Where Is Jesus Today?

When Jesus was twelve he was taken by his parents to Jerusalem. They unknowingly lost him in the crowd and the gospel account records, “Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends” (Luke 2:44).

Many people still react the same way today. Not sure where Jesus is they continue on with their daily routine without realizing they left him far behind.

Others, if they become aware they have lost him, go back and look in the familiar places assuming he must be there among relatives and friends. So they go to church to find him, or they practice a little religion imagining that is where he will be found. Yet he is not in a building or in a religion.

In the gospel of Luke we find it takes Jesus’ parents several more days to find him, and when they do he is in the heart of Jerusalem in the temple. As we will see, not much has changed.

The celebration of Easter is in truth a culmination of Passover. Indeed, Jesus was slain on Passover at the same time the lambs were being sacrificed by the High Priest in Jerusalem.

While all the pomp and ceremony surrounding the holiday was taking place, three crosses were being erected over the Place of the Skull. Just a few hours earlier Jesus was in the upper room telling his followers, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22).

Indeed, his life was a fulfillment of all the major feasts of the patriarchs. John the Baptist recognized this when he proclaimed three years earlier during Yom Kippur upon seeing Jesus he calls him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Notice the singular use of the word sin. He didn’t come to take away our ‘sins’, he took sin itself away, destroying its power and hold over people.

So where do we find Jesus today? Passover is intimately connected to Pentecost in which the Spirit of God was poured out on all flesh as the book of Acts talks about.

Paul speaks of a mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations.

Any discussion of Easter that does not clearly tell us where Christ is misses a major piece of the puzzle. It is not enough to know he is no longer in the tomb.

To find him you need only look in the temple once again because as Paul expands, “God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

Later he would simply proclaim, “Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you?” (2 Corinthians 13:5).

So where is Jesus? He is not in a tomb but now he is in his people, and “greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).