So last Sunday, in our series on Ultimate Questions we dealt with the question: What is heaven really like?But last week I mentioned that the Bible talks about the heaven that is now and the heaven that is yet to be.
The heaven that exists now is where the souls of believers go when they die. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:8, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
But last week we also saw how the heaven that is now is temporary. So today I would like to talk with you about the heaven that is yet to be. And in order to do that we have to talk about something else that Christians have believed in for 2000 years. That is the resurrection of the body. In the Apostles’ Creed we confess, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.”
Perhaps the best place to learn about the resurrection of the body is 1 Corinthians 15, what has been called, the resurrection chapter, just as 1 Corinthians 13 is the love chapter of the Bible. So, listen for God’s word to you from 1 Corinthians 15:35-54…
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.
42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is[j]from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will[k] also bear the image of the man of heaven.
50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters,[l] is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die,[m] but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
So, in order to answer the question: “What will the future heaven be like?” we must first answer the question, “What will our resurrection bodies be like?”Paul tells us, there will be continuity between our mortal bodies that are now and our immortal bodies that will be in the future.Just as there is continuity between the seed and the full-grown plant, so also there will be continuity between the mortal body and the immortal body.
This is not to say, necessarily, that we will recover those particular units of matter that we have now. As C. S. Lewis once noted, there won’t be enough to go around, for we all live in secondhand bodies. There are atoms in my chin that probably have served many another man, dog, eel or dinosaur. We don’t even retain the same particles in this life; we are constantly shedding some cells and gaining others. While Jesus reassumed the same body that had died only days before on the cross, this does not necessarily mean that we will do the same. What I Corinthians 15 and Jesus’ resurrection teach us is that there will be elements of continuity between our earthly bodies and our resurrection bodies. N. T. Wright summarizes the argument this way:
Paul says that God will give us new bodies; there may well be some bodily continuity, as with Jesus himself, but God is well capable of recreating people even if (as with the martyrs of Lyons) their ashes are scattered into a fast-flowing river.[1]
Ben Franklin once put it this way when he wrote his own epitaph:
The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer,
Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
Lies here food for the worms;
But the work shall not be lost,
For it will (as he believes) appear once more
In a new and more elegant edition,
Revised and corrected by its Author!
That, I think, is a very good statement of the hope of the Christian.
The story is told of a lady who fell out of a second-story window and landed in a garbage truck that was slowly moving past the house. Half buried in the litter, she tried without success to get the driver’s attention. A foreign diplomat standing on the sidewalk saw her and commented indignantly, “Another example of how wasteful Americans are! That woman looks like she’s good for at least another 10 years.”
The Lord is not wasteful. And matter, in and of itself, is not evil. There is every indication that God likes matter. After all, he made a lot of it. And the doctrine of the resurrection teaches us that he is not going to waste any of it.
The second thing we see in 1 Corinthians 15 is that there will be discontinuity between our mortal bodies and our immortal bodies. Now, you may think that I am contradicting myself. I just said there will be continuity between our mortal and immortal bodies. Now I am saying there will be discontinuity. Which is it?
It is both. There will be continuity in some ways and discontinuity in others. It would appear from Scripture that there will be continuity in that our immortal bodies will be fashioned in some way out of the matter that God has already created. But there will be discontinuity in that our immortal bodies will have greater splendor, power, glory, and durability.
The point at which Paul’s argument can get confusing is when he begins to talk about the natural versus the spiritual body. It almost sounds like Paul is saying that the resurrection body will be immaterial. But that is not what he is saying. In this context, spiritual means created and sustained by the Holy Spirit. Back in 1 Corinthians 2:13 Paul said, “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.” Thus, “spiritual” does not mean “immaterial.” “Spiritual” refers to that which comes from and is sustained by the Holy Spirit. Our present bodies are given to us by natural generation from our human parents. Our resurrection bodies will be given to us directly by the work of the Holy Spirit, just as the Holy Spirit raised Jesus’ body from the dead.
Someone once wrote to Ann Landers,
A recent column of yours about a minister who mispronounced the name of the deceased three times during the service brought back some memories. Our preacher got this one off a few weeks ago while extolling the virtues of a leading citizen during the eulogy: “We have here only the shell—the nut is gone.”
Scripture teaches us that our bodies are a shell in which and through which we relate to the world. In God’s new world he is going to give us new and better shells in which to relate to our new and better environment.
Thirdly, we learn from 1 Corinthians 15 that our resurrected bodies will be like Jesus’ body.Paul contrasts the natural, earthly body of the first man, Adam, with the spiritual, heavenly body of the last Adam, Christ. Paul says that we who are believers in Jesus will bear his likeness, just as we have borne the likeness of Adam. If you want to know what your resurrection body will be like, look at what Scripture says about Jesus’ resurrected body.
Jesus’ resurrected body could be touched (John 20:17). He was recognizable as the same Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee with his disciples (John 21:12). In his resurrection body Jesus was able to eat broiled fish (Luke 24:42-43). Jesus’ resurrected body was similar to our earthly bodies in these ways, yet, it was also different. For example, after his resurrection, Jesus was apparently able to appear, vanish, and move unseen from one location to another (Luke 24:31,36).
