No. 29 We ought to talk about that in which we have our hope, then. What does God teach us about heaven? I have a friend who has a friend who asked once: �Won�t heaven be boring?� Well�okay�so it�s my question. There are times when I picture an eternity spent in choir. And yet, don�t get me wrong�I look forward to heaven. I just wonder what to expect. Do we know? >>PROFESSOR ROLAND ZIEGLER: Yeah, I think a lot of people have had this question. And you put it in that way: Well, an endless choir concert. Even if you love music, music can get kind of boring after a while. Or grows old on you. And frankly, I mean, we do need variety. And especially that image of you sitting for an eternity on a cloud playing the harp and praising the Lord seems to be not that attractive to put it mildly. It seems to be then boring. You do it over and over, the same thing. Now, it's not the biblical image that heaven is sitting on a cloud and playing the harp and then getting bored. And heaven is not simply a long, long stretch of time. But heaven is a little bit different. Let's look what Scripture actually tells us about this existence after Judgement Day. Well, the first thing to note about life in heaven is that it is bodily life. We believe in the resurrection of the body or in the resurrection of the flesh actually the Apostles' Creed says in the original Latin. We celebrate the resurrection of Christ every year at Easter. And Christ is the first fruit of the resurrection. His resurrection is the anticipation of what will come. As Jesus says, "This is not only for him. But this is for all who believe." In John 6:40, "And this is the will of him that sent me that everyone which sees the Son and believes in him may have everlasting life. And I will raise him up at the last day." I emphasized before that our hope is a bodily existence and not some disembodied spirit somewhere. This new body will have a continuity with our mortal body. Paul says: But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwells in you. We see this continuity in the case of Christ. The tomb was empty. And that's about all we can say. Because now of course come all these questions. Well, how can that be? All those billions of people, ages ago, the bodies have long turned into dust and have been assimilated by other things. The short answer is: We don't know. But there is some kind of a continuity there. There is also nevertheless change. Paul in his great chapter on the resurrection in I Corinthians 15, he puts what is now and what will be side to side. Now we have a corruptible body. Then there will be an incorruptible body. Now there is dishonor. Then there is glory. Now there is weakness. Then there is power. Now, a natural body. Then a spiritual body. Now we are bearing the image of the earth. Then we will bear the image of heaven. So here as in everything when we talk about heaven, we can get a glimpse. We can say something. But we pretty soon reach a border. Because it's so utterly different from what we know and experience now. We live in a world that has the signature of death and of a finite life all over it. How can we imagine a life that is free of the signature of death and that is not finite? It's very hard to imagine. And that's why you have to use similes and metaphors if you want to say anything at all. So the life in heaven will be a bodily life. And it will be eternal life. That's the most common term. The righteous go into life eternal as Jesus says in Matthew 25. And of course in John 3:16, Jesus talks about that, too, when he says: Those who believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. This is the life that is freed from death and decay. But it's not only that, it is life in its fullness as man was intended to live. Our life now is but a shadow compared to this eternal life. Eternal life is life without pain, anguish and sin. A verse that is often used at funerals from Revelation 21:4: And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. For the former things are passed away. So all imperfection of which sin is the worst and the source will be gone. There will be no pain and anguish anymore. No suffering which are the consequences of sin. This life eternal will be a life in Communion with God. We will be with God. As Jesus says in the Beatitudes: Blessed are the pure in heart. For they shall see God. From this word of Jesus, the goal of the Christian life has been described as the beatific vision. That the blessed ones, those in heaven, will see God. And that this vision will be the fulfillment of their life. If you go to Dante's "Divine Comedy," at the very end of heaven, that's what is the climax of this entire poem. As man was created for fellowship with God and God's salvific history is the history of the restitution of this fellowship, so now comes its fulfillment. It will be a Communion with God. Openly. No longer will God be hidden. But everything will be revealed. We will see God. That is we will know him in a way we have not known him before. We still will know God through Christ. Because at the center of the heavenly Jerusalem is the lamb on his throne. Life eternal will be also life in Communion with the angels and the saints. The heavenly life is not just God and me. The Christian is by definition a part of a community. He is a part of the church. The body of Christ. And he stays a member of this community. When heaven is described in the image of the heavenly Jerusalem, this shows that heaven will not only be the fulfillment of the individual life, but also the fulfillment of the social life. The heavenly Jerusalem is the opposite of Babylon, the Godless and therefore anti-God community of man. In heaven there will be also the sanctification of man as a social being. As a ***zon polita conus Aristotle defined him. He saw something there. We are created for community. It's not good that man is alone. And he never is alone. So also in heaven we will live in a community. We will remain social beings. We will live as social beings in interaction with the Christians of all ages, the angels. And that's why we can also say and believe that we will meet those whom we cherished here on earth and who die as Christians in heaven. And we will meet many more. Life eternal means also that we will participate in God's glory. God's glory describes his splendor almost as the deity. God shared this glory with man and man has lost it. As Paul says in Romans 3:23: For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But in the resurrection, we will be glorified. That is God will give us part in his glory. Paul says: Christ shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like into his glorious body according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. In Romans 8 he talks about us being glorified as a consequence of us being joined as with Christ. What does that mean that we share or participate in God's glory? It means that God gives us what is his. So that we are in the fullness of life that is possible. God is the one who gives. And in a way he gives himself. So he gives of the fullness of his being to us. And we will have a life that transcends all that we know. The relationship to the past that we will have in heaven is not only negative, that is that there are no more sorrow, tears or pain. Our earthly life is still part of our existence. But only the negative is overcome. The positive of our life, though, is still with us. To that belong the statements in the New Testament about the reward of good deeds. It might seem to be somewhat sub Christian to talk about reward. Afterall, is salvation not by grace alone? So what can then any talk about rewards mean? On the other hand, there are just too many passages in the New Testament that talk about reward to ignore them for the sake of a supposed logical consistency. So for example in I Corinthians 3 where Paul talks about the different creatures or teachers. If any man's work by which he has built there upon, he shall receive a reward. What that reward will be, we don't know. But we can say that the good in our life will be recognized by God. Blessed are the dead which shine the Lord from henceforth. Yes, as says the spirit that they may rest from their labor and their works do follow them. Our lives here on earth are not wiped out. Only the bad is wiped out. The good remains with us. It remains part of our identity. Because that's all -- that's the work of God in us and through us that will be with us for eternity. So even though everybody will enjoy the same salvation and everybody will see God and everybody will be glorified, there still will be differences. We will still look up to the great men and women of God. But not in envy, but to praise what God has done through them. It's not some kind of class or case system in heaven. But neither is it some kind of egalitarianism where everybody wears the same uniform and everybody gets the food as in some -- as it was in the cultural revolution in Mao's China. But again, what will we do? Well, Scripture does not say too much about this. It speaks about the saints serving God. That is to worship him. The praise of God will flow from the redeemed. Jesus describes heaven as a banquet. And it is also known as the marriage feast of the lamb. Is all of this enough to keep us from being bored? Well, being in Communion with God, sharing his glory, participating in his feast will never get old or leave us unsatisfied, which is the reason to get bored. So even though we can only catch glimpse of what heaven will be like, we can say it will not be boring because it will be the fullness of life. We will live life to its top. To a top we can't even imagine in every moment of this heavenly existence.