At the Right Hand of the Father

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Rachel Voytek, and we are in the first chapter of Acts, not to be confused with the second chapter of Acts or the musical group named 2nd Chapter of Acts. That’s a reference for…

My generation.

When we left off last time, our Lord was ascending into heaven. I’m going to start with verse 9.

And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a sabbath day's journey.

We’ll consider what followed next time, but right now we want to talk about the historical reality and the historical significance of Christ’s ascension.

For those of you who are familiar with the document, we’re going to have our Heidelberg catechisms open to the questions in and about #49, because the authors do such a fantastic job of summing up some of what’s involved here. So we’ll come and go through there and through some of the verses that are noted at the bottom of the page in the catechism.

You don’t know what a catechism is?

“I’m so glad you asked.”

A catechism is a series of questions and answers, and in religious terms it’s designed to teach children or new converts the basics of the Christian faith. It’s basic material.

The Heidelberg catechism comes out of Germany in the first and a half generation of the Reformation. Its authors are Ursinus and Olevianus, with some help from Prince Frederick. You can secure a copy and read all about the history, which I don’t plan on going into.

Not until we get there.

But it is important to note as we go through church history, one of the key points that we’ll hang our hat on are different confessions and catechisms and things like that, because they mark key points in church history and progress in understanding the scriptures.

They represent a crystallization of understanding. They were written at a time when people said, “Okay, we’ve gotten this far. We may not all agree on the next step. We may all think we know the next step, but at least we all agree this far. Let’s draw a line and write a book and teach this.”

Usually in the face of some opposition. The Catholic church didn’t write their catechism until the Protestant Reformation.

Speaking of which, the first question we get after “What’s a catechism?” is “Wait, isn’t that Roman Catholic?” Not necessarily. Rome does have one, but a lot of denominations and in fact Bible teachers and theologians have created catechisms to teach by questions and answers.

Now, if you’re looking for innovation and new ways of thinking and how to critique things, you don’t want catechetical instruction. Catechetical instruction says, “Here’s the question. Here’s the answer. Memorize it.”

There is a right answer. You don’t need to find it in your own words. Here are the words.

These are the best words that multiple generations have used. You can learn them, too. We can always go beyond that, but again this is elementary learning. When we teach children the times tables, if we still do – I’m not sure about that anymore – we teach 2x2 = 4, not 2x2 is 22 +/- … No, it’s very set. There are subjects where you want students to know specific answers. There’s a time for thinking through things and making application and expanding. This is not it. This is where our minds are to submit to what past generations have learned through long struggle and, as you say, through conflict.

Here with the Heidelberg catechism the conflict was on the one hand with Roman Catholicism, but on the other hand there was a mild conflict also with Lutheranism, which actually shows up in these questions.

Luther and most of his followers taught that Jesus’ body upon his ascension became ubiquitous, which is to say everywhere. This was necessary to maintain their doctrine of the supper, that when you come to the Lord’s supper the bread and wine don’t become the body and blood of Christ, but the body and blood of Christ are everywhere so you take the one with the other. That was a huge sacrifice to make to maintain a mistaken understanding of the supper, because it calls into question the theology of Chalcedon and the doctrine of the incarnation.

Jesus is God and man. He is truly God. He is truly man. To say that the humanity has now acquired omnipresence is to undo that, so the writers of the catechism in question 48 – “Since his human nature is not present wherever his Godhead is, are not then these two natures in Christ separated from one another?”

That is how the Lutherans would ask it. “Are you being Nestorians?” or whatever the opposite is.

Yeah, aren’t you separating Christ? And the catechetical answer is not at all. “For since the Godhead is incomprehensible and everywhere present, it must follow that the same is not limited with the human nature He assumed, and yet remains personally united to it.”

It’s a human nature and therefore finite, so it’s not limited with his human nature and yet remains personally united to it. The union is personal – again hypostatic union is the technical term – not that both natures have to be in the same place at the same time. That’s kind of a problem since the divine nature is transtemporal anyhow and eternal.

So this is something of what the catechism is dealing with, for those of you who care about such things. Some of you already know it, but we’re coming to a question and we’ll talk around it a little bit and I’ll read it in more depth eventually. The question is “What benefits do we receive from Christ’s ascension into heaven?”

First, he is our advocate in heaven in the presence of his Father. Second, we have our own flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that Christ our head will also take us, his members, up to himself.

