In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven . . . .

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. . . . All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit . . . .

Acts 1:1–2; 2:1–2, 4

In these first two chapters of Luke’s history of the church, there is one great statement of the Son’s ascension—“he was taken up to heaven"—and one great statement of the Spirit’s descent—"came from heaven.” These two movements of two persons of the Trinity, to and from the Father, can hardly be overestimated for their significance for the revelation of who God is, for the salvation of humanity, for its incorporation into the church, and for the establishment of the new creation. 

God is Revealed

First, these acts of the Son and the Spirit teach us about God—about who God is. They give evidence of the irreducible identity of each as persons in the Godhead. It is common today in so-called classical Trinitarian thought to reduce the notion of persons to "relations" rather than describing them as "persons-in-relation." It is true that the persons of the Godhead are one in essence and one in communion, but they are mysteriously also persons. Of course, divine persons are not to be thought of as exactly the same (univocal) as human persons. Human persons do reflect the image of the triune God, but they are only analogous to divine persons. For one thing, divine persons are completely mutually internal to one another, whereas human persons-in-relation can only, at best, be interdependent. Each person of the Trinity is in the other, yet each is not the other, with respect to their personhood. The terms coinherence or perichoresis are used to describe this state in which divine persons interpenetrate each other totally and yet retain their irreducible identity. It is not through a priori philosophical reasoning that we arrive at the personhood yet oneness of the Trinity. It is through observation of the history of the persons, and this is nowhere more evident than in the two movements of the Son and the Spirit in Acts 1 and 2. There is a distinctness about the Son as he ascends to the Father after accomplishing the atonement of humanity and the cosmos. There is a distinctness to the Spirit as he descends upon the early church to baptize it into existence, to be the Gift of the Father through the Son to every believer, and to apply the saving work of the Son to every repentant soul he awakens. 

Keeping the distinctness of the divine persons in their acts is crucial to proper Christian theology. Sometimes we may hear sincere Christians in their prayers thanking the Father “for dying on the cross for us.” This is sincere but it is confused theology. It is the Son who died on the cross. It is true that as he died, the Father was in him and with him, for when Jesus claimed that he was in the Father and the Father was in him (Jn. 14:11), there is no reason to believe this was not the case on the cross. Two doctrines of Trinitarian life and acts are these: there is a doctrine of appropriations by which each person does distinct things (the Father elects, the Son reconciles, the Spirit regenerates), whilst, at the same time, there is a doctrine of the indivisibility of the being and acts of the divine persons (called in Latin, Opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt). 

These two doctrines apply to these great movements of the Son and the Spirit in Acts. It is clear that the Son ascends and the Spirit descends. However, the Son’s resurrection is enacted by the Spirit’s power (Rom. 1:3-4) and by the Son’s ascent the Father gifts the Spirit to Son, who pours out the Spirit at Pentecost. And by the Spirit’s descent the Son is brought into union with the believers, is conjoined to him as his church, and his character is formed in them.               

But why did Jesus ascend in a body to heaven? And why did the Spirit descend with visible signs? 

A Finished Work is Celebrated, an Unfinished Mission Begun (the Baton is Passed)

The bodily ascension of Jesus into heaven, the dwelling place of God, is a massive and unmistakable communication that God has taken humanity into the Godhead, making what had been accomplished in the incarnation a perpetual reality, and bringing humanity to its intended goal. Christ’s resurrection gave him a glorified humanity, and by his ascension he carried that humanity into the throne room of God there to intercede for us, and one day to bring redeemed humanity into the new creation. One significance among many of bodily ascension is that God has reaffirmed his creation.    

