Does Heaven Matter?

The question that headlines this paper may surprise the reader. Of course, heaven matters. Many who have lost loved ones or who are facing death themselves take great comfort in the belief that there is a heaven for those who follow Jesus Christ. Belief in heaven supplies the grieving with the hope that a person who has died is not lost, or merely dead. So, what prompts this question? In the teaching letter Gracious Judge, Holy Saviour, Layton Friesen writes concerning heaven, “We do not believe that the whole debate about whether finally we go up to heaven or heaven comes down to us is very important.”¹ This statement generates a whole host of questions: Who is the “we” referred to in this sentence? If this is a letter representing the congregations of the Evangelical Mennonite Conference (EMC), how do we know that the debate over heaven does not ebb and flow depending on each individual in the conference? Does it represent the Board of Leadership and Outreach? How was it determined that the debate over heaven was not important? Thus, the question: Does heaven really matter if we deem it unworthy of correct biblical teaching?

Heaven is for real?

Early in the teaching letter, Friesen states, “Heaven has greatly declined in our preaching and worship in the recent generation.” He then cites the African American tradition, the 19th century hymns, and the southern gospel music genre as examples of a period when attention was given to the theme of heaven. The assumption is that heaven mattered more to these people groups, possibly because of oppression and suffering, than to the generally comfortable setting of the 21st century.

However, the theme of heaven as the resting place of the departed is frequently referenced at many evangelical funeral services. One song in particular is featured often at these services (ad nauseum): “I Can Only Imagine.”² Chris Tomlin, Phil Wickham, and Third Day, just to name a few artists, all have songs focusing on the prospect of heaven. Matt Redman’s “One Day (When We All Get to Heaven)” holds out the promise of heaven for everyone (universalism?). One questions whether evangelical hymnody has decreased or increased when it comes to heaven in this respect.

Reading material has exploded in the last two decades on the matter of heaven. Todd Burpo’s Heaven is For Real, detailing his son’s experience of heaven while in surgery, topped the reading list of Christians and non-Christians alike. Five-year-old Colton Burpo shared how he went to heaven and met Jesus, his long-deceased grandfather and an unborn sister. People hungering for a glimpse of heaven lauded the book. Earlier, Randy Alcorn published a book on heaven which became instructive for evangelicals. And John Burke shared his research of hundreds of people who had near death experiences (NDE) in his book Imagine Heaven. Burke’s book answered questions such as “What will heaven look like?” and “Will I see friends and loved ones?” based on the NDE data.

No, there is no decrease or lack of focus on heaven in our songs or in our teaching. Books act as sermons to the masses who prefer to learn that way. Preachers cannot help themselves either when performing funerals; they talk about heaven with intensity to comfort the grieving. Heaven matters greatly to this generation as evidenced by these books, songs, and sermons. The real question is: are we being taught the biblical perspective on the nature and meaning of heaven in the Christian understanding of the afterlife? And if we are somewhat doubtful about this teaching (and some of us are indeed dubious), would it not be important to our conference to ensure that we are teaching a biblical view of heaven?<br< data-preserve-html-node="true"

Origins of heaven

What is the origin of the “going to heaven when you die” belief? This is an important aspect of our understanding of heaven that deserves further study. For the last several hundred years, many Christ-followers have held to the belief that when you die, your soul goes to heaven. Underlying this conviction is that humans consist of three parts: body, soul, and spirit. Just as the Trinitarian God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—three persons but one God—there was a common assumption that humans consisted of three parts. When the body dies, the immortal soul goes to heaven.

Where did this idea of the undying soul come from? Did the ancients believe in the immortal soul? What did Judaism teach about heaven?

Almost every ancient belief system believed in some type of afterlife and a dimension beyond the present where the dead found themselves in a state of bliss. Christians were not the first people to have the hope of heaven; pagans of all stripes believed in heaven too. While paganism had some influence on Christian thinking, we must first look to Judaist roots for the basis of heaven.

