And so Jesus steps on the scene and starts saying things like, “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is near,” or, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Which honestly that doesn’t make sense if heaven is really far away and has no bearings on your life now, it’s just the place you go to when you die. But I’m going to side with Jesus on this one. It’s near. It’s here. It has crash landed in a first-century rabbi who said He was God. That’s heaven. Which is why it becomes so much more powerful when you understand that Jesus said He was the true temple. He is the place where heaven and earth truly meet. He is the place where the two dimensions, God’s space and our space, collide. And just like the temple, He is the true clean space. No sin. Perfect.
And so when Jesus commissions His followers to go and make disciples, that’s what we are to make disciples of. Not evacuation but restoration. Not of “get saved so you can leave this place” but “God is bringing His reign and rule down to this place, will you come under it?” And in the first example how you live doesn’t matter. But in the second it deeply does. We are commissioned to bring heaven down to earth in all that we do—our finances, sexuality, families and jobs.
And according to scripture, the heaven as we know it and usually depict actually isn’t the end goal. Yes when we die we are in the presence of the Lord, but that’s actually not the hope presented in scripture. The hope of scripture, and definitely the hope that would’ve been stated by any follower of Jesus in the first century, is the resurrection of the dead. The reunion of heaven and earth. The putting to rights the entire world that has been broken for so long. And don’t take my word for it, go read Revelation 21 and 22. John sees a vision of heaven coming down to earth like a bride adorned for her husband. Fully put back together and married once and for all, never to be separated again. That’s what heaven is about.
And following Jesus, with a proper view of heaven and the weight that brings, means it’s the beginning, not the end. And God’s putting the world back together through the very people that broke it. If that’s not grace, I don’t know what is.
