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HEAVEN IN THE GENERAL EPISTLES

JON LAANSMA

From now on, let’s talk about heaven.

Grace Verwys¹

Most speculation about heaven is either indulged or held in contempt. Either way, if by heaven we mean only a place and state separate from our present world, with special interest in its features, pleasures, and securities, then the comment of my informed colleague might be apt: “There isn’t much about heaven in those letters,” meaning Hebrews through Jude, the so-called General Epistles. We would do better, however, first to listen to these letters. Or rather, we do well to bring our existing beliefs consciously and fully to our reading, there to have them examined. Our judgments might change. Among other things, “above and below” or “now and then” cannot be kept as distinct as they sometimes are. Again, we perceive in the scriptural tradition that heaven is not spun out of speculation on the postmortem existence of humans but is the “place” of a holy God who has driven humankind out of his presence, yet who, by inhabiting heaven, remains present to his creation; it has become that which is humankind’s reconciliation in the person of the Son of God through the Holy Spirit. Moreover, as we reread the General Epistles with this changed understanding, it occurs to us that a good deal that would seem irrelevant to our theme is of its very essence when viewed from the perspective of what mattered to the writers of these epistles.

Just one critical note needs to be registered immediately: the “sober truth is that without a full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.”2 To the extent that this is not seen, there will be, no doubt, the perennial impulse to shoulder past grace to learn what heaven will “really” be, what truly satisfying things and experiences it might hold. The biblical authors we are about to survey never really get that far but seem compelled to linger over grace, and we will have no choice but to hang back with them.

Hebrews

With its vision of the heavenly Jerusalem and the true temple, Hebrews would seem to be the exception to what we just said. The concern of Hebrews, however, is to use its cartographic and architectural images not as things to look at but as things to look along, things through which to see this gracious Lord and his great salvation.

The Greek word most commonly glossed in English as heaven (οὐρανός) occurs in Hebrews as both the highest tier of the created and visible realm (1:10; 4:14; 7:26;³ 11:12) and the transcendent abode of God (8:1; 9:23, 24; 12:23, 25, 26), which may be distinguished like so even though it is not finally clear that these are entirely distinct realms in the writer’s imagination. Additionally, the cognate Greek adjective (ἐπουράνιος) is used of the abode of God (3:1; 6:4; 8:5; 9:23; 11:16; 12:22). Excluding the passages that refer to the visible heavens of the cosmos as a feature of that which will be “rolled up like a robe” (see 1:12)—in spite of the ambiguity just noted—and including others that do not necessarily use the word itself, the dominant conception of heaven is as the place of the divine throne, situated within the Most Holy Place of the heavenly tabernacle. It belongs to what is created—it represents the presence of God in his creation rather than his renunciation and abandonment—and itself requires cleansing (8:2; 9:11; 11:10, 16; cf. 9:23). It is characterized as the “resting place” promised to Israel (3:7–4:11); the place promised Abraham as an inheritance (11:8); a city having foundations whose architect and builder is God (11:10); a coming city (13:14) and world (2:5; cf. 10:1); a fatherland (11:14); a heavenly [place] (11:16); Mount Zion and the city of the living God; the heavenly Jerusalem. It is a place of myriad angels; a festal gathering; the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven; the place of God, who is judge of all; the place of spirits made perfect; of Jesus, mediator of the new covenant (12:22–24). It is also designated simply as “glory,” into which God is leading many children (2:10).

That much is a mere catalog of its images, and one might think we could mine each of them to gain special knowledge of heaven as a place. A systematic pursuit of that nature would, however, tend toward the conclusion that the place of God’s presence and the salvation that effects access to it were depicted in these ways in the interest of understanding more than pictorial realism. The motifs are too changing and fluid to suggest otherwise. Surely these particular images were not optional or merely culturally convenient; surely they were not merely rhetorically exploited for a Jewish readership but rather were and remain inspired, canonical, and necessary for “seeing” what must be seen, what cannot be seen otherwise. That said, they do not exist for their own sake but as ways of revealing the Son and his great salvation.4

Another thought augments this and needs to be pursued briefly; it momentarily takes us further afield but bears on all of the writings we will survey. Whatever our stated principles, we tend to supplement what is revealed of heaven in Scripture, if not bypass it altogether, by projecting our hopes and desires based on present experience. The procedure itself of seeing heaven through the immanent earthly is, however, a dicey one when all we truly “know” of heaven, for its part, is what stood among us in the person of the Son, as this is given us chiefly in the narratives of the transfiguration (cf. 2 Pet. 1:16–18) and resurrection, including 1 Corinthians 15. What we see in the resurrected Son is decidedly of the nature of radical continuity impossibly coterminous with radical discontinuity—the same body, the same man, wounds and all, yet new and different, not soulish and earthly but spiritual and heavenly (1 Cor. 15:39–49). To put it strongly, it is both renewal of all that is and at the same time termination of all that is followed by the appearance of something simply new, not merely a new beginning but the beginning as such; it is the resurrection of the truly dead.

So it is not that we know nothing. We know heaven is tangibly real. We not only saw it and saw him; we even had meals of this-worldly fish with him. We know, too, that it will be a work entirely, exclusively, of God’s grace, not our works; it will come by the logic not of cause and effect but of death and resurrection; not in the course of natural development but by the miraculous act of the free God. Yet measuring heaven’s nature from our unholy, unenlightened instincts of good and evil, desirable and undesirable, our guesses at continuity and discontinuity, is so unreliable as to be useless and rejected. This is said hyperbolically5 but with a point: we finally know heaven by gazing at Jesus. We finally make heaven known by pointing to the name of Jesus, by doing what witnesses do, which is all that we can do. That witness is entirely derivative from the inspired, verbal witnesses of the Scriptures, which are finally all what Mark so felicitously said of his Gospel (Mark 1:1), that it is the gospel “of” Jesus Christ—of in the senses of both by and about him.⁶ Hebrews, with its varied and fluid cultic imagery, constitutes a part of that inspired, canonical, christologically integrated witness that yields to us a vision outside of which we have no possibility of knowledge of these things, whether that knowledge is merely theoretical or fully relational.

Hebrews is at bottom the promissory speech act of forgiveness (10:18); it is a performative word that effects by its very pronouncement cleansing for the seed of Abraham, the seed that is now finally and actually made God’s family, God’s household, through the incarnation and priestly office of God’s Son, himself the seed of Abraham, himself that Word; forgiveness once and for all, uttered and accomplished by God in and as the Son and in accordance with what God had spoken by Moses and all the prophets. This brings to its concluding moment the long history of God and those who believed him through the years of waiting. Accordingly, it opens access in the present to the presence of God, formerly unapproachable in his holiness but now “the throne of grace” for the people. It inaugurates the achievement of the promise God made to all humanity in Psalm 8, the truth of which was to be found exclusively in the Son and only thereby for his fellow children.

The drama is not yet closed, however, as that closing moment undergoes elongation for the sake of God’s mission. “These last days” are days of arrival but also of continued waiting while the Son waits for all his enemies to be made a footstool for his feet and while those who believe that the promise is the Son voice back their gratitude by rendering pleasing worship, learning what it means to be genuine sons and daughters of God, going outside the camp, and bearing Jesus’ reproach for the sake of his mission, because “here we have no lasting city but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). The destination is thus the holy city, the cosmos cleansed through Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice and reconstituted as God’s dwelling.7 Meanwhile and forevermore, the Son has become their text, their Scripture, and their God in whom they find themselves, their family, their history, and their inheritance.

In sum: covenantal faithfulness of the God of Abraham, the keeping of a promise, arrival, forgiveness, holiness, righteousness, peace, entrance, dwelling, the home and family of God, celebration, worship—this is some of heaven as it opens to our eyes in Hebrews. About all these, more should be said, but we have limited space, so we round out our sketch with just a few further thoughts.

