Jesus Christ is now at the right hand of God. He so exalted and transcendent that it is easy to forget that He is still human. Some may even suppose that He stopped being human and went back to just being God. But as Paul made clear, “He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens” (Ephesians 4:10 NIV). He is still the same human Jesus.
A human life has been lived for you. That same human life is still being lived for you. Hebrews 7:26 tells us that He became High Priest for us and stills lives to make intercession for us—still lives the same human life now, far beyond the reach of death. He is “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” …and still human. The eternal Son of God became human not for a mere thirty-three years but forever.
His exaltation is the reward for His suffering. He suffered and was crucified as a man. He is rewarded with glory as a man. As a man He continues to live His life for you. If His humanity was destroyed in His glorification—if He had to become less human in order to sit at the right hand of God—then His reward for His suffering was to escape humanity. If that is the case, then that should be our goal as well: to no longer be human but to turn into something else.
But God doesn’t want to change us into something else. He made us human and wants us to stay human. He has prepared a glorious future for us to enjoy as humans.
This future is beyond our wildest dreams, but we can begin to dream about it based on what the Bible tells us about it. We know that we will understand God and agree with Him. We will be incorruptible, as much like God as one could get without actually being God.
Until the age to come fully arrives with the return of Jesus we can only try to imagine such glory. But if this promise of a glorious future life means that we will no longer be human, then it is a future closed off to us for now. We can in no way begin to live this life already but must wait for our change, and our escape from humanity.
As it is, God has not delivered us out of our humanity but redeemed it. And by His Spirit He communicates to us the glory of the age to come. And since we still tend to think of humanity in terms of the old being, in Adam, the Spirit renews our minds in Christ. The Spirit teaches us to be human —the new way to be human—redeemed in Christ. We can begin now to live the life we will live forever because Jesus is still living for us the life He began to live for us many years ago.
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