THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY
“All your life, an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it – or else that it was within your grasp and you have lost it forever.” (C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain)
Philip Yancey wrote of modern Christians in the West, that “we fear heaven as our ancestors feared hell” (Soul Survivor, page 211). Why is this?
Perhaps there is the fear of being accused of holding out “pie in the sky when you die” as a sop to the unfortunate and oppressed, either as a pious alternative to actually doing anything to relieve their suffering, or as a means of excusing, or even justifying the circumstances and systems of oppression which perpetuate it. There is the fear of being accused of “being too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good” of having our minds so engrossed in contemplation of celestial delight as to neglect the gritty realities of the injustice and misery all around us.
Furthermore, there is the curious fear which Randy Alcorn found when speaking to Christians about heaven, a fear of the perceived tedium of unending existence in some vague, ethereal state. Who wants to live forever sitting around on a cloud playing a harp? (see Randy Alcorn, Heaven, chapter 1)
Nevertheless, as we shall see with the doctrine of hell, the idea of heaven (though not necessarily the bit about clouds and harps) is quite clearly taught in Scripture, including by Jesus himself, and is integral to the Christian virtue of hope. It is surely appropriate then, as a believer in heaven, to explore, however briefly, what it is exactly that I believe in and hope for.
Firstly, heaven can be understood in terms of our relationship with God, more specifically as the culmination of our relationship with God, which begins on earth for those who come to know Christ, and which is to mature throughout our life until we see God face to face and know him even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13.12). According to Christ himself, “this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17.3) This understanding of heaven as the joyful consummation of our relationship of love for God can help us to understand the idea of “reward” and how it is that there can be varying degrees of glory in heaven. As (in an old illustration) a series of different-sized containers can all be full to the brim and yet contain different amounts of water, so we can all be filled to the brim with the joy of being in the presence of the God whom we love and serve, and yet, in view of the differing degrees of service and maturity in our earthly lives, have differing capacities for God.
Secondly, the hope of heaven contains the promise of becoming new people, no longer bound by our sin and weakness and other limitations of the flesh, no longer bound even by death, but being transformed into the very likeness of Christ himself. Not only to be with Jesus but to be like him. Again, this isn’t only a promise for the distant future but the culmination of something which is (or ought to be) happening now, increasingly, as we, beholding Christ, are progressively transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3.18). And, as we grow in our love for God and for others, it is only reasonable to expect that we would seek more and more to bring the peace and love and justice of heaven to earth. As C. S. Lewis put it –
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. … It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 3, chapter 10)
Thirdly, as the Creed implies with its talk of the resurrection of the body, heaven is ultimately the promise of a restored universe, the new heavens and the new earth. In this sense, as the Belinda Carlisle song goes, “true heaven is a place on earth”. Randy Alcorn, in his book Heaven, defends this view against the assertions of what he calls “Christoplatonism” – the idea that heaven must be “spiritual” in the sense of being insubstantial or immaterial. No, the scriptural teaching on heaven (like it or not) is that it speaks of a real, restored creation, where real people, in real, though incorruptible, bodies, will live forever in joyful relationship with the infinite and loving God.
(See other posts in this series and buy Edward’s book)