4 Ways the Reality of Heaven Changes Everything

The Bible speaks of heaven and the heavens. Sometimes, it simply means “the sky.” And sometimes, it is a reference to the place where God dwells. For the sake of this article, I’m not considering any of those when referencing “heaven.” I am attempting here to use the colloquial meaning. Thus, “heaven” will simply mean “the place we go when we die”. How does the Bible speak of this?

Let’s begin with Jesus. In Mark 16 and Acts 7, Jesus was taken up into heaven and sat at the right hand of God. This establishes a real place where Jesus (still embodied) could go. Hebrews 9:24 says that “he entered heaven itself.” The idea is that the place often described as God’s throne (Isaiah 66:1, Matthew 5:34-35) has been entered by the Lord Jesus.

We are further told by Jesus that He is going to prepare a place for us. But is this where we go immediately after death? (We will consider that in a moment). We can say confidently that according to Jesus, believers will have a definitive home after death.

We can also say that according to Jesus in Luke 23:43, upon death, we will be with Jesus in paradise. Paul seems to indicate the same thing in Philippians 1:23 (to depart is to be with Christ) and refers to being “away from the body” as being “at home with the Lord in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8. Revelation 6:9-11 describes the souls of martyrs in heaven, indicating a conscious existence in God’s presence after death.

For those who are united to Christ, we can say that to depart is to be in the presence of Christ in some sort of conscious existence. But there are very few details about this. The informed reader might be wondering why I have not mentioned the beautiful picture of “no more tears” in Revelation 21. We will discuss that now.

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Most of us hope to go to heaven when we die. And we assume that we will be greeted by St. Peter and given the keys to our new mansion when we get there. It is here, in this eternal abode, that we will rest for all of eternity. In other words, we figure that the heaven we go to when we die is the same heaven where we’ll spend eternity.

Yet, the Bible paints a different picture. Christopher J.H. Wright says it well:

Christians who keep on talking about “going to heaven”—as if that were their last great hope—seem to have missed the whole point of the way the Bible ends. Look again at the wonderful picture in Revelation 21-22. It says nothing about us going to heaven or anywhere else. Rather, it shows us God coming down to earth, transforming the whole creation into the new heaven and the new earth that he had promised in Isaiah 65:17, and then living here with us—on earth.[1]

I have argued elsewhere that you can sum up God’s grand purpose for us with the words rest, rule, and relationship. Put another way, we might say that God created us for a people, a place, and a purpose. Sin shipwrecked all of this. We see these things wonderfully present in the Garden, and then every moment after Genesis 3, there is a march to get back to the Garden.

What we see in Revelation 21 is a restoration of all of this. We see there that rest, rule, and relationship will finally be decisively restored. God will be with us as our God—we have a place, a purpose, a people. All those are present there in the grand climax of the Bible. But it’s even more beautiful because the beautiful story of redemption is etched across the horizon. The new heaven, the place we will dwell in for all eternity, is as “earthy” as the original Garden. And it will be beautiful and all our longings fulfilled.

I would contend that many of the descriptions of heaven in the Bible speak of the new heaven and not necessarily the one that we go to whenever we die. Yes, I believe that when we die, we go to a very real heaven. But it might not be “real” in quite the earthy sense. That will be reserved for the resurrection.

When we die, we will be in Christ's presence, and that is all that truly matters.

I suppose we could argue that heaven is “real” in that it exists and is something where our souls float around and such. But we don’t mean it is “real” in any meaningful sense. And you could argue rather convincingly that there will certainly be a time when our experience of heaven is not embodied. Maybe in that sense, we might say that for a period, heaven isn’t “real.” But I don’t believe that is what people mean. Rather, they mean that life after death does not exist meaningfully. And that, I do not believe, can be defended with Scripture.

But why does this matter?

If you want to believe in “soul sleep” or something that happens before the resurrection of the dead—there isn’t much harm in this. You need to develop some sort of meaningful existence in the presence of Christ, though. But if you can do that, I suppose there isn’t much harm.

The real harm comes if you deny the resurrection or the reality of eternity. It seems that Paul had a few enemies arguing about this very thing. In 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, he plays a game of “what if.” What is the consequence of denying the reality of heaven—of life after death?

If there is no resurrection, the implications for our faith are devastating. First, our preaching would be in vain, as the central message of the gospel would be rendered meaningless. Second, our faith would also be in vain because it rests on the truth of the resurrection. Third, we would be misrepresenting God, as the Scriptures that testify to Christ's resurrection would be false. Fourth, we would still be in our sins, with no hope of forgiveness or redemption. Fifth, Christians would be the most pitied of all people, having placed their hope in a false promise. Finally, those who have died in Christ would have perished with no hope of eternal life.

These devastating consequences paint a bleak picture of what life would be like without the resurrection. Without it, there is no hope, forgiveness, or future. All the good that has been done in the name of Christ would be meaningless in one fell swoop. And death would have the final word. But, as Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 15:20, 

"But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." 

This assurance flips everything on its head. Because Christ is risen, our preaching is not in vain, our faith is secure, and we are no longer in our sins. We have hope beyond the grave, and death has lost its sting. The resurrection assures us that all our labor in the Lord is not in vain, and we can live with confidence in the victory that Christ has won for us.

This means that Christ has the last word in our lives. If heaven isn’t real, well, death has the last word.

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The reality of a real heaven impacts our daily lives significantly. Have you ever watched a baseball game (or any other sport) on replay? If you know your team won, it impacts how you watch the game. When your team is down three runs in the seventh inning, you don’t sweat it like you would if the game was live. You know your team will prevail. That homerun your pitcher just gave up isn’t definitive. Something else will speak louder and more definitively.

If heaven is real, then it means that our eternity gets the last word. All of our momentary suffering is a blip in light of eternity. What it is all about will be lived out in eternity in the new heaven and the new earth. And this allows us to live and to love differently. We do not have to cling to this world as if it is all we have. We lament injustice. We grieve at death. But we know that none of it is final.

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