To Encourage You

John 20:17 “Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’”

Do we have the slightest comprehension of the great gulf there is between heaven and earth?  The only way we would ever hope to comprehend this is by the condescension of Jesus from that place to this.  Jesus willingly left the glories of heaven and bridged this great gulf to experience all that we do here in this place of suffering and death.    We are told of Jesus that “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).  The very Son of God chose to depart from the realms of glory, a place where there is no sorrow, or tears, or sickness or death, to a place that is filled with such things. He left the place where He was continually glorified by the angels of Heaven, to be despised and rejected of men. 

It is beyond comprehension to think that anyone would voluntarily do such a thing, i.e., to depart from a place of such blessing and come to a place of such cursing, so that He could experience all that we do, and ultimately to die for us, the very ones that had rejected Him.  But what may even be more incredible still is expressed in the words from John 20 above.  Here, Jesus gives Mary Magdalene a message at the tomb for His apostles who were not there to experience what she had.  He told her to go tell “my brothers and say to them that ’I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Implicit in these words was the fact that as His brothers, a relationship only made possible by Christ’s death and resurrection, they too would one day be resurrected and follow Him in His ascension. 

Here we learn that Jesus bridged the gulf between heaven and earth to experience what we experience so that we could one day cross that same immeasurable gulf, but in exactly the opposite direction, to experience what He had experienced from all eternity in heaven.  What an incredible truth this is!  Jesus’ great condescension to make possible our great ascension.  Thus, these wonderful words from Paul to those who have put their faith in Christ: “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17). No wonder Paul followed these wonderful words with these: “Therefore encourage one another with these words.” 

What a wonderful God we serve who would bridge the gulf from heaven to earth with all its accompanying pain and death so that we might someday bridge that same gulf, albeit in the opposite direction, so that for those who believe, it will mean only the great glory of eternal life!