I find that many Christians believe that after we die we spend eternity in heaven. This is not true.
It is true, however, that when we die our spirits go to be with Jesus (Phil 1:23; Luke 23:43). However, many fail to understand that this is a sort of “holding place”—it is temporary. It was never God’s plan for his people to die and go and live with him for eternity in heaven. It was always God’s plan, however, for human’s to live forever on earth.
So if Christians do not go to live for eternity in heaven, where do they spend eternity?; in the New Heavens and the New Earth—the new creation. Revelation explicitly teaches that God’s mission to the broken world will come to completion with the creation of a new heavens and new earth (Rev 21).
This serves to remind us that humanity was not created for heavenly dwelling. No, humanity was created for an earthly dwelling. The earth is home for humanity, not heaven.
What is wonderful, then, is that upon the creation of the new heavens and the new earth (it needs recreated because it has been corrupted by sin and brokenness), heaven and earth will meet—humanity will have unlimited access to God’s presence, to communion with the Trinity. This means that it will be like heaven, however, it will be heaven come down to earth where the two meet together.
This was the entire purpose of the Tabernacle in the Old Testament (Exodus). The Tabernacle is the place where heaven comes down to dwell with humanity on earth. The Tabernacle is the place where people can go to find the full presence