The Hebrew word for heaven (or heavens), Shamayim, should be understood as one part of a three-part biblical cosmology. Earth and sheol (the grave, or underworld) are the other two parts. Shamayim is the dwelling place of God and other angelic beings; earth is the home of the living; sheol is the place of the dead. Ancient Jews pictured the earth as a flat disk floating in water, with the heavens above and sheol below; imagine a solid inverted bowl above the earth which kept the waters above from flooding the earth. When speaking of heaven, Old Testament writers referred to heaven as the throne room of Yahweh. “Thus says the LORD: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool’” (Isa. 66:1).³ For the Jew, heaven is where God lived, and thus, OT writers never talked about entering heaven when they died. When David’s infant son died, he explained his grief saying that he “shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Sam. 12:23). Where was David going to join his son? Not in heaven, but in sheol, the place of the dead.

One must resist looking back on OT references with a Christian lens. Ancient Jews had no such lens and would not interpret Scripture as Christians do. So, to enter sheol is not to go to hell. When David wrote Psalm 16, he rejoiced that God would not abandon him to sheol (v. 10). He was not saying that God would keep him out of hell, but that he was certain God would preserve his life in his present crisis. Psalm 16:10 would later be interpreted by NT writers as a prophecy concerning the resurrection of Christ. But these are two different ways to read the psalm. The underlying emphasis of this explanation is that sheol was the eventual destination of the OT dead.

Until 300 BC, this was the Jewish three-tiered understanding of the cosmos.⁴ Then a newer Greek model began to emerge with seven concentric heavens, one for each visible planet. God, of course, was in the highest heaven. During the first millennium CE, Jewish scholars continued to elaborate on the nature of the seven heavens and determined which archangel they believed ruled each heaven.⁵ No doubt you have heard the term “seventh heaven” and understood it to be supreme. The seventh heaven was called Araboth and was the holiest because it housed the throne of God; God dwelled there. Paul spoke of being caught up to the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:2, but it is unlikely that he was referring to this seven-tiered system since Christianity has never taught a multi-tiered heaven.

As Greeks influenced late Judaism with their philosophies, they also influenced Christian theology, to its detriment. Greek philosophers took the hope of heaven in a distorting direction deeming all things material, including the body, to be inferior—even tainted—compared to all things spiritual, or heavenly.⁶ Greek philosophy found its way into early Christianity and created a theological conflict over the physicality of Jesus. Was Jesus truly flesh and blood? If Jesus was completely human, would he not be less than holy because he possessed a body which is evil? This conflict set up the Nicaean discussion where it was finally settled that Jesus was fully human and fully God. If Jesus’ humanity and divinity (a major theological concern) were in question, one can see how the lesser concern of where the soul goes after death could be equally affected.

Around the time of the apostle Paul there lived a contemporary of his named Plutarch.⁷ A Middle Platonist, a follower of Plato’s philosophy, Plutarch was a philosopher, biographer, essayist and pagan priest at Delphi. N. T. Wright identifies Plutarch as a purveyor of the concept that human souls have been exiled from heaven and are merely doing time on earth until they can go back to heaven. If life on earth is meaningless toil, heaven gave humans hope that beyond this life there was something better after death. It is extremely possible that Greeks like Plutarch influenced Christian thought much the way popular culture and politics shapes the church today. The lasting effect of Plutarch is that Christians down through centuries adopted an escapist understanding of heaven; this world is a sinking ship full of misery and corruption with only heaven to look forward to.

Does heaven matter? With the above-mentioned view of an escapist heaven, the question turns to “Does life on this planet matter?” And that is the danger of an overemphasis on the hope of heaven in contradistinction to this present life. If heaven is what we are meant for, what is the meaning of life?

What did Jesus say about heaven?

No discussion on the biblical perspective of heaven would be complete without hearing what Jesus had to say about heaven. Though admittedly not exhaustive in all Jesus had to say on the subject, we now turn to the voice of Christ.

Most students of the Bible will acknowledge that Matthew’s record of the gospel witness has a distinctly Jewish flavor. Along with parallels between the life of Moses and the life of Jesus, Matthew used terms that appealed to the Jewish-Christian reader/listener. More often than “kingdom of God,” Matthew used “kingdom of heaven” so as not to offend the sensibilities of the Jewish mind that dared not speak the name of God. Nevertheless, there are places in Matthew that speak directly to the place of heaven.

