Where is Jesus? A rather impor­tant question, wouldn’t you say? You call yourself a Christian, a follower of Christ. You say He is the most important person in your life. But how could you say this, if you don’t know where He is?

With Us, and Not With Us⤒🔗

Maybe you don’t think about this question much, because the an­swer is so obvious. Ask any be­lieving child where Jesus is, and they will give you a simple answer: He’s in heaven.

Such a child would be quite cor­rect. We read in verse 11 of Acts 1 about the angels declaring to the disciples, just after Jesus as­cended: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” He was taken from the earth, and went to heaven. And since He hasn’t come back yet, that’s where He remains to this day. Question answered. But there’s more to it than this, is­n’t there? We read Jesus quoted in Matthew 28, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I am with you always. And yet, He isn’t with us, because He left to go to heaven. What are we to make of this?

Jesus promises us in John 14:18, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Jesus here is assuring His followers that He would send the Holy Spirit to live in their hearts. And in making this promise, He is saying to them, “I will come to you.”

The Son and the Holy Spirit are two distinct persons. Neverthe­less, they are so closely linked that Jesus can say, “When the Spirit lives in your heart, I live in your heart.”

Does this mean that when Christ comes to us with the Holy Spirit, He is leaving heaven to be with us here again? No, of course not. Jesus still remains in heaven. In order to understand how Jesus can be both with us and not with us at the same time, we have to remember how Jesus Christ is both God and man. It’s his human nature that remains in heaven. But when it comes to His divine nature, He is with us now.

The Heidelberg Catechism spells this out quite clearly in Answer 47: “Christ is true man and true God. In his human nature Christ is not now on earth; but in his divinity, majesty, grace and Spirit he is not absent from us for a moment.”

In Heaven Pleading Our Cause←⤒🔗

So, Christ is in heaven in His hu­manity, and He is with us in His divinity. So what? Does this really matter? It might be interesting the­ology, at least for those of us in­clined to think about such things, but does it really affect us in our everyday lives? Well, yes, it abso­lutely does.

You have to remember that we benefit greatly from Christ being in heaven, but also being with us here on earth.

Christ didn’t go to heaven simply because He was tired of being on earth and wanted to go home. He wasn’t trying to get away from it all. No, He ascended to his rightful place of glory at the right hand of God, and He did it for our good. For our good!

For one thing, think about how Christ pleads our cause in heaven in the presence of his Father. As Hebrews 7:25 says, “Consequently, he (that is Christ) is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” And as Ro­mans 8:34 teaches us, Christ Je­sus, the one who died, and even more than that, the one who was raised to life, He is at the right hand of God interceding for us. You might say that in all of this, Christ is acting something like a defense lawyer. But not like any defense lawyer you would find in a John Grisham novel. Such a lawyer has other things to do be­sides arguing the case for his clients in front of the judge all day long. And besides, if that’s all he were doing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, both the law­yer and the judge would get burnt out pretty quickly. But Christ is constantly in the pres­ence of the Father and con­stantly pleading our case on our behalf.

Plus, defense lawyers do not al­ways win their cases. Perhaps it’s because they can’t come up with a reasonable defense when the guilt of their client is perfectly obvious. Well, our guilt is obvi­ous, but Christ never loses a case. He still comes up with the perfect defense every time: His death on the cross.

Mind you, it’s not like God the Father as judge is constantly sit­ting on his throne wanting to get at us with his wrath, but Christ as our intercessor has to keep pleading with him, trying to con­vince Him how that would not be the right thing to do. It’s not like every time we do something bad, He stops the Father from de­stroying us. “Well Father, I know he did something really naughty this time, and I know you’d like nothing better than to have your judgment fall on him, but I really, really, really think you should forgive him. After all, I did die on his behalf.”

Rather, his being our intercessor means that He constantly pre­sents God with his perfect sacri­fice on the cross, the sacrifice of his humanity which was more than sufficient to pay for all our sins. The Son keeps on interced­ing, presenting His sacrifice, and God remains eternally satisfied with that sacrifice.

