Many of my readers will have expected the triad in my title to be the world, the flesh, and the devil. I rephrased it for two reasons. First, the devil is a spirit being, and in the original context, each of the elements is a hinderance to proper Christian living, hence a hinderance to proper spirituality. Second, I see in the three elements an echo of the triune constitution of humans: we are spirit; we live in a body; we have a soul. With our body, we contact the world; “flesh” is synonymous with soul; Spirit is self-explanatory.
But I am getting ahead of myself saying spirit is
self-explanatory. Maybe it’s not for many. I titled this blog “Why Heaven
Always Matters Most,” but I need to explain what I mean by “heaven.” Prepare to
be shocked: I do not believe heaven is the place where we go when we die.
Shocked? There is no Bible verse I know of that says that. The closest one can
come is Jesus’ statement to the thief on the cross: “Today you will be with me
in paradise.” I don’t believe paradise is the same as heaven.
The Greek word “paradise” is only used three times in the
New Testament. Once by Jesus on the cross and once in Revelation where Jesus
tells Ephesian conquerors that they will eat from the tree of life which is in
the “paradise of God.” This is interesting because the Greek translation of the
Old Testament uses “paradise” to describe the Garden of Eden. The third use of
paradise is in 2 Corinthians where Paul describes his ecstatic vision as
possibly taking place in “paradise,” which he parallels with the “third
heaven.” Curiously, he isn’t exactly sure where he was taken or even whether he
was in or out of his body.
At the time of Paul’s writing, the Jews believed there were
three “heavens.” The first heaven is where the birds fly; the second is where
the stars hang; the third is where God lives. Earth’s atmosphere, the vast
reaches of outer space, and the realm of God: three heavens. I believe Paul was
trying to say he left the created universe and appeared in the presence of God
and His angels. That would be paradise, but Paul never wrote that he expected
to be there as a physical being. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 15, he makes it
clear that when we die, we put on a different type of body: a spiritual body. So,
when he said, “absent from the body is present with the Lord,” he knew it would
be a spiritual body that took him there. To be in God’s presence is to be fully
in the spirit because God is spirit. (John 4:24)
Now look at Jesus’ use of the word heaven. Matthew records
Jesus using the word over seventy times. It is most frequently used in
combination with either “kingdom of” or “Father in.” The few times it refers to
what we would call the sky, it has an article preceding it: the heavens. In
Jesus’ usage, heaven is where His Father “lived,” and it is the name for the
kingdom He is initiating. The Greek word for kingdom means rulership – that
which is ruled by the king comprises the kingdom. So, the kingdom of heaven is
not a place where people go, it is a state of being ruled by “heaven,” which is
a metonymy for God. In this case, “heaven” points to the spirit realm, and
those who enter it must be under God’s rulership. This explains why Paul
repeatedly insists we must be in the spirit to be fully Christian.
It is no wonder we struggle to understand what or where
heaven is. The finite human mind struggles to understand the infinite. There is
another aspect to our struggle that is equally important: we are living as
spiritual beings in a material world. J.B. Phillips wrote a book years ago
called Your God is Too Small. Whenever we try to understand God in a
physical sense, we generally err because that makes Him “too small.” Childish
pictures of God with a long white beard sitting on a giant throne cannot possibly
portray the awesome, infinite God of Creation.
We occasionally get a “picture” of God in Scripture. In
Isaiah chapter six, the prophet had an experience somewhat like the one Paul told
the Corinthians about. Isaiah “saw” God on His throne in Heaven. He thought he
would die because the Jews believed no one could see God and live. But he didn’t
die. R.C. Sproul notes something important we can learn from this experience: “God’s
work of grace upon Isaiah’s soul [my italics] did not annihilate his
personal identity. Isaiah said, ‘Here am I.’ Isaiah could still speak in terms
of ‘I.’ He still had an identity. He still had a personality. Far from God
seeking to destroy the ‘self’ … God redeems the self. He heals the self so that
it may be useful and fulfilled in the mission to which the person is called.
Isaiah’s personality was overhauled but not annihilated. He was still Isaiah
Ben Amoz when he left the [heavenly] temple. He was the same person, but his
mouth was clean.”[1]
He was prepared for service on earth.
I would like to point out that the “self” Sproul refers to
is the soul of Isaiah. It is that which makes Isaiah Isaiah; it is his
personality. It was his soul that needed cleansing. If you read the New
Testament carefully, you will find that when it uses the words soul, mind,
flesh, or understanding, it always refers to the human part of our being – our
personality, our faculties, or our character. When the New Testament refers to
spirit, it always relates to heavenly things. In every case, those heavenly things
or things above are spiritual things. If we remember this, some difficult
passages are made clearer.
Jesus’ explanation to His disciples in His last moments
before the crucifixion can be confusing. They did not understand why or where
He was going. When Jesus told His disciples that He had to leave, He was still
in His original incarnation – His physical body. It is that body that had to
leave. In that same discourse, He said that He would be coming back to be with
them. He also said that He was going away to build a home for them with His
Father in Heaven. This naturally confused them.
Jesus was telling His disciples about a state of being that
was in their future. All the references to Him at the right hand of the Father
are after His resurrection in His new body – His spiritual body which I believe
is the type of body we all will have after we are resurrected. In 1 Corinthians
15, Paul tries to explain how our present physical bodies will be exchanged for
spiritual bodies. In 1 John we learn that we don’t know exactly what form
Christ is in now, but we know that we will be like him when He returns for us
(and we get our new bodies.)
Remember that the post-resurrection Jesus could appear and
disappear; He came into rooms without using doors. I personally think He is
forever in that resurrected spiritual body that has properties we cannot
imagine. That may explain how he can be at the right hand of God and still say
He is “in” us. It may be correct to say that the entire godhead is in us since
what we call God is not physical according to Jesus. (John 4:24) I suspect the
Holy Spirit is the “vehicle” that brings God into our being. Perhaps the Spirit
is needed because Jesus is forevermore in His resurrected new-human body – like
the one we will get when we are resurrected.
We shrink God when we try to make Him fit into our physical reality.
He is more real than our reality because He created it out of nothing, and He
lives beyond it in eternity. He can be “in” us and “in” Heaven at the same
“time” because He is not bound by words like “in” and “time.” After the final
judgment and the recreation of the world, I believe that the spirit world and
this physical world will be reunited like they were in the Garden of Eden.
Heaven will come to Earth.
That condition will truly be paradise. We will live
continually in God’s presence because the death caused by Adam’s sin will be
done away. We have always believed that the “death” God warned Adam about was
primarily spiritual. This is why Paul repeatedly refers to humans as dead until
Christ makes them alive. For now, we remain body-and-soul as earthly creatures,
but spiritually we are heavenly creatures if we are in Christ. The life we are
promised in Christ is spiritual. That is the life that will be fully realized
after our resurrection to Glory and the transformation into our spiritual body.
Earth and Heaven will again become one. Hallelujah! Maranatha, Lord Jesus!
Come!
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Heaven Matters
Great read brother! God bless you guys on your journey and keep you healthy and safe.
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