The Most Important Thing about Heaven
Last week we talked about the central and most important reality of the new universe: we will live with God, or what’s often called the beatific vision, the “happy-making sight” of seeing God’s face (Rev. 22:4). This hope is hinted at throughout the Bible. In the Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6, we ask the Lord to “make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you” and to “lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (vv. 24-26). David says that the “one thing he seeks after” is “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” (Ps. 27:4). And John says that when Jesus appears, “we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2).
Heaven is a World of Love
What will living in this new world with God be like? Let me give you several things. First, it’ll be a world of love. In his little book Heaven Is a World of Love, Jonathan Edwards describes heaven as a place where God’s love overflows from his being and fills the new world.
As Edwards says, “God is the fountain of love as the sun is the fountain of light.”[1] Since “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8), and since God is an infinite being, then God is an infinite fountain of love, making heaven a world of love.
Edwards says that the Father, Son, and Spirit live as one in “infinitely dear, incomprehensible, mutual, and eternal love.” In heaven “this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love!”[2]
Heaven is a Society of Love
In heaven, love flows freely from God the Father to God the Son through God the Holy Spirit, from God to us, from us to God, and to each other.
There will be no enemies of God in heaven, only lovers of God. Jesus’ love will flow out to his whole church, to every individual member of it, so that we’ll be united in a holy and pure love for him, our spiritual husband.
The angels and the saints will join together in loving God and loving each other, as “all the members of the glorious society of heaven” unite together in genuine love.[3] There will be no heart that isn’t full of love, not a single person who isn’t loved by all the others.
Edwards points out that in this world, our love is often tainted by unholiness, but in heaven all love will be perfectly holy, never corrupted by selfishness. He talks about how love isn’t always perfectly mutual here on earth, but in heaven we’ll love each other with equal proportions, meaning we’ll never feel slighted by each other. Our love will always be perfectly reciprocated. We’ll always be seen and delighted in and our desire to be loved will always be satisfied. We’ll never wonder whether those we love really love us back. Our love will always be fully returned.
In heaven, our love will never be tainted by jealousy or doubt or inconsistency or misunderstanding or unfaithfulness or betrayal or suspicion or rivalry. Edwards says that we’ll be “perfectly satisfied (with) the sincerity and strength of each other’s affection, as much as if there were a window in every breast, so that everything in the heart could be seen.”[4]
He says every expression of love will come from the bottom of the heart and every expression of love will be received and felt as real. We’ll never doubt the genuineness of each other’s love.
Here on earth we struggle to know how to express our love for each other. We love but don’t know how to show it. In heaven, our love will find perfect expression. Nothing will “clog” our love or our expressions of love.[5]
In heaven, God’s people will live in a society of love. No one will be unsocial or withdrawn or isolated or left out. Everyone will be perfectly included and appreciated and desired and drawn into ever-deepening love relationships. No one will ever feel distant from the ones they love. There won’t be any envy, only rejoicing in each other’s happiness. There will be perfect honesty that draws out our deepest heart and draws us into each other’s deepest heart, the kind of love we feel when someone is vulnerable with us.
The only thing that can create and sustain a society like this is the love of God. And, as I said, the brightness and sweetness of his love will flow freely from himself into his world and his people. As John saw in Revelation 21:23, “The city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” The light that fills the new world is the light of love, the light of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.
How to Know You If Are Headed to the World of Love?
How do you know if you’re a member of this society? Simple, some of the love of heaven has already been planted in your heart and will therefore be visible in your life. Why do you think John talks so much about loving one another in the church? Those who love the church in tangible, sacrificial ways give evidence that heaven has come to live in their hearts.
This is one reason why joining, rather than just attending, a church, is so important. The church is a family, not an event. What does it say to the family, and to the Head of the family, if you aren’t willing to put yourself in an accountable relationship with a family of believers?
Holiness, as well as love, will also start to flow out of your life. Those headed to heaven start to live like those in heaven. They make war with their sin, honestly calling it what it is and stop minimizing or rationalizing it away. The love of God in their hearts will create a growing desire to be like the God who loves them.
Those who don’t see love and holiness growing in their lives should be alarmed because the world that awaits them is a world of hatred. Everything in hell is hateful. There is nothing good or lovely or pure or loving there. Hell is, in Edwards’ words, a “deluge of liquid fire” for those who don’t turn away from their sins and follow Jesus.[6]
Consider carefully what world you’re headed to because every hour you move closer to the point where your everlasting fate is fixed. Listen to Jonathan Edwards’ appeal:
“We are all of us, as it were, set here in this world as in a vast wilderness, with diverse countries about it, and with several ways or paths leading to these different countries, and we are left to our choice what course we will take. If we heartily choose heaven and set out hearts entirely on that blessed Canaan – that land of love – and if we choose and love the path that leads to it, we may walk in that path, and if we continue to walk in it, it will lead us to heaven at last.”[7]
Heaven Will Be a New Earth
Those who find their way to heaven will find that heaven will be a new earth. This may be a surprising thing to many Christians. Heaven will not be something entirely different from the earth. In John’s vision at the end of Revelation, he sees heaven “coming down” to the earth. The end will look like the beginning.
God remaking the earth in the future is the consistent teaching of Scripture in almost every part of the Bible:
Isaiah 65:17, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth.”
Isaiah 66:22, “For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain.”
Matthew 19:28, “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’”
Acts 3:21, “(Jesus), whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”
2 Peter 3:13, “But according to his promise we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
Revelation 21:1, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.”
Paul even says that the glory of God’s people after the resurrection demands a glorious new creation to live in (Rom. 8:18-23). Randy Alcorn asks, “Do you ever sense creation’s restlessness? Do you hear groaning in the cold night wind? Do you feel the forest’s loneliness, the ocean’s agitation? Do you hear longing in the cries of whales? Do you see the blood and pain in the eyes of wild animals, or the mixture of pleasure and pain in the eyes of your pets? Despite vestiges of beauty and joy, something on this earth is terribly wrong.”[8]
The creation groans because we groan, and all creation will be set free from corruption when we’re set free from corruption. God will make the whole creation new so that our environment will fit our new bodies.
When Christ returns, he’ll raise us and he’ll raise the earth to new life. As Isaac Watts says in his hymn “Joy to the World”:
No more let sins and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.
God will lift the curse morally in terms of sins, psychologically in terms of sorrows, but also physically in terms of the ground. How far does Jesus’ work reach? “Far as the curse is found.”
Heaven Will Be Where We Live in Resurrected Bodies
Heaven will be a new earth where we’ll live with new bodies. The doctrine of the resurrection makes no sense apart from a new earth, as resurrected bodies aren’t meant to float around space, but call for an earth to live on and work and cultivate.
God made us to live with him on the earth and he hasn’t given up on that plan. Living with God in a physical place is what we were made for. This is why other views of heaven leaves us wanting more. Randy Alcorn, in his book Heaven, illustrates this point well. He says,
“We do not desire to eat gravel. Why? Because God did not design us to eat gravel. Trying to develop an appetite for a disembodied existence in a non-physical heaven is like trying to develop an appetite for gravel…What God made us to desire, and therefore what we do desire if we admit it, is exactly what he promises to those who follow Jesus Christ: a resurrected life in a resurrected body, with the resurrected Christ on a resurrected earth. Our desires correspond precisely to God’s plans.”[9]
As Paul says, we long to “put on our heavenly dwelling,” and as long as we live in this body “we groan” (2 Cor. 5:2, 4). We long for what Edwards described as “immortal youth and freshness.”[10] We long for a different kind of body, not just the body we used to have.
What will these bodies be like? Our resurrected bodies will be like Jesus’ resurrected body. John says that “when he appears we shall be like him” (1 Jn. 3:2). And Paul says, “(The Lord Jesus Christ) will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21).
After his resurrection, Jesus was recognizable to his friends. He walked and talked and cooked and ate in his resurrected body. He also seemingly entered a room with locked doors. Perhaps our new bodies will have abilities that our current bodies don’t. Edwards speculates that the saints may at times be “sent on errands of duty or mercy to distant worlds.”[11] We don’t know all that our perfected bodies will be capable of in the new world, but we do know that they won’t be capable of. They won’t decay, get sick, mourn, or feel any pain of any kind ever (Rev. 21:4).
Working and Singing
What else will we do with our resurrected bodies? Again, the end will look a lot like the beginning. This means there will be meaningful work in cultivating God’s creation. It means having adventures, being with animals, enjoying a natural world no longer in bondage to decay, being surrounded by people from every tribe, tongue, and language with perfect love.
And, of course, there will be music. Revelation 4, 5, and 7 all picture the saints in heaven singing and declaring truth about God. One of the greatest joys of heaven will be the roar of sound coming from perfect people singing in perfect pitch to their perfect God. Every Sunday morning is a dress rehearsal for this concert of praise.
Heaven is Dynamic
We often think that heaven will be static or that it’ll basically be us doing the same thing forever. But that’s not true. Heaven is dynamic. There will be growth and deepening. In Ephesians 2, Paul says that God will show us “in the coming ages…the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (vv. 6-7). And Psalm 16:11 says that in God’s presence “there is fullness of joy” and at his right hand “ are pleasures forevermore.”
In heaven God will continually show us the “immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness” and our joy will grow and increase eternally. As we see more and more of the endless beauty of our triune God, we’ll have a greater and more satisfying joy. As Sam Storms writes, “Our delight in God will never reach a point at which there is no more for us to enjoy.”[12] Or, as Edwards describes it, in heaven there will be “joys that are forever increasing and yet forever full.”[13]
God Will Not Let Go of the Earth
Heaven will be a world of love, a society of love, a new earth where we live with new bodies where we’ll work and rest and sing our hearts out, a place where joy never hits a ceiling and where we never stop discovering and growing and becoming more and more glorious as we behold God’s glorious face.
It’s surprising to many that heaven is so earthy. But it makes since when we remember that God’s incarnation and his death tied him inextricably to the earth and its future. Paul says that in Jesus “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:19-20).
God’s plan in Christ is to rescue people and rescue the earth. As Alcorn says, “In a redemptive work far larger than most imagine, Christ bought and paid for our future and the earth’s.”[14] God will not let go of the earth, even when his hands have to be pierced by nails.
[1]Jonathan Edwards, Heaven Is a World of Love (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 35.
[2]Ibid., 37-8.
[3]Ibid., 49.
[4]Ibid., 61.
[5]Ibid., 63.
[6]Ibid., 98.
[7]Ibid., 104-5.
[8]Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), 120.
[9]Ibid., 7.
[10]Edwards, 75.
[11]Ibid., 79.
[12]Sam Storms, “Foreword,” in Jonathan Edwards, Heaven Is a World of Love (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 17.
[13]Edwards, 85.
[14]Alcorn, 94.