Heaven in Hebrews could not be rightly understood if we attempted to define it only as the future of believers. It is, rather, that which has begun already to harrow the hell of this world in the qualitatively distinct epoch of “these last days” (1:2; 9:26); it is the holy that has already invaded the sphere of the profane and triumphed over its power (2:14–15); it has broken out of the restricted space of the temple’s precincts to sanctify the people en masse (13:12). Those who obey its word of forgiveness have already participated in (“tasted”) the heavenly gift; they have already become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the coming age (6:4–5). They have been enveloped by the holy, by heaven, and are incorporated into its sphere; they are the sanctified, the saints (2:11; 3:1; 6:10; 10:10, 14, 29; 13:24). Heaven is thus that which both orients and resources their present existence. It is their true city, their true state, and their true nation to which alone they give their allegiance, which alone they regard as their home and destination (2:5; 11:10, 14–16; 12:22–24; 13:14; cf. Gal. 4:26; Phil. 3:20; Rev. 21:2). It is not a city as such, as if unknown and foreign to us, but rather it is the city of Jerusalem, Zion, which we know, whose ethos has been revealed to us and which has indeed had a history among us.⁸ It is the heavenly Jerusalem, where, as we saw in Jesus’ resurrection, heavenly means not only “other” and “different”—it is certainly that (Heb. 12:26–27; 8:4–5)—but at the same time the present creation cleansed and transfigured through the one who is priest and sacrifice.9 That cleansing and transfiguration is what is already secretly true of the pilgrim people, by virtue of which they already approach the throne of grace (4:14–16; 10:19–25) even now, before Christ’s second appearance (9:28).

Heaven is founded on a perfect offering “through the eternal Spirit” (9:14), an offering that satisfies “once for all” (9:2; 10:10) and results in the removal of sin through his sacrifice—where there is forgiveness there is no longer any offering for sins to be made. It is everlasting mercy and grace—sheer mercy and grace grounded in nothing else than that this is a God who does not lie and so will never rescind his promise.¹⁰ Put the other way around, heaven is the mercy of a God with whom there is no change or shadow of turning, who, because he chose it—and for no other reason—gave us birth by the word of truth (James 1:17–18). It depends not merely for the present age but for all eternity on the merciful intercession of Jesus; because it depends on his Word and nothing else, it is unshakeable, firm, commanding of faith (Heb. 4:15–16; 6:13, 18; 7:25; 12:27).

Heaven in Hebrews is decidedly a place, a destination, and one powerfully resonating name for that place is the resting place (κατάπαυσις) of the coming world (2:5), the fatherland (11:14), Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem in which is the great and festive Sabbath celebration (3:7–4:11; 12:22; cf. Isa. 66:22–23). The Sabbath climax of creation is ushered in by the Son. Again, like everything else in Hebrews it tells us that the story of the patriarchs and their children related by the prophets of old was always the story of the Son, of Jesus, in whom is the Yes for all the promises of God (2 Cor. 1:20), who is the mediator of the new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance (Heb. 9:15; cf. Deut. 12:9–14; 2 Sam. 7:1–17; 1 Kings 8; Acts 7). Heaven is thus a destination attained only through endurance, but it brings not the ephemeral experience of arrival we know in this life but the eternally sustained joy and happiness of full human life. It is the “peaceful fruit of righteousness” that is yielded by the process of perfecting discipline under which all true sons and daughters must go (Heb. 12:11, 23; 6:7), for their Melchizedekian priest is both King of righteousness and King of peace (7:2), whose scepter is the scepter of uprightness and who loves righteousness and justice (Ps. 45:6–7; Heb. 1:8–9). These may seem to be disparate strands, and to some extent they are distinct motifs within Hebrews, though one can see how they coalesce by setting them against their Old Testament contexts, of which Isaiah 32 can serve as an example:

Behold, a king will reign in righteousness,

and princes will rule in justice.

Each will be like a hiding place from the wind,

a shelter from the storm,

like streams of water in a dry place,

like the shade of a great rock in a weary land. . . .

Rise up, you women who are at ease, hear my voice;

you complacent daughters, give ear to my speech. . . .

Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields,

for the fruitful vine,

for the soil of my people

growing up in thorns and briers,

yes, for all the joyous houses

in the exultant city.

For the palace is forsaken,

the populous city deserted;

the hill and the watchtower

will become dens forever,

a joy of wild donkeys,

a pasture of flocks;

until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high,

and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field,

and the fruitful field is deemed a forest.

Then justice will dwell in the wilderness,

and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.

And the effect of righteousness will be peace,

and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.

My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,

in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places. (vv. 1–18)

It is nearly impossible to provide one simple image of heaven that summarizes the vision of Hebrews unless it is to say that it is the whole world of the Old Testament Scriptures as it was intended to be in creation and the redemption of Israel—all brought to its goal and perfect form in the Son of God. It is necessary for its readers, Jews and Gentiles both, to embrace their identity as children of Abraham, that is, to embrace their Israelite identity and cultural heritage, and only then to see heaven as the perfection of their hopes.

James

Moving from Hebrews to James requires that we virtually begin anew. It is true that if a biblical theological reading is a canonical reading, then it works from the assumption that the one reality remains the subject matter of the language of each writer, and on both these and historical grounds we expect (and find) continuity between the different New Testament witnesses. But if it is to be exercised in biblical theology, we make it our task to look at things from James’s distinctive position. In brief, James contains the idea of heaven as both present and future, as we saw in Hebrews, with its attention given primarily to the “wisdom that [already] comes down from above” (3:15), to heaven’s imminent justice, and to how these enable believers to navigate the economic and social realities of their present world.

James uses the word οὐρανός just twice, once for the visible heavens of creation (5:18) and again for the place of God’s abode (v. 12). It may be that verse 18 is intended in a twofold sense, however, alluding at once to the visible heavens and as a metonym for the God who answered Elijah’s prayers; the application for the present is clearly with respect to the fruit of heaven’s blessings (cf. v. 7). The presence of heaven in wisdom’s descent was just noticed (3:15). James also speaks of the coming salvation (1:21; 2:14; 4:12; 5:20) in creational terms (1:18) and as the kingdom God promised those who love him (2:5); likewise, those who endure trial in the present will ultimately receive the crown of life God also promised to those who love him (1:12); they will find a high station (v. 9) and every good and perfect gift (v. 17). The more sustained reflection on heaven is 5:7–11; here the experience of heaven that will come with the Lord’s parousia is paralleled with the farmer’s precious fruit of the earth and the end of Job’s story in God’s purpose, for “the Lord is compassionate and merciful.”

James’s teaching on future salvation is set against the backdrop of the suffering of the poor at the hands of the wealthy and powerful (1:9–11; 2:1–7; 5:1–6),11 a situation well known from Israel’s prophets—whom James echoes (e.g., Isa. 5:9 in James 5:4; Jer. 12:3 in James 5:5)—and as a constant of world history. Along with the other New Testament writers he conceptualizes the present as the “last days” of creation—indeed, the Lord’s parousia has drawn near (5:8, 9)¹²—during which it is particularly foolish to hoard wealth (vv. 1–6). Those who do hoard wealth in these days are ultimately banded with those who murdered Jesus himself (v. 6).¹³ In this there is no hint of a philosophical opposition of material and spiritual, this-worldly (bad) and otherworldly (good). There is no correlation of poverty as such with righteousness and God’s mercy on the one hand, and prosperity as such with unrighteousness and God’s judgment on the other. At points James’s words against the wealthy are categorical and damning, yet he also takes a more reforming posture (1:27; 2:1–26; 4:1–17).¹⁴ At its root are finally the competing allegiances isolated by Jesus: “You cannot serve both God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24), where mammon designates wealth and property.¹⁵ There is a fundamental claim of lordship that divides categorically and exclusively at this point of human life, playing itself out in the quiet of an individual soul, in casual meals, publicly in every village and city, on the grand scale of civilizations, but ultimately and singularly on the cross (James 2:7; cf. Luke 14:7–14; 16:13–15; 18:18–30; John 11:47–50; 1 Cor. 2:8).

