Denny answers:
Jesus rose up to heaven and is ruling with God the Father.
After dying on the cross for sin and becoming alive again three days later, Jesus spent 40 days teaching His followers and showing them He was really alive (Acts 1:3).
After 40 days, Jesus took His followers to a mountain. They wondered if Jesus would make peace in the world right away and rule over their country Israel. But Jesus said only God the Father knew that time.
Then something amazing happened to Jesus as they were standing on the mountain. “After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up 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).
So why did Jesus go to heaven and not stay on earth? Just before He died, Jesus gave one reason why: “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3).
On a day that only God the Father knows, Jesus will return and take His followers to live with Him forever (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17). Until that time, Jesus wants His followers growing to be more like Him, obeying His Word, and sharing His truth to all people.
Does that sound hard? Yes, but Jesus promised to send believers a Helper—the Holy Spirit (Remember the Trinity that God is three-in-one: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit). That’s another reason why Jesus, God the Son, went to heaven—so He could send the Holy Spirit to earth (John 16:7; Acts 2:33). The Holy Spirit helps Christians know and obey the truth and gives them power to be witnesses—to share about Jesus throughout the whole world (John 16:7-15; Acts 1:5-8).
A final reason why God brought His Son to heaven was to lift up Jesus because He’d finished His work on the cross. Jesus made Himself low to become a man. He suffered and died to take the punishment of sin for believers. Then God the Father lifted His Son up to sit at His right hand. Sitting at God’s right hand shows Jesus has finished His saving work and is now ruling. He is King of kings and Lord of lords (Ephesians 1:20-23; Revelation 17:14).
Bible Truth
- “After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19; see also Luke 24:50-53).
- “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:5-11).
- “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven” (Hebrews 1:3).
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