And thus, when the Father looks at the accused, He does not see someone whom He would just as soon destroy. Instead, He sees the perfectly righteous humanity of Je­sus Christ. It’s like the perfectly obedient humanity of Jesus Christ is seen as our humanity.

And nothing can change this. Nothing can stop Jesus from inter­ceding on our behalf, when we truly belong to him. And the Father will never say to our mediator: “Sorry, you’re not putting up a good enough defense anymore. That sinner is toast.” As a very familiar verse in Romans 8 makes clear:  nothing  “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Je­sus our Lord.”

In Heaven Preparing a Place for Us←⤒🔗

We should be so thankful for this. We should give thanks to God for this every day. We should want to say to Christ over and over: thank you for interceding for us.

We do this now in prayer. And one day we will also be able to do this in person. In the first couple of verses of John 14 we read, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

Christ, the perfect human, is in heaven, preparing a place for all his human brothers and sisters. And in fact, He himself is the guarantee that He will be able to take us there. Redeemed humanity has what you might call a down-payment in heaven, proving to us that it can and will be done, show­ing us that we will one day be like him. Praise the Lord!

We look forward to everlasting life in glorified bodies in the new heav­ens and the new earth, because Christ is already in heaven with his glorified body. His being there proves that we also are going to go there.

If Christ had not ascended into heaven with his human body, how could we be sure that we would be able to go there? It would be like trying to climb a sheer cliff with no­where to put your hands or feet, nothing to help you get up. You need someone at the top to lower a rope to you to help you up. We could not and cannot climb our own way up to heaven. We could never be sure that that’s where we’re go­ing. But now we can be sure, be­cause He is there for us, and has promised to take us to Himself.

With Us, Giving Us a Taste of Heaven←⤒🔗

So, Christ in heaven pleads our cause, and He serves as a guaran­tee that we will go to heaven to be with Him. But wait, there is more! Jesus Christ in his divinity sends His Holy Spirit into our hearts, giving us right now a foretaste of what eternal life will be like.

This doesn’t mean we spend all our time with our head in the clouds, not bothering to deal with the mun­dane details of living on this lower plane of existence. But it means that as we live in this world, we do so as those who are, in effect, living on a higher plane of existence: the higher plane of love and joy and peace. We have our heads in heaven, helping us to live here on this earth as holy people, helping us to show as we live our everyday lives that we belong to God. We read in Colossians 3:1-2: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” And what are these “things above”? Later in this same chapter, verses 12-14, we read,

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and be­loved, compassionate hearts, kind­ness, humility, meekness, and pa­tience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect har­mony.

When we don’t put on these qualities, when we engage in the opposite sort of behavior, we are showing that we are not seeking the “things above”.

Do you indulge your sexual lusts? Do you slander people behind their backs? Do you let rage get the better of you? Is your tongue constantly pouring forth filth? In this, you are showing your worldly nature.

Is that what Christ ascended for? Is that why He intercedes for you, so you can keep on doing these sorts of things? No. He as­cended so you can have a taste of heavenly living while here on this earth, heavenly living being the life of obedience to our crea­tor.

Heaven is obedience? That’s not what most people would think of when they think of heaven. The word obedience has negative connotations for us, since it im­plies doing things that we have to do, not because we want to, but because we’re told to.

But obedience to God is not a burden. It’s a privilege. And we have this privilege, because Christ ascended into heaven with his human nature and now lives with us in his divinity.

I’d like to conclude by asking and answering the question I asked at the beginning of this article: where is Christ? He is before the Father, the eternal son of God pleading your cause, offering the perfect testimony of the sacrifice of his human body on the cross. Where is Christ? He is in heaven in his humanity as a guarantee that we and our humanity will also go to heaven. Where is Christ? He is with us in his divinity, leav­ing us not as orphans, but living with us and giving us a taste of eternal glory. Thanks be to our ascended Lord!