The Most Important Thing in the World

BLOG
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Jeff Lampl

The Most Important Thing in the World

“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ.  Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw.  But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value.  If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward.  But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.”       
                                             1 Corinthians 3:11-15 (NLT)

So, what will happen to you when you die?  

Near Death Experiences have been recorded for millennia in all religious traditions.   In fact recent movies have been made about them.  Skeptics will claim that they are simply neurons in the brain firing off whatever inputs it has received during the deceased’s life time.   I think this skepticism is good, yet I am fairly certain that there is something valid to at least some NDE’s, both those reported to be “heavenly” and those reported to be “hellish”  (To Heaven and Back by spine surgeon Mary Neal is one that makes sense to me)  

Beyond that the bible tells us that every human being who ever lived will, in some way, shape or form, meet God in Jesus and the cross.   This is the first judgment.  Those who have believed and pursued the things of God in this lifetime will find that the first judgment is a huge “welcome home, beloved son/daughter” and they will enter heaven or paradise as Jesus called it when talking to the thief on the cross beside him.     

Those people who have rejected God and the things of God, including his forgiveness, will have grown a heart hardened to the love of God.   The Love of God that melts the heart of the repentant, hardens the heart of the recalcitrant.  Those who have practiced a patterned resistance toward God on earth will be resistant to Him on judgment day  (read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis).   To them Heaven will be repugnant and they will choose the outer darkness, one of Jesus’ reference to an eternity apart from God.   It will an angry, bitter, existence of sub human loneliness.  If you are counting on an end of life conversion, don’t.   It’s a bad bet.  I suspect they are rare.   Those who find God an interference now will find him intolerable when they see him face to face.  

Those who in this life say to God, “Thy will be done” will enter heaven.  Those to whom God says, “Thy will be done” will miss heaven both in this life and the next.  

But heaven is not the destiny.  Isaiah 65, Revelation 20-22 and elsewhere tell us that God will renew the world  (Acts 3:21).   Heaven is temporary.  One day Jesus will return to earth, bringing heaven and all those in heaven with him to earth, at which time believers will receive a new physical body, albeit animated by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 15) and live a life on earth that is unimaginably magnificent (1 Cor. 2:9) (see characteristics of life on the new earth below).  

WHY THIS MATTERS  

This matters more than anything in the world.   The decisions you make about God in this life determine your eternal destiny.   Again, I seriously doubt if there are many, if any,  death bed conversions.  

Secondly, 1 Corinthians 3 (above), tells us that every moment, hour, day, month, year, relationship, attitude, behavior, act of faith or unbelief, word of disbelief or belief, every aspect of every day is either building us into the kind of person who can flourish in God’s New World or the kind of person who cannot.  Those who have grown in the things of God in this world will find that they have a developed large capacity for God and God’s New World.   Those who have built their lives on “straw” will discover that most of themselves will be burnt away at what the bible calls the second judgment.  They will enter but not much of them will be left.   I like how one theologian quipped, “I’m sure God will let anyone in who can stand it”  

There is a great myth that says that those who are the most heavenly minded are no earthly good.   History shows the opposite.  Those who lived the Lord’s Prayer “Thy kingdom (heaven) come on earth” are those who lived on earth becoming the kind of person who loves the things of God and has sought to bring the things of God about in their lifetimes on earth, and in doing so they will be the ones prepared for life in God’s coming New World when Jesus returns brings heaven with him.   It will be the great merger of heaven and earth and Satan’s best anti-trust suit can’t stop it.      

Those who live for heaven now are those who are the most earthly good.   In fact I’m certain if you are reading this you know people just like that.   You are probably too humble to believe yourself one of those people but I have no doubt at all that many of you indeed are.    

Your task and mine in this life is to become the kind of person who has grown a capacity to flourish in the New Merger of Heaven and Earth.    

Comment       
For more:   follow on Twitter @jefflampl    

Appendix:   What is Life like on the New Earth?  

Jesus returns, bringing Heaven to earth.  Heaven and earth are merged forming a New Creation where God, human beings and nature are finally united into a vibrant, flourishing, creative New World   (Rev. 21:1-5)

·         We will discover that life on the new earth is a continuation of the life believers had
          already begun to live on earth.  Believers will discover they have “entered and lived in
          heaven” before they died.  

·         They will discover that the hard work of repentance and obedience on earth was
     preparation for flourishing in the presence of God in God’s new world.  They will be
     thrilled to be living the kind of life foreshadowed by the 10 commandments & the
     sermon on the mount: a life of   Honesty, vulnerability, love, humility, courage,
     generosity, selflessness, service and joy.  

·         On the New Earth we will be part of a society of people (the metaphor in Revelation
     is city) not unlike life today, only exponentially more vibrant, joyful and flourishing. 
     Genesis 1:28 will be fulfilled  (see the word pictures of Rev 20-22)  

·         Beauty will be overwhelmingly stunning.  The coming new world will be as a full color
     landscape is to a pencil sketch.  Our lives  today are the sketch, the portrait is yet to
     come  Rev 21:9-22 (word pictures of indescribable beauty using words from earthly
     experience)  

·         All relationships are made right:  all hate, resentment and broken relationships will
     be repented of and forgiven.  Those who refuse repentance and forgiveness will be
     choosing to refuse heaven” 

·         We will be given new physical bodies  complete with intellect and emotions  
     1 Cor.15. Phil 3:21  

·         We will be reunited with loved ones who have chosen a destiny with God
     1 Thess.  4:14-18  

·         We’ll eat and drink   Luke 14:15, 22:18  

·         We will have joyful jobs to do, a purpose to pursue, a calling corresponding to our
     giftedness.   The toil of work will be over and the joy of work will have become
     complete.  2 Timothy 2:12 Rev 22:5  

·         Will have free will, freely choosing God’s will because the Goodness of God is
     “irresistibly compelling.  The Worship of God will direct our will.  
     Jeremiah 24:7  Ezekiel 36-25-28  

·         All of nature will be restored including animal life Isaiah 11:6-9 and 65:25  

·         There will be no loss:  no one will become unmarried.  the greatest pleasure on
     earth will have been only a dim foretaste of the real thing  

·         Everything that has gone wrong on earth will be made right.  Even evil deeds will
     be used by God for making the world right .     Romans 8:28  

·         Everything done for the Lord on earth will be found here in its completion. 
     1 Cor 15:58  

·         We will grow, life will not be fixed: expansion & increasing vastness.
     Isaiah 9:7 Rev 7  

·         Every pleasure of earth including hobbies, sports, activities will find themselves in
     the new world, only not in their “sketch” form  as they are today, but in their
     consummate form,  to be enjoyed in ways we have only hints of today.  

·         The rewards received in heaven are like the reward of the master pianist.   His
     reward is not external (accolades), rather his reward is the achieved ability to joyfully
     play a concerto.  Our reward will be the capacity to enjoy in “heaven” that which we
     have practiced for on earth.    1 Corinthians 3:12-15