There are a variety of ways to explain why the residents ask Jesus to leave. Were they just distraught over the loss of their possessions, their swine? Was this unleashing of spiritual power too much to handle, perhaps fearing what Jesus might do to or require of them? Calvin remarks that their fearful request for Jesus to leave reflects the basic quality of their present relationship with God:

“for his face is terrible, so long as they contemplate him as a Judge, and not as a Father. The consequence is that the gospel, which is more delightful than any thing that can be conceived, is everywhere considered to be so dismal and severe, that a good part of the world would wish that it were buried….

Hence we learn how wide is the difference between the knowledge of the goodness, and the knowledge of the power of God. Power strikes men with terror, makes them fly from the presence of God, and drives them to a distance from him: but goodness draws them gently, and makes them feel that nothing is more desirable than to be united to God.”

If we recognize God’s goodness and his love for us in Jesus Christ, we can joyfully surrender ourselves to him and be delighted by his power and his presence, which can heal and transform us just as the demoniac was healed and transformed. But when we refuse to trust the goodness of God, we flee from him, we find his presence threatening, and his power terrifying.

Jesus obviously takes their fear to be evidence of their lack of faith. It is easy to be struck with dread in the face of the dangers of this world, especially in our terror-hyped times. But is fear ever appropriate for someone with confident faith in God? Can a proper fear ever serve our faith rather than evidence our lack of faith? John Calvin reflects on these questions in his commentary on this passage:

“Is every kind of fear sinful and contrary to faith? First, he does not blame them simply because they fear, but because they are timid. Mark adds the word “so,” — “Why are you so timid?, and by this term indicates that their alarm goes beyond proper bounds. Besides, he contrasts faith with their fear, and thus shows that he is speaking about immoderate dread, the tendency of which is not to exercise their faith, but to banish it from their minds. It is not every kind of fear that is opposed to faith. This is evident from the consideration that, if we fear nothing, an indolent and carnal security steals upon us; and thus faith languishes, the desire to pray becomes sluggish, and the remembrance of God is at length extinguished. Besides, those who are not affected by a sense of calamities, so as to fear, are rather insensible than firm.

Thus we see that fear, which awakens faith, is not in itself faulty until it go beyond bounds….It is not every kind of fear which indicates a lack of faith, but only that dread which disturbs the peace of the conscience in such a manner that it does not rest on the promise of God.”

And how we view the future is indicative of what we think God really cares about — what is God’s ultimate plan for the world? What is the goal toward which everything is moving? When Christians think that all God really cares about is the spirit (or “soul”) of human beings, and not the whole created order (including our bodies), then this profoundly shapes our orientation toward life in the present. Do we attend only to “the soul,” or also to the body, or indeed to the whole creation? If God cares about and is redeeming all of it, then the scope of our participation in God’s mission includes all of it. (N.T. Wright has a nice interview in Time Magazine on this issue, emphasizing the cosmic scope of redemption, the truth that in Jesus Christ God is working out the redemption of all things. I posted a sermon I recently preached on this issue as well.)

I’m thinking about this today because I happened to be reading the early church father Irenaeus, who related this issue very practically to a host of issues in his struggle against Gnosticism in the early church. In the section cited in my devotional reading this morning, he points to the fact that our calling to offer material things to God speaks to God’s redemptive purposes for creation.  Irenaeus points out that it doesn’t make sense to offer to God what one thinks God cares little or nothing about — we offer “our” treasure and care for those in physical need, for instance, precisely because God intends his creation and all our “posessions” to be ordered around his redemptive purposes in the world, which are indeed cosmic in scope.  We don’t offer material things to God to prove that they don’t matter to us, so that we can get rid of what God doesn’t care about.  Rather, we offer them to God so that they can be used in a manner consistent with his mission to restore all things to himself — precisely because he does care about them.

Of course, Irenaeus ultimately grounds his discussion of these things in the incarnation — God uniting himself to humanity and to the physical world when he becomes human as Jesus Christ — and in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the firstfruits of the New Creation. And in the section I read today he also applies God’s work in redeeming “flesh” to the regular worship of the Church, through the Eucharist: physical elements that by the Spirit provide nourishment to our bodies and our souls, by communicating the body and blood of Christ to us:

“Then, again, how can they say that the flesh, which is nourished with the body of the Lord and with His blood, goes to corruption, and does not partake of life? Let them, therefore, either alter their opinion, or cease from offering the things just mentioned. But our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion. For we offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Spirit. For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 18.5).

Whenever we offer material things to God (whether in the form of financial resources, caring for the creation or those in physical need, etc.), and whenever we participate in the Eucharist, we do so because our bodies and the physicality of all creation are part of the fabric of God’s good intentions for us and for the world, and indeed a part of what God is redeeming in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit.

In Deuteronomy 7:2, for instance, Moses tells the Israelites that when they enter the Land of Canaan, which God had promised to give them, they will encounter its current inhabitants whom they “must destroy totally.” And then in the description of the conquest in Joshua we find these instructions carried out in a sweeping manner. For instance, in Joshua 6, after God collapses the walls of Jericho, the Israelites “devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” The Hebrew word here translated “devoted” is herem and it’s a technical term in a variety of such Old Testament passages describing things (and people) that Israel was supposed to “devote” to the Lord, often devotion through destruction: “Herem War.”

