The Burning Question
What Is Heaven Like? Part 3 – The Way to Life
February 24, 2008
Various Scriptures
Let’s quickly review what we have seen about heaven. Heaven is multi-facted. It has many different aspects. We have seen the heaven is the place where God reigns and it is comprised of the subjects of that reign: kingdom people. We also have seen that the kingdom is not strictly spiritual. There is more to the kingdom that breaks into this world. The earth is part of the domain of God and one day at the end of time, a new heaven and a new earth will be brought into existence. There are spiritual aspects but there is also a physical resurrection.
This week we are going to explore the relationship of the subjects. In other words, what is entailed “when we go to heaven?” Last week we saw that eternity will probably entail a return to care of this new creation in such as a way that existed before Adam and Eve transgressed God. So what does this mean, “to go to heaven?” How do we get there? What is involved?
Exploring the Way
The first thing that most of us equate with heaven is eternal what? Eternal life. But we do a disservice to the gospel, to God, to Jesus, and to others when over-simplify these matters.
• More than living forever
Often our usual “gospels” are simply way to omit God from our daily life. I pray a prayer. I acknowledge that Jesus died for me intellectually (we call this believing) and one day because Jesus already paid the price for me I will go to a spiritual realm called heaven and those who don’t acknowledge Jesus will go to another place called hell. (By the way, next week we will address the question, “Is there really a hell?”) I live my life and Jesus only makes a real difference one day when I die. An excuse to omit God. Does Jesus only enable me “to make the cut” when I die? Is there any good news in this life? In a way this is like having a car with great insurance but the car doesn’t run. I rather have a car that ran and great insurance, wouldn’t you?
I was reminded of two young ministry students down south who stopped at a rickety old shack to “share the gospel.” There must have been a dozen kids running around apparently doing whatever they wanted. It was chaos. The house was falling apart.
A woman completely and totally disheveled answered the door. She looked totally exasperated. “Can I help you?” she asked obviously not meaning it because the last thing she needed was something else to do or someone else to take care of.
“M’am,” one young man nervously began, “I have some good news. Jesus died for your sins and if you receive him as your savior, you can live forever.”
She stared at them for a long moment and said, “Sonny, do you see where you are at? I can’t control these kids. My husband left me. I can’t pay the bills. The house is falling apart. I am at my wit’s end. Why in the world want to live this way forever?”
• The Way to Life (John 15:21)
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” When Jesus said this phrase, he was using a term translated as “I am” but would have been clearly understood by his Jewish disciples as a reference to the name that God gave Moses: I Am that I Am. Jesus was saying that as the great I Am there is no way to God except through my ways which is God’s ways. Thus Jesus could also tell his disciples that whoever has seen him has seen the Father. All life comes through Jesus. Jesus was claiming to be God.
But this way for Jesus was the way of the Kingdom. It was living as a subject of the Kingdom now. Those who were subjects of the Kingdom and therefore subjects of heaven would live out his teachings specifically his Shema of loving God and loving others. Jesus healed people. Jesus declared that a new era of justice, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and love had come not just spiritually but was breaking into this world and its corruption. Jesus was declaring the fulfillment of the anawim hope that the Davidic kingdom was near. It was so near in fact that its present was already being seen and felt. This occurs whenever the kingdom people live out the ways of God. These ways lead to life. Jesus said in John 10:10 that he came so that we would have life in its fullness or as another translation says abundant life.
Jesus came to heal and empower the human condition. He lived an ordinary life and showed us the way to copy with broken world that was passing away and being transformed by God’s infinite power.
• Life is Shalom
Life, that is Kingdom Life, in the New Testament is the same as Shalom in the Old Testament. It is abounding peace with God and with others. It is wholeness for our lives not a dualistic separation between what is sacred (Sunday morning) and what is secular (the rest of my life). In sharing our weakness, he gives us strength. He imparts a companionship that has a quality of life here and now that continues through eternity.
Abraham was considered to be the Father of the Jews. He was considered to be righteous. He was called a man of faith. Why? What was his faith in? Was it the God would provide a sacrifice for his sins? No, God did do that. He was a man of faith because he believed in God’s promise in this life for a son, an heir. Finally, he saw it and finally he trusted in God to provide life instead of trying to help God fulfill God’s promise.
The Kingdom calls us to reconsider our approach to life. When we see Jesus as he is, we must turn away from our previous life, our previous way of living. When Jesus died for our sins so to speak, Jesus died not to just clear a ledger but to lead us to a new life lived in the Shalom of God. It was kind of like turning a tin man into live man. Forgiveness is essential to Shalom but that alone is not what life in the Kingdom of Heaven is all about.