There’s a third, and there’s a great deal going on in the third, and there are also some things that go beyond that, but here we’re talking not so much about the session, his sitting at the right hand of the Father, as we are about the fact of his ascension. So why does it matter that Jesus in his humanity left the earth and went to his Father’s right hand?

The first thing we have to do is make sure we understand what I just said because we’re talking about a historical event. Jesus was really there – yes, resurrected, on the verge of all the glories of heaven, and yet real – flesh, bone, heartbeat, brain waves, respiration. All of that’s going on.

He is a real man standing in front of them and that real man, by his divine power, ascends. He leaves our planet. He goes from this location to another location, which means that heaven is a real place. He’s not passing out of our history into mythology. He’s not passing beyond the counting clocks of history and the calendars and the geography into “Bible people, Bible stories, Bible lands, wherever that is.”

This is something that writers of so-called Christian textbooks really struggle with. They acknowledge that Jesus ascended, but then it’s almost as if – you know the old phrase, “Jesus has left the building.”

We begin talking about his philosophy, his ethics, his message, we talk about the gospel, we talk about his church, we may talk about the Holy Spirit, but we tend to ignore Jesus himself except as we pray to him about our own personal needs. And even there sometimes there’s a question of, “Well, he’s in heaven. What exactly can he do for us?” because we forget who he is.

The first thing we have to understand is that he did not pass out of history. Heaven is a place where clocks tick. Elijah and Enoch are there in human bodies, but so are the souls of the departed saints. “How does that work?” I have no idea, but it is a place where time happens, where history flows, and one day heaven and earth are destined to be one.

This is what John sees at the end of Revelation 21 and 22. The new Jerusalem descends from heaven into earth and there’s a union of the two. Heaven was made first, formed and filled and lighted, and earth was made to be like heaven. There we could talk about the dominion mandate, the fall, the covenant of grace, and now Christ ascending to accomplish those purposes. So first thing, this is real. This is historical.

Second, he went from one place to another. I’m skipping here to the second part of the catechism question, “We have our own flesh in heaven.”

I mentioned last time, and I did not look it up to see who it was, but there was some weird sect in Christianity that said when Jesus ascended he dropped his body off in the sun as he went. I don’t know the details, but I can sure guess that somebody was offended at the idea that Jesus would maintain his physical material substance in heaven. It had to be some kind of Gnostic influence.

You know what that means. We need to <ding!> ring the Gnostic bell.

For those of you who are new to this, this is the Gnostic bell, which we will ring frequently, it seems, anytime Gnosticism sticks its head into Christian theology or Western culture.

Anytime people denigrate physical existence.

Yes, and that’s the danger here, to think this is a spiritual thing in a Greek Platonic sense – that is, a non-material, non-temporal or trans-temporal kind of thing. The body is going into never-never-land, and we never never go there. But we have our flesh in heaven – our flesh.

First of all, Jesus being born of the virgin Mary, conceived by the Spirit in her womb, has human flesh, so in the broadest sense as the second Adam he’s human, and the flesh is that of common humanity. He has human DNA, to put it in modern terms.

The second thing, the “our” particularly is directed toward disciples, toward Christians. He’s our flesh. He’s our head. We’re his body, and the life that’s in him flows to us through his Spirit as we lay hold of Christ by faith. There’s a vital union. This is what Jesus talked about in John 25, “I am the vine, you are the branches,” and it’s echoed throughout the New Testament.

Romans 6 probably is the starting point –

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Romans 6 sums up, “So you’re united to Jesus in his death. When he died, we died. When he was buried, we were buried. When he rose again, that was our resurrection, and resurrection life now works in us.”

Romans 6 stops there, but Colossians 3 takes us the next step and says –

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

So we also share in Jesus’ ascension, which explains in Revelation 4 and 5, for instance, why the church is seen in heaven on the Lord’s Day, because that’s where the church is. That’s why we are already counted kings and priests, because Jesus is the Emperor, the Divine King, and our High Priest, and sharing his anointing and being united to his body we’re kings and priests too, and so on.

Again, the organic idea of one head, one body, one life, the life is Christ’s, his resurrection life, communicated to us by the Spirit, and that’s the last thing in the catechism about this.

So why does he still have to have a body? Because of this. Because otherwise you just cut off the head and left the body on earth to kind of writhe around and die and corrupt and get yucky. The body without a head is a monstrosity or a horror. It’s easy sometimes to think of the Church that way, and yet God’s promise is that the life is real and that we are in him. One of Paul’s favorite phrases is “in Christ.” “You are in Christ,” he reminds us again and again and again.