At a much more mundane level, the ascension of Jesus in a body also let his disciples know that this resurrection disappearance was final, and that his atoning mission was complete. When Jesus had ascended, that is, was “taken up” as Luke records it, this was a sign of the Father’s delight in all he had accomplished on earth in his saving mission. He “sat down” (Heb. 1:3; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2) at the Father’s right hand, indicating the completion of his work as Priest, and signifying his coronation as King. However, the sitting down was accompanied by the word “until.” That is, Jesus was seated as King Priest in heaven until his reappearing at the second coming when his glory would be revealed universally. So what was to happen in between his ascension and his second coming? As T. F. Torrance commented, since the kingdom did not just come immediately when Jesus ascended, there was an eschatological reserve regarding what happened.¹ The kingdom has come, and the outpouring of the Spirit was the sign of this. Yet the kingdom is breaking in gradually from on high and it will only fully come at the Parousia. 

So, the visible, historical acts of Jesus’s ascent and the descent of the Spirit were given so that the disciples would know that the baton for kingdom mission had been passed on to the third person of the Trinity who would be the primary agent of the Trinity at work on earth until the second coming. The restrictions associated with the ministry of Jesus on earth, and now in heaven, were surpassed by the work of the Spirit everywhere and all at once. The book of Acts has been called the Acts of the Apostles but it is really the Acts of the Holy Spirit through the apostles. But the reality of coinherence pervades the book, for everywhere the Spirit goes, and in all the sermons preached, Christ is glorified and his church grows. The work of the Spirit produces Christ in his people both in character and in acts—what the Spirit does in empowering the Son in Luke, he does for the people of the Son in Acts. 

One should not imagine that Jesus is twiddling his thumbs as a “seated” person in heaven. Hebrews describes that he has an ongoing ministry as our King Priest. He guides world mission and affairs from his throne as King; he intercedes for his people as Priest, granting cleansing from their sins, ministering strength and comfort when they are suffering, and presenting their prayers and worship as priests to the Father as a fragrant incense. In all of this, the Spirit is active in the Son’s activity. He is that “other comforter” (Jn. 14:16) to which Jesus points. In fact, the Spirit’s aim as the “quiet” person of the Trinity is precisely to work in perfect communion with the Son and to glorify the Son (Jn. 16:14).        

The Giving Gift is Given

One very specific reward which the Father bestowed upon his Son when he ascended was the Gift of the Spirit. Without engaging the centuries of conflict in the church regarding the filioque (and the Son), perhaps, as a number of mediating theologians have suggested, our cue should be taken from what happens historically in the economic Trinity as described in various New Testament passages, including in this Acts passage. It seems clear that the Spirit is given by the Father through the Son (per filium). Even the chronological sequence of the ascension and the descent of the Spirit is suggestive of this order. It is not until the Son ascends to heaven that the Spirit descends from heaven. In John 14:16-17, Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.” The Father gives the Spirit to the Son who pours out the Spirit on the church. And if this is true in the economy, it seems most likely that this corresponds with eternal reality in the immanent Trinity. 

But even the per filium way of seeing the relationship between the Son and the Spirit must not tempt us to underplay the dignity and deity and personhood of the Spirit. It is true that the Spirit does apply the work of the Son in salvation and healing and in participation in his mission to the world. But this does not mean that the Spirit is merely a divine scivie! The Spirit is himself the "Gift," a title given by some of the Church Fathers who wished to emphasize the deity and dignity of the Spirit as God. The New England theologian, Jonathan Edwards, made it one of his main ambitions to bring honour to the Holy Spirit, an honour equal to that of the Father and the Son, a value as Gift commensurate with the value of the sacrifice that procured it. And more recently, theologian Tom Smail emphasized that the Holy Spirit is not just Gift. He is the Giving Gift.² That is, he does work that only God can do, and he gives gifts that only God can give. That is, he regenerates people, he incorporates believers into the body of Christ, he seals them as belonging to God, his presence in their lives is a harbinger of all that is to come, and in the in-between time he gives them remarkable charismata that enable them to minister supernaturally. All of this leads theologian John Milbank even to speak of the Spirit as the “other atoner.”³  

Let us seek afresh to be under the reign of Christ, filled with the Spirit, that we might be changed in character and empowered in servant mission to our broken world.