What is Heaven, Where is It, and Why Does It Matter?
“when you pray, you should pray like this: 'Our Father in Heaven. . .' Matthew 6:9
Reflection
Heaven (literally “the heavens”), the space that God occupies, surrounds us (Jeremiah 23:24 and others). At one time heaven and earth were one (Eden), but they were separated (banishment from Eden in Genesis 3). God’s Goal ever since has been to restore the oneness of heaven and earth, to restore all of creation, not to do away with it, but to save it and remake it (Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 65, Rev 21, Acts 3:21, Romans 8, Matthew 6:10 and more). This restoration began with Abraham (Genesis 12), continued with Israel and culminated in Jesus’ Life (God and with him a bit of heaven on earth), death, bodily resurrection, return to God’s space (heaven which surrounds us) and now continues through people who themselves are restored by the reconnection of their spirit with God’s Spirit when they believe (1Corinthians 1:10-16). Meanwhile when a believer dies, he (without his material body) goes to be with God where God is, God’s space, which we refer to as heaven, which occupies our ordinary world but it still not one with it. Heaven, however, is not final. It is not our ultimate destination. Our ultimate destination is the reunion of heaven and earth. At that point each of us will be given a new body (1 Corinthians 15) and our lives will again be material, real, concrete, yet sinless, and yes will have tasks and jobs to do (2 Timothy 2:12 and others). The restoration will be completed when Jesus comes back (Revelation 22:20)
The implications of this for our lives are huge. Here’s a short list.
1. This planet matters. If God is restoring it, we must work to restore it, too.
2. Our bodies matter. The bodies of ours are inseparable from “us”. Our spirit, soul and body, biblically understood are one and also one with God’s spirit when we believe. And one day God will put all that back together. The idea that the body is bad and spirit good is heresy. We must care for our bodies (1 Corinthians 6). Eating right matters. Exercise matters. Abusing our bodies matters. Sex matters. Each of these bodily activities or inactivity are deeply spiritual.
3. God is happy. God wants us to live abundant, overflowing, flourishing lives (John 10:10). This will happen when the final restoration of all things takes place (Acts 3:21). Yet as believers we have “one foot in heaven and one foot on earth”. We should be living it up. We should be happy. We should know deep in our souls that the worst that can ever happen is not the last thing. the best is yet to come but there’s a sense in which it is already here. Enjoy God and people and yourself! Play!
4. Beauty matters. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Rather God is beauty. He defines it. Humans are too easily corrupted and we, by recreating it in our sinful image all too often desecrate it. But beauty exists and in the new creation it will be a display that will be too resplendent to tolerate for those who retain their sin (one of many reasons for recognizing that those who don’t repent cannot enter the final merger of heaven and earth). Therefore a believer’s sense of beauty should grow and his sense that he should add to, not subtract from God’s beauty should grow as well.
More later.
Today's Prayer
"Our Father in heaven, surrounding us right now, recreating the world at this moment, establishing your kingdom on earth as I speak, please lead me to honor you with my body, with my care of the environment, with my ability to enjoy You and others and the Life you have given me. Help me to join you in making all things beautiful in their time. Amen”
Hi, Pastor Jeff,
ReplyDeleteI can't remember who turned me on to you, but I've really been enjoying your discussion on the Lord's Prayer.
I really like your emphasis on restoration -- to me, that is the central message of the Bible:
Two questions for you:
1) How you can you define heaven as "the space that God occupies"? Does God live somewhere in outer space? Doesn't he occupy our entire space -- isn't that what omnipresent means? Or does God occupy some other dimension of space? Is God a spatial being at all?
2) What about heaven in the here and now? I've always been somewhat fascinated (and mystified) by Christ's comment "the Kingdom of God is among you." We're studying I Peter in our Bible study, and I find it both interesting and immensely encouraging that Peter promises a future inheritance in heaven (1:4), but also that "you are [present tense, right now] attaining the goal of your faith – the salvation of your souls." (1:9)
Thoughts?
PS - Would you consider adding RefTagger to your site? I love that you provide so many crossreferences, but I don't always have time to look them up. RefTagger is a free service automatically converts any Bible references on your site to links, and even gives the text of the verse in a pop-up window. It's really easy to add to Blogger.
Pastor, you have been preaching this earth restoration interpretation for approximately 12 months.
ReplyDeleteI am a member of your church and cannot agree, from the scriptural perspective, with with your interpretation.
From the perspective of 1 Cor 1:10, what should a member do? How long does one persevere with disagreement?
Since God is onmipresent, a Spirit and outside of time and space, it seems we can no better try and describe Heaven, than what we already read in the Bible. We can say with certainty it isn't earthly.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, Jesus was physical. His changed body after the resurrection was physical, glorified yes, but physical. Perhaps there is a physcial dimension to Heaven as well as a spiritual dimension. Colossians 3:3 says Jesus has our lives hidden with Him NOW as He sits at the right hand of God".
I love knowing the Presence of God is there for the entering. That He never leaves us, is outside AND inside of us, for the Kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit. Luke 17:20
"The kingdom of God does not come visibly, nor will people say 'here it is' or 'There it is', because the kingdom of God is within you."
I wonder at the insistence of the thinking that we need to be careful to keep a (reverent) gap between ourselves and God. God didn't think so.
In fact, He never chastised anyone for getting 'too close', instead the irreverencey came from being too distant. If one is going to err, I would err on the side of closeness. For the very act of His giving us His Spirit while 'still in progress' denotes to me a building of His Kingdom through a love that gets as close as is possible to get.
Scripture is clear that this earth and the current heaven will be destroyed and there will be a new earth and a new heaven. I always understood Pastor Jeff's teaching of "restoration" as the spiritual restoration happening in us now and the eventual restoration through replacement in future of the actual earth and heaven. If the teaching is that this physical earth is somehow preserved, that is clearly not supported by scripture - but I don't think that was the point. Only Jeff can clarify.
ReplyDeleteTo the Member in Disagreement,
ReplyDeleteThis is a fellow brother in Chirst and member. I have noticed that Pastor does not use this blog to respond to questions. I am sure he would enjoy doing so, but does not have the time to do so. I care a lot about you as a fellow church family member and would be heartbroken to see you leave the family without having the opportunity to discuss this directly with Pastor. I encourage you, if you haven't already, to schedule a meeting with Pastor and talk through your disagreement and your question on perseverence with him. As we know, iron sharpens iron.
Love,
Your Brother in Christ