I think we could add to both Hebrews 7:24 and Hebrews 9:24 here.

For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.

He goes physically there and is ever in God’s presence, which links to Hebrews 7 where it speaks of him as our high priest.

But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

He is alive in heaven and actively interceding at a physical place, the right hand of God, as our high priest. And because he always lives, therefore we always have a high priest and we always have his resurrection life.

The passage that the catechism quotes for some of that is 1 John 2:1 –

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

It is in part his mere presence, but it is also, as you said, his activity. He has a job. We talk about the finished work of Christ, but sometimes we forget the unfinished work of Christ. The unfinished work is to take his finished work and to go on applying it to us and before the Father from here on out.

There’s a similar passage starting in Romans 8:33 –

Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

There’s an active presenting of his finished work, of his shed blood before the Father, not that God is this angry tyrant just looking for a chance to smack us down. He’s the one who sent his Son in the first place, but in order that before the whole sentient universe his righteousness, holiness, and justice be vindicated and justified, he’s chosen this way as the best way, and therefore it’s the right way, that his Son should sit at his right hand not only as king, but as priest, as advocate. We have an advocate with the Father.

The Greek word is paraclete. It’s the same word that’s used of the Holy Spirit in John 14, 15, and 16. It’s one called alongside. It can be used of someone who steps in to help in an emergency, but it could also be used in a law court of the lawyer who stepped in to defend you before a judge, to testify of your innocence and prove your case. So both the Holy Spirit and the Son are paracletes, although in different roles. It is basic to the Son’s work that he do this in his resurrection body, the body that was slain and that is now risen.

I don’t know if the catechism quotes this passage, but in Revelation this is one of my favorites to teach from. God the Father is seen holding out the covenant document, the scroll with seven seals, to his church.

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.

Then John weeps because he understands. This is a picture of redemption. God has this wonderful plan, this wonderful inheritance, this covenant for his people, but it needs a Mediator, an executor, an advocate, and for 4,000 years the search was made. There was no one. Men couldn’t do it. They’re fallen. Animals don’t work. Demons are wicked. God in his own essence can’t suffer and die, so historically for 4,000 years there wasn’t anybody except “I promise.”

Then as John is crying and feeling the weight of this, one of the elders says –

And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

John looks and he sees not the Lion, he sees the Lamb, as it had been sacrificed. It was dead but it’s alive. He’s standing up. He’s upright. This is the morning and evening sacrifice, the standing sacrifice. But he’s alive now, and it’s because of this that he comes and takes the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne. When he takes the book, all of heaven rejoices, and I won’t read all of their songs of praises, but “You are worthy to take the book,” “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain,” “Blessing and honor and glory…”

Many of the New Testament songs that we still sing are based on this, that Jesus is worthy to stand before the Father and to take up this job of executor of the new covenant. Part of that is standing there as our Advocate and pleading his blood, reminding the Father that it’s all paid for.

Again, it’s not because the Father doesn’t want to be reminded, but because he does want to be reminded, just as he wants to hear our prayers. He knows what we’re going to pray for, and yet he says, “Pray. Ask.” So the Son is there praying and asking, and in Him God is gracious to us.

So the catechism again, summing up –

First, he’s our Advocate in the presence of his Father in heaven.

Secondly, we have our flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that Christ our head will also take us, his members, up to himself. That adds a dimension because it is unnatural for a head and body to be separate, even though there’s a spiritual unity. Before Jesus left, the night he was betrayed he said something along these lines to his apostles.

This is my paternal grandma’s favorite verse. As she was getting on in life she just kept telling us this verse over and over again, with full understanding. She knew exactly what she was saying.

“Let not your hearts be troubled. If you believe in God believe also in Me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you,” and that pathway is through the cross and through the empty tomb, and on into heaven at the Father’s right hand.

There’s no skipping the cross here. His going is, first of all, going to the cross, but beyond that he’s going all the way to heaven. First he prepares a way for us by his shed blood, and then by his resurrection, the power and the life he will be granting us, and then by going and sitting beside the Father and, so far as we’ve seen, acting as our Advocate. There’s more, but that’s crucial.

Then he says this. “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there you may be also.” He asks something of his Father along the same lines in John 17 in his priestly prayer. “Father, I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for that lovest me before the foundation of the world.”