Heaven and earth are thus understood at this juncture of social and economic existence, so we must give it a little direct attention. It appears that, in fact, most of those in James’s audience are among the poor—their plight has stripped away delusions of self-sufficiency, robbed them of the opportunity to exploit and oppress and live in luxury, and encouraged a living dependence on God for sustenance and justice; in at least some cases their poverty may be the direct result of their piety, even their Christian identity. Though they are nothing in the eyes of those who are something, they are loved of God and chosen; they will see right done by the defender of orphans and widows. Yet they are not free of the same drives and desires upon which the wealthy have occasion to act (e.g., 1:14–15; 2:1–13; 4:1–12), and there is no glorification of poverty as a state of life, certainly no encouragement to cultivate it. There is rather a recognition that the cross has tipped the scales of history, exposing the love of mammon for what it is once and for all and marking the triumph of God’s righteousness, thereby ushering in history’s final days, in which the perennial war of righteousness and unrighteousness, God and mammon, is only intensified and brought to its head (Rev. 12:13–17; 1 Tim. 4:1–5; 2 Tim. 3:1–5). It remains only to choose sides, which does not involve a commitment to a principle such as asceticism or a specific economic theory (even if these might have their place in application) but a full, very personal and direct dependence on the God who is alone the judge and provider; a spirit of unreserved generosity from the heart, as those who need nothing and have everything to give; the wisdom of charity and peacemaking (James 3:13–18); and a resolute and profoundly active faith that walks into the maw of poverty and persecution without flinching, refusing to take matters into its own hands but determined to wait for God (heaven) to prove his faithfulness. It is, in short, to obey Jesus (Matthew 5–7) more literally than most have allowed.

The desire for wealth, the life of self-dependence and faithless planning, the amassing of riches, the spirit of stinginess and self-indulgence—all these were bad enough when condemned by the prophets of old but are the epitome of folly when practiced in the full light of what the present is. The coming of the Lord is at hand! The judge stands at the door (James 5:3, 5, 7–9)! Surely these are not metaphors for personal or national upheaval in an ongoing sequence of natural history. What awaits is rather on the order of Jesus’ own death and resurrection, and that means both termination and renewal of a wholly different sort. There looms a time of world-ending, conclusive judgment (3:1; 5:1–6, 9, 12) that will bring about a reversal of fortunes (1:9–11). It is carried out “under the law of liberty” (2:12) and founded on mercy (2:13; 5:11), yet “judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy” (2:13), where mercy is understood as faith’s activity of mercy (vv. 14–26)—which brings us back to heaven’s bearing on the present. Faith will persevere in such a life of mercy and peacemaking in the conviction, opposed by all the evidence of scientific knowledge, that the harvest will materialize at the Lord’s coming (5:7; 3:18; Matt. 5:3–11). Such faith also refuses to yield to the urges to make war on each other out of a friendship with the world (James 4:1–12; 5:9), meaning out of the same spirit of greed and rapine. It is characterized rather by the patience of Job (5:11), whose story did not lead to a theology of health and wealth—as if the relief and reward would arrive in advance of the Lord’s coming—but to an expectation that things would continue on as they were and find their settlement only upon the arrival of the Judge.

This is as far as we can go in speaking of heaven in James. Heaven’s wisdom—the “wisdom from above” (3:13–18)—is to find embodiment in persons of faith, who will in the natural course of things be exposed to the ravages of evil now but will discover full justice at the Lord’s coming. Theirs will be a crown of life and God’s kingdom. These and other images of heaven are consistent with those encountered more fully elsewhere in the canon. It is James’s interest less to elaborate on these future things, however, than to mention them by way of renewing our resolve to live as those who belong to that world and (to say the same thing) stake our lives on God’s faithfulness to his promises.

Yet saying that much leaves the necessity to underscore once again that here in James is no vision of “heaven on earth,” if by that is meant a vision that creates heaven’s conditions on earth in the present in the form of sustainable societal structures. Even the attempt to establish such structures in this spirit would seem deeply wrongheaded in the light of James’s teaching. The otherworldly identity of the justice and life that James foresees is just that: otherworldly, waiting for its inauguration in the coming (parousia) of the Lord. To be sure, it is an otherworldly reality that finds entrance now, comes down from above now, and finds expression through persons of faith, which is like opening a window to let heaven’s life-giving air into our foul space. Certainly that involves us as members of a given society with responsibilities to effect changes for the better. In that sense heaven is indeed already on earth.16 But for James this possibility is dependent precisely on its otherworldly source, and its realization is only at very great personal cost to those who so live. Servants are not above their master, after all. Such faith runs counter to the wisdom that is earthly and demonic (3:15), and everywhere in James the expectation is that of trials (1:2, 12) and exploitation (2:5–7; 5:4, 6, 10–11) for the righteous that continue unabated till the end. There is no possibility of relenting from living as heaven’s children, but just as surely there is no hope proffered of a change of conditions until it is personally brought about by the Lord at his coming. It will, however, be brought about, for “the Lord is compassionate and merciful,” and in that is the whole essence of heaven.

1 Peter

Somewhat like James, 1 Peter speaks of heaven against the backdrop of the present age and its suffering, injustice, ungodliness, impermanence, corruption, and opposition to God. Like Hebrews, though without its sustained development of heaven as the heavenly tabernacle, 1 Peter hits us with a veritable kaleidoscope of Old Testament types, with much the same cumulative effect. The emphasis of 1 Peter falls on heaven’s penetration into the present, with its orienting hope and provision thereby providing glimpses of what is to come.

The word οὐρανός (1 Pet. 1:4, 12; 3:22) is used for the place of God’s abode, where the incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance of the saints, founded on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is kept secure and ready to be revealed in the last time (1:3–5). Heaven is thus an impenetrable fortress, a bank guarded by the power of God himself. The inheritance of the elect sojourners17 is there because their Lord is there. In the last time, in the revelation of Jesus Christ, their faith, much reviled in the present (3:8–4:19) but the means through which God’s power extends from heaven to guard them (1:5), will be found unto praise and glory and honor (1:7) and result in the salvation (1:5, 9, 10; 2:2; 3:21; 4:18) of their very lives (1:9).¹⁸ This sequence corresponds to the primary and normative pattern of Christ himself, whose story had been inscribed ahead of time in the prophets by the Spirit sent from heaven; his story involved first suffering and only then glory (1:11).¹⁹ That pattern overarches the whole of 1 Peter, recurring in 4:13 and 5:1, 10. The hope of resurrection, after all, assumes that one first dies. Now, since “all flesh is like grass” (1:24), mortality is common to all, not an option; if anything it is intensified and accelerated for the faithful. So it belongs to the great blessedness of believers that their suffering and death find a trustworthy example in their Lord. By grace, through faith, they participate in the meaning and redemptive power of their Lord’s suffering and death (2:21–25; 3:8–4:19; Col. 1:24; 2 Cor. 4:7–18), and ultimately they will be raised to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. They therefore take up their cross, resolutely despising its shame for the joy set before them (Heb. 12:2), and follow him.

In 1 Peter 1:13 that future joy is characterized simply as “grace” being borne to them in the revelation of Jesus Christ—underscoring as beautifully as can be expressed in language the eternal foundation of salvation and the character of that experience to come, and at the same time underscoring the condition (grace!) under which alone it can be “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” No sooner is grace affirmed, however, than the complementary assertion is added that their Father judges and will judge20 them impartially according to each person’s work (1:17; 4:5–6, 17), for it is precisely the fruit of holy grace to oppose and condemn all unrighteousness and bring full human life to birth (v. 23), not as if bringing a mechanical response (grace does not make us less human!) but through the fullness of willing obedience. This, too, betokens the full measure of life to come as an obedience that will renew each day with spontaneous joy in reflection of the ever-renewing mercies of God (Lam. 3:23).