When Jesus sat down with his followers gathered around him, he taught them to pray. He said, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” (Matt. 6:10). As the teaching letter correctly implies, the prayer asks that the values and ethics of heaven be exemplified in the life of the faith community on earth. As one would do in heaven, so do on the earth in the present life.

Paul reiterates this sentiment that the believer is a citizen of heaven as opposed to a citizen of the world system that is opposed to God (Phil. 3:20). When Paul said, “our citizenship is in heaven,” he did not mean we are waiting to go to heaven where we belong. No, if someone in Philippi said, “We are citizens of Rome,” it wouldn’t mean they were looking forward to living in Rome, but that Philippi was a colony of Rome. Christian conduct reflects the Holy One who rules from his heavenly throne since it is he who said, “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). Live as a colonist of heaven on earth. Teachings about the kingdom are primarily for the orientation of our behaviour.

The kingdom of heaven is more than a sphere of ethics. When Jesus came preaching, he declared, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). Again, there is an invitation for a change of behaviour to usher in the kingdom. However, beyond the ethical challenge, we find the rule and reign of God entering the world through the work of Christ. Contrast this with the idea of escaping the world and going to heaven and we see that God has not abandoned this world but values the world and desires to reign over it.

When a person intones that “going to heaven” is escapist and unbiblical, responders invariably quote the “heaven” passages. A popular saying of Jesus in this regard is “I go to prepare a place for you” in John 14:2–3. Christians have read these words this way for so long it is difficult to read them any other way. Richard Middleton, however, views these verses along with others as part of an apocalyptic pattern. Middleton proposes the pattern throughout the NT speaks of heaven as the place of preparation for that which will be unveiled on earth.⁸ Thus, Jesus’ words of comfort to his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion do not mean he is going to take them to heaven. Instead, when Jesus speaks of his Father’s house with many rooms, these may be “resting places” for his followers while history moves towards its cosmic conclusion. Said rooms would be temporary, like a room at a hotel. Yet the term used for “many rooms” does not convey a temporary sentiment, but permanent. Jesus uses the same Greek word (mone) when he promises to dwell with his disciples through the Spirit. He and the Father will make their dwelling with those who believe and obey (John 14:23). Even here the reader can discern the believer does not go to the Father, but the Father and Son come to dwell with the believer.⁹

What about the “Father’s House”? Does this not refer to heaven? Does he not have “a big, big yard, where we [will] play football?”¹⁰ John 14:1–3 does not reference heaven specifically at all. The reader is left to search the Bible to find a meaning for the term “Father’s House.” That search will lead the reader to passages like Isaiah 66:1 which depicts heaven and earth together as the temple of God; this is God’s house. In summary, John 14:1–3 may refer to Jesus’ preparations in heaven for the final redemption of creation as a fitting place for God to dwell, the new heavens and the new earth.

Paul and the resurrection

What then was the hope for Jesus’ followers? Not heaven, but resurrection.

A case could be made from the writing of the Apostle Paul that he himself anticipated the blessed hope of heaven after his death. One text that emphasizes this more than others is 2 Corinthians 5:6–9. Beginning in chapter 4, Paul appears to support the heavenly destination for believers as he contrasts life in the present body with a future heavenly body. These bodies are wasting away in the flesh while our spirits are being renewed, he wrote (4:16). The logical assumption for the reader of 2 Corinthians 5:6 is to interpret “while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord” as longing for the heavenly existence. Is this not a case for “going to heaven” when the believer dies?

Not if we take the context into consideration. At the beginning of chapter 5, Paul stated that his hope, if his earthly body (this tent) is destroyed, is for a “building from God” (the resurrection body) which God has prepared for him (v. 1). Then Paul says that while we groan in this present body, we do not want to be unclothed or naked (disembodied; dead) (vv. 2–4). What do we make of Paul saying that he prefers to be away from this present body and at home with the Lord? Is he contradicting his hope in the resurrection?