Jesus is human, and as a human being he wants us nearby. Temporal and geographical proximity actually do mean something to him, and because of this he promises to come and collect us. He comes and collects us at our deaths, but one day he will come again for his whole Church and receive us into glory. This is the doctrine of the resurrection and the accompanying rapture which lifts us up to heaven to meet him and greet him and bring him back to final judgement and to the eternal kingdom.

The fact that he’s in heaven as a true human being, and he’s our Head, means he’s coming back for us. He has not abandoned us. Very small children, when mommy leaves the room, will often start screaming. So do cats sometimes. You have to reassure them, “Mommy is coming right back because you’re here. She’s going to come back for you.”

Mom always comes back.

Yes. To borrow a line from a movie, I once told one of our daughters, “I will always come for you,” and tried to keep that promise.

Then there’s one other thing the catechism adds. Thirdly, that he sends us his Spirit as an earnest, by whose power we seek those things which are above where Christ sits on the right-hand of God, and not on things on the earth.

It’s kind of a loop or a hook. He sends us his Spirit, but the Spirit then directs us back to him and teaches us and enables us to focus our attention on his kingship, his priesthood, his role as our chief prophet and teacher, and to count everything in this world as secondary, as subsidiary to his purposes, to seek his kingdom, his righteousness, that all these other things may be added to us. He’ll take care of the other stuff, but our chief concern is to be seeking Christ, and Christ is in heaven so our affections are to be set there.

We read the passage in Colossians.

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. So ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

I think we could also add the Ephesians 2:6 verse here, where we speak of the fact that we are seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. The tense of the verb is present. It’s not that we will be seated, but we even now are, and that’s part of the benefit we have of Christ as a true man in heaven. We are joined with him there in sitting and reigning even now, and that is part of what motivates our eyes to look up.

Hebrews calls it the anchor of our soul, that hope that Jesus is already in heaven and has already guaranteed our reigning with him, our complete salvation we might say. So him being there is what moves our eyes from this earth up there, so that we in some ways are already in heaven now.

And the Bible regularly talks about the Church as being a heavenly people, as living in heaven, living for the presence of God. Then with regard to Lord’s Day worship it re-emphasizes this. “You are come to Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” and to an innumerable company of angels, who we go to worship.

There’s a level added. Not only are we, by virtue of the Spirit, in Christ’s representation in heaven, but we draw near to God. Draw near is an Old Testament phrase that means come into the presence of God. How do we do that? We go to church, where Christ reveals himself to us by His word and in the sacraments and in the persons of other Christians.

Again this is historical reality. This is not fantasy. This is not mystical experience, but it is something that has to be believed by faith. We go to church and we don’t see angels, and sometimes our own singing and that of our choirs doesn’t sound particularly angelic, and yet it is a sweet savor in God’s nostrils and a sweet song in his ears.

That’s reassuring especially when we’re wrangling small children. It doesn’t seem like a very spiritual time.

Yes, and forgive me while I go off on a little tangent here, another one of my soapboxes. The God who ordained that men and women should have children is the same God who would ordain that his people should worship on the Lord’s Day. He’s also the same God – and pardon my Baptist friends – that we should baptize our children.

Is that magic? No, it’s not magic and it’s not a guarantee that this particular child will be saved, but it is a promise that God welcomes the children of believers into his presence, and communicates his gospel to them, which means what I just said. Children should be brought into the presence of the Lord and hear the gospel. They should not be shuffled off into side rooms to watch Veggie Tales.

He knew they were wiggly and noisy when he called them and said, “Suffer the children to come to me.”

Yes, he knew they were wiggly and noisy. He knew that sometimes they wet their pants right in the middle of a service, that they throw up, that they won’t stop screaming, and he’s not bothered by it. Jesus loves the little children. He wants them there. He wants them in his presence, which means that he’s far less a stickler for hour formats than sometimes we are.

He’s after our hearts, but he’s also after our children, and therefore he expects us to bring them. “Permit the little children to come to me. Forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” End of soapbox.

What we’ve been talking about primarily is our Lord’s ascension and why it’s important that he ascended in his physical body. We haven’t even technically got to “and he sat down at the right hand of the Father.” Luke and Mark both talk about it. It’s here in Acts, although I don’t think the words ‘sat down’ are there but we have it elsewhere, and probably next time we’ll start there and then move on.