Some refer to the Conquest of Canaan as “genocide,” since the term means the “killing of a people,” which is exactly what’s described in the Book of Joshua. God’s covenant people were to be holy, and the rationale of the Conquest seems to have been that the whole Canaanite culture of worshipping false gods in the Land needed to be eradicated so that Israel would not be tempted to violate their covenant with God and themselves be destroyed (Deut. 7:4).

These passages certainly jolt modern readers, and undoubtedly they were intended to raise the eyebrows of their ancient near eastern readers as well. I have recently had some conversations about these passages, considering them in light of the character of God, the teaching of Jesus in the New Testament, and “holy war” themes in the modern geopolitical landscape. Of course, these are areas of disagreement among Christians, and tomes have been written on each of these issues. But here are a few things that have come up in conversation.

The Broader Drama of Redemption

First things first: it is important to remember that the Conquest of Canaan is one event in the broader drama of God’s war against sin and evil, and his mercy toward sinful humanity. Ultimately, ancient Israel, including the Conquest of Canaan, played an indispensable part in the story we now know climaxes in Jesus Christ, through whom salvation is brought to all nations of the earth. Our reading of the Conquest narratives should begin with this in mind.

In the course of redemptive-history, God’s justice and mercy always go together. Put bluntly and simply, in the broader biblical narrative, God both extends grace toward humanity by saving some and judges humanity in destroying others. The story of the Flood in Genesis is a gruesome example (Genesis 6-9). While we like to make it a cute story to depict on the wall of children’s nurseries, the story is about how God destroys just about every living thing on earth, because it had become so corrupt. The mercy of God is seen in his provision of salvation for a few through Noah and the Ark. This story highlights God’s willingness to judge human sin through destruction and shows God’s mercy by giving humanity a fresh start. This theme runs throughout Scripture, right up to the Final Judgment when the Messiah returns. When we take sin as seriously as God does, including our own, the horror of human destruction doesn’t diminish, but we gain a perspective unlike the modern presumption of human goodness and belief in a distant and benign Creator. God is very much involved in history; and God is both just and merciful in the face of human sin and rebellion.

The uniqueness of the Conquest of Canaan, then, seems not to be that God would destroy human beings but that (a) he would single out a particular people group for destruction and (b) he would use one people group as his instrument to destroy another. Hence, the term “genocide” applied to this instance.

Looking More Closely at Some Aspects of the Conquest

While I don’t think there is any way to avoid characterizing the biblical narrative of the Conquest as “genocidal,” there are several other important things to keep in mind. The biblical narrative of the Conquest does not simply focus on one ethnic group (Israel) wiping out another ethnic group (the Canaanites). True to the broader scope of redemption just mentioned, it really focuses on God (the primary “protagonist”) vs. sin and idolatry (the primary “antagonist”). We see this in the story in numerous ways.

The Canaanites are pictured as wicked and idolatrous, toward whom their Creator, who is owed perfect obedience, exercises forbearance (Gen 15:16). And when the Canaanites are destroyed, the biblical narratives go to great lengths to emphasize that God achieves their destruction, not the Israelite solders: it is God who collapses the walls of Jericho (Joshua 6), and it is God who “threw down huge hail stones from heaven” on the Amorites, and “there were more who died because of the hailstones than the Israelites killed with the sword” (Josh. 10:11).

That the drama is really about God vs. his enemies and not Israel vs. the Canaanites can also be seen in God’s willingness to punish Israel when they turn against him: he sends them into Exile (e.g. 2 Kings 17). In the story of the Conquest, God had chosen them to be his covenant people who would receive the gift of the Land in which they were to live in holiness. When they violate their covenant with God, the instrument of destruction becomes the object of wrath.

We can also see the primacy of the covenantal nature of the relationship and the less-than-“pure” ethnic identification by the fact that Canaanites could apparently be spared by repenting and turning to God, such as in the case of Rahab and her family (Josh. 2). God’s covenant people were not strictly defined by ethnicity but rather by covenant faithfulness.

Additionally, “the commander of the army of the Lord” who comes to Joshua in a vision refuses to identify himself with the side of Israel (Josh. 5:13-15). That would be a misconstrual of the situation. Israel has been brought onto God’s side and has been given a special role to play in God’s fight against sin and evil; God has not come to take up arms for Israel.

Further still, and very importantly, the special role given to Israel in fighting the Canaanites was in the end not for the sake only of the nation of Israel but was one part of God’s ultimate plan to use Israel as a blessing to all nations of the earth (Gen. 12:1-4).

To the above clarification about who is really doing the fighting and why, we should note that the “special role” that the nation of Israel was given in carrying out a policy of Herem War was strictly limited to the era of the Conquest. God gives no extension to the policy beyond that particular campaign.

The above points at least help us to place the story in the broader plan of redemption and in the light of God’s justice and mercy. And though those who are prone to misuse biblical texts are not prone to careful exegesis, keeping these things in mind should also distance the biblical narrative from any contemporary programs of nationalistic violence and ethnic cleansing.

The Warrior God In the New Testament

In the New Testament, the picture of God as a Warrior is by no means left behind. In many ways God’s judgment on the Canaanites as Israel enters the Promised Land foreshadows the Final Judgment, where the “King of kings” comes “to strike down the nations” prior to establishing the New Heaven and Earth in which the saints will reign with Christ forever (Rev. 19-22). Indeed, in his first advent, Jesus the King came to earth to battle against God’s enemies, and the victory of God was achieved through the cross, which mysteriously defeats the powers of darkness (Col. 2:15), and through the Resurrection, which triumphs over death and destruction once and for all.