Accordingly, they are exhorted to purify themselves²¹ in “the obedience of the truth,” for they were not granted this new birth through corruptible seed but incorruptible, namely, the living and abiding word of God (1 Pet. 1:22–25). Therein, in the divine (heavenly) word, is the generative and indestructible power of their new life coupled with its quality as an existence that has no part in the perishability and corruption, including moral corruption, of the present age. That word—along with all else that promotes health in the church—is like milk they are to crave so that they will grow into the spiritual house whose chosen and precious cornerstone is Jesus Christ, for the one who believes in him will never be put to shame (2:1–10). Heaven is thus the place of ultimate and final vindication; not only the removal of disgrace but the gaining of glory and praise.

Heaven is, moreover, their genuine home just as in Hebrews, for in the present world they are “resident foreigners and sojourners” (2:11; 1:1).22 It is therefore from heaven that they must take their bearings on their identity and roles. Indeed they must live as aliens in a land at war with their homeland, not secretly but openly as a witness, that the nations will glorify God in the day of his visitation (2:11–12; cf. Isa. 10:3).

In the teaching to the members of the Christian households, heaven is referenced or implied. Slaves are pointed to the example of Christ’s suffering as pattern, provision, and promise, for “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24). Women are encouraged to cultivate the “hidden” beauty of the heart, which is precious in God’s sight (3:4); we may think of the words of Jesus, that his own will be rewarded by the God who sees what is done in secret (Matt. 6:4, 6, 18; 5:3–10). Likewise, the shepherd elders are pointedly referred to this hope to heighten their sense of accountability and their resolve; they can expect an unfading crown of glory, that is, the prize that is glory (1 Pet. 5:4).²³ Such a reward befits their labor but seemingly does not surpass the hope of their fellow saints (1:4, 7). The point is not that of preserving in the world to come our present worldly system of ecclesiastical rankings but more simply that of providing encouragement and motivation for a life fraught with its own costs, traps, and temptations.

For all believers the hope won through a life patterned on Christ’s is the inheritance of a blessing and experience of good days (3:9–10). Again Christ serves as both pattern and provision in his having died in the flesh and been made alive in the spirit²⁴ and going into heaven, with angels, authorities, and powers in subjection to him (vv. 18–22). Believers are therefore to arm themselves with the same way of thinking, “for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin” (4:1)—an exciting prophecy of a world to come, to which we conform ourselves from within the present evil age. They should not think it strange if they undergo fiery trials now but should rather rejoice as they fellowship in the sufferings of Christ, so that in the revelation of his glory they might rejoice and be glad (vv. 12–13). That revelation is about25 to happen (5:1), which heightens its ability to motivate and probably bespeaks its effectual presence. Like the sun about to break over the horizon, its radiance is already causing the darkness to scatter.

Finally, at the letter’s close all believers are called upon to humble themselves under God’s mighty hand in order that he might exalt them in time (5:6). Given the larger themes of the letter, this is probably to be understood in ultimate more than immediate terms. Likewise, what awaits believers is God’s “eternal glory in Christ Jesus” into which they were called and the confidence that after a short period of suffering, God will restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish them (v. 10). This also may have this-worldly application even while its ultimate referent is the “end of all things” (4:7).

In light of Peter’s teaching in this letter, which draws together strands we saw highlighted in both Hebrews and James, perhaps it must be said that the truest test of sound knowledge of heaven consists of the quality and habits of life in the present. The words of Jesus—“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21)—are of comprehensive significance. Or, as with the faithful of Hebrews 11, it is a matter of seeking a “better country” than any we now inhabit (vv. 14–16), for “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (13:14). Against the persistent, dark caricature of such a hope as detached, self-interested, and ultimately nothing more than an excuse for personally, socially, ecologically irresponsible living, one can only observe that the precise opposite is the vision of the Scriptures and the lived example of the faithful tradition.²⁶ It is properly to charity, love, righteousness, and justice that all this gives rise, which are necessarily domestic, civic, economic, and ecological in nature. To fail there in the present is to demonstrate a false hope for heaven. Yet the effect of a heaven-filled church on its city will be no less than was that of Chernobyl on its environs, where evil is what suffers catastrophic destruction and shalom is what is radiated. The heavenly city, whose temple is already being erected in the very midst of the earthly cities (1 Pet. 2:1–10), can only wreak havoc on our Babylons (5:13; Revelation 18; 2 Cor. 6:14–18) precisely in its obedient submission to their governments and promotion of the good (1 Pet. 2:11–17). It will refuse their overtures of peace and make no tacitly compromising alliance with them in their efforts to build heaven on earth, no matter how convincingly they renounce evil and extol the good—even if they seem to be preaching the gospel itself. It knows the one possible source of peace in the justice of God worked in his Son.

Jesus is Lord. His claim is exclusive or is no claim at all. And if the salt loses its saltiness, what is it good for? Too often the world recognizes that incompatibility more clearly than the children of light, too many of whom are far too eager to make those very alliances. The world, however, sees the peace of God as a dagger at its heart and therefore responds with greater decisiveness. As Jesus said, students are not above their teacher and must expect the same abuse (Matt. 10:16–25). Just for that reason, Peter writes, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. . . . Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Pet. 4:12–13, 19).

2 Peter

The treatment of heaven in 2 Peter is sufficiently distinct from 1 Peter to merit a separate discussion.27 Certain false teachers had challenged the apostles’ teaching about the Lord’s promised return. Peter’s answer to that challenge, including his description of the end of this world and what lies beyond, provides the most striking contribution to our theme. As with the other New Testament writings, however, we will take into view the whole of this letter.

Heaven’s presence is felt as soon as the letter begins in that Jesus’ divine power has given believers everything that leads to²⁸ life and godliness; this gift consists in (comes through) the knowledge of the one who called them (i.e., Jesus) by his own glory and power. Through his glory and power he has given promises with the intent that through them believers might become sharers of the divine nature, having fled the world’s corruption. Sharing in his divine nature here does not mean they will be divinized but by grace will, upon their “entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord” (2 Pet. 1:11), become god-like, being granted immortality and incorruptibility (see 1 Pet. 1:22–25).29

The “promises” of 2 Peter 1:4 refer to the promises associated with the Lord’s parousia (3:4–13), which is in turn associated with the glory of the transfiguration (1:16–18). The focus accordingly falls on conceptual content that has come into the believers’ possession—knowledge, promises—and on human ethical choices in rational response to this content. This rational aspect is not less heavenly for being rational, but it can be observed that all of this is saturated with heaven’s presence in other ways as well. Peter prays that “grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord” (1:2); it is Jesus’ “divine power” that gives all things; his “glory and excellence” call believers; the Holy Spirit bore the prophets as they spoke (v. 21); believers are to grow “in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (3:18). Through their active involvement in this grace and knowledge they will make their calling and election sure (1:10), and their entrance into the eternal kingdom will be richly granted (v. 11).

In its own way, the opposition to these heavenly promises clarifies the hope. The readers are warned against the presence of false teachers, whose destruction does not slumber and whose history serves as a type of both their judgment and the sure salvation of the righteous. We can note, then, the heavenly fate of the faithful foreshadowed by way of contrast with the condemnation, chains of gloom, destruction, punishment, corruption, and accursed state of the apostates (2:4–22). From all this the Lord knows how to guard and rescue the righteous (vv. 5, 7, 9).

