Up

A popular animated movie has a retired widower attaching a huge bunch of balloons to his house and sailing off into the air, on "the adventure of a lifetime." Well, back around 30 AD, someone else rose up in the air, without the benefit of
balloons or anything but his own supernatural power, to begin a whole new adventure for himself and all of us. Yep, it was Jesus. Right in front of his disciples, he rose up from a hill in Judea and disappeared into the clouds. What was that all about? Let's take a brief look.

It's interesting that Jesus went up in the clouds in the same human-but-more-than-human body that was raised up from death about 40 days earlier. He didn't disappear into thin air or turn into something else. He just rose.

To where? Quite a few places in the New Testament speak of Jesus Christ being "at the right hand" of God, a position of power and favor (see Matt. 22:44, 26:64; Mark 16:19; Luke 22:69; Acts 2:33, 5:31, 7:55; Rom. 8:34; Eph. 1:20; Col. 3:1, Heb. 1:3). That's the same Jesus Christ who walked the earth with us, knows us and all our problems, and is our representative now to God. Romans 8:34 says "Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us." There is "no condemnation" (Rom. 8:1) because Jesus is there, the only perfect human, still God in the flesh (now perfected and full of glory) as our fully-righteous representative. His right standing with God, sinless perfection, is ours also; that's why we can "come boldly and confidently into God's presence" (Ephesians 3:12).

If Jesus had just vaporized somehow instead of rising in that visible, touch-able body like ours, we wouldn't be certain that he was fully representing us. But he did take that body with him, and we are assured over and over that he is there for us: "There is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5).

There's more, and we're going to keep exploring it as we go toward and past Pentecost. Don't miss it!