As God’s New Covenant people await Christ’s return, when that victory will be fully manifest on earth, we continue the battle through spiritual warfare as we witness to the reign of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul famously puts it: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). If in the “Old Covenant” (Old Testament) God’s covenant people took up physical arms for physical battles in the cause of God’s Kingdom, in the “New Covenant” (New Testament) the war enters a new phase of deep, spiritual intensity. God has fulfilled his promise to Abraham, that through his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed: God’s people are now not a “nation” but among all nations, and we conquer not by the sword by the proclamation of the Gospel that Jesus is already the reigning King who will come again.

This does not, however, mean that in this era, before Christ returns and takes up the sword himself (Rev. 19:15), that God has not given the power of the sword to anyone. In Romans 13, we read that God has given the power of the sword to legitimate “governing authorities” to be “the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.” The “state” is supposed to reward righteousness and punish evil. In other words, they are to rule with justice, and they have been given the power of the sword in the service of justice.

And now for the question that I will take up in a day or two: can Christians then participate in the state’s God-ordained activity of ruling with justice by the sword? This is not entirely clear. In a subsequent post, I’ll write down some thoughts on Christian pacifism, which emphasizes Jesus’ teachings on nonviolence, and on just war theory, which emphasizes Christian responsibility to protect the lives of the innocent. In the meantime, here’s some reading to consider on the Conquest of Canaan and the politically charged yet biblical theme of God as a Warrior.

Some Suggested Reading on the Conquest of Canaan

The following are only a few suggestions. They are from authors who have what I would consider to be a “high view” of Scripture – in other words, they really try to deal with the theology of the Conquest narratives as they appear in Scripture, rather than setting them aside on the assumption that they merely represent a primitive religious consciousness in ancient Israel - though they represent a variety of approaches to the biblical narratives.

Goldingay, John. Israel’s Gospel. Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1. Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2003. See pages 474-505 along with the postscript on the nature of historical narratives in the Old Testament. I found Goldingay’s treatment of the Conquest to be provocative, even if not entirely convincing. He embraces a pretty flexible understanding of the historicity of Old Testament historical narratives, and in the case of the Conquest he does a theology of the history of Israel instead of a theology of the Old Testament narratives. In other words, he makes what he admits is a “large exception” to his usual methodology, and attempts to go behind the text to the actual “history” of Israel and do his theology with that “history behind the text” in mind. Because there are so many different views on what that actual history is, the net effect of focusing on the “history” in this case is to make the meaning of the narratives a bit more ambiguous and less offensive for modern readers. While I find this tempting, in order to be really convincing I think he needs to make a stronger case for why we should employ a different methodology in dealing with the Conquest narratives than with most other “historical narratives” in the Old Testament.

Gundry, Stanley N., ed. Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003. Here are four different “conservative” approaches to the Conquest narratives and how they relate to the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. The one I agree with the most is Tremper Longman’s essay, where he argues for the “spiritual continuity” between the Conquest narrative and life as the New Covenant people of God.

Longman, Tremper. God is a Warrior. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995. A more extended version of his essay in the above book.

Wright, N.T. Evil and the Justice of God. Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2006. A very good little book, a biblical theologian’s approach to re-framing a classic theological and philosophical problem. I hesitate to offer a quote from the book, because you really need the larger framework within which he’s working in order to place it, but nevertheless here’s part of what he says about the Conquest:

“We look back from our historical vantage point – and post-Enlightenment thought has looked back from its supposed position of moral superiority – and we shake our heads over the whole sorry business of conquest and settlement. Ethnic cleansing, we call it; however much the Israelites had suffered in Egypt, we find it hard to believe that they were justified in doing what they did to the Canaanites, or that the God who was involved in this operation was the same God we know in Jesus Christ.

And yet ever since the garden, ever since God’s grief over Noah, ever since Babel and Abraham, the story has been about the messy way in which God has had to work to bring the world out of the mess. Somehow, in a way we are inclined to find offensive, God has to get his boots muddy and, it seems, to get his hands bloody, to put the world back to rights. If we declare, as many have done, that we would rather it not so, we face a counter-question: Which bit of dry, clean ground are we standing on that we should pronounce on the matter with such certainty? Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared that the primal sin of humanity consisted in putting the knowledge of good and evil before the knowledge of God. That is one of the further dark mysteries of Genesis 3: there must be some substantial continuity between what we mean by good and evil and what God means; otherwise we are in moral darkness indeed. But it serves as a warning to us not to pontificate with too much certainty about what God should and shouldn’t have done” (pp. 58-59).

The idea of Heaven is fascinating. It’s actually one of the few universal human fascinations. Everybody thinks about heaven. Even if it’s your own made-up, private version of “heaven,” you think about it. C.S. Lewis once described heaven as that remote music we’re born remembering. I think that captures it really well. The whole human race has a kind of deep memory of paradise lost, a faint but powerful awareness that there must be a better, different world that we were designed for.

Barbara Walters did a two-hour TV documentary on different views about heaven a couple years ago, and it showed that people of all sorts of religions have views about “heaven” that are all over the map. And there is some confusion in the church about heaven, too. So, this morning we want to look at some of the most significant things the Bible says about the future life of those who are in Christ, so we can cultivate a “godly imagination” about heaven.