The question becomes “And having ascended, what then? He sits down at the right hand. What does that mean?” The right hand of power is the Commander’s chair. It’s the bridge of the universe. It’s the throne. It’s where the ruler sits to rule, and we need to talk about that. We need to talk about what it means for Jesus to actively rule the universe. It’s true that he rules the world with truth and grace. That’s absolutely true, and that’s the nature of the redemptive kingdom. However, he does not do it in a spiritual desert, in isolation from everything else.

Sometimes we get that idea. “Jesus is trying to win the world, but he really doesn’t have much in the way of assets or backup here, so he’s just doing the best he can with a lot of scuzzy sinners and a really rotten church. You know, we can’t really expect too much of this before the end, which obviously is going to be very soon because even God can’t do much with this planet.” No, no, no, and no.

We need to consider not just his outpouring of the Spirit upon his church, and his active use of his Church, his Word, his gospel, and the inworking of the Spirit to change lives. We also need to talk about his absolute providential control over history as the one who makes the sun rise and set, the one who raises up kings and puts down kings, the one who brings wars and rumors of wars upon nations when they rebel against him, and who opens new technologies, movable type, new forms of printing, the internet, ways of reaching out and touching the world with the gospel.

These are not historical accidents. This is not inevitable historical evolution on a cultural level. This is Jesus at work through sinful broken tools so that he can accomplish his Father’s purpose – all nations blessed.

That’s what we’re going to need to talk a little bit more about as we move on and try to get probably to Acts 2, because that’s where some of this comes out plain. Acts 2 is a sermon about “What does it mean that Jesus has ascended?” Peter is going to tell us some of these things and that will be next time.

Sounds good. Let’s wrap up with some recommendations then.

I have one and I guess a lot of times I say “I have one, but it’s random.” My random recommendation is a challenge to see how many vegetables you can eat in a single meal.

Hey, that’s fun.

Sometimes I will sit down at the table with David and say, “Hey, let’s count,” and I’ll get 8-10 and those are my exciting days. I know, simple things.

Recently I did a challenge to myself to cook through the alphabet because I was tired of all the meals I was cooking. It was fun. I couldn’t think of anything for the letter U except ube. Costco has these ube-flavored shortbread cookies and I was like, “That’ll work.”

I thought I could come up with something clever for you and I’m failing utterly.

See? It’s hard. “Uncooked?”

There you go. Uncooked eggs.

It could be anything.

I will recommend a song. It’s one that I just relistened to today. I have a playlist that I keep. I had one for Gretchen before she was born. I put this playlist together, partially because my midwife told me that sometimes people like to have music playing during labor. No, I did not want music playing during labor, but I had this great playlist put together, so when we were expecting Ransom I started a playlist for him, too, and it was nowhere near as long. It’s like half an hour long, but I keep adding to it so maybe it will be long someday.

This one is called Music From a Garden. It’s by The Gray Havens, which is a Christian folk group, and it’s a retelling of creation with kind of a Narnian flavor to it. What strikes me about it is how the chord structure really reflects the tone of the words. It’s vast open sweeping melodies and harmonies that are tightly knit together and yet grand, and they have that open feeling and the depiction of a Lion’s voice and the song that we keep dancing to, even today. That’s Music From a Garden by The Gray Havens.

Mine’s not going to be quite so random. I’m going to recommend, like a young pastor friend of mine, that you acquire a copy of some catechism amenable to your denominational preferences and start teaching your children.

My friend is not from a particularly Reformed background, but he says he loves Reformed theology and he decided to teach his very very young son the Heidelberg Catechism, not any of the children’s watered-down versions or any such thing. He’s going right for the jugular. He loves it and the kid’s doing great.

Can I ask how old? I’m asking myself how soon I can start teaching Gretchen the Heidelberg.

The boy’s about 2-1/2 and they’ve been doing this at least six months, possibly a year. I’m sure they started slow and a few words at a time, but why not? So my recommendation, if you don’t have a denominational catechism, try the Heidelberg Catechism.

Awesome. Thank you both so much for this conversation. It’s been a delight. This was one of those episodes where I just get to sit and listen and say, “Wow, yes, that is so cool” and learn, so thank you so much.

A big thank you also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband, who edits the show for us and makes our technology work. We would not be here if it were not for him. A big thank you also to our financial supporters who pay for the editing software that David uses. We super appreciate that, and we appreciate you for listening, dear listener. Whoever you may be, wherever you are, thank you.

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