Why did Jesus ascend? Why not stay on earth?

Question 3041.

The ascension of Jesus is the forgotten doctrine of the Christian faith. We celebrate the incarnation at Christmas and the resurrection at Easter, but Ascension Day passes most evangelical churches without a mention. Yet Luke thought it important enough to record twice, and Jesus told His disciples plainly that His leaving was not a loss but a gain: ‘it is to your advantage that I go away’ (John 16:7).

Why would He say that? Why did the risen Lord not simply stay, visibly reigning from Jerusalem, settling every dispute and silencing every sceptic? The answer opens up some of the richest theology in the New Testament. Let me give you the reasons Scripture itself supplies for the ascension of Jesus.

What happened at the ascension of Jesus

Forty days after His resurrection, on the Mount of Olives, Jesus ‘was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight’ (Acts 1:9). The Greek verb Luke uses, analambano, means to take up: He was received up bodily, in His glorified humanity, while the disciples watched. This was no gradual fading from the scene but a deliberate, visible enthronement procession.

Two angels immediately interpreted the event: ‘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). Bodily, visibly, to the same mountain (Zechariah 14:4). The ascension of Jesus is therefore the pattern and pledge of His return. He is not gone; He is installed, as I explore in Where is Jesus now?

He ascended to send the Spirit

Jesus gave the disciples His own primary reason: ‘if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you’ (John 16:7). During the incarnate ministry, Jesus in His humanity was in one place at a time. Through the Spirit, sent at Pentecost by the ascended Lord (Acts 2:33), He indwells every believer everywhere at once.

Think what that means. The disciples had Jesus beside them; you have Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). That is why He could say it was to our advantage. The ascension of Jesus did not reduce His presence with His people; it multiplied it beyond every boundary of geography and time.

Paul adds that the ascended Lord gave more than the Spirit’s presence; He gave gifts to His church. ‘When he ascended on high… he gave gifts to men’ (Ephesians 4:8): apostles and prophets to lay the foundation, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to build on it, and grace distributed to every single member for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:12). Every genuine ministry you have ever benefited from is a dividend of the ascension. The Lord who left equipped the church He left behind.

He ascended to intercede as our High Priest

The letter to the Hebrews is largely a commentary on the ascension. Israel’s high priest entered the earthly Most Holy Place once a year with sacrificial blood. Our High Priest entered heaven itself, ‘now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf’ (Hebrews 9:24), having offered one sacrifice for sins for ever. The ascension of Jesus was the true Day of Atonement procession, the Priest carrying the merit of His own finished work into the true sanctuary.

And there He stays on duty. ‘He always lives to make intercession’ for those who draw near to God through Him (Hebrews 7:25). When you fail, you have an Advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1). Your standing before God is maintained not by the steadiness of your grip on Him but by the ceaseless ministry of the ascended Christ. I have written more on this in What does it mean that Jesus is our High Priest? and What is Jesus doing in heaven?

He ascended to be enthroned

Psalm 110:1, the Old Testament verse most quoted in the New, is the ascension in prophecy: ‘The LORD says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’ (Psalm 110:1). Peter preached Pentecost from this text: God has made Him ‘both Lord and Christ’ (Acts 2:36). Paul says God seated Him ‘far above all rule and authority and power and dominion’ (Ephesians 1:21).

The right hand of God is the place of supreme honour and executive authority. The ascension of Jesus means a man, our kinsman and representative, now occupies that seat. He is Head over all things for the church (Ephesians 1:22), waiting for the appointed moment when His enemies become His footstool and He returns to reign on David’s throne in Jerusalem, the hope I unpack in What is premillennialism?

Stephen was given a glimpse of that enthronement at the cost of his life. Full of the Spirit, he ‘saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God’ (Acts 7:55), and said so aloud, which sealed his martyrdom. Standing, notice, as though risen to receive the first martyr home. The ascended Lord is no distant monarch filed away in glory; He is attentive, engaged and on His feet for His people.

He ascended to prepare a place

Jesus also framed His departure in the language of a bridegroom: ‘I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also’ (John 14:2). In the wedding customs of His day, the bridegroom left the betrothed to ready a home, then returned, at an hour she did not know, to fetch her.

That is the shape of our present moment. The Church lives between the going and the coming, betrothed and waiting. The ascension of Jesus guarantees that His return for His own is not wishful thinking but the second half of an already-begun journey. He does not start what He will not finish.

Why not stay and reign immediately?

So why not remain on earth? Because the programme of God had, and has, an order. Messiah must first suffer and enter His glory (Luke 24:26); the Spirit must be poured out; the gospel must go to the nations; the Church, a mystery not revealed in past ages, must be called out from Jew and Gentile alike (Ephesians 3:4). Only then comes the King’s return to earth. Heaven must receive Him ‘until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets’ (Acts 3:21).

An immediate earthly reign in AD 33 would have meant judgement before mercy had run its worldwide course. The delay is not divine slowness but divine patience, ‘not wishing that any should perish’ (2 Peter 3:9). Every year since the ascension of Jesus has been harvest time.

The ascension of Jesus in Old Testament picture and prophecy

The Old Testament had sketched the ascension of Jesus long in advance. Psalm 68 pictures the victorious King going up: ‘You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train’ (Psalm 68:18), the very text Paul applies to Christ’s ascending and giving gifts to His church (Ephesians 4:8). Daniel saw the scene from heaven’s side: one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, presented before the Ancient of Days and given everlasting dominion (Daniel 7:13). We usually read that as the return to earth, but the movement in Daniel’s vision is upward, into the presence of God: it is the enthronement the disciples watched begin from the Mount of Olives.

Even Israel’s liturgy rehearsed it. Every Day of Atonement, the high priest disappeared through the veil into the holy place while the people waited outside for him to emerge, the proof that the sacrifice was accepted. The ascension of Jesus is our High Priest going in; His return will be the High Priest coming out to bless a waiting people. Hebrews says exactly this: Christ ‘will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him’ (Hebrews 9:28).

So the ascension of Jesus is not a loose end between Easter and Pentecost. It is the hinge on which the whole priestly and royal work turns: sacrifice accepted, Priest within the veil, King crowned, people waiting. The story is exactly on schedule.

So, now what?

Lift your eyes. Your Saviour is not a memory from Galilee but a living man on the throne of heaven, praying for you by name at this moment. Whatever today holds, it unfolds under His authority and within reach of His intercession.

And live ready. The same Jesus who went will come in the same way, and for His Church that coming is imminent, without a single prophetic precondition. The disciples were told to stop gazing and start witnessing (Acts 1:8). That remains the agenda between the clouds of the ascension and the clouds of His return. Are you about His business?

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

Hebrews 7:25 (ESV)