Why The Seated Jesus Is Good News For Parents

My world often shrinks to the size of my children’s problems. A simple request to get ready for school can dissolve into disorganized chaos as socks are flung around just as quickly as insults about them not being washed. I try to plan so my children will be OK, but things inevitably go awry, and I start to feel stressed, worried, and out of control.

What I say to myself in those moments can mean the difference between tightening the reins of perceived control or releasing them completely. It’s the doctrine of Christ’s session that’s helped me do the latter.

As a child, I sang the Apostles’ Creed every Sunday, enjoying the staccato of the line “he ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand” without understanding what it meant. I’d tucked this knowledge away in the corner of my mind labeled “catechism” and thought of the heavenly Jesus as a kind of faraway character.

However, facing motherhood’s everyday complexities has challenged me to more closely consider how Jesus’s seated ministry is good news for my parenting.

Christ Is Seated

The devotional our family worked through last Easter asked us one evening to consider the implications of Christ’s heavenly rule. We read an account of Christ’s ascension, 40 days after he’d risen from the dead. “He led [his disciples] out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:50–51). Mark tells us that Jesus was “taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19).

As we reflected on this as a family, the doctrine of Christ’s session (as I’d later learn it was called) shifted from something arbitrary to something real. We sat around the table eating our dinner—well, some of us—and I realized that at that very same time, Jesus was on his throne, also seated. Here are three implications of that truth for our parenting.

1. I have a Person to whom I can take my worries about raising children.

The more I read about the acceleration of AI technologies, social media’s effects on children, or the secular influences on our young ones, the more overwhelmed I become about parenting well. Anxiety over our children’s lives and, more specifically, over their faith formation runs high.

The truth of Jesus’s heavenly seat means he rules, reigns, and has conquered. On the cross, he overcame sin, death, and the grave. But the story doesn’t end there. “More than that,” says Paul, he “was raised [and] is at the right hand of God” (Rom. 8:34). He isn’t conquering, or going to conquer, but has conquered. And because he has conquered, Paul calls us “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37).

He isn’t conquering, or going to conquer, but has conquered.

If we’re in Christ, nothing can separate us from his love (vv. 38–39). We can hold out this truth to our children. We can point them to the promise in Revelation 3 that Jesus gives to the church in Laodicea: “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (v. 21).

I hold real concerns about what might happen to my children in this shaky, temporal habitat. But because Jesus is on his throne, I can take those anxieties to the eternal conqueror and encourage my children to do the same.

2. God hears my prayers for my children.

I don’t always act like I believe God is listening. Sometimes my concerns in parenting feel too insignificant and trivial for Almighty God. Not so.

He doesn’t shame us for the way we’ve parented but invites us to come boldly (Heb. 4:14–16). I can pray big, bold prayers for my children, knowing he hears them. Prayers about toilet training, prayers for recovery from illness, and prayers in the deepest depths of pain are taken to Jesus on his throne and carried to the Father’s arms.

3. My children are part of something bigger.

Paul says that God gave Jesus “as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22–23). Jesus was judged before an earthly throne (Luke 23:1–16), but now he sits on a heavenly throne as head of the church, restoring all things to himself (Col. 1:18–20). God has exalted him, so we can—and should—exalt him (Phil. 2:9).

I can pray big, bold prayers for my children, knowing he hears them.

We teach our children to praise God for all sorts of good things: creation, family, friends, health. But how often do we encourage them to praise him just because he’s worthy to be praised? We can teach our children that they have a Savior who not only personally cares for them but also died, rose, and is exalted. We can explain that we aren’t saved just for the purpose of having an independent, personal relationship with Jesus; we’re saved into a church, a community of believers.

The socks still get lost and I still worry about my children. But as I stand in church with those children and sing the Apostles’ Creed, feeling uprooted, an unshakable comfort grounds me. I’m more deeply assured that Jesus’s heavenly dominion is the best news for my parenting, and for my children too.