My nine-year-old daughter thinks more about the new creation than she does about heaven. She speaks more about Jesus returning to earth to make everything new than she does about joining him in the heavens after death. I do, too. This isn’t because going to be with Him (should He tarry in his return) will not be inexplicably better than anything we have experienced in this earthly life. As Paul says, “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8b).
If the choice were between living on this earth forever in our current state of sin or our souls leaving our bodies to enter the eternal state of blessedness in paradise with the risen Christ, the decision is obvious. If we are called to die before Christ returns, we rejoice with the thief on the cross who embraced the promise of his soul immediately entering a Christocentric paradise upon his impending death.
And yet, it is possible to be in a state of blessedness and not the final state of perfection. That is the state our brother, the thief who died beside Jesus, is in now, and the state every believer from every age who has breathed their last currently resides in.
Our final and ultimate longing is not for heaven. It is for heaven to come to earth and for Christ to reign in a new world in full submission to Him. Though our souls are already made perfect in glory when we die in the Lord, they long for all things to finally and totally be made right at the return of Christ to rule the nations (Revelation 6:9-11).
It is blessed to die in the Lord, but it is more blessed to be raised in the Lord, or to even be among those privileged saints alive at his return.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism, a concise document consisting of 107 questions and answers, addresses the benefits of those who die in Christ and the benefits of these same ones who are raised bodily at his return. (I believe the Westminster Confession and its larger and shorter catechisms to be the most accurate systematic presentation of what the Bible teaches, and I would commend it to you wholeheartedly on this and multiple other topics). Let’s look at both of these questions and answers below.
Question 37 asks: “What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?”
The answer: “The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection.”
This is good. This is astoundingly beautiful. Any person who has ever trusted in Christ, any child of the covenant who has died in the womb, any scoundrel who has turned to Jesus in the last five minutes of his earthly pilgrimage, enters, IMMEDIATELY upon death into the presence of Christ in glory. The confession says that their souls are made perfect in holiness.
Those we love who have died in Christ are separated from their earthly bodies, but their souls have been made perfect. They no longer struggle with sin. They no longer struggle to love Jesus as they ought or to believe in his love for them. They are no longer oppressed by sin, the world, or the devil. Your covenant babies who didn’t see the light are with Jesus. Your grandmother, who loved Christ, is in His presence now. Your enemy, who looked to Christ at the last possible moment, now understands him better than you do yourself.
I want to “get to heaven.” I can’t wait to “see” (whatever seeing looks like without a body, God knows!) my Maga and Pops, my dear friends’ baby who died just before his first birthday, and countless saints who have entered their rest before me.
More than this, I want to dwell in paradise with my Saviour, my soul finally made perfect and able to fully enjoy Him. I want to plead with the other saints under the throne for Christ to make things right, and finally, offer such prayers without a hint of selfish motive.
And yet, more than this, I want Jesus to return right now. I am ok if I miss out on “heaven.” Because the benefits of Christ coming from heaven to earth are staggeringly even better. Let’s look at the following catechism question and answer.
Question 38 asks: “What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?”
The answer: “At the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity.”
This “resurrection” is the coming day when Christ will return in victory to judge the living and the dead. When every single body buried in the earth, cremated in ash, or torn to pieces by lions will be raised to life, either unto eternal blessedness in this body but transformed or unto eternal judgment in this body.
This is the day when all who have trusted in Christ will not only be raised from the dead bodily but will be openly declared to be the children of God, fully forgiven by the merit of His Son, fully declared ready to live in a world without end in utter perfection. This is forever. This is living on this earth with the risen Jesus.
This is the affirmative answer to Samwise Gamgee’s inquiry “Is everything sad going to come untrue?” This is the even more solid, more “Narnian” Narnia, the most real and perfect, holy and pleasurable world we can imagine.
This is better than Eden because we will be so fully and utterly saved body and soul that we will not even be able to sin or want to sin.
This is the promise fulfilled, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Did we catch that? When Jesus comes, we will be made like Him, body and soul. We will see Him in all of His perfection, and no choice will remain to us but to become perfectly righteous (not just legally but experientially) in the One who became legally and experientially cursed for our sake.
“When will He come back?” This was my daughter’s urgent question as we turned into our parking garage a few weeks ago, after reflecting on some of the hard things going on in our world. She is ready for her hero, Jesus, to come and make it all better in the world and in her heart. I am too.
To that end, we keep praying, “Come, Lord Jesus!” May it be before I get to heaven. May it be before this article is published. May it be today!
Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash
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