Ascension of Jesus

“And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

— Acts 1:9 (ESV)

The ascension of Jesus is Christ’s bodily return to heaven, forty days after his resurrection, in the presence of his apostles: “he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them… he parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:50-51; cf. Acts 1:3, 9). Predicted by Christ himself (Matt. 26:64), it is presupposed throughout the rest of the New Testament, from Peter’s preaching in Acts to Hebrews and Revelation, as a settled part of the church’s faith from the beginning.¹

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession holds the resurrection and ascension together as a single continuous act: Christ “rose from the dead with the same body in which he had suffered, with which he also ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of his Father making intercession for his people.”² The body that was raised is the same body that ascended: the ascension is not Christ shedding his humanity but carrying it, bodily, into heaven.

Biblical Basis

The forty days between resurrection and ascension were, in Bavinck’s reading, a period of transition in which the risen Christ instructed his disciples and prepared them for his departure (Acts 1:3; Luke 24:26-27, 44-46) before being “taken up before their very eyes” while “a cloud hid him from their sight” (Acts 1:9). Paul reads the ascension as the completion of Christ’s exaltation: “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11).

Doctrinal Significance

The apostles do not treat the ascension as a bare fact to be affirmed; they read it as the ground of what Christ, now ascended, does for his church.

Christ’s session and reign

Peter reads the ascension as the fulfillment of David’s own words: “the Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand’… Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:33-36, quoting Ps. 110:1). Hebrews grounds the church’s confidence in prayer in the same reality, the ascended Christ’s ongoing priestly work: “since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession” (Heb. 4:14), for he “always lives to make intercession” for those who draw near to God through him (Heb. 7:25).

The Spirit’s outpouring

Jesus himself ties his own departure to the Spirit’s coming: “it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you” (John 16:7). Paul reads Psalm 68:18 the same way, as a prophecy of exactly this pattern: “when it says, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers” (Eph. 4:9-11). Christ’s ascension, on this reading, is not merely a departure but the very means by which he equips his church.

The believers’ own hope

Hebrews calls Jesus “a forerunner on our behalf,” one who “has entered” the inner sanctuary “before us, into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Heb. 6:20; 9:24), so that where he has gone, his people will follow. The angels at the ascension promise that it also previews Christ’s return: “this Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

Threefold benefit, per Calvin

Calvin’s Institutes treats the ascension not merely as a fact to affirm but as a source of benefit to believers, in three parts. First, “by his ascension to heaven” Christ “opened up the access to the heavenly kingdom, which Adam had shut.” Second, his “seat beside the Father is not without great advantage to us”: “having entered the temple not made with hands, he constantly appears as our advocate and intercessor in the presence of the Father.” Third, faith “discerns his power, on which depend our strength, might, resources, and triumph over hell”: “when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive” (Eph. 4:8), and, having spoiled his foes, “gave gifts to his people, and daily loads them with spiritual riches.”³

Doctrinal Implications

Because the body that ascended is the same body that was crucified and raised, glorification did not convert Christ’s human nature into something omnipresent: it remains a real, localized human body, now in heaven rather than everywhere.⁴ This bears directly on how Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper, and on the manner of his own return: because he departed bodily and visibly, the angels promise he “will come in the same way” (Acts 1:11), not as a merely spiritual event.

Historical Development

The ascension had scriptural anticipation before the event itself. Gill reads Daniel’s vision of one “like a son of man” coming “in the clouds of heaven” and being brought near to the Ancient of Days to receive “dominion, glory, and a kingdom” as a preview of it, in which Christ “was made… openly declared Lord and Christ, Head and King of his church” (Dan. 7:13-14).⁵ He reads the bodily departures of Enoch and Elijah the same way, as personal types: “Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind, in a chariot, and horses of fire” and “was carried up by angels,” so Christ “was carried up to heaven, received by a cloud, attended by angels, while he was blessing his disciples” (2 Kings 2:11).⁵

The ascension entered the church’s confessed faith immediately, through the earliest creeds rather than through later controversy. The Apostles’ Creed traces the same order Scripture itself gives: the Son “was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, died, and was buried; the third day he arose from the dead, ascended to heaven, is seated at the right hand of God, whence he will come to judge the living and the dead.”¹ The creed’s insistence on a real body, crucified and buried before it ascended, answered an old denial: early Manichean and Marcionite teachers held that Christ’s body was only an apparent one, a phantom rather than true flesh, so that nothing genuinely human was crucified, raised, or carried up into heaven at all.⁶

