Why Did Jesus Ascend into Heaven?

Simon Sinek once said that great leaders
lead from their "why."
I once worked for an art company
that gave the staff random directions
but never told us what we were doing
or why we were doing it.
And I recall the directions were always in bits,
one task at a time.
It was very frustrating,
and the end goal always suffered
because the staff did not know why they were doing it.

Eventually I quit.

A lot of people think God is like this.
That everything is on a need to know basis,
and that we are given directions to obey.
And if you miss it,
well it sucks to be you.
Back to being an unhappy Christian trying to make 
the mean old man in the sky happy.

This is not Christianity.
God is in relationship with you,
and He wants you to know why.

Jesus
tells us in many places,
but most notably in John fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen
why he is going to ascend into heaven.

Jesus is going away,
so that he is no longer limited by the finite
restrictions of space and time.
He is going away so that we can receive 
the Holy Spirit.
And the disciples are told
not to do anything
until they receive the Holy Spirit.

This is the "why."
The Ascension of Jesus
is the reason 
real Christianity works.
And we are given evidence
that Jesus 
believed the ascension
was the whole point of his mission.

In Daniel 7 we are given a cryptic vision:
"I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
    there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
    and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
    and glory and kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
    should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
    which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
    that shall not be destroyed."

Jesus defines himself with the title 
Son of Man.
He is referring to Daniel 7:13.
At the beginning of Acts Jesus walks into a cloud,
and on the other side
he stands before the Ancient of Days.
This returning to the Father
is the ultimate act of victory.

Jesus,
a man in the flesh,
has now entered
the realm of the spirit.
By being outside time and this created order,
he can now be in all places at all times.
And because he has lived in this created order,
he can rightly judge
and understand your human experience.

And because Jesus is in the Holy Spirit,
and the spirit of Jesus
lives in us,
by the Holy Spirit
we are in him.
He is in us.
We are seated with him in heavenly places,
and the kingdom of heaven is in our being.
It is all by the Holy Spirit.

Many Western Christians
struggle with this 
because we have been influenced by Saint Augustine,
who did not understand the Holy Spirit.
He tried to reconcile his life experience in Greek philosophy
with his Christianity,
and he made the life in the Holy Spirit very hard to understand
and impossible to experience.
He replaced a Person
who is living and active and operating
with abstract concepts like "grace"
and the bond of love between the Father and Son,
and said that your mental agreement is enough.
And of course,
this is not enough,
because you cannot experience it.
The Holy Spirit is a Person,
not a vague concept.

Jesus said,
that if he went away,
we would be with him.

If he went away
we would be with him.
Hmmm.

How?

He has gone away,
and because the same Spirit in him
is in us,
we are with him.
Leanne Payne put it beautifully:
No matter how sick or broken you are,
there is always a place inside of you
that is whole.
That place is where Jesus is.

Graham Cooke put it this way:
Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit is in you.
And if Jesus is in you,
then all the things that Jesus is
are in you.

So,
Jesus Christ is the most powerful person in the Universe.
Jesus Christ is the richest person in the Universe.
Jesus Christ is the Kindest person in the Universe.
Jesus Christ is the Most Loving person in the Universe.
And on and on.
If you need to be kind,
you simply say,
"Jesus you are in me,
and you are kind.
I am not kind, so I am going to get out of the way and let you be kind through me."
And then the Kindness of God manifests.

This takes the notion of calling things down from heaven 
to a higher level.
Everything in the Kingdom of God 
is about relationship.
Jesus did not ascend into heaven
to leave us to our own devices.
He ascended into heaven
so that through the Holy Spirit
he could not only be close to us,
but inside us.

And this is real Christianity.

You are not a follower of Jesus
trying to read the Bible and figure out
what would Jesus do.
No.
You are a little Christ.
Jesus, if you are born again by water and the Holy Spirit,
has now taken residence inside of you.
Jesus is abiding in you,
and so you can agree with him.
And when you do this,
you are the temple of the Holy Spirit,
and Jesus,
if you live a life of surrender to him,
will live in you.

And so Paul will say
the mystery is Christ in you
the Hope of glory.
He says
we have the mind of Christ.
He says his power is manifested in our weakness.

We are "quantumly entangled"
with the Holy Trinity.

All of this is possible
because Jesus ascended.
This is the victory of the Incarnation,
the victory of the cross,
and the victory of the Resurrection.
Heaven is not off out there.
Heaven is here,
right now.

And all the great saints understood this.
Many of those who were wonder workers
describe
"going up"
and then coming down with the grace to heal.
Others describe
the reality that when you are in Jesus
you are bigger on the inside
than you are on the outside.
And many describe having access
to the resources of heaven
because they are aware of the presence of Jesus in them.

It is this Presence,
of Jesus in you,
that is the life in the Holy Spirit.
Jesus went away,
ascended on high,
and is now seated with the Father.
And because of the Holy Spirit
we are seated in him
and with him.

Our calling is to surrender to this reality,
Christ in us.
Where he is 
we shall go.
And by the Presence of the Holy Spirit,
we are given a foretaste
and a pledge of it,
now.