I’ve now taught Bible in churches for most of my life, and now I teach middle school Bible at a wonderful Christian classical school near our home. I love it, and those wily 7th graders! Most of these kids have grown up in Christian homes and in Sunday school, and they largely have the same understanding that I’ve had most of my life about death and the afterlife; namely, you die and, if you are a believer, you go to heaven. For the longest time I thought that this all ended for Christians in heaven where we will live forever. The idea that people either go to heaven or hell in a one-stage postmortem journey is not a bad hope for Christians, but it’s infinitely less than what God has finally planned for us and for all of his creation. So, what does the Bible teach?

The briefest summary of the Bible’s teaching is the creed:

“We believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”

There is so much wrapped in this little phrase that constitutes our blessed hope! The idea that heaven is the final destination for Christians is shortsighted and it strips from Christians the greatest hope we have. It deprives Christians of the glory that awaits us when our physical resurrected bodies will be more solid, more real, and more substantial than our earthly ones; where our present bodies will look like “unsubstantial ghosts” compared to how we will be (The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis). The Apostle Paul speaks of this as “the weight of glory” ( 2 Corinthians 4:17). I love how Theologian Phillip Cary describes the resurrection of the body as “the overcoming of all corruption and the healing of all harms” (The Nicene Creed: An Introduction).

The Bible speaks of two resurrections for Christians. We are first spiritually brought from death to life when we are united to Christ in his death and resurrection.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:3-4

Being “born again” is the experience with Christ of his resurrection. We are alive from the dead in a moment of grateful reception of Christ’s gift of salvation. But, no less, the Bible promises the resurrection of our flesh, our bodies, when Jesus comes again:

“Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ”

1 Corinthians 15:23

When Christians die they go to heaven – “today you will be with me in paradise,” Jesus told the thief on the cross (Lk 23:43). Paradise is a place of superabundant life because Jesus is there. The glory that awaits us is anticipated in this present life (2 Cor 12:3), and then begins in paradise/heaven (Jn 17:24), but it is not fully realized until Jesus returns. Once in heaven, Christians wait for Christ’s bodily return to the earth in the same way he went to heaven (Acts 1:11), and for the final chapter in God’s plan of redemption.

This is not purgatory or a place of cleansing and punishment for believers, which is a later Christian invention not found in Scripture or in the early church fathers. Heaven will be a place of tasted glory waiting for the greater glory. Stephen, gazing into heaven, saw the glory of God (Acts 7:55). When Jesus comes again, there will be the resurrection of our mortal bodies, and the restoration of all of creation that is now held in bondage until that day (Rom 8:18-23).

“Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!”

Isaiah 26:19

All of human history, from the days of Adam and Eve, is moving towards a greater reality than life on earth followed by life in heaven. When Jesus returns he will bring with him heaven to earth, the New Heaven and the New Earth of which the Apostle John speaks (Rev 21-22) – the glory that is to be revealed to us, the “freedom and the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:18-23). Our blessed hope is a future hope, a renewed and redeemed geography on earth where we will live in a new glorious body, and where God forever reigns as King. For those now in heaven and for those who die before Jesus returns, it’s life after life after death that is the blessed hope of those who believe in Jesus for their salvation.

As I imagine it, in the coming New Heaven and New Earth, doctor’s offices and hospitals will be turned into art museums and flower shops, abortion clinics will become party rooms for children’s birthdays, and graveyards will become dream parks where families, who were once separated by death, will come together with blankets for picnics to hear musicians that make James Galway and Jimi Hendrix sound like amateurs!

The I’m-going-to-heaven-thinking is a little view. It denies Christians the assurance of their salvation found in the resurrection of the body.

“…because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Acts 17:31

It casts a shadow on the “stuff,” the physicality, of this world, seeing the material world, and the people and things in it, as temporary and passing away. And it is then a small step to the idea that the mortal human body is the container of an immortal spirit – which is the gnostic heresy! In fact, all the stuff of this world is created by God and is very good – and our ultimate end is the New Heaven and the New Earth. Heaven will come down to earth uniting the two in an everlasting union (Rev 21, 22). This is so much more than just life after death in general terms (i.e., going to heaven), but God’s New Jerusalem on earth, of which our being a “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17) here and now, is the first installment of a thousand installments. Maybe a million!

We say in our creed that we believe “in the resurrection of the body,” not just the spirit. We believe that God is going to do for the whole physical creation what he did for Jesus on Easter. We see glimpses of this when the psalmist alludes to a time in the future when the mountains will sing and the trees will clap their hands. The New Heavens and New Earth is what all of creation groans for now (Rom 8:19), and of which the prophets described as a place full of gladness and rejoicing (Isa 65:17-25), and where boys and girls will fill the streets with play (Zech 8:5). Our ultimate goal as Christians is both God’s material creation redeemed and united to God’s immaterial world where he is enthroned – heaven on earth.

I once invited Boston College philosophy professor Peter Kreeft to our church to talk about heaven. He wrote several popular books on the subject. What he describe was “life after life after death” – life after the intermediate heaven called paradise – life in the New Jerusalem. He began by quoting C.S. Lewis: “None of us would ever imagine an orange if we’d never seen one before.” Then he asked us to imagine a baby inside his mother’s womb for nine months who knows nothing more than that limited reality. It never crosses the baby’s mind that there is anything else. “It’s a great life there,” Dr. Kreeft suggested. All his needs are attended to, it’s warm, and he is fed and well cared for. Then one day, all of a sudden, that baby is thrust into a whole new reality that is so much bigger, more glorious and colorful, and filled with new excitements that were never before imagined. Dr. Kreeft said, “This is how it will be when we experience the ultimate reality that God has prepared for us.”

We know and experience such limited reality here and now; but then we will come face-to-face with reality as God created it to be in all its beauty and glory. We will share that glory! This makes this life and the partnerships we have with justice, love, mercy, truth, and beauty so much more meaningful, and our place in God’s unfolding plan for his creation. This is our blessed hope!

The older I get, the more I agree with C.S. Lewis: “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing – to find the place where all the beauty came from” (Till We Have Faces).