Paul’s argument has been for the hope believers have amid suffering and death. To that end we need to pay attention to Paul’s key statement about living faithfully in this context: “Knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence” (4:14). To be at home with the Lord does not contradict Paul’s hope in the resurrection at all. He was looking forward to the second coming of Christ when the dead in Christ will be raised with imperishable bodies to live in the new creation. To be away from this present body is to be clothed with our resurrected body.¹¹

Hope in the resurrection appears prominently in the gospel proclamation of the early church. When the apostles preached in the book of Acts, it was their message of the resurrection of Jesus that confounded the establishment and gave hope to new believers. In First Corinthians, Paul devotes a large space at the end to the resurrection of Christ and consequently of those who believe in him for salvation. After arguing that Christ was indeed raised from the dead, and then affirming that believers will be raised as well when Christ returns, Paul explains why this must be so: “What is sown is perishable [these present bodies], what is raised is imperishable [resurrection bodies]” (15:42). These current bodies are inadequate for life in eternity and thus need to be transformed at the resurrection into bodies fit for eternal life. Resurrection, not “going to heaven,” was the hope of the NT church.

It bears noting that heaven and earth as it exists now will pass away (Matt. 24:35). If we read Revelation carefully, we will observe that Christians who had been slain were under the altar crying out for justice, a scene that is the opposite of tranquil (Rev. 6:9–10). Indeed, the book of Revelation does not depict heaven as a place of peace, but of war, until the Lamb brings all things to a conclusion. And then a new heaven and a new earth will take the place of the old and Christ will dwell with us in the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:1-4). In this way, heaven and earth will be one and the same, with the throne of God at its centre (22:1–4).

Summary

Does heaven matter? Is it worth debating whether we go to heaven or whether heaven comes down to us with the parousia (second coming)?

Our hope as Christians rests on a proper understanding of what Christ and the NT writers have promised us in the pages of Scripture. If “heaven” is a catch-all term for what we understand for eternal life with God, then perhaps the distinction is less important. Pastorally, when people are grieving and speak of heaven as the resting place of their loved ones, we dare not argue. On the other hand, if a pastor or teacher desires to be “a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), that person will care about accurately conveying the truth of Scripture. There are too many references in the Bible to a renewed earth, and to the primacy of the resurrection as our hope, to ignore. Our congregations yearn for biblical truth and our task is to present an accurate picture of hope.

The purpose of this paper is not to argue for the existence of an intermediate state. We will not know in this present life the exact nature of our existence in eternity either. This author’s intention is to draw the reader nearer to the concrete truth of our faith, the resurrection body. Gracious Judge, Holy Saviour, suggests the debate on heaven is not important. But if the debate on heaven is not important, then our creation theology is also not important.

Our present existence in God’s creation was significant enough for the Father to send his Son into it to redeem this life. Jesus did not come to open an escape hatch; he came to give meaning to life in the present, and hope if we die in the cause of his work, the redeeming of creation. Thousands of believers have faced the dangers of this world with great courage because of the resurrection hope.

Let us put aside the Greek dualism that we have been taught for so long and preach Christ Jesus resurrected from the dead, the first fruits of the harvest that is yet to come.

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¹Gracious Judge, Holy Saviour was written as a teaching paper by Conference Pastor Layton Friesen, and endorsed and distributed by the Evangelical Mennonite Conference Board of Leadership and Outreach.
²Written and performed by the group Mercy Me.
³All Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
⁴David E. Aune, “Cosmology,” Westminster Dictionary of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature (John Knox Press).
⁵Angelology,” JewishEncyclopedia.com.
⁶Aka Dualism.
⁷NT Wright, “The New Testament Doesn’t Say What Most People Think it Does About Heaven,” Time.com, Dec. 16, 2019.
⁸J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2014), 212.
⁹Middleton, 229.
¹⁰See lyrics to “Big House” by Audio Adrenaline from their album Don’t Censor Me (1993).
¹¹See Middleton, 230.