OUR LORD WHO ASCENDED

Jesus' final hours were marked by extreme fatigue for being awake for up to 33 hours starting from the morning of the day before the crucifixion to His death at around 3:00 in the afternoon. 

His last hours were also marked by deep humiliation from being lied about, derided, spat on and mocked. 

He was in emotional pain from being betrayed and abandoned by His friends as well as leaving His mother behind.

 He was in  existential pain when His sense of closeness with His father in heaven was stripped away. 

He was in excruciating  physical pain from being repeatedly struck on His head and face, scourged and nailed to a cross and lifted up, suspended between heaven and earth.

After undergoing this, His body began to fail under the prolonged duress. Multiple cycles of shock had come and gone and His body, getting no reprieve from the stresses, began to undergo  organ failure. 

Now, emptied of every last reserve of strength, He used His last breath to commit His Spirit to God His Father and He bowed His head and died.

The sinless, righteous, kind-hearted and brave Lamb of God, who had been obedient to His father through every moment of His life, remained perfectly obedient to God even to the final act of giving His life up to fulfill the requirements of His Father; that He die for the sins of the world.

As all these events were happening in a very public arena, a devine wisdom was at work cloaked in such secrecy that the end result of the death of Jesus was unknown to the spiritual rulers of the kingdom of darkness. This is outlined in  1 Corinthians 2 verse 6 - 8;

Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

As apostle Paul said, truly they would not have crucified the Lord of glory because the death of Jesus made a passage for Him into the headquarters of the kingdom of darkness and it was while He was there, having passed every minute test of law, that the absolute perfection of the Son of God was given full expression in a reffulgent blast of light that tore the gates of hell off their hinges and rendered the kingdom of darkness a humiliated, broken and  defeated remnant of its rebellious ambitions.

All this was revealed to all of creation and Jesus emerged triumphant in ressurection that proved His victory over evil.

What then followed was the ascension into heaven where the man Jesus, having undergone the most brutal possible destruction of a human being, triumphed over death by having overcome the world by emerging as holy and perfect under the most stressful conditions imaginable.

Jesus was now given the throne of rulership over heaven and earth with total authority over every creature be it in heaven or earth or below the earth. He is the majesterial King above all kings and the Lord above all lords.

This is the ascended Jesus Christ. High and lifted up and worthy of all honor and praise forever and ever.

Amen.