If heaven is the realm where God’s will is done, then the kingdom comes whenever one of the least of these submits to the kingship and ways of God. It is simply saying, “My life is now yours God. Do with me as you will.” May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The Kingdom comes. We step into living as Kingdom people and step into the heavenly realm now even though this kingdom has not come into fullness at this moment.
• God is the Source (John 17:3)
John 17:3 tells us what eternal life is all about. This is a huge eye-opening passage if you have bee stuck in dualistic worldview. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Did you get the significance of this? Eternal life is not just a place to go. Eternal life is not only a prayer to be prayed. Eternal life is an intimate (and I emphasize intimate here because that is the connotation of the language) relationship with God and Jesus. It is intimate. One hears the Father’s voice as Jesus says. You know God’s voice. Maybe not perfectly, but you at least are learning how to listen and it does become clearer. God is the source of life. Living apart from Him now is preparation for eternity.
Jesus came to prepare the way for the Kingdom. He came to prepare the way for us to live as Kingdom people. First of all, sin keeps us from entering. It is a barrier. Jesus makes a way for us to live here and now a life that will continue for all eternity.
It is literally this: Jesus lives his life through you. Think about it. Jesus lives his life through you. It is no longer yours (although we often keep trying to take it back). It is his life, his ways, his truth. And as we see in the Sermon on the Mount there are very specific ways to live as we love God and love others.
Proverbs 3:32, The crooked man is an abomination to the Lord, but He is intimate with the upright.
So what happens when we die? Paul talks about being absent from the body but present with the Lord. We bury our bodies. No matter how much we might try to preserve them, they decay. Abraham is dust. Moses has returned to dust. When we die our soul or essence of our being joins with God in the other worldly realm of God where Jesus is seated on his throne called the Kingdom of Heaven. However, that realm is making its way into this world even now. It appears as the Kingdom people live out the ways of God. One day at the end, the eschaton, Scriptures says the kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our God. A new heaven and new earth will be made. Everyone will be judged and the goats and sheep will be separated. At that time when Jesus comes again, we will receive a new body. A body that is both physical and spiritual but not the same as now. It will no longer be corrupted by sin and we will dwell with God forever worshipping God, enjoying the presence of God as the source of life, and serving God by taking care of what God has created and by generally doing His will.
Will there be cars? I personally doubt it. They won’t be needed. Besides, look at how they destroy creation. Streets of gold. Probably not literally, that is a symbol showing us that everything will be provided for us perfectly by God.
So all in all what is heaven like? Can we sum it up?
All words at least human words and especially short, pithy phrases fall short. They are simply things to point us to experience the deeper reality. So what is heaven like? It has taken me two decades to arrive where I’m at and next year I hopefully will grow more in my understanding and will revise this short phrase. After all, I haven’t addressed, the apparent levels of heaven that we find in Scripture (the seventh heaven of Paul and so on). How we live out the kingdom in this life, I believe, has a great impact on how we will experience eternity and the fulfillment of the Kingdom. However, I will say this:
Heaven is the living kingdom of eternal life that begins here and now.
It doesn’t say it all but it says a lot. There are a lot of implications to think through for us. One of which is this: Are you truly a student of Jesus and His ways? We look to a lot of different sources about how to live and how to cope. I wonder if there are many of us that truly can say that I am a student or disciple of Jesus. He is the one that I search out first and foremost.
David Cho as a young man was a Buddhist. He was pretty devout but his life was hopeless. He lived in abject poverty in Korea and as happens a lot with people in those situations he was dying. In his case, he was dying of tuberculosis. TB often runs rampant in the slums.
He had heard that the God of the Christians helped people. In fact, he had heard that their God healed people. So he simply asked “their” God to help him.
And their God did. God healed this young Korean man. So Cho began to learn about Jesus and from Jesus. God gave Cho an abundance of Kingdom life. And now this same life flows through David Cho to thousands of others.
David Cho now heads Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea, which is regarded by many as the largest church in the world today. Every morning thousands of Korean worshippers gather at the sanctuary to pray at 5:00 am. They bring their morning tea because literally thousands cannot get in at 5:00 and must wait until 6:00. They gather to seek out the source of life and to learn his ways: Jesus. Those that can’t get in at 5:00 or 6:00 wait until 7:00 when perhaps they are finally able to join with others.
Heaven is the living kingdom of eternal life that begins here and now.
Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
Is Jesus living his life through you? Is Jesus all that you want? Is Jesus the your greatest desire? Or are there other things that compete for your attention, your passion, and your desire?
I have a video of a dramatic interpretation. It is representation of the source of life that is Jesus. But it also shows how things distract us and threaten to pull us away from Jesus. Even when we succumb to the temptations, Jesus calling for us to return.