The false teaching itself is characteristic of the rebellion of “the last days” (3:3), which is to say that its epoch has begun.³⁰ These teachers mock the promise of the parousia by observing that things go on as normal, as they always have.31 Were they attentive and sincere readers of the Scriptures (v. 5) they would have taken to heart that the Lord’s time is different from humanity’s,³² and his delay is due to his desire to extend mercy (vv. 8–9). Likewise they would have understood that the present order of heaven and earth is reserved for a judgment and destruction (ἀπωλείας) by fire, just as Noah’s world underwent “destruction” (ἀπώλετο) by water (vv. 5–7). What this means, however, is less than fully clear since both the language and the conception of what follows in verses 8–13 are disputed. Moreover, the same caution we expressed earlier against the expectation of a pictorial realism and strict literalism is very much in order here. The upshot of at least one set of exegetical decisions, however, is that what is foretold here is not the annihilation of the cosmos³³ so much as its utter exposure to the judgment of God,³⁴ leading via that judgment to what can only be described as a new heavens and earth, as God had promised (Isa. 65:17; 66:22; cf. Rev. 21:1), in which righteousness (alone) dwells. Believers are thus to have no part in this corruptible and doomed age but rather participate in its heavenly life now by cultivating the virtues that correspond to the knowledge and promises God has given them (2 Pet. 1:1–11; 2:20–22; 3:11) so that when all things are exposed to the all-seeing eyes of God, the judge, they will be “found . . . at peace” (3:14) and their entrance into the eternal kingdom richly provided (1:11).

To resume an earlier thread, heaven in 2 Peter is no escapist’s fantasy. It is something, rather, from which there is no escape. It, or rather, this God, has in his holy grace, merciful righteousness, and patient wisdom invaded the sphere of the profane so as to incorporate it into his own sphere—for salvation or judgment, either of which is in the sphere of his love. This has already begun with “these last days,” but there is a future divide marked out by the promised parousia and the new creation, wherein there will be no unrighteousness but only righteousness (3:13). Hope for that day, if it is authentic, is marked out not by disengagement with this world but by full engagement with that world to come within and on behalf of this world and thus by being caught up in the sanctifying advance of God’s love that desires all to come to repentance (3:9).

1–3 John

As we move on to John’s letters, we encounter a very different atmosphere and must once again be willing to start over and look at everything through his eyes, to some extent as if for the first time. These three letters do not use the word οὐρανός or its cognates, but this hardly constitutes an omission of the idea of heaven. They anticipate the end of the present age (2:8, 17, 18, 28; 3:2–3; 4:17; references are to 1 John unless otherwise indicated) and glance ahead to the life to come after the judgment (2:17; 3:2–3; 2 John 8), but their primary emphasis is on the eternal life35 that is found already in the person of Jesus Christ; not merely “in” him, as if through him, but as him, for he is that life. As with the other letters already surveyed, but in a more pronounced fashion, the spheres of above and below, of then and now, overlap. “The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining” (2:8); “The world is passing away along with its desires” (v. 17); “It is the last hour” (v. 18). Accordingly, “in Jesus the distinction between the two ages has collapsed, so that believers in Jesus are able to experience end-time blessings already in the here and now, most notably eternal, abundant life.”³⁶ The sense in which we are already “in” heaven now is brought into special focus.

To survey the letters: Jesus himself is that life (1:2; 5:20), though the idea is expressed in a variety of ways: this life, which comes through the Son (4:9) and is in him (4:11; 5:11), was promised to believers (2:25); they have gone over from death into it (3:14); God gives it to them in the Son (4:11); those who have the Son and believe in his name have eternal life (5:12–13). Accordingly, emphasis falls on abiding in him (2:6, 24, 27, 28; 3:6, 24; 4:13), in God (2:5, 14, 24; 4:13, 15, 16), in love (4:16, since God is love), or in the light (2:10). Or else it is that the Son (3:24; 4:13), the word/truth/teaching (2:4, 14, 24; 2 John 2, 9), the anointing (2:27), God’s seed (3:9), eternal life (3:15), the love of God (3:17), or God himself (4:12, 13, 15, 16) remains or ought to remain in believers; the one who does the will of God “abides” forever (2:17). Fittingly, the letter is capped in this way: “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He [Jesus] is the true God and eternal life” (5:20).37 The single line that follows—“Children, keep yourselves from idols”—gathers up the whole of the Old Testament polemic against idolatry and places its full weight on teachings that depart from the acknowledgment of Jesus as the one who is and in whom is found “the true God and eternal life.”

This point deserves further emphasis inasmuch as this promised life is equivalent to the hope of heaven. Theologians have for excellent reasons been driven by Scripture inexorably to the conclusion that there is no revelation or atonement external to the person of the Son and no way to separate the speech and work of God.³⁸ The Son is the revelation of God and is salvation. This is certainly not to speak of absorption into the being of God. It will be no less true then than now that creation, as new creation, will not be God but will exist as wholly distinct from him. Then, as now, we will exist within an environment finally of one fabric with us. As it is a place “in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13), we can only anticipate that it will flourish beyond imagination in all the ways that already provoke our awe and enlarge our souls. But it is to acknowledge that the same Scriptures that lead to that insistence on the distinction between God and creation teach us Jesus Christ is the true God and is himself our eternal life (1 John 5:20; cf. 1:2).³⁹ All that is good, true, and beautiful is found there, in him alone. He and the enjoyment of him constitute the sum of heaven, however else it is conceived.

Particularly with this emphasis on the present enjoyment of eternal life, another window on heaven derives from the ways in which that life is described: fellowship of love with other believers and the Father and Son (1:3, 7; 3:11, 14; 4:1–21); full joy (1:4); cleansing from all sin and unrighteousness (1:7, 9); forgiveness of sins (1:9; 2:12); propitiation40 for sins (2:2; 4:10); knowledge of the Father (2:3, 13, 14; 4:7); victory over the Evil One or the world (2:13, 14; 4:4; 5:4–5); knowledge of the truth and the true God (2:20, 21, 27; 5:20); birth from God (2:29; 3:9; 4:4–7; 5:1–4, 18–20); bestowal of inconceivable love, such that they are called children of God and are in fact such (3:1); boldness⁴¹ and freedom from shame (2:28; 3:21; 5:14); freedom to ask anything of him, knowing he listens (3:22; 5:13–15); fear’s being utterly cast out before the Father (4:17–18); God’s testimony within (5:10). Believers have an intercessor (one who appears in another’s behalf) with the Father (2:1);⁴² a Savior (4:14); an anointing of the Spirit (2:20; 3:24; 4:14); and confidence that God knows all things and that our vindication ultimately rests on his knowledge and love, even more than our own (3:20; 4:10, 16–19).⁴³ Jesus Christ was revealed that he might take away sin (3:5) and destroy the works of the Devil (3:8); the effect of this and birth from God is that such a one does not sin (3:4–10). He laid down his life for others, thereby demonstrating God’s love (3:16), and he keeps the believer safe from the Evil One (5:18).

When John anticipates what is to come, it is in terms of boldness and freedom from shame before Christ at his coming, which are conditioned on remaining in him (2:28–3:3; 4:17–19); he also speaks of a “full reward” (2 John 8). Full status as sons and daughters is already given, though what that ultimately involves has not yet been revealed except that we know that when we see him as he is, we will be like him (3:2). We do know he is pure,⁴⁴ so those who harbor the hope they will be like him necessarily purify themselves just as he is pure. But what that future “sight” involves and the change it works are not further developed, so we are left to take our cues from John’s imagery as we consider other canonical passages that seem to speak of the same thing—a process of glorification that begins when one turns to the Lord and culminates in bodily resurrection, all of which conforms us to the image of God’s Son (e.g., Romans 6–8; 1 Corinthians 15; 2 Cor. 3:7–18; Col. 3:4). Likewise for John, that conformity is already true now (1 John 4:17), but we await its fullness and completion (3:2); we can say we are already “in heaven” (or heaven is in us) as a foretaste of its goal. Either way, by anticipation (3:2) or realization (4:17), the revelation we receive touching heaven supplies wisdom and life for the present phase of that process.

Jude

Perhaps the primary contribution Jude makes to our understanding of heaven is by way of contrast, calling to mind the past disruptions of heaven in the angels that rebelled, the gloom reserved for all who come under judgment, and the life that merits that condemnation; in this he parallels 2 Peter 2. Yet in the short sections that precede and follow his bracing exhortation he provides potent hints of the good he had desired to make his theme (v. 3).45 For all its similarities to 2 Peter, Jude gives us yet another distinct perspective.