The topic of “heaven” for this morning actually follows well on the heels of last week’s sermon on “spiritual warfare.” Last week you heard about the cosmic battle between the Kingdom of God and all the powers of darkness. And we learned that Jesus, in his life, death and resurrection, has already won the decisive victory for the Kingdom of God. But we also saw that it will not be until Jesus comes to earth a second time, his Second Coming, that God’s Kingdom will be fully realized here on earth. It is when Jesus returns that the kingdom of this world will become the Kingdom of our God, and Jesus will renew all things and establish the new heaven and new earth. And that, really, is the “heaven” that we look forward to. Our eternal home is the “new creation” or “new heaven and new earth” that Jesus will establish when he returns.

So I want to walk through the “future life” this morning in three steps.

First, I want to look at the “new heaven and new earth,” and we’re going to read from Revelation 21 as a starting point. We’ll see that the whole creation will be renewed, and all those who are in Christ will be gathered to live with him in this new world forever. What will it be like? We’ll spend most of our time this morning on this subject.

Second, I want to consider what happens to believers who die in Christ before he returns to establish the New Heaven and Earth. We’ll talk about the so-called “intermediate state” between our body’s death and its resurrection at Christ’s return.

And finally I’ll close with a few remarks about how our meditation on the future life should impact the way we view life in the present.

New Heaven and New Earth

As we prepare to read from Revelation 21, recall that the Bible opens in Genesis with the creation of the heavens and the earth. And this first creation, the one we live in now, was at first like paradise for human beings, but it has suffered the consequences of human sin and rebellion, and the story of the Bible is really the story of how God is restoring all that has been lost. And so the Bible closes with the ultimate future restoration, the creation of the new heaven and new earth. First, there was “paradise lost.” And when Jesus returns, we have the promise of “paradise restored.”

So let’s turn to see that in Revelation chapter 21. John, the author of Revelation, had a vision from God about this new creation. Here’s part of what he saw.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Rev. 21:1-5)

So many themes from the Bible are brought together in this one vision, and it continues on through chapter 22. But let me just mention two main themes of this vision for now.

1) All of Creation will be restored to perfection: By renewing all things in a new heaven and a new earth, God will reverse the curse on the land that came as a result of human sin in Genesis 3. Ever since humans were cast out of paradise and creation was turned against them because of their sin, it was clear that the drama of redemption would involve a restoration to the Land and a life in harmony with creation.

This redemption of all creation in a New Heaven and New Earth is foreshadowed throughout Scripture, especially in the idea of the “Promised Land” in the Old Testament. God’s people would be gathered together to enjoy creation’s blessings in the land “flowing with milk and honey.” Of course we know ultimately Israel was cast out of the Promised Land, too, because of their sin. And their restoration from Exile was never complete but remained the hope of God’s people for the future. This hope for restoration to the Land will be fulfilled when Jesus returns and establishes a new land, the New Heaven and New Earth, and his people will live there forever.

The major point here is that just as the whole creation suffered the consequences of human sin, the whole creation will be redeemed along with us. The resurrection of Jesus is the decisive victory of God over death and destruction and it demonstrates that physical matter can be made incorruptible. That’s what the future life will be like. The Apostle Paul elaborates on this theme in Romans 8:

“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:22-27)

So, the first thing that we need to see is that the next world, our eternal home in the New Heaven and New Earth is a physical, restored world, and it will never fall into sin again because it rests on the resurrection of Jesus. Now, I realize there’s a long tradition in the church of thinking about eternity as floating off in space as disembodied spirits! And some of our hymns picture life in eternity like that, too. But the Bible doesn’t. The Bible tells of a cosmic redemption, a restoration of all creation. God is not going to destroy the world and save us from it. Rather, God is going to renew the world, and give us new bodies to live there on this new earth, the promised land fulfilled.

Friends, beware of any view of the “end times” that promotes the idea that this world and all aspects of our culture are simply “going to hell in a handbasket.” The promise of Jesus is different. He doesn’t say “I am destroying all things!” He says “I am making all things new!”

So that’s the first the point: creation will be renewed when Jesus returns.

2) God’s presence will be restored to his people. In the new creation, God’s presence will be restored to his people. The portrait of life in the Garden of Eden that we’re given in Genesis pictures “the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Before we turned against God and were thrown out of the Garden, humans experienced the peace of God’s intimate presence. And a major theme in the Bible is the restoration of God’s presence with his people.

In the Old Testament, in the Promised Land of Canaan God told the Israelites to build the Temple, as a place where God would be present with them in a special way. His presence was veiled, of course, and only the High Priest could enter the “Holy of Holies.”

In the New Testament the restoration of God’s presence with us takes a leap forward, because Jesus replaces the Temple. Jesus is Immanuel, “God with us.” The presence of God is enfleshed for us in the person of Jesus Christ. But Jesus was only with us on earth for a short period of time, and now we know him in the presence of his Spirit with us. But when Jesus comes again, God’s full presence with us will be restored forever. As we read in verse 3: “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’”

Now, in the Bible, the word “heaven” usually means “God’s dwelling place.” Put simply, heaven is the place where God dwells. In Revelation 21, God’s dwelling is now with us on earth. In other words, heaven and earth will no longer be separated. They are brought together forever. That’s why when we think of the “heaven” that will be our eternal home, we should think of the restored creation, the New Heaven and New Earth.

So what will the next world be like? It will be like this world cleansed and perfected. And so it will both be like this world and very different from this world. The struggle with sin, both our own personal struggles and the whole creation’s frustration, will reach its end. All the uncleanness of the world will be judged and will come to an end, and the old order will pass away. There will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain,” as in v. 4. God’s people will be gathered to enjoy life with him forever in the Promised Land of the new heaven and new earth. So heaven will be this world cleansed and perfected.

