We Believe: He Ascended into Heaven
After Jesus rose from the dead, many of his followers thought that he would soon bring about the end of history, a final judgment upon all evil and wickedness in the world, and a permanent restoration of Israel. But instead, Jesus commands his disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit, and he ascends into the clouds, vanishing from their sight. The disciples, just like us, must live in a world without the physical presence of the resurrected Christ. Why is this the case? Why didn’t Jesus stick around after he rose from the dead? As it turns out, Jesus ascends not to abandon his followers, but to empower and equip them. He ascends to grant his followers access to the Father in prayer, ownership in his Church, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Ascends to Give Us Access to the Father
Throughout the Old Testament, we find that Israel’s access to God was limited. It was veiled by clouds on Mount Sinai and curtains in the tabernacle. Those who attempted to approach God’s presence without strictly following elaborate purity rites were consumed by his radiant fiery glory. The clouds and veils that obscured his glory show that God can be known, but not known intimately. Even Moses, who converses with God on top of Mount Sinai, is denied his wish to see God face to face.
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As Jesus was crucified on Mount Golgotha, Matthew states something astonishing: that as Jesus’ body was being torn open, the temple curtain, which obscured the presence of God, was torn in two. This curtain, the barrier between Israel and God’s presence, was now removed through the sacrifice of Christ. This was the first sign that an intimate encounter with God was now being made possible for all those who believe in Jesus as Lord and God.
We Ascended, Too
When Jesus ascended into heaven, we ascended into the spiritual temple to tear down the spiritual curtain that prevents our hearts from directly accessing the Father. Through Jesus, Christians can now have immediate access to God. Since Jesus is fully human and fully divine, he can receive human prayers and immediately present them to the Father on our behalf.
When we pray to Jesus in the Spirit, there is a kind of Trinitarian conversation that happens: our prayers are lifted by the Spirit into the heavenly temple, where they are heard by Jesus and discussed with the Father. This enables us to cultivate a personal and intimate prayer life with God. We can speak to Jesus in our hearts on a human-to-human level and know that we are speaking directly and immediately to God. Jesus ascends to open up heaven to us and to allow this kind of closeness and intimacy with the triune God.
Jesus Ascends to Empower the Church
As human beings, we long to be participants, and not just spectators. If we love music, we’ll probably strive to learn an instrument. If we watch sports on television, we probably daydream about playing professionally someday. We are designed to live an active life, and so Jesus ascends to bless and empower us to participate in the most important project of all: building the kingdom of God on earth.
Jesus conquers sin and death through the cross and his resurrection, and he empowers his followers to proclaim this good news to all the ends of the earth. His followers are thus called to preach the Gospel to their neighbors and build churches that physically embody the love of God and neighbor. In essence, Jesus ascends because he wants us to be active participants in his kingdom, and this comes about first and foremost through active participation in the life of his Church.
Active Participants
Being an active participant in the church is challenging in an entertainment-saturated culture like our own. We are used to passively receiving an endless stream of media that requires nothing from us in return. Unfortunately, we can take this same approach to church, attending as passive recipients whose job it is to assess whether the preaching and music sufficiently entertain us to warrant our return.
But Jesus doesn’t want us to be passive recipients. He didn’t physically stay on earth, so we might marvel at his miracles from the bleachers. Instead, he ascended to equip us to build his kingdom, which comes through our involvement in the body of Christ. We are called to be active participants in Sunday worship—the word “liturgy” itself means “the work of the people.” We are called to serve in the church through its various ministries. And we are called to grow the Church by proclaiming Christ to those outside of the Church.
Jesus Ascends to Send the Spirit
Although Jesus ascended to enable us to pray to the Father and advance his kingdom on earth, we could do neither of these things on our own. Sin is still a part of our day-to-day existence: it prevents us from permanently accessing God and hobbles our ability to build the kingdom of God. And so Jesus ascends so that, together with the Father, he might send the Holy Spirit into the hearts of those who confess him as Lord and God.
His Spirit is like a rushing wind in our hearts, allowing our souls to be lifted into the heavenly temple, where we can worship God and bring our requests to him in prayer. His Spirit is also a powerful fire, a combustion engine in our hearts that gives us the strength to boldly declare the truth of his resurrection, to heal those who are suffering, and gather the nations in the body of Christ.
Jesus Ascends to Descend
Despite this incredible gift of the Spirit, we still mourn the loss of the physical presence of Jesus. While the Holy Spirit enables us to see and speak to Jesus in our hearts, it also spurs in us a longing to physically encounter Jesus. As the Spirit allows us to hear from Jesus is prayer, it prompts us to yearn to hear him with our physical ears. As the Spirit allows us to see the resurrected Christ in our mind’s eye, it instills in us a deep desire to see him with our physical eyes on Mount Zion.
Immediately after Jesus ascends, angels inform the disciples that Jesus will descend again from the very clouds in which he departed. These angels promise that our longing to be physically present with Jesus will be fulfilled when he returns to bring about a final judgment on sin, evil, and death, and afterwards resurrect all believers so that they might see him face to face upon Mount Zion. The Nicene Creed will thus continue by expounding upon the events that follow Jesus’ ascent, by elucidating the Holy Spirit as Third Person of the Trinity and describing the final judgment that will come when the ascended Christ descends once again.
Image: Ascension by Francisco Camilo (1651), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
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