What is heaven?

Question 10055.

Heaven is the dwelling place of God, the present home of believers who have died, and the sure hope of every soul who trusts in Jesus. When people ask me about it, I find they often carry a thin, cloudy picture in their heads, all harps and idleness and drifting spirits, which owes far more to cartoons than to Scripture. The Bible paints something far richer and more solid than that. It is real, it is glorious, and it is the place where the people of God will at last be fully at home with their Lord for ever.

I want to clear away the mist and set out what Scripture actually teaches on this. There is a present reality where God dwells and where believers go at death, and there is a coming, fuller reality, the new heaven and the new earth, which is the final and eternal state. Holding both together keeps our hope both comforting now and gloriously concrete for the future. Let me take you through it, because a right view of heaven changes how we live and how we die.

Heaven as the dwelling place of God

First and foremost, heaven is where God makes His presence known in unveiled glory. Jesus taught us to pray to our Father in heaven, and Scripture repeatedly speaks of heaven as the throne of God, the place from which He reigns and where His will is done perfectly. The Greek word often translated heaven is ouranos, which can mean the sky, the starry expanse, or the very dwelling of God, depending on its context. In its highest sense it names the place where God is worshipped without hindrance and His glory fills everything.

This is what makes the place what it truly is. It is not the golden streets or the pearly gates that make the place glorious, wonderful as those images are. It is the unclouded presence of God Himself. To be there is to be where He is, to see His face, and to dwell in the light of His countenance for ever. Everything else that Scripture says about the place flows from that one central reality. Take God out of heaven and there would be nothing left worth the name. He is its treasure and its joy.

Where believers go at death

When a believer dies, they go immediately to be with the Lord, and this is a great comfort I have leaned on at many a bedside. Paul says that to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord, and he tells the Philippians that to depart and be with Christ is far better. Jesus promised the dying thief that he would be with Him in paradise that very day. So there is no long sleep of the soul and no waiting room. The moment a Christian closes their eyes here, they open them in the conscious presence of Jesus.

This present state, wonderful as it is, is not yet the final one. The believers who are with Christ now are blessed beyond our imagining, yet they still await the resurrection of the body, when soul and body will be reunited and glorified. So the joy of being with the Lord now is real and full, but it is not the whole story. It looks forward to something even greater, when the whole person, body and soul, enters the eternal state. The best, quite literally, is still to come.

The new heaven and the new earth

The final and eternal state is not a disembodied existence in the clouds but a renewed and physical creation, the new heaven and the new earth of Revelation 21 and 22. John sees the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, and hears a great voice declaring that God will dwell with His people, wiping every tear from their eyes, so that death and mourning and crying and pain are no more. This is where the whole story has been heading, a restored creation where God and His people dwell together in a real and glorified world.

I take this literally, as I take the rest of prophecy. The new Jerusalem is described with specific dimensions and materials, and its cubic shape recalls the Holy of Holies, suggesting that the whole city is the dwelling place of God with man. Whether the present creation is renewed or wholly remade is a question I hold with an open hand, but its literal, physical character I hold firmly. Our eternal home is not less real than this world but far more real, the true and solid country of which this one is only a shadow.

What we will do in that eternal home

People often imagine eternity as endless idleness, and no wonder they find the prospect dull. Scripture says otherwise. We will worship God with undimmed delight, we will serve Him, for His servants will reign with Him and there is meaningful work in His kingdom, and we will enjoy unbroken fellowship with Him and with one another. There will be knowledge and growth and discovery, for we shall know even as we are known. Far from being static, the life to come is the fullest, richest, most active life there is, freed at last from sin and weariness.

And it will never grow stale, because its centre is the inexhaustible God. An eternity spent exploring the riches of His character could never run dry or become tedious, for He is infinite and we are finite, and there will always be more of Him to know and to love. This is why I never speak of the life to come as though it were only a consolation for the sadness of this one. It is the very thing we were made for, the home our hearts have been aching after all along.

How the hope of heaven shapes life now

A settled hope of eternity is meant to change the way I live today. Paul says that if we have set our hope in Christ for this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied, but because our hope reaches beyond the grave, we can labour and suffer and even die with courage. The martyrs went to the stake singing because they saw a better country ahead. A firm grip on the world to come loosens our grip on this one, freeing us to be generous, brave, and unafraid.

It also puts our present troubles in their proper scale. Paul could call his many afflictions a light and momentary trouble, not because they were trivial but because he weighed them against an eternal weight of glory that made them look small. When I keep the coming glory in view, my heaviest burdens here shrink to their true size. This is no escapism. It is the clear-eyed realism of a people who know where they are going and who is waiting for them there.

Longing for heaven without idolising it

Some worry that a strong hope of heaven makes people useless here on earth, but I have found the very reverse to be true, as I noted of the martyrs. Others swing to the opposite extreme and grow so fascinated with speculation about the furniture of glory that they lose the wonder of the thing itself. Scripture keeps us balanced between the two. Paul could say that our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly await a Saviour, in Philippians 3:20, and yet he laboured harder than any man of his age. A firm hope of glory fuels faithful work rather than quietly replacing it.

I also refuse to let heaven become a vague comfort detached from Christ Himself. The joy of that place is not first its beauty but its Lord, the same Jesus who reigns now, who will reign in the coming kingdom, and who will reign on into eternity. Jesus told His disciples in John 14:2-3 that He goes to prepare a place for them and will come again to receive them to Himself. It is His presence, promised there, that makes the hope worth having, just as His absence is the true horror of hell. I long for the place because I love the Person who is its very centre.

So, now what?

Heaven is real, and it is the home of all who belong to Jesus, but it is not the automatic destination of everyone. The one entrance is Christ Himself, who said that He is the way, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. The question for you is not whether the place is real, but whether you are ready for it, whether your sins are forgiven and your name is written in the book of life.

If you have never trusted Jesus, then the door stands open to you today, and He bids you come. Turn to Him, and the home He is preparing becomes your certain inheritance, a place beside Him for ever. Do not settle for a thin, cloudy hope when He offers you the real and solid country. Are you ready to go home to the God who made you for Himself?

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.”

Revelation 21:3 (ESV)