Now, having just skimmed the surface, let me take up some of the specific questions you all asked about the future life. Here are four questions I was given.

Will there be animals in heaven?

If you’re an animal lover, I have good news. We can give a confident thumbs up on this one. In Isaiah’s vision of the New Heaven and Earth, for instance, he says: “The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox” (65:25. In other words, in the next world harmony will be restored to the animal kingdom.

And what about your pets? I have no idea. The Bible doesn’t say anything about that. But given the prominence of animals in prophecies about the New Heaven and Earth, there will be plenty of animals for us to take care of there.

Now, on a different note, my wife wants to know if roaches will make it to the new earth, too, and I assured her that they were a product of sin and so would be cast into the lake of fire and destroyed forever.

Are there different levels in heaven?

The short answer is “no,” the Bible does not tell us there are different levels in the next world. The passage that has caused some confusion is in 2 Corinthians 12, where Paul says: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.” What does the “third heaven” mean?

Well, in the ancient world sometimes the universe was described in terms of three levels of heaven. The first level is the earth’s atmosphere, where we see clouds and birds and so on. The second is further up in space, where the stars are. And the third level of heaven refers to the place where God dwells. In other words, by “third heaven” Paul just means that this man, and it was probably Paul himself, had a vision where he was caught up into God’s dwelling place, that is, to what we normally call “heaven.” So there’s no indication that there will be different “levels” in heaven.

Will we know our spouses in Heaven?

The Bible describes the next world as great fellowship with all of those who are in Christ. In fact, it appears to be more like “one big family,” than a collection of “nuclear families.” So a married couple who dies in Christ will know each other in the next world. But Jesus seems to say that the institution of marriage is a blessing for this world, not something carried into the next world.

One time when the Sadducees were trying to stump Jesus they asked him about a woman who had been married seven times in this world, since her husbands kept dying and she kept getting remarried. They said: who will she be married to at the resurrection? Jesus answered: “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” (Mt. 22:30). Now, if there’s no marriage in heaven, I know what you are thinking: “No sex in heaven?!” Yes, that seems to be the case. But don’t worry. It will be even better. So meditate on that.

Will we work in heaven?

Yes, work will be wonderful in the next world. In the present fallen world, because of sin, work is often plagued by all kinds of burdensome factors. But part of the order of the next world will be that work will no longer be toilsome, but we will be free to work in harmony with creation and in harmony with each other.

In Revelation 22 it is said that the saints in heaven we will “reign” with Christ “forever and ever.” That is, we will be restored to our original vocation as God’s vice-regents, his “images” or representatives in the world. We will re-present the reign of God. The imagery in the Bible includes our ruling cities with justice, and cultivating all the various aspects of human culture to glorify and honor God in the new heaven and earth. (Actually, as new creations in Christ, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing now as part of God’s renewal of all things.)

So there’s a brief, composite picture of the future life. We will live in perfect fellowship with God and with other believers in a renewed world that we can cultivate to God’s glory, free of sin and decay and sadness and full of righteousness, life and joy. That’s the awesome hope we have in Jesus Christ!

Dying in Christ Before He Returns

Now I want to spend a few moments talking about the eternal security of those who die in Christ before the resurrection, before Christ returns to establish the new heaven and earth. Where are our loved ones who have died in Christ and where would we go if we die in Christ before he returns? The Bible doesn’t talk as much about this as it does about the New Creation, but it says enough to give us wonderful assurance.

First and foremost, if you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then the Holy Spirit has united you to Christ and that union is unbreakable. The Bible says that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ” (Romans 8:29). Throughout the New Testament, it is clear that “eternal life” begins now when we trust in Christ, and it will never end. And so, in short, when a believer dies before Christ’s return, he will be in the presence of God. Now, as we have said, “heaven” in the Bible is the place where God is, so, we can say that if you die in Christ before he returns, your soul goes to be with Jesus “in heaven.” You may recall that Jesus tells the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” And in 2 Corinthians 5 the Apostle Paul speaks of being “away from the body, and at home with the Lord.” So if you are a believer, you can face death with the utmost assurance and confidence, because your soul is safe in the sovereign hands of Jesus.

The mistake we don’t want to make, though, is to picture our ultimate destiny as disembodied souls. When the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians that he would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord, he also says that ultimately we do not desire to be found “naked,” that is apart from our bodies, but to be clothed with our “heavenly dwelling,” that is our resurrected bodies. And in Revelation chapter 6 we have John’s vision of the souls of martyred saints before the throne of God who call out in a loud voice: “‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they was completed.”

So, in summary, this “intermediate” existence between death and resurrection will be paradise compared to this life, but we will still be longing for the final vindication of God over all of his enemies, when Jesus returns and sets up his Kingdom on the new earth. When heaven and earth come together in the New Heaven and New Earth, so too will our souls come together with our resurrected bodies. Only then will we be complete, in our “final state” in glory, to reign with Christ in the restored creation forever and ever.

The New Heaven and Earth in the Present Life

Now, finally, in closing, let me state the obvious about the present life: living by faith in Jesus Christ and clinging to the promise that God will complete his work in us and renew the whole cosmos, should be absolutely central to how we view life in the present world.

On the one hand, it reminds us that the new earth is our true heavenly home. We know that the music we’re born remembering and longing to hear again is a symphony we’ll hear with clarity only in the world to come.

