No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. (John 3.13)

History is marked by humanity’s attempt to usurp the divine. The advent of our failure was to take the fruit in the garden believing we could be like God. We have built towers to cut the skies and claim the throne-room of God. We have an insatiable belief that we can evolve beyond our finite limitations. At our worst we believe we can increase beyond our station and, by killing a “disillusionment” of God, become supermen no longer bound to laws and moral constraints. It is saddening to see the bloody and amoral epochs humanity has won for itself in its futile attempts to storm heaven.

We could never ascend to heaven in our own power. We could never experience the heavenlies within our own efforts, at best misguided and at worst megalomaniacal. God is fully aware of this. Our crippling sin is no surprise to Him. Mindful of this He removed us from the garden to keep us from the tree of life and waste eternity striving toward self-salvation.

We could not ascend, but He could descend. Jesus is our descending ascender. Jesus, fully God and fully man, descended into the heart of humanity and became our access to heaven. Jesus is the door to eternity we could never open ourselves. Jesus is the stairway to heaven we could never build. Jesus is the ladder to the throne of our holy God we could not climb in our sinful weakness. We now have access to our beloved Father which was opened by Jesus our descending ascending Savior.

Jesus, thank you that you saw the impasse and bridged it. You descended so that we might ascend to the Holy Father clothed in your righteousness.