If your salvation depends on the death and resurrection of Christ, as it does, why pay so much attention to his ascension? Luke’s ends his Gospel with a brief account of the ascension of Jesus, Luke 24:50–53.
Receive Christ’s blessing. Christ is now the glorified Lord. Luke shows you the glory of your Lord. Near the beginning of his Gospel Luke records the blessed angelic song of joy and peace. Now he concludes with Christ blessing his disciples and their resulting joy. He has described the humiliation, suffering, and death of the Messiah. Chapter 24 recounts the triumphal resurrection. The exalted Lord instructed his disciples in the Word, showing its focus on him. Now you see the Lord ascend to the place of exaltation at the right hand of the Father. Yet this is not the end of the story, but only the end of the beginning. Volume 2 (Acts) is about to describe the continuation of Christ’s work. This will be the record of the work of the ascended, glorified Lord (who is life-giving Spirit) through the apostolic church. There is continuity with the church today, with this congregation. Christ ascended to the work which he continues today: sitting at the right hand of the Father, subduing the nations by his Word and Spirit, and ruling over his church. The ascension, no less than Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, was foretold in the Scriptures, Psalm 24:7–10; 68:18. The glorified, ascended Lord summons you to submit to his authority. It is this glorious, ascended Lord who invites you to live in fellowship with him.
“[T]he Christ who was invoked, confessed and worshipped by the faithful, was the living Lord. Though He was remembered as the One who on their behalf had surrendered His life unto death, and had ratified the new covenant in His blood, and though there was a sober realization that the perfect consummation was to be manifested only in the future manifestation of the rule of God, their present faith in Him as the Lord bound the elements of remembrance and hope together and afforded a present assurance of grace and righteousness through faith in His name.”
Ned B. Stonehouse, The Witness of Luke to Christ, p. 151
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