And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Daniel 12:2
....and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
Acts 24v15
I've talked a little about the permanence and security of the life we have in Christ. There's a lot more to be said about that, and a lot of verses to work through and contextualise. But for now I want to look at this new life we are receiving. As we saw, the New Testament calls it zoe life. In fact, zoe aioneos. Eternal life. We discussed what 'eternal' might mean. Regardless of exactly how time is experienced in eternity, everyone agrees there is no end to it. What is it like? How does it feel? How much can we know about it now? If Heaven isn't a wonderful home, why aim to go there at all?
Winston Churchill was voted the Greatest Briton a few years ago. However I read that as he approached death, he told his doctor that life had been fun, just the once. He didn't want a re-run. That's sad but illuminating. Life lived eternally in the Kingdom of God will have qualities which we don't experience now. We won't want this life to end. Not with the entirely new quality of life He gives.
We must trust God knows what He's doing, and that eternity with Him will have no place for boredom or disappointment, trials or tedium. We must believe that all negatives like these will find no place.
The whole aim of dealing with sin is for opening up and perfecting relationships. Sin is in a sense a secondary issue with the Gospel. We need the root of it dealt with, and it has been. We need, as these verses below say, to walk free from it without getting entangled again. But the aim, and the aim for Jesus, is the joy of friendship and spiritual family.
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:1,2
God is not tempted by, or fixated with, sin. He just knows it needs to be got out of the way for life to work. The Westminster Catechism is right when it says the chief purpose of man is to know God and enjoy Him forever. Sin is merely a passing obstacle. Christ dealt with it. He dealt with it because He wants an eternal, big happy family! He's not selfish but He does have a big heart for family relationships. He has very high ambitions for His children!
We may not understand how (or if) time works in eternity. We may not be able to fully anticipate the 'physics', the environment, the 'architecture' or 'scenery'. But we have been told quite a lot about how relationships will work in Heaven.
Jesus spoke mostly about relationships. John and others got some physical information about eternity, things like streets and a city.
The Flesh
Relationships on Earth work according to the 'flesh'. Though men want to put on a 'righteous' front, they are not righteous in God's sight.
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21
That is about real human nature without the Holy Spirit. There is conflict, greed, oppression, manipulation, fear. When God withdraws fully from people, relational and social Hell will result. The environment of Hell will just be a fitting backdrop. Many unbelievers are now living in the blessing of praying, Spirit-filled Christians. The Holy Spirit is still active even in this fallen world. In Hell, that will not be so. Envy, strife, conflict, cheating, getting one over on people, every kind of turmoil, uncertainty and insecurity. There will be no real harmony and no real rest and peace.
Those who have come to love the strife, the ruthless competition, the exploitation, the greed, the selfishness, the lust and oppression, the lying and cheating, and have rejected their answer in Christ, will be removed summarily from the presence of God and the sanctified. Done at the end of the age, this is necessary for the blessing of the righteous. God won't tolerate the nonsense of sin forever. They will burn with these feelings and motives eternally. Conflicts will arise and escalate. There will be no real or lasting resolution. They will burn with regret and never achieve real peace or fulfilment.
The Spirit
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23
Here are listed the attributes which make eternal life viable and enjoyable. Believers are filled with the Holy Spirt, the person of the Trinity who inhabits us. When His virtues have taken over completely in us, leaving no room or desire for the fleshly things, God can trust such people and bless them with Heaven.
In Heaven there will be an intimacy of relationship, totally impossible when people don't trust each other. There will be a framework allowing for true harmony and fulfilment, a hosting of the blessing of God.
In the present age, we have been delivered from the penalty of sin, which is death and Hell. We are being delivered from the power of sin. We are often still aware of it tainting our lives.
We will, at the resurrection of the righteous, be delivered from even the presence of sin completely. No inward or outward presence of defilement!
Loneliness will not exist, because people will be free to know each other completely and love each other completely, without the fear of rejection or alienation. We have been reborn to dovetail with each other. There'll be no need to hide or pretend. We will all understand that Christ saved us from our depravity, and that we are all recipients of His mercy. But there will be a permanent chasm between our past sins and our present reality. We will be distantly aware of our past sins and failures, but we will feel no embarrassment over them, or even any sense of identification with them. They will be a remote, distant folly. There will be no judgment and no condemnation, from ourselves, or others, or from God. There will be no sense that our past sins define who we are now, or taint us to any degree. We will be absorbed in enjoying the new, and the past will only be relevant because we are so thankful it is behind us.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
John 10:10
Do we sometimes feel a fleeting longing for something we can't put into words? A sensation that there is more to be known, experienced and enjoyed, in our inward life, in our emotions and thinking? That there are vistas and nuances of consciousness we can't quite get in touch with fully? A childhood friend who lived life 'down here' full on, seizing every opportunity to have fun, good or bad, once said 'there must be more than this'. There is. Our hearts tell us.
At the moment there are aspects of mortal life which are in the themselves death. They are the fruits of the flesh mentioned above. We might think we'll miss them, if only for the contrast and the intrigue. But in God's eternity, new aspects of life will be present. People who have had experience of Heaven have mentioned this. There are new colours, new sounds, new experiences. Completely new. We won't miss the old order.
We will have so many people to spend time with, and we won't be restricted to a small context of relationships by proximity, by money or even by earthly family. We will be understood, heard, loved, cared for, by all.
While we don't know, and probably couldn't presently understand, our new physical context, we can deduce a few things about it from the character of our Maker and Redeemer. Our environment will be granted by God to please and delight us. It will lack the marring hand of sin we see now, seen as it is alongside the shadows of glory this fallen world undoubtedly still shows. It will be wonderful, in ways we can't yet even imagine. It will be harmonious, without jarring elements. It will resonate with possibilities and discovery. It will satisfy every corner of our being. We will have an eternal home. Many are seeking a little escape, a paradise for themselves and those they clique. But in Heaven there will be no need or desire to escape, or to shun. The fulness surrounds. It's the natural backdrop. It's who we all are and where we all are.
God has always planned to put sin in remission and then to do away with it entirely. With no efforts spent on security and secrecy, our creativity will flourish as never before. The God who granted us a context of existence also grants us an ability to help create it for ourselves and others. There will be work, but not toil. Our minds will be sharper, our perception clearer. We will enjoy the abundance of very good thing.
When I got saved, the staleness went, and freshness came. It was vivid like nothing else before. I haven't remained in that emotional place constantly, but it was the first installment and foretaste of what awaits. A new sense of wonder, praise and thankfulness, along with a new pleasure and satisfaction in life. In Heaven, these blessings will abide permanently.
The sorrow and sighing, the longing for more and different, will have dissolved into pure daylight. Frustration and disappointment move into satisfaction, satisfaction for all who came.
The Beatitudes
That's some taster, some deductions based on Scripture, about eternal life for the redeemed.
How are things in the meantime?
These verses are found in Matthew 5v3-12.
They tell us what the hunger for the final fulfilment of eternal life, experienced in the here and now, feels like.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Those who are not self-satisfied, and hunger for something else, something altogether better, may feel longing now, but they are blessed. They will be fulfilled. The depth of their longing will be more than met in the delight of their fulfilment.
We can bury our longings under worldly ambition and escapism. Or we can wait patiently for the coming King and His Kingdom.
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