If we really believe this, we won’t demand the satisfaction from this world that God has told us we will experience only in the next world. When Jesus says “the meek shall inherit the earth,” he does mean the new earth. And so I think meditation on the future life can help us to loosen our grip on the present life, and cultivate a cross-bearing witness to Jesus. To give but one example, one that I try to tell myself everyday, I will be free to love my spouse and my children when I am not demanding that they meet my own ultimate need to be satisfied. If we demand of our loved ones now what only God will provide for us in the new earth, we put an eternal pressure on them that they can never bear. So resting in the promise of the new heaven and earth frees us to love. The present order of this world is not our heavenly home.

While hope for the new heaven and earth helps us loosen our grip on the present order of things, when we believe that Jesus will one day renew all things we can also deeply appreciate this world and care for it. If we get sidetracked into the idea that the world is simply headed for destruction instead of for renewal, we treat the earth poorly and it becomes awkward to enjoy God’s blessings in this world. (Doesn’t it seem strange to appreciate and enjoy blessings that God will just ultimately destroy?) But when we look for the world’s renewal, it will be normal to celebrate every foretaste of the coming Kingdom and give thanks to God for it.

At the end of Revelation 21 we learn that the “glory and honor of the nations” will be brought into the eternal kingdom of the new earth. In other words, the best of human culture will be perfected and carried into eternity. As believers in Christ who are empowered by his Spirit, we can contribute to the eternal Kingdom even now. We should engage the world and our culture with confidence that God may use us to begin the work of renewal that will endure forever. And as we proclaim the Gospel and promote beauty, justice and goodness in this world, we pull back the veil and let people catch a glimpse of the coming reign of Jesus Christ on the Earth. That is our mission in this life – to let the reign of Jesus be visible in us as individuals and as his body, the church. May he give us the grace to take it up with joyful urgency!

David Van Biema, the article’s author and the senior religion writer for Time, visited a public school where a Bible course was being taught as part of the regular curriculum. He was encouraged to find that the teacher did a good job of presenting a religiously “neutral” position or “secular teaching” on the Bible. His point is that when teaching the Bible “neutrally” in public school we do our children an invaluable service: we inform them about a book without knowledge of which they could hardly be considered educated and we do it neutrally so as not to indoctrinate them or cross the constitutional lines separating church and state.

Biema says there is an upsurge of interest in teaching the Bible this way in public schools. It will certainly be interesting to watch this trend unfold. They do predict – surely correctly – that mistakes will be made, court cases will ensue, etc. But in the end he thinks it’ll be worth it. And I agree, with a few qualifications.

First I should say that the notion that a “secular teaching” on anything, much less an explicitly religious text, is religiously “neutral,” is a bit old-fashioned. There are certain “canons” or fundamental commitments of “secular reason” which make presumptions about reality, what counts for “truth,” and so on, that have quite religious implications, and therefore are not “neutral.” So just to clarify, however this shakes out, it won’t be “neutral.” That shouldn’t surprise anyone, but we should be aware of what we’re doing and the education must go on.

But I do think there is an approach that is more workable than most of the options presented by Biema. On the one hand, he notes the approach of the two leading curricula for teaching the Bible in public schools both have some potential problems with crossing constitutional lines. One, for instance, “still devotes 18 lines to the blatantly unscientific notion that the earth is only 6,000 years old.” So, on the other hand, Biema’s own approach seems to want all “unscientific” notions excised from the explanations of the Bible stories. And he goes on to say that proper teaching of the Bible in public schools must address “the Bible’s harmful as well as helpful uses.”

I can sympathize with Biema’s comments. On the creation issue, I’m not a “young earth” person and if the curriculum advocates that position, it’s inappropriate. And on the question of the “harmful and helpful uses” of the Bible, there are certainly both, and history gives us limitless examples of each. But Biema’s comments here set up a paradigm that would likely lead to a major and unnecessary clash of ideologies.

The problem I see beneath the surface of Biema’s approach is the problem with much contemporary education – it proposes an enormously prescriptive pedagogy and does so unawares. On the “helpful uses” question, for instance, who gets to decide? Clearly this isn’t neutral. When we make the “harmful/helpful” distinction in uses of the Bible or any topic we’re teaching, we do so because we’re making judgments about what’s appropriate and trying to produce a particular kind of person. And then we measure the subject matter, in this case the Bible, against that prescriptive criteria. So the question is, who gets to decide what are the appropriate uses of the Bible?

Normally in these cases, what’s considered “helpful” is something consistent with the faith of secular humanism – dismissing the distinctive truth claims of any of the major world religions and ending up with a kind of non-specific moralism that everyone can feel pretty good about. (I’m not against teaching moral principles in schools, but I am against filtering sacred texts down to such principles.)

And on the question of the “unscientific” stories of the Bible, well, this is a complicated topic but let’s just say the resurrection of Jesus is probably more “blatantly unscientific” than six-day creation. And while I would never expect teaching that claims “neutrality” to favor such an idea, which is the most central of all Christian teachings, I wouldn’t think such teaching would campaign against it either.

So here’s my modest proposal for a better approach: teach the Bible as literature, with sensitivity to literary context and the “history of reception” of this literature, i.e. hit the highlights of the major narrative framework of the Bible and the dominant trends in the history of biblical interpretation in western civilization. The whole thing should be “multi-perspectival”: views about the original literary intention of, say, the creation story of Genesis, and three or four representative ways the story has been “received” in the history of interpretation. This approach would be as descriptive as possible – making them familiar with the actual content of the Bible and the significant trends in interpretation – ancient, medieval, and modern. The question isn’t “do the first chapters of Genesis teach six-day creation?” but “how have these chapters been understood in western civilization, including (but not necessarily limited) to those who have accepted them as sacred writing?”

