luke uses the Ascension story as the launching point for his second half of the gospel story, the Acts of the Apostles, where he tells of the subversive gospel going out to announce Israel's God and his worldwide kingdom, to proclaim Jesus as Lord and Messiah.
And with the Ascension, we begin worshipping in trinitarian terms, focused on the Lord Jesus and God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Ten days from now, we will celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity.
The next time we see Jesus, he, with the Father and the Spirit, will be on his throne. This “inaugurated eschatology” leaves us in the “now and not yet” of history—Christ has come, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.
As his representatives, we can live out the ethics of the kingdom here and now, doing what we can to spread light and love, to care for the hurting and sick and oppressed, to seek justice, to make right what is wrong. He’s our king even now. We don’t have to wait til he returns to start living as his subjects.
I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, on the sea, and everything in them say,
Blessing and honor and glory and power
be to the one seated on the throne,
and to the Lamb, forever and ever!
Rev 5:13.