10 Jan 2021

We are familiar with the part of the gospel that deals with the death of Jesus, how He took our place on the cross, bore our sins as our substitute and effected atonement for us who believe.

His self-offering on the cross was once and for all (Hebrews 9:12,14). As we consider atonement in the light of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, we see the work of redemption as the work of His life on earth, His death and His resurrected life. Atonement then has past, continuing and future dimensions – He saved, He saves and He will save.

The resurrected Jesus at the right hand of the Father ever lives to present Himself for us directly before the Father. We are presented “holy and blameless and irreproachable” (Colossians 1:22) in Him and by Him to the Father. In union with the resurrected Jesus we are brought to share in His communion or fellowship with the Father. In union with the resurrected Jesus, our humanity is now set within the Father-Son relationship in the power of the Holy Spirit; Jesus does not reveal something about God; He reveals God – He does not only share His knowledge of the Father but in Christ we know God from the inside, from within the Father-Son relationship. Jesus reveals God in terms of the consubstantial and personal relations of the Godhead (the Trinity), and He does so as God, from within the mutual relations of knowing and loving. To know God is to know the personal relations between the Father and the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Jesus reveals and makes known the internal relations within God by letting us share in them; He reveals what is His alone, to share His being as God and His communion with the Father. This is given to us personally and relationally by the Holy Spirit. In other words, Jesus binds us to Himself to share in what is uniquely His, His communion with the Father! We are, as believers, enfolded into the communion of love within the holy Trinity. Is this not a wondrous revelation and privilege?

Without the incarnation, the Word would not have become flesh; without resurrection and ascension our humanity would not have entered into communion with the Father, and Jesus would have no continuing ministry. With the incarnation, God made His ‘home’ in our human place; with the ascension, Jesus, the human one, has made His ‘home’ in God’s place, from whence in the Spirit He continues to exercise His mission from the Father. With the incarnation, the ministry of Jesus on earth began; with the ascension, the ministry of Jesus from heaven began, the same Lord and the same ministry yet different in manner, because it is now in the agency and power of the Holy Spirit. The first means Jesus’ ministry on earth, in His flesh as we know it. The second means Jesus’ ministry from heaven in His flesh, now as a spiritual body and life-giving spirit.

The doctrine of union with Christ is central to Christian faith and ministry. It refers to the work of the Holy Spirit by which we share or participate in the resurrected life of Jesus. This is the staggering claim that lies at the heart of the Christian experience. Everything in faith and ministry flows from this, from sharing in the joy and hope of the risen Lord. This is the ground on which we build our theology, for by the Spirit who brings us into union with the resurrected Jesus, we share in our Lord’s knowledge of the Father. This is the ground of our worship, for by the Spirit who brings us into union with the resurrected Jesus, we share in our Lord’s communion with the Father. This is the ground of our ministry, for by the Spirit who brings us into union with the resurrected Jesus, we share in our Lord’s ministry given from the Father. Thus sharing in the resurrected life of Jesus, which is by the gift of the Holy Spirit, everything for faith and ministry is cast rigorously into a trinitarian frame of reference: from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit; and to the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. The ascension means that Jesus has a continuing ministry: He presents us to the Father, He intercedes for us, and He sends us the Holy Spirit to join us to His own life and mission to the glory of the Father, for the sake of the world. The heart of mature faith and faithful ministry is communion with a living Lord. This means sharing in His life and His life’s purpose.

The Christian faith, life and ministry are not built on an idealized system but on a personal relationship with a Lord who acts today in time and space in His continuing ministry of grace, love and communion. The emphasis is always placed on Jesus and not on us. The focus is on Christ’s promised faithfulness to be present as God who loves, forgives and blesses us, and not on our experiences of being loved, forgiven or blessed, important as these are in their own way. The focus is on God as the human one who offered and continues to offer to the Father the life and ministry that is acceptable to God. To participate in Christ’s ministry means we share in His life. Who He is and what He is up to defines the whole work of our ministry. Wherever Christ is, there is the ministry of the church. It is not our ministries that make Christ present and possible; it is the present, living Christ who makes our ministries possible.

The resurrection of Jesus is the assurance that Jesus not only stood in for us while He lived, but that He stands in for us still, today and tomorrow and forever, offering us – who we are and what we do – in Himself to the Father. Our lives, our worship and our ministries as well as our prayers, are given to the Father “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Our whole life and ministry are already gathered up in Him and by Him and given to the Father. Chosen in Christ, we, lowly and inadequate as we feel much of the time, are “holy and blameless before God in love ” (Ephesians 1:4) – even our often muddled ministries.

With His embodied resurrection and in union with Him, His future becomes our future as His life becomes our life. It is in this sense of opening out human being to life, to a new future beyond the limit of death, that Jesus is the second Adam. He could not fully become so until His resurrection. That life which is His by action of the Father in raising Him from death becomes ours by adoption, which is the consequence of union with Him. This is what it means that He is the Head of the race: through union with Christ, by which action of the Holy Spirit we are bonded to the living Jesus, HIs future becomes our future,. And just as Jesus, following His resurrection, no longer lives as a human being unto death, for HIs humanity is now lived unto life, we, in Him, are clothed with the humanity of His embodied resurrection life. In His resurrected human life, in union with Him this human life becomes the future for our human life. Jesus, as the true and living human, is the future for humankind. Outside of union with Him, outside of an organic, connectedness to Him, outside of being “in Christ”, there is no future in life for anyone. Even as the resurrected Lord, Jesus never ceases to be fully human. As such, He, our high priest, ever lives to be the mediator between the Father and us , bringing God to us and us to God, all in the power of the Holy Spirit.

As the resurrected and ascended Lord, Jesus is alive and reigns in power for us and for all. His resurrection and ascension have direct consequences for our lives and ministry because He is a living and acting Lord. The ascension does not mean that He no longer has any connection with us or with all. It means that in the Holy Spirit He is present. The Lord Jesus is Lord of all, ruling over space and time. He is Alpha and Omega. One thing that might mean for ministry is that it puts our efforts into perspective. The success of God’s redemptive plan is not our responsibility. It is God’s responsibility, indeed God’s act, to inaugurate the kingdom in fullness. We should think about what it means to rest in the completeness and adequacy of His reign. Important as our work is, so much more important is His work. Ministry is rightly seen within the providence of God. Jesus’ reign at the right hand of the Father is a summons to have confidence in God’s ordering of all things, and so, therefore, to be less anxious about our small part in the economy of creation’s salvation. God kills our ministries when they get into the centre of things. Our ministries are not redemptive; only the ministry of Jesus is redemptive. Apart from Jesus’ continuing ministry the church has no ministry whatsoever. But because Jesus has a resurrected ministry, we have a ministry that is entirely oriented around His living ministry.