The point is that many folks, even those who favor a ‘secular’ teaching of the Bible in public schools, are still operating in a mold where the Bible in the secular teacher’s hands is a book that is making truth claims in the classroom, claims which must be vetted through the assumptions of scientific naturalism and lowest-common-denominator ethics. And while any sacred text could be said to be making certain truth claims implicitly whenever it is read, in the public schoolroom it is taught as we would teach any enormously influential body of literature produced over hundreds of years and interpreted in a whole variety of ways.

Biema may be assuming that the Bible in the classroom is still the Bible of the religious right, and no doubt there is some justification for this fear. But if we are too afraid of that possibility as we develop a better approach, we’ll end up with a secular humanist Bible, which isn’t any more “neutral.” While no method we choose will be neutral, a more literary-historical approach would serve public school students much better, and it would introduce them to Bible content and some significant ways it has shaped our civilization. And because it would at least attempt to set the truth claims and prescriptive applications off to the side, it might even make for a better run in the courts.

The Context of “Church Unity” in Ephesians: A Few Foundational Things
When we look to the New Testament to learn about the unity of the Church, we often turn to Ephesians. The Apostle Paul’s words about church unity in this epistle have much to do with the new relationship between Jews and Gentiles that came as a result of the Gospel. Prior to the incarnate ministry of Jesus Christ, the Gentiles were “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). Yet Jesus, the promised Christ, has fulfilled the promises of the Old Covenant (or Testament) and established a New Covenant (or Testament), which includes the Gentiles. He “has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,” so that the new Israel, the people of God’s New Covenant in Jesus Christ, would include not only the Jews but the Gentiles, too. Paul says the “mystery of Christ” is that “through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body” (3:9).

This major shift in redemptive-history is fundamental to the teachings of the New Testament and occupies a central place in the consciousness of the New Testament writers. Paul puts succinctly what the early church struggled to realize and live: “through Christ we both have access to the Father by one Spirit” (2:18). Christ has made one new humanity out of those who were formerly separate, so together they now have “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (4:4-5). Another way to put it is this: God’s people are those who believe in Jesus Christ, and such faith is open to anyone, Jew or Gentile. This was revolutionary, and much of the New Testament is God revealing what this means, who the followers of Jesus are and how they will live.

The phrase “in Christ” is repeated throughout the letter to the Ephesians, and being “in Christ” was the basis for the unity of the Jews and Gentiles in the Church. Really, it is the basis for any true Christian unity. Actually, it’s the basis for salvation! The unity of the church is the result of our participation in Jesus Christ, which is our salvation.

With these things in mind, we can draw on the rest of Ephesians and make a few points worthy of our consideration as we think through our life in the Presbyterian Church (USA). What I mention might seem elementary, but I have found that reminding myself of some basics is important before jumping into the more complex stuff.

Locating the Church: Unity of What?
The first point is that we need to be careful about confusing the PC(USA) with the Church. We are a little denomination, much of which participates in the Church (we certainly hope so).

There’s no PC(USA) in the Bible; and “the Church” whose unity Paul speaks about in Ephesians is not the PC(USA) as such. Though some conversation partners in the church seem to think we are, as a denomination, the New Covenant people of God, I think that’s more than a little stretch. I mentioned above that the Church was formed through a revolutionary shift in redemptive-history, God breaking into human history in and as Jesus Christ, and bringing about a new humanity. The beginnings of the PC(USA) were not quite as spectacular, even if you define it, as I have tried to do, as the covenant community of congregations that stretches back to the early 18th century.

So I get a little uneasy when folks talk about bringing various sides of PC(USA) debates together and saying that they sense “the unity of the whole Church” in a diverse Task Force or committee. We need to broaden our horizons a bit. We might even consider being less Amero-centric and decide to take seriously some voices of the Church that come from outside the U.S. Internal “church unity” in the PC(USA) cannot ignore the kind of unity of the Church that is the ultimate focus of the New Testament’s concern for Christian unity, indeed of the Lord himself.

Humility and Church Unity
The exhortations to Christian unity in Ephesians do, however, apply in many ways to our own context. At the outset of chapter 4, for instance, we have the well known and incredibly challenging words from the Apostle: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit…”

I’m not sure what it means to be “completely humble,” but my best guess is that it’s something different from the ego-mania that often characterizes us, whether as individuals or as a denomination. We tend to be so self-important and inwardly focused. The intellectual and structural boundaries of our discussions on church unity are often our own, and at the same time we impute to them a cosmic level of importance in God’s plan of redemption. Neither is humble.

Furthermore, being patient, bearing with one another, keeping the unity – these apply both to our relationships within the PC(USA), and the relationships that we have as the PC(USA) with the larger Church. Calvin, in his commentary on this passage, says this:

…first of all he mentions humility. The reason is, that he was about to enter on the subject of Unity, to which humility is the first step. This again produces meekness, which disposes us to bear with our brethren, and thus to preserve that unity which would otherwise be broken a hundred times in a day. Let us remember, therefore, that, in cultivating brotherly kindness, we must begin with humility. Whence come rudeness, pride, and disdainful language towards brethren? Whence come quarrels, insults, and reproaches? Come they not from this, that every one carries his love of himself, and his regard to his own interests, to excess? By laying aside haughtiness and a desire of pleasing ourselves, we shall become meek and gentle, and acquire that moderation of temper, which will overlook and forgive many things in the conduct of our brethren.