Opposing Views

Reformed and Lutheran theology agree that Christ ascended bodily but disagree over what that means for his glorified human nature now. The Formula of Concord teaches that Christ’s human nature, once exalted, shares directly in the divine attribute of omnipresence: “the right hand of God is everywhere; but there Christ has, truly and in very deed, been placed, in respect to his humanity, and therefore being present he rules, and holds in his hands and under his feet all things which are in heaven and on earth.”⁷ On this view Christ’s body, though human, is now present wherever his divine nature is, and is therefore truly and substantially present in the Lord’s Supper wherever it is celebrated.

Reformed confessions deny that glorification changes what a human nature is capable of. The Scottish Confession states the alternative directly: “although there is great distance of place between his now glorified body in heaven and us mortals now upon the earth, yet we nevertheless believe that the bread which we break is the communion of his body… by the hidden and incomprehensible power of his Spirit.”⁷ Bavinck states the principle governing both the incarnation and the ascension alike: Reformed theology “applied the finitum non capax infiniti rule to the state of exaltation as well as humiliation” (the finite is not capable of the infinite), so that Christ’s body, even glorified, remains a real, localized human body, now in heaven rather than everywhere, and the church’s communion with him at the Supper is a spiritual rather than bodily presence.⁴ The same principle, applied to the years of Christ’s earthly life rather than his glorified state, grounds the extra Calvinisticum.

A more radical position denies the ascension is a historical event at all. Bavinck describes the Socinian and radical Anabaptist view, on which a sharp division between eternity and time makes both the incarnation and the exaltation impossible as real events: the resurrection, ascension, session at God’s right hand, and return for judgment “are not facts but merely graphic representations of the idea that the moral ideal that Christ pursued corresponds to the will of God and will be realized by him.”¹ The confession states the opposite: Christ “ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of his Father,” a particular body, once dead and buried, now bodily in a particular place.²

Objections and Responses

Why does only one Gospel (Luke) actually narrate the ascension, if it is as central as the resurrection? Bavinck notes that while the event itself is recorded only in Luke 24:50-51 (and its sequel, Acts 1:9-11), its significance saturates the rest of the New Testament: Jesus repeatedly alludes to his coming departure to the Father in John’s Gospel (John 6:62; 14:28; 16:28), Peter presupposes it throughout his preaching in Acts (Acts 2:33-34; 3:21; 5:31), and Paul, Hebrews, and Revelation all build on it as settled fact (Eph. 4:8-10; Heb. 4:14; 9:24; Rev. 1:13). A single narrated event underlying constant reference elsewhere is the ordinary pattern of New Testament narrative, not a sign the ascension was a late addition to the church’s belief.¹

Does “seated at the right hand of God” mean the ascension carried Christ to a location alongside God, one place among others? Scripture itself is speaking here in a human manner and in imagery, not specifying a location: “we must never forget that we are expressing ourselves here, not incorrectly, but still in a human manner and in imagery (1 Kings 2:19; Pss. 45:9; 110:1; Matt. 20:21). The Christian church thus refrains from any further specification of the place of Christ’s exaltation.”¹ What the phrase means is that Christ has been raised “to the highest power, dignity, and honor conceivable and possible under that of God himself.”¹

Why did Christ ascend visibly, before witnesses, rather than simply ceasing his resurrection appearances or departing unseen? Gill answers that the event’s visible, witnessed character is itself part of its evidence: “the eleven apostles were together, and others with them, when this great event was; and while he was pronouncing a blessing on them, he was parted from them, and carried up to heaven; they beheld him, and looked steadfastly towards heaven, as he went up, until a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9-10).⁵ Gill also insists the manner of the event was real rather than merely apparent: Christ went “really, visibly, and locally,” not in a vision alone.⁵

Related Doctrines

References

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 16, “The Exalted Lord Christ.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” para. 4. ↩ ↩²
Calvin, Institutes, bk. 2, chap. 16, secs. 14-16. ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged, chap. 14, “The Only Begotten Son of the Father.” ↩ ↩²
John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book V, chap. 7, “Of the Ascension of Christ to Heaven.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-46), bk. 2, chap. 13, sec. 1. ↩
A. A. Hodge, “Chapter XLIII. The Lord’s Supper,” in Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879). ↩ ↩²