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(Part two of our Heaven mini-series. Click here for our previous post.)

In my last post I argued that it was right and appropriate for us to direct our thoughts and hopes toward heaven because that is where God is. I argued that a right understanding of what heaven means will help us appreciate both heaven and earth.

The Problem with Heaven

But of course there’s a serious problem here. If heaven is the home of a holy God is then it must be a hostile place for sinful humans. The earthly places where God makes himself present tend to be dangerous and inhospitable. They come guarded by sword-bearing angels, or wreathed in fire and smoke. They expel, terrify and incinerate people who approach them in the wrong way. God is too holy, too pure.

The places where God makes himself present tend to be dangerous and inhospitable. They come guarded by sword-bearing angels, or wreathed in fire and smoke.

If that’s how it is with the secondary symbols of God’s presence (see our previous post) then what must heaven be like? When seers such as Ezekiel, Isaiah or John have more direct visions of God the effect is devastating. Ezekiel and John fall down like dead men (Eze 1:28; Rev 1:17). Isaiah cries out that he is finished: “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty,” (Is 6:5).

Heaven, despite the fond imaginings of pagan and popular culture,[1] is no place for unclean people like us. Unless God finds a way for sinners to come close to him heaven will be hell.

Atonement and True Atonement

Mercifully God does have a solution. In Isaiah 6, an angel takes a coal from the altar and touches it to the prophet’s lips: “this has touched your lips,” he tells Isaiah in verse 6. “Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” The prophet can see God and live.

The coal here stands for the whole system of temple sacrifice: the death of animals that atones for the guilt of God’s people; the blood that purges sin from the earthly symbol of God’s presence so the people can live near God (c.f. Lev 16:15-16).

In the New Testament of course we learn that these sacrifices were shadows and anticipations of the death of Christ. His work on the cross was a “once for all” sacrifice (Heb 10:1-18) to finally and completely deal with sin.

But we also learn that the temple itself was a symbol. The Most Holy Place was a symbol of heaven,[2] and the entry of the high priest on the Day of Atonement was a symbol of Christ’s entry into the true presence of God.

Drawing Near

The writer of Hebrews makes this clear. He tells us that Jesus didn’t just open a path into an earthly temple “that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence,” (Heb 9:24). He depicts Jesus entering heaven on our behalf (6:20); carrying his own blood (9:12); to purge our sins from presence of God (9:22-23). Finally he makes the startling revelation that (unlike the Levitical High Priest) Jesus opens the way for us to follow him into the presence of God. He (the writer) calls us people with a “heavenly calling” (Heb 3:1); heirs of a “heavenly country,” (Heb 11:16,40). He insists that we should claim the access that Christ has given us and make it the centre of our spiritual lives:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:19-22)
In chapter 12 he goes further, urging us to lift our eyes and realise that through Christ we have already reached our eschatological home:
  …you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24)

Exactly how it can be true that we “have come” is not made clear to us. Is this a corporate reality such as we see in Ephesians 2:6 and Colossians 3:1, where we are in heaven because we are in Christ? Is it true in some extra-dimensional sense – suggesting that Christians are literally in heaven and could see it if their eyes were opened (c.f. Gen 28:10-17)?[3] Is the statement simply proleptic – referring to a future reality as if it were already realised?

if we have Christ as our high priest, then heaven is our home. We – who could never approach the ‘consuming fire’ of God’s holiness by our own righteousness – have been made citizens of heaven.

But what is clear is that, if we have Christ as our high priest, then heaven is our home. We – who could never approach the “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29) of God’s holiness by our own righteousness – have been made citizens of heaven. We who by rights should be banished from God’s presence have been led into the very throne room of God’s presence. We who have nothing to our name but filthy rags have been made perfect and washed clean by the sprinkled blood of Jesus.

And now we are ready to talk about how this heavenly reality affects the rest of creation (continued).


[1] I mean that humans have always been happy to think about heaven as place of victory, reunion, rest, beauty, glory and transcendent delight (or physical delight, in the case of Islam). It has been much harder for us to fix our attention on the central fact of the biblical vision – that heaven is where God is. It’s possible that there is a subtle drift toward this preoccupation with secondary aspects of heaven in our attempts to nail down its relationship to our current earth.

[2] It seems that the Jews understood this before the coming of Christ. Josephus, for example, explains that the parts of the temple symbolise different parts of the cosmos. The “third division” – i.e. the Holy of Holies – was set apart “because heaven is inaccessible to men.” See Jewish Antiquities 3.7.7.

[3] This is how Tom Wright (following C.S. Lewis) sometimes explains the relationship between heaven and earth – N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (London: SPCK, 2007), 122, 126-127. Elsewhere he takes his cue from Rev 21-22 and imagines Jerusalem as being prepared in heaven and lowered to earth; and/or earth and heaven being united; ibid. 26.

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