There is something here for everyone. If you’re on the liberal end of things, in your mind right now you’re probably telling conservatives to stop being so certain about everything and to have a little humility, at least in the attitudes with which they sometimes engage in the debate. If you’re on the conservative end of things, in your mind you’re probably telling liberals that maybe they ought to consider the 2000 year witness of the church and the biblical exegesis of the majority Church before rushing headlong with great certainty into an embrace of secular American sexual “freedom.” But to be humble we probably ought to think first of our own propensity to be haughty, and pray for deliverance from the sin of arrogance.

Church Unity: Who Does It?
Another important teaching on church unity is found in the first words of chapter 4 of Ephesians, and this one concerns the dynamic between God’s grace in Christ and human striving in Christ. Paul says, as quoted above, that we ought to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (4:3). We have said that Christian unity comes from being united with Christ, and Paul says that Christ “himself is our peace” (2:14). So which is it? Is it God’s work of grace that results in our being united with one another because of our union with Christ? Or is our unity something “we keep” and make happen through our grace-enabled efforts? The answer, it would seem, is yes and yes.

So, first, Christian unity is all of grace. God has given us faith as a gift (2:8), and through faith has united us with Christ in the power of the Spirit, and therefore united us with one another. And yet God continues and manifests his redemptive work by exhorting and enabling us to live as the humble, gentle, and holy people he has called us to be, and he has given us lots of armor for the battle (6:10ff). Yes, it’s God’s work. Yes, you have to do it.

Many of us err on the side of human establishment of church unity (and purity). Just think about how much attention we give to the vast array of political strategies or renewal “programs” or the gradualist agenda of liberal special interest groups. And what about all the rhetoric about moving beyond “winners and losers,” and no more “up/down” votes as the PUP Task Force was fond of saying? That whole framework presumes that it’s about us – we’re left only with some array of human opinions and efforts and to achieve unity we need to impose some human proposal that finds a way to split it down the middle. Let’s make church unity for ourselves, this approach says. The more we think in that way the less we are thinking “in Christ.”

To see and live church unity as God’s work involves the peculiar humility that comes from knowing that “God made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (2:5), and it involves drawing on the strength of the Spirit to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (4:1).

It’s a kind of “holy humility” or “humility in holiness.” You were dead in your transgressions, you have been made alive in Christ, freed from the guilt and the power of sin. And you have been given the Spirit and the rest of the Armor of God (6:10ff). So much of Ephesians is about learning together to live lives that are transformed by the Spirit so that we can be a community whose distinct way of believing and living will be a witness to Jesus Christ in the world. Therefore “you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking” (4:17). He says we are “to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (2:24).

To be “in Christ,” where our unity is found, to put on the new self, to no longer live as the Gentiles live, to be holy, means you’ve got to avoid certain things that are fundamentally opposed to being in Christ. He highlights a few things. The first is sexual immorality: “among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality” (5:3).

In the PC(USA)’s debates, some of have said that we should stop talking about sex and just pay attention to other things. This is tempting in some ways. I am weary of it myself, and some others have been actively engaged in the sexuality debates for as long as I’ve been alive. Yet I’m not sure how we drop it, as long as there are those among us who are calling the church into sexual immorality. If the New Testament singles out this type of sin as particularly important to work against, for the sake of our witness to Christ in the world; and if our witness to Christ is our mission: how can we get on with the mission of the church and acquiesce into sexual immorality? If homosex is categorically immoral (which our church has always and continues to believe, on the basis of God’s Word), then the identity of the church is at stake in the question of whether or not we celebrate our participation in what God has called us to strenuously avoid.

Liberals should not trivialize the dilemma experienced by conservatives who do not know if they should stay in the PC(USA). Paul does say, speaking about the immoral who claim to be Christian: “do not be partners with them.” He might mean “don’t join them in their sin,” but the point is clear: flee from immorality, don’t campaign for it – that’s what the powers of darkness do (2:2). (Part of my thinking on church unity and not feeling as though we have a mandate to leave the PC(USA), after the 217th GA’s actions on ordination standards and sexuality, has to do with the fact that I’m not sure how much more I am associated with immorality than I was before – i.e. I have a quite severe view of the condition of the PC(USA). We’ve been mired in open immorality on quite a number of fronts for quite a long time.)

Even if we can’t stop talking about sex, we should talk some more about the sins that follow it in Paul’s list, which includes greed. I mentioned above that we need to be less Amero-centric and consider ourselves as part of the larger Church, the center of which is outside the affluent western world. Surely the sin of greed will be one of the major blind spots that future generations will rightly accuse us of having.

But the point of this discussion of living the transformed life is how it relates to church unity. First, we said that God works out his grace through our thinking and our actions, so that what we do is important regarding the unity of the church. Secondly and more particularly, living lives transformed by the Spirit so that we are “imitators of God” (5:1), is inseparable from being the Church that has its unity in Christ. To be in Christ is to be made one with the others who are in Christ; it is also to be called and enabled to live differently by the power of the Spirit. We cannot maintain the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace by submitting to the powers of darkness, for instance, even though that approach has much contemporary appeal (as I’m sure it did in the 1st century).

A Catholic and a Puritan
Of course, Paul says a lot more than this in Ephesians. But these provide us with some preliminary points for further discussion. I am going to start reading two books side by side, related to church unity. One is by Pope Benedict XVI, and the other is by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I’ll be posting on what comes to mind as I read these two dissimilar books and continue to reflect on where we are as Presbyterians today.