In response to the violation of God’s grace among false teachers, we see heaven’s counterpoint. Rather than finding in the holy grace of heaven the spirit of grateful obedience and holiness of life that it gives, they twist it into the hateful rebellion of hell itself (v. 4). It is nothing short of an assault on heaven from within by those chosen and restored to paradise at the price of God’s own life. The proverbs Peter invokes in the closely parallel context of 2 Peter 2:22 are apt: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.” Both Jude and 2 Peter 2 recall the warning of 1 Corinthians 10:1–13, wherein Israel shared in the saving blessings of God and yet willfully succumbed to temptation and fell under God’s displeasure (cf. Jude 5). The warning of Hebrews 5:11–6:12 bears its own similarities. The history of Jude’s false teachers replicates that of the “Watchers”—the traditional name for the angels of Genesis 6:1–4⁴⁶—who did not keep their allotted domain but left their habitation and so have been kept in eternal chains under gloom for the great day of judgment, giving a glimpse into the past history of heaven. For the rest, as in 2 Peter 2, heaven is the implied contrast to the judgment foretold for the false teachers.

It is striking that in the face of this, it is above all the mercy of God that is fronted for the called, loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ (Jude 1–2, 21). Believers are to keep themselves in the love of God while they look forward to “the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (v. 21). As the theologian Karl Barth said,

The mercy of God lies in His readiness to share in sympathy the distress of another, a readiness which springs from His inmost nature and stamps all His being and doing. It lies, therefore, in His will, springing from the depths of His nature and characterising it, to take the initiative Himself for the removal of this distress. For the fact that God participates in it by sympathy implies that He is really present in its midst, and this means again that He wills that it should not be, that He wills therefore to remove it.47

This mercy is finally fulfilled not when God suspends his righteousness, but when he himself, as the Son, does righteousness in taking upon himself his own condemnation of sin.

The presence of heaven is felt now not in its distinction between the ungodly, whose destruction is the theme of Jude 4–19, and those who do not deserve such a judgment. It is felt and known, rather, in its extension of mercy, for mercy is known by those who agree that God is right in finding them deserving of his judgment and rejection and in his decision to exercise that judgment on himself so they can no longer regard themselves as rejected. It is known, then, only when one keeps oneself in the love of God⁴⁸—which comes only because he wills it and not for any merit or cause within us—while waiting for that mercy of the Lord, without which they cannot hope to escape the gloom of judgment. Even the possibility of regret over sin’s occasioning mercy is extinguished when God is celebrated as the merciful God.

In that mercy heaven will be the full measure of all the blessings mentioned by Jude. In his greeting he speaks of the called who are “beloved in God,” which probably means “those whom God loves are taken into the intimate fellowship of God’s love, embraced and enfolded by his love. To be in God’s love is to be ‘in God.’”49 They are also “kept for Jesus Christ,” which means he will guard them from stumbling and present them blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy (v. 24), where “his glory” is the approaching “mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 21). Whatever else it will be, heaven will be the full measure of God’s mercy, peace, and love (v. 2). As in Hebrews, it will be constituted by his act of ushering us into his own presence as the only God, our Savior, to whom alone through Jesus Christ our Lord belong glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever (vv. 24–25).

Conclusion

When it comes to heaven, the line between sanctified imagination and idle speculation is thin.⁵⁰ There is a time to imagine beyond what is written, but there is a need constantly to return to what the apostolic authors actually said, and this has been our task in this chapter.

When I was young, I stood near the base of a glacier with one of my older brothers and tried to follow the direction of his finger as he pointed out a distant and well-camouflaged group of mountain sheep. Because of the distance it proved harder than I expected, even as I pressed in close and peered along his arm. The foregoing exposition of the General Epistles is quite analogous to that attempt. Others claim to have journeyed to heaven, to the throne room of God, but I have not. As a guide I am limited to the attempt to “press in close” and look along the pointing arm of these canonical witnesses.

Very few words are permitted for a summary, so I will begin with a general comment, followed by three notes on characteristic features of these letters. Our modest aim has been to represent the distinctive perspectives on heaven of these eight canonical witnesses by sketching in their primary contours and conveying their pastoral intentions. These writings do not read like guides to heaven’s geography, furniture, treasures, and the like, though in what they say they encourage and instruct our imaginations in ways that bring profound good to the world around us and ourselves. Likewise, these letters cannot be reduced to either the anthropocentric or theocentric visions that have tended to alternate and emerge in ever-changing forms through church history, even though they give impetus to both.51 Their attention is on the name from which all that is good and worthy in these disparate visions derives. Moreover, for all the ways in which these letters have called us to focus on the implications of heaven for this-worldly conduct, it is patent that they are of a different spirit than the modern turn toward life before death.⁵² Heaven’s reality is palpable and precious to these writers, enabling them to see the present world for what it is, catching them up in God’s redemptive love for that world, commanding them to give glory to God in patient endurance, commanding them to accept his mercy and grace by faith, summoning them forward toward history’s goal with hope, and leaving room only for thanksgiving forevermore.

Complementing this general comment are three specific observations. One way to express a key to these letters’ vision of heaven is the phrase “back to the future.” Hebrews might be the most systematic expression of the principle, but it is the fundamental approach of all of these letters: heaven is the perfection of Israel’s hopes as expressed in her Scriptures. This is not to be limited to Old Testament passages that foretell a future idyllic state. All of Israel’s covenantal Scriptures projected a world that was only more or less realized in her history but provides the shape of all sanctified hopes. As we commented in regard to Hebrews, it is not as if the future city is a city unknown to us. If it were, we might well wonder what it is supposed to mean that we are to live as citizens of that city, requiring as that does some knowledge of a city’s laws and ethos. But this is a city that we do know, for it has been foreshadowed in types and particularly in the Jerusalem of Israel’s history. By looking back we can see ahead. We must first become Israelites, children of Abraham, and recognize Jesus did not come to abolish the law of Moses—not one small stroke of the pen—but to fulfill it. Though these writers think and write in Greek as authors thoroughly socialized in the Greco-Roman world of the first century, they are not conjuring notions of heaven by playing linguistically imaginative games, channeling archetypes or creatively arranging religious pebbles into an appealing mosaic (2 Pet. 1:16–21). Heaven for them is not the fulfillment of any hope but of these hopes, the hopes of Israel’s Scriptures.

Second, their hope is thoroughly christological, which means several things. The principle we just mentioned assumes the Old Testament Scriptures are being read through the Son—indeed, they are not the Word of God apart from the Son—while the Son is being seen through the Old Testament. By the same token, heaven is bound up with the Son, who is present to his church even now; there is an important sense in which the heavenly Jerusalem has already come down. Because their hope is christological, the overwhelming wonder of heaven is the grace and mercy present and active in the Son. In that, of course, is acceptance of the sweeping judgment pronounced on sin in the Son’s death; it is impossible any longer to wink at sin or harbor any other hope than the justification that comes through faith. Or again, for the same christological reason, their hopes revolve around reconciliation and fellowship, both with the triune God and with his people. Likewise, the Son illuminates the way to heaven as suffering first, glory later—death and then resurrection. He is, moreover, the destination, for he is in his person eternal life.

Third, as just noted, because their hopes are christological, they are resurrectional and new creational. Resurrection, as we witness it in Jesus’ bodily resurrection—including the empty tomb and his appearances among us—involves radical continuity and discontinuity. Accordingly, the apostolic hopes revolve around a transformation that is foreshadowed in God’s previous work and properly characterized by metaphors—such as the redemption, restoration, and renewal of the present physical creation—not only shaping notions of what is hoped for but bearing deep-running implications for life now, before death. This hope is not a retreat and escape but an advance and reclamation. It is for good reason it is called a victory, a conquering. Yet as true as this note of continuity is, the logic of resurrection must also be characterized as a radically new beginning. It is a beginning in which believers already participate within the present age but which awaits a future crisis: namely, the second appearance of the Son, “not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Heb. 9:28), and in him the resurrection and judgment that usher in a final and comprehensive transformation. Grace reigns, forgiveness goes unchallenged, sin and death and their wounds are cast out, perfection is achieved and made permanent. Things will be different, irreversibly so, and only in keeping with God’s own perfections. The hope of heaven compels us to make clear that the present world is impermanent, and wisdom requires all of us to become citizens of a city that is holy and therefore incompatible with the present age. Our lives, just as Jesus’ did, mediate the life of that world to this one in tangible ways, and yet in that very mediation our lives are a standing challenge to this age and a witness to one qualitatively different. A witness and an invitation.