E. Stanley Jones once told the story of a layman, a newspaper man, who was called upon to conduct the funeral of a mutual friend. Being an exact man, he wanted to do it properly and in the best Christian tradition. So, he turned to the New Testament as the original source and example of how Jesus conducted a funeral. And he found that Jesus didn’t conduct funerals at all. Jesus only dealt with resurrections… I love that!
Now, you may well be wondering, when will the resurrection of the body take place?Scripture teaches us that it will happen at Jesus’ Second Coming. Paul says,
Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die,[m] but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
In a cemetery in Hanover, Germany, there was a grave on which were placed huge slabs of granite and marble cemented together and fastened with heavy steel clasps. It belonged to a woman who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Yet, strangely, she directed in her will that her grave be made so secure that if there were a resurrection, it could not reach her. On the marker were inscribed these words: “This burial place must never be opened.”
In time, a seed, covered by the stones, began to grow. Slowly it pushed its way through the soil and out from beneath the slabs. As the trunk enlarged, the great slabs gradually shifted so that the steel clasps were wrenched from their sockets.
A tiny seed became a tree that pushed aside the stones. The dynamic life force contained in that little seed is a faint reflection of the tremendous power of God’s creative word that someday will make not only new resurrection bodies, but also a new heaven and earth.
What will that new heaven and earth be like?We get a glimpse in Revelation 21:1-5…
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth hadpassed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home[a] of God is among mortals.
He will dwell[b] with them;
they will be his peoples,[c]
and God himself will be with them;[d]
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”
He will dwell[b] with them;
they will be his peoples,[c]
and God himself will be with them;[d]
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”
From this passage we can learn at least three things about the heaven that is yet to be. First, we will have a new physical environment in which to live in our resurrected bodies. Some have thought that the new heaven and earth will have no connection to the old. But Romans 8:20-23 suggests a transfiguration of the old heaven and earth. Paul writes,
…for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
Just as we groan and long to put on our resurrection bodies, so also the creation groans and longs to put on the new heaven and new earth. And that new heaven and earth will be remade, refashioned, out of the old heaven and earth, and, as we see in Revelation 21, joined together as one.
As C. S. Lewis once wrote in his book, Miracles, “The old field of space, time, matter, and the senses is to be weeded, dug, and sown for a new crop. We may be tired of that old field: God is not.”[2]
But more important than all of this is the fact that in the heaven that is yet to be, just as with the heaven that is now, we will be with the Lord. And since we will be with the Lord this also means that we will experience no more sorrow, pain, or death. God will wipe every tear from our eyes…
***
Now, the original question, that spurred me on to deliver this sermon was: What is heaven really like? And you may feel that between last Sunday and this Sunday, I haven’t really answered the question. If that is so, I would suggest the reason is because the Bible only gives us glimpses, little snapshots, of what the current heaven is like and what the future heaven will be like. Last week we saw how Jesus used different images for heaven. The current heaven is like a beautiful enclosed garden, an inn along a journey, or like a great banquet or a party. Now today we have seen the author of Revelation picturing the future heaven as something joined with earth and more like a city than anything else. The New Jerusalem he calls it.
One difficulty that some people have when it comes to believing in heaven stems from these biblical images. What are we to make of them? My literary mentor C. S. Lewis wrestled with this question. In Mere Christianityhe wrote that all scriptural images (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) are symbolic attempts to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because music suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest splendor and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of heaven and the preciousness of it. Lewis contends that those who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Jesus told his disciples to act like doves, he meant for them to lay eggs!
So we do not have to take the biblical images of heaven literally. And at this many of us may want to breathe a collective sigh of relief. But what are we to do with the biblical images if they speak poorly to our imagination? Lewis admits in The Weight of Glorythat he relates to this feeling. He confesses that the appeal of the biblical imagery is to him, at first, very small. But that, he claims is what we ought to expect. If Christianity can tell us no more of heaven than our imaginations surmise already, then Christianity is no higher than us. But, Lewis maintains, if Christianity has more to tell us, then we must expect it to be less immediately attractive than our own ideas. Once we have awakened more to our new life in Christ, perhaps the biblical images of heaven will become more interesting to us.
I have to confess that one of my favorite images of heaven is not one from the Bible, but rather it comes from C. S. Lewis’ final children’s story, The Last Battle. At the end of the book, Lucy, Edmund, and Peter, three children whom we first meet in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, experience a railway accident in our world and suddenly find themselves in a strange land that is incredibly beautiful and breathtaking in its grandeur. Within this land they discover many of the people whom they loved in their life on earth as well as many of the places they loved both in Narnia and England. While the children are still trying to figure out exactly where they are, they discover something even better about this special land—Aslan, the great Lion, the Lord of Narnia is there. Lewis writes:
The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-coloured cliffs led up in front of them like a giant’s staircase. And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty…. Then Aslan turned to them and said:
“You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”
Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”
“No fear of that,” said Aslan, “Have you not guessed?”
Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.
“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before…
At least one question remains: will we be part of that Great Story? We can be, as we trust in Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Let us pray…
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