The ascension and Christ’s reign

He ascended into heaven

The creeds move straight from the empty tomb to the throne: "He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty" The Apostles' Creed. The Nicene Creed says the same: he "ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father" The Nicene Creed. After his suffering the risen Jesus "appeared to them over a span of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3). Then he led the disciples out as far as Bethany and lifted up his hands to bless them, and "While He was blessing them, He left them and was carried up into heaven" (Luke 24:51). Luke tells it again at the start of Acts.

After He had said this, they watched as He was taken up, and a cloud hid Him from their sight. They were looking intently into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.”

Acts 1:9-11

In Scripture a cloud often marks the presence of God, as on the mountain of the transfiguration (Luke 9:34). The ascension is not a journey into outer space. It is the risen Lord, still bearing our human nature, entering the glory of God's presence.

What is surprising is how the disciples reacted. They did not go home bereaved; they "returned to Jerusalem with great joy, praising God continually in the temple" (Luke 24:52-53). Jesus had told them, "it is for your benefit that I am going away" (John 16:7). Chrysostom imagines someone asking what Christ's ascension has to do with us, and answers: "For as is the head, so also is the body; as the beginning, so also the end" Chrysostom. Where the head has gone, his body will follow.

Seated at the right hand of God

The language of sitting at God's right hand comes from a psalm the New Testament quotes again and again (Acts 2:34-35, Hebrews 1:13).

The LORD said to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”

Psalm 110:1

The right hand is not a seat beside another seat; it is the place of honour and power. Augustine warns against picturing God with human limbs and says that "by the right hand itself we understand the power which He as man received from God" Augustine.

That Christ sat down tells us two things. His sacrifice is finished: "After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3). The priests of the old covenant stood day after day offering the same sacrifices (Hebrews 10:11), "But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God" (Hebrews 10:12). And his reign has begun. God raised him and "seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority" (Ephesians 1:20-21), and "He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet" (1 Corinthians 15:25). Every knee will bow at his name (Philippians 2:9-11). His kingship and priesthood are explored further in Prophet, priest and king.

What Christ is doing now

The ascended Lord has not withdrawn from us. He intercedes for us: "He always lives to intercede for them" (Hebrews 7:25; see Romans 8:34). "If anyone does sin, we have an advocate before the Father — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One" (1 John 2:1). The word is paraklētos (παράκλητος), one called alongside to help or to plead a case, the same word John's Gospel uses when Jesus promises the Spirit as "another Advocate" (John 14:16). We have an advocate in heaven and an advocate within.

He has gone to prepare a place for us (John 14:2-3). Exalted to God's right hand, he "has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear" (Acts 2:33). "When He ascended on high, He led captives away, and gave gifts to men" (Ephesians 4:8): apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, "to equip the saints for works of ministry and to build up the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-12). And he will come back in the same way he went, which is the subject of Christ's return and the millennium.

The Heidelberg Catechism gathers the benefits of the ascension under three heads. Christ is our advocate in the presence of his Father in heaven; we have our own flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that he, our head, will take us his members up to himself; and he sends us his Spirit as a pledge in return, by whose power we seek the things above and not things on earth Heidelberg Catechism, Q49. Matthew Henry adds a word of comfort for disciples left on earth as witnesses: "in heaven he manages their concerns with perfect wisdom, truth, and love" Matthew Henry.

In heaven, and with us always

Before he ascended Jesus promised, "surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). How can the one who has gone into heaven be with us? Every church confesses that Christ is truly present with his people. Lutheran and Reformed Christians differ, though, on how his ascended human nature relates to that presence.

Lutherans teach that because the divine and human natures are inseparably united in one person, Christ's exalted humanity shares in the majesty of his divinity. The right hand of God is not a confined place in the sky but God's almighty power, which fills heaven and earth; so Christ can be present according to both natures wherever he has promised to be, above all in the Lord's Supper Formula of Concord, Art. 8. The Reformed teach that Christ's body, being a true human body, remains in heaven until he returns, for "Heaven must take Him in until the time comes for the restoration of all things" (Acts 3:21). In the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, "with respect to his human nature, he is no more on earth; but with respect to his Godhead, majesty, grace and spirit, he is at no time absent from us" Heidelberg Catechism, Q47.

Each side has a concern. Lutherans fear that the Reformed view pulls Christ's two natures apart; the Reformed fear that the Lutheran view makes Christ's body something other than a true human body. Yet both mean to keep the confession of Chalcedon, neither mixing nor dividing the natures, and both rejoice that Christ is really with his church now. The difference matters most for the Lord's Supper, and Baptism and the Lord's Supper takes it up.

Meanwhile Paul's word holds for all of us: "strive for the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God" (Colossians 3:1). Our King reigns and our Advocate pleads for us, so the chaos of the world need not swallow us in fear. Many churches keep Ascension Day on the fortieth day of Easter, a Thursday. For the hope of his coming, see Will Jesus come again?

Practice