There seems to be a misconception on eternal life — what it is, who will have eternal life, where they’ll go, etc. For instance, I continue to hear so many people today talking of going to Heaven when they die, and it’s like they’re sure that Heaven’s where they’re going, yet they purposely neither have anything to do with God (or at least not the True God), nor believe in a final judgment. So the question I always ask is, “If you don’t want to have anything to do with the Lord now, then why would you even want to go and spend all of eternity with Him?”
What Will Heaven Be Like?
I think one of the major issues is that the world has invented this image of Heaven as being a place where you go as a reward for being “good person”, or if you’ve never killed anybody. In their idea of heaven, there are clouds; they become angels, and if they do well as an angel, they’ll earn their wings; everybody’s playing harps; it’s like a fantasy-land place, or paradise, where “good people” go when they die.
Some people also have an issue with the fact that there are only 2 places of choice to spend eternal life, and thus either choose not to believe in Heaven (and/or Hell) altogether, or make up their own idea of where they’ll go when they die. But either way, though the Bible doesn’t talk much about Heaven’s details per se, it does tell us that it’s not in sync with the worldview.
What Is Eternal Life?
John 17:3 asks the very question that everybody seems to be confused about, “What is Eternal life?” The answers given are:
- Knowing the only True God
- Knowing Jesus Christ (whom God had sent)
In other words, Heaven is where God is. Eternal life is knowing God. Heaven is a place for those who know God. But then the question raised is, what does it mean to “know” God?
Who Will Go to Heaven?
In the Old Testament, the word “know” (or “knew”) is often used to tell us that a married couple had sex. But it’s not explaining a simple fling. People of God in the Old Testament only “knew” their wives. Notice for example:
Genesis 38: Judah’s first son, Er, was evil, so the Lord smoked him. So Judah told his next son, Onan, to “go into his brother’s wife and marry her…” But in verse 9, we read that when he had sex with her, he didn’t “know” her, but he “went into” her. This is also the case in verses 16 and 18 where Judah hires who he thinks is a prostitute. He asks to “go into her”. Then it said that that’s just what he did: he “went into her”. I believe that the reason for this change in words/phrases is because to know somebody was not just about sex, but having an intimate connection/relationship with them in a way that nobody else could.
The Church is the Bride of Christ…Jesus is the groom. To know somebody is intimate, as in marriage. Your relationship with your spouse (or future spouse), is (will be) intimate…as you grow together in your marriage, you come to know each other better than anybody else in the world, in every way.
Anybody who loves the Lord can tell you that it’s not just being familiar with the Bible, nor just being aware of God’s existence, but an intimate relationship between believer and God, created and Creator, child and Father. There’s constant communication, hanging out, learning, bonding, venting, sharing, trusting, mentoring, becoming like God in character, etc.
My Point:
If you don’t know God intimately now, then you won’t be experiencing Heaven later, for:
- Eternal life = Knowing Jesus and the One True God
- Knowing Jesus/God is relational
- Eternal life is relational
So my question remains the same, “Why would you even want to spend eternal life where God is, if you want to have nothing to do with God now?” But I also think I need to alter it some to, “What makes you even think that you’ll be able to spend eternal life in Heaven when you die, if you refuse to know God now?”
Please Leave a Reply