These three aspects find their center in the person of the Son of God, without whom the Old Testament Scriptures are not the Word of God, who is himself eternal life, and whose resurrection brings to birth the new heavens and the new earth. Indeed, the denial of heaven, in principle or practice, is finally the denial of Jesus’ death and resurrection from the dead. In his death, his no is spoken to the sin and death of this age, while his yes is spoken to the work of God that is cleansed and redeemed; in his resurrection, his yes to the new creation is uttered. Accordingly, the confession of hope expressed in the epigram at the head of this chapter was not, for Marv and Grace, a matter of giving up on this life and turning away to another but of embracing what alone is true life, therein discovering light and life for these days when we live, and live abundantly, as resident aliens, in gratitude seeking the city that is coming.53

 

¹ On Thanksgiving Day, 2012, Marv Verwys, aged ninety-five, went with his wife, Grace, to the emergency room, where the doctors informed Grace he would live only days. When Marv asked why they were not leaving the hospital that day after his tests, she told him he had a cancer of the blood, and they could not operate. “Am I going to die?” “We’re all going to die, and I may die before you. But it looks like you are going to go before me, so now we need to look towards heaven. From now on, let’s talk about heaven.”

² Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 199.

³ 4:14 and 7:26 are ambiguous.

⁴ One readily thinks of Rev. 21:22: “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”

⁵ See Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, Hope against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), on the place of imagination in Christian hope.

⁶ I am not taking liberties in using the word gospel of the OT Scriptures; cf. Heb. 4:2, 6.

⁷ Heb. 9:23 speaks of the cleansing of the heavenly things, which in its flow of thought strongly implies heaven itself, the place of the heavenly tabernacle. A full discussion is not possible or necessary in the present context. Eight proposed lines of interpretation of 9:23 are listed by Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 477.

⁸ This makes the relation of gospel and law utterly relevant to our theme, though we merely mention it here. It is proper to note here we have the image “of a city, not a garden,” which contributes to a theology of human culture. If we get no further, however, we will have missed the larger point that it is not any city but a very particular city whose past was both a reflection and foreshadowing of the Son (Heb. 8:5; 9:9, 23; 10:1), who is himself our future.

⁹ This last claim regarding the reclamation of the entire cosmos is not obvious from Heb. 12:25–27 and other passages, leading many to think otherwise. I have tried to defend it in Jon C. Laansma, “Hidden Stories in Hebrews: Cosmology and Theology,” in A Cloud of Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in Its Ancient Contexts, LNTS 387, ed. Richard Bauckham, Daniel Driver, Trevor Hart, and Nathan MacDonald (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 9–18, following in some ways the work of William L. Lane, Hebrews 9–13, WBC 47B (Dallas: Word, 1991), 435–91.

¹⁰ We must get out of our heads entirely the notion that works on us like a force of gravity, namely, that God somehow answers to a more general law of the right. He acts from and for himself. Our hope has no other foundation, but with this foundation it is firm.

¹¹ It should be noted that the economic aspect of the struggle so prominent in James was not missing in Hebrews but was an essential part of its situation (10:32–34; 11:26 [cf. 13:13]; 12:16) and so could also be brought into reflections on its vision of final salvation.

¹² Whether he thinks of this nearness as something that could happen anytime (indeterminately imminent) or as soon to happen is an open question when his language is considered in isolation. It is certain he does think creation’s history has reached its last chapter, bringing qualitative changes to the world in the overflow of heaven’s blessings and heightened implications for righteousness and wickedness.

¹³ More literally, “You murdered the righteous one,” which can be taken generically or as a reference to an individual. Even if it is taken generically it seems likely Jesus is intended as the ultimate righteous and poor one who was murdered.

¹⁴ James does not succumb to the temptation to pander to either the wealthy or the poor. The well-to-do have the upper hand, and most of James’s audience would seem to be of the have-nots and oppressed, but he has bracing, uncompromising words for all, wealthy and poor alike. The root of things is not economic, after all.

¹⁵ In keeping with biblical emphasis we single out money, but, as my father has reminded me, there are many currencies of power in this world: knowledge and degree credentials, office, athleticism, artistic talent, physical beauty, and more. All of these can become mammon.

¹⁶ Moreover, in another frame of reference we affirm that the progress of God’s redemption within history, bound up with the life to which James exhorts us, is inexorable as he builds his temple stone by stone (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:4–10). More generally, on the “possibility of progress,” see Bauckham and Hart, Hope, 174–210.

¹⁷ The word παρεπίδημος in 1:1 (2:11) is defined by BDAG, s.v., as pertaining “to staying for a while in a strange or foreign place, sojourning, residing temporarily.”

¹⁸ Literally 1:9 speaks of the “salvation of your souls” (ὑμῶν σωτηρίαν ψυχῶν). It is clear that for Peter, as for Jesus, the salvation of “souls” indicates the salvation of the whole person, the resurrected (1:3, 21; 3:21) body and soul. It is the counterpart of the call not to fear those who can put only the body to death in contrast to God, who alone has the authority to destroy both body and soul in hell (Matt. 10:28). It can be taken for granted that the one who has power over the fate of the soul has power over the fate of the body. This manner of speaking has less to do, then, with a theory about the “parts” of a human than the limits of human authority on one hand and the power of God on the other.

¹⁹ This verse can also be read in reference to the sufferings and glory of the followers of Jesus; cf. BDAG, s.v. δόξα.

²⁰ The present participle of 1:17 (κρίνοντα) may indicate the ongoing judgment of God during the course of their sojourning (4:17) but would assuredly include the future and ultimate judgment.

²¹ Again, literally, their “souls.”

²² This understanding of the language of 1:1 and 2:11 is strongly challenged by Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter, BECNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005). She does view the language as bearing theological associations, though not in terms of the recipients’ “vertical” relationship to heaven as their primary home but more horizontally, “primarily as defining the relationship between the Christian and unbelieving society” (62). I accept her argument regarding the sociological force of the language (more tentatively her specific historical reconstruction), which is vital, but continue to hear as well the vertical (and future) theological implications for primary identity. Most of my summary of 1 Peter does not hang on this point, in any event.

²³ The word for crown (στέφανος) often denotes “a wreath made of foliage or designed to resemble foliage and worn by one of high status or held in high regard,” but it is likely that in some passages such as the present, “the imagery of the wreath becomes less and less distinct, yet without loss of its primary significance as a symbol of exceptional merit,” so that the meaning is closer to “award or prize for exceptional service or conduct, prize, reward” (BDAG).

²⁴ Or, in the (Holy) Spirit.

²⁵ The wording in 5:1 (τῆς μελλούσης ἀποκαλύπτεσθαι δόξης) could indicate this event is going to happen at some time, is destined to happen, or is on the point of happening (about to be); the last would be its meaning here (cf. 4:7). Even so, the same ambiguity we noted in James is true here; the wording may signal something that either could happen at any moment (indeterminate imminence) or was expected to happen very soon, whether within days or a few years.

²⁶ Jerry L. Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), 200, confronts modern conventional wisdom that a hope for heaven is morally weak and inimical and that its renunciation is morally courageous and socially productive, a view that is quietly ubiquitous even among many of faith; likewise, Gary Scott Smith, Heaven in the American Imagination (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), 238. Bruce Winter, Seek the Welfare of the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens, First-Century Christians in the Graeco-Roman World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), has argued that 1 Peter, harboring no weak hope for heaven as future glory, summons Christians to act as public benefactors within their cities.

²⁷ The word οὐρανός occurs six times (1:18; 3:5, 7, 10, 12, 13), most of which refer to the visible skies. We will pass over 1:12–15, though it would be a passage to discuss in a more general treatment of the state of believers between death and resurrection (the “intermediate state”), which bears on heaven. Taken on its own, however, 2 Pet. 1:12–15 gives little away, so the reader should see 2 Cor. 5:1–10.

²⁸ ESV = “pertains to.”

²⁹ See Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, WBC 50 (Waco: Word, 1983), 180–81, with many parallels from the NT’s environment.

³⁰ Cf. 1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Tim. 3:1, where it also is clear a description of evil’s advance in the last days is in fact a description of what is already true in the present.

³¹ The background for the views of the false teachers has been sought in different directions, especially among the Epicureans (J. Neyrey, “The Form and Background of the Polemic in 2 Peter,” JBL 99 [1980]: 407–31; Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 294) or the Stoics (E. Adams, The Stars Will Fall from Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the New Testament and Its World, LNTS 347 [London: T&T Clark, 2007]; John Dennis, “Cosmology in the Petrine Literature and Jude,” in Cosmology and New Testament Theology, LNTS 355, ed. Jonathan T. Pennington and Sean M. McDonough [London: T&T Clark, 2008], 157–77). Modern voices sound similar themes, e.g., Marcelo Gleiser, “A Guarantee: The World Will Not End on Friday,” posted Dec. 19, 2012; http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/12/19/167530202.

³² The text neither states nor implies a theory as to chronology. The allusion to Ps. 90:4 is a way of addressing the misinterpretation of the time already elapsed and the failure to sympathize with God’s aims; it involves no speculation about how much longer the delay might continue.

³³ At the very least, the verbal parallel just noted between the “destruction” of Noah’s flood and the “destruction” by fire yet to come should give us pause before we conclude that the text indicates something like annihilation or the abolition of creation. Indeed, the language of 1:4–11, the urging in 3:11–14 to live now in continuity with the character of the world to come in which righteousness dwells (v. 13), and the very hope of personal existence (even if 2 Peter as a discourse does not speak explicitly of bodily resurrection) in that new world all bespeak continuity between the present and future worlds. The general emphasis of 3:1–13 does fall on discontinuity, however, so as to highlight the motifs of judgment and separation from what is unholy.

³⁴ This is probably the sense of 3:10, accepting the reading εὑρεθήσεται instead of οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται as in NA²⁸. A variety of textual and interpretive options are discussed along with potential parallels by Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 314–21, before he settles on the meaning we have adopted. The image of v. 10 may be of the visible heavens, along with their heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, and stars (στοιχεῖα), functioning like a veil between earth and the holy realm of God’s presence, being rolled back and burned up so that the earth, particularly its inhabitants, are fully exposed to the eyes of God (ibid.). Also in 3:12 it is the heavens and heavenly bodies that are destroyed, giving way to the new heavens and earth.

³⁵ The character of that eternal life as “abundant life” (see John 10:10) is not as thematic in 1 John as in John’s Gospel. Because of the false teaching, the emphasis on 1 John falls on how that eternal life in all its aspects comes into our possession (e.g., 5:11–13, 20). Necessarily and naturally, however, this does involve teaching on the nature of that life, on which see below.

³⁶ Andreas Köstenberger, A Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 297, commenting on the Johannine corpus broadly.

³⁷ For a defense of this translation, see I. H. Marshall, The Epistles of John, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978), 254–55.

³⁸ Cf., e.g., T. F. Torrance, Incarnation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity: 2008), 37, 107–9, 184; Torrance, Atonement (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009), 93–94, 124–25, 148–53.

³⁹ Mysteriously unifying these seemingly contradictory assertions is the person of Christ himself, in whom our human nature, and thus the new creation, is united to God; he is both true human and true God, “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” Analogically, one can notice how the Lord’s insistence that he is himself the inheritance of the Levites (e.g., Num. 18:20; Deut. 10:9) does not mean they have no earthly land or food (e.g., Num. 35:1–5; Deut. 14:29; 18:1–2).

⁴⁰ The sense of the Greek term ἱλασμός has been much discussed, with some arguing it relates to “expiation” (the removal of an offense, neutralizing or cancelling sin) and others arguing for “propitiation” (turning away the wrath of the offended party). In the present passage, where the image of the advocate is present in 2:1, it conveys the idea of a propitiatory sacrifice; Marshall, Epistles of John, 117–18.

⁴¹ The word signifies “a state of boldness and confidence, courage, confidence, boldness, fearlessness, especially in the presence of persons of high rank” (BDAG, s.v. παρρησία). It often relates to boldness of speech, and that would be its use throughout 1 John, as is apparent from 5:14.

⁴² John does not stress the eternal nature of this advocacy as does Hebrews, but it is entailed in its relation to the eternal life in which it is involved.

⁴³ Presumably, God’s knowledge of all things in 3:20 alludes especially to his ultimate and perfect knowledge of who believers are as a result of his forgiveness and cleansing. “The point is not that God is merciful and forgiving (which, of course, John assumes), but that he has the full knowledge on which to base a just verdict concerning us. Consequently, we have grounds for confidence” (Marshall, Epistles of John, 198). The idea of 4:17–19 in its own way asserts the grounds for this: “As he is [righteous and in a right relationship with his Father] so also are we [by God’s holy grace] in this world.”

⁴⁴ The word ἁγνός signifies moral purity that qualifies one for entrance into God’s holy presence.

⁴⁵ Jude, like 1–3 John, makes no use of the Greek word οὐρανός.

⁴⁶ The history of the tradition in Jewish and Christian interpretation is summarized by Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 51; see 1 Enoch 6–19; 21; 86–88; 106:13–15, 17; Jub. 4:15, 22; 5:1; CD 2:17–19; 1QapGen 2:1; Tg. Ps.-J. Gen. 6:1–4; T. Reub. 5:6–7; T. Napht. 3:5; 2 Apoc. Bar. 56:10–14. Jude appears to be dependent on 1 Enoch 6–19.

⁴⁷ CD, 2/1, 369.

⁴⁸ Keeping themselves in the “love of God” (v. 21) involves both the submission to God’s love for them (vv. 1, 24–25) and the concomitant obedience of walking in that same love (vv. 22–23); v. 20 represents both sides of that at once. The logic of Matt. 5:48; 6:14–15; 18:33 lurks behind this.

⁴⁹ Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 26.

⁵⁰ We may expect that upon arrival our response will simultaneously be, “This is nothing like what we imagined,” and, “Yes, we see that this is exactly what you were talking about.”

⁵¹ Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 353–58. As they summarize it, “Some Christians expect to spend heavenly life in ‘eternal solitude with God alone’” (the theocentric version), while other Christians “cannot conceive of blessedness without being reunited with friends, spouse, children, or relatives” (the anthropocentric vision). Both emphases are richly represented by the tradition. They postulate that at the root of this bifurcation is the dual command of love of God and love of neighbor. We may add that insofar as that is true, it remains that in the Son those parallel lines meet, for in him above all, as both our God and human brother/friend, we love at once both God and neighbor—indeed, “the least of these,” and him above even our closest family.

⁵² Ibid., 358, comment on this twentieth-century turn, represented within the church as much as without: “Here we have something quite new and unprecedented in the history of Christianity: the discontinuity with traditional belief is greater than the continuity.”

⁵³ Marv was able to return home and live a few more days of routine, rising for breakfast at table with Grace. Finally his strength gave out and he could not stand. On December 2, eleven days after their trip to the emergency room, Grace told him she released him and would be okay. Later that day Marv fell asleep in the Lord. They were married sixty-seven years. Marv’s final days were lived in profound peace of faith. Grace continues in that same hope.