Now we know the meaning of the ascension of Christ. It was His official inauguration. First of all, He was made the Lord. As God, before His incarnation, the Lord Jesus was the Lord already. But after His incarnation, this very God became a man. God was the Lord, but man was not. Yet the Lord became a man, and this man was crucified on the cross, buried, and resurrected from the dead. It was at this time that the man Jesus became the Lord. For God to be the Lord, there is no need of any kind of inauguration. But for a small man from a lowly town in a despised country to be made the Lord requires a real inauguration. He was not made the Lord as God. As God He was Lord already. Now this man from Nazareth was inaugurated to be the Lord of all.
Peter, preaching on the day of Pentecost, said, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” Peter not only preached Christ as the Savior, but also as Lord of all. He never realized that Jesus was so great before the ascension. By the ascension he realized that the very man Jesus, whom he had been following for three and a half years, had been inaugurated to be Lord of all!
Peter also declared on the day of Pentecost that Jesus was the Christ. He was made both Lord and Christ. In Matthew 16 Peter had said that Jesus was the Christ. “And Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). However, at that time, Jesus was not officially the Christ. The word “Christ” means the anointed one, and the anointed one in the Bible means the appointed one. God anointed this man, which means God appointed Him. Christ was God’s anointed and appointed one. This appointment was made official by the ascension of Christ. By the ascension, God officially appointed Jesus as the Christ.
Christ was anointed and appointed to accomplish God’s eternal purpose, which is to build up His temple, the New Jerusalem. Praise the Lord! God appointed Jesus to do this, and this appointment was made official by His ascension. When Jesus ascended on high, God made the appointment official. In this way God told the whole universe that this is the very one whom He has appointed to accomplish His eternal plan. So Jesus became God’s Christ officially at His ascension.
But this is not all. He was also made the Prince, which means the Author, the Originator. All the things of the old creation had become old and useless to God. Now God has a new creation where everything is new. By His ascension Jesus was inaugurated to be the Author and Originator of everything new. He is not only the Author of life, but of everything.
Suppose we went to Jeremiah and asked him to tell us the meaning of a member of Christ. He would say that he simply did not know. If we were to ask the same thing of Moses, he also would not know. And if we were to ask Adam the meaning of an apostle, he would not know what we were talking about. This is because an apostle is something new. An evangelist is something new. A member of Christ is something new. They did not have any of these things in the Old Testament.
So many things in the church life today are new. These new things have been originated by Christ. God inaugurated Christ into a post to originate so many new things. Ephesians has many terms pertaining to many new things. Elijah, David, Moses, and Adam did not know any of these things, but today the smallest one among us knows them all. This is why Jesus told His disciples that the least in the kingdom is greater than those in the Old Testament (Matt. 11:11). We are bigger than Moses, David, or Elijah. They were in the Old Testament before the coming of the new Originator. After them, Jesus was inaugurated as the Originator, the Author, to originate so many new things. Hallelujah!
One day Andrew brought his brother Peter to the Lord Jesus. Immediately the Lord Jesus told Simon that his name was Cephas, meaning a stone. This was something new. In God’s old creation, every man was made of clay. But in God’s new creation, something more is originated by Christ. We must be a stone because Christ Himself is a stone. Later, Peter said, “This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:11-12). Jesus was a stone, so He made all of us stones. This is something new. He is the Author. He is the Originator.
In the Old Testament, we cannot find a verse telling us that we must take Christ into us as our everything. But Jesus came with something new. He said that He was the bread of life, and the one that eats Him will live by Him (John 6:35, 57). This is really new. From Adam through John the Baptist, no man was edible. But now Jesus comes and tells us to eat Him. He is the real Originator. He not only told us to eat Him, but also to come and drink of Him: “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37). This is also entirely new.
The Lord Jesus originated all the new things and passed them on to the church. But the church became degraded and eventually lost everything. So the poor church went back to the old things of the Old Testament, mainly the doctrines and prophecies. But today in the Lord’s recovery, we must come back to the origin. The Lord Jesus is the Author of His recovery. He is the Originator. We did not start the Lord’s recovery. He did!
Today the Lord is telling us to come back to eat, drink, and breathe of Him. These things are not only new to Moses and Elijah, they are even new to today’s Christians. In some places where we have shared these things, we have been rebuked. Some felt that it was terrible to say the Lord wants us to eat Him today. But this is altogether originated by the Lord Jesus. He was and still is the Originator, and this Originator was inaugurated at His ascension. He was made the Lord, the appointed One, and the Originator or Author.