What did the ascension look like? 

Today we live in a world that views heaven as a long way away. We imagine that if Jesus is “in heaven” he is not relating to us any more – he’s gone away and left us by ourselves. But in the biblical worldview, heaven and earth are meant to join together, and where heaven and earth join together is the temple. To say that Jesus is now “in heaven” is to make a statement about the true temple being Jesus’ own human body (this is affirmed in John 2:21).

So how does that work, granted that heaven and earth are not fully joined together as they will one day be? In the last 300 years in Western culture, we’ve had an ‘upstairs/downstairs’ heaven and earth vision of how stuff works, but that’s not the way it’s usually described in scripture.

There are some passages in the New Testament that speak of a present ‘secret’ reality, of something that is ‘hidden-but-to-be-revealed’. 1 John 3:2 says that when Jesus appears “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”. When he ‘appears’ one day, we will realize that he has been there all along.

Paul says the same in Colossians 3: If you are raised with Christ, you are seated with him in the heavenly places. When Christ, who is our life, appears, you will “appear with him”. The heavenly places are not miles away ‘upstairs’. They are right here with us.

I do not know exactly what the ascension looked like. But it seems to me that the idea of a cloud receiving Jesus is rather like what happened at the transfiguration: there was a cloud and a voice from the cloud. This is the living presence of God saying: This really is my Son, he is now with me.

If that means there is some vertical movement then I’ve got no problem with that. The danger is that it makes people in our culture think: “Jesus is some kind of weird spaceman, then.” That plays into the wrong view of the second coming as well – that Jesus is going to be floating downwards on a cloud. 

It is highly likely that if heaven and earth are coming together, we wouldn’t have adequate language to describe it.

Reflect: How should the fact that the heavenly places are with us impact the way you live your daily life?