The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is “a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood, one can trace a slide into muddled and even dangerous ideas and practices. . . . The ascension demands that we think differently about how the whole cosmos is, so to speak, put together and that we also think differently about the church and about salvation”[1]

It may seem odd to mention the ascension at Christmas time, but it is actually very important to do so, as Wright says, for the sake of the church and our salvation, the way the author of Hebrews does in Heb. 1, and Paul does in Phil. 2. For Jesus was born in humble human flesh (Phil. 2), God incarnate, to be able to relate to our human condition, to take our redeemed humanity into the very presence of the Father from whom we were estranged in the Garden, to reconcile us with the Father, and to intercede everlastingly for us with our heavenly Father (Heb. 2:17-18; 4:14-16). The ascension, not merely the cross, not merely the resurrection, but the ascension and Jesus’s royal enthronement at the Father’s right hand, is what Christ’s birth was set to achieve: his glorious triumph over all enemies, including sin and death, having all things put under him (Eph. 1:16-23), and having called us to share his ascended glory in the church and throughout the world, in whatever we do or say or think (Col. 3:1-4, 17). Because he humbled himself, taking the form of a servant in the likeness of men at his incarnation, “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord [King!], to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8-9).

That’s what the Prophet Isaiah clearly understood as well:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this” (Isa 9:6-7).

Christ is born. Christ is King, forever and ever. Hail the incarnate, ascended King, the Prince of Peace! Merry Christmas!

Roy Atwood is a board member of Theopolis Insitute. Roy is the Deputy Head of Nehemiah Gateway University in Pogradec, Albania.

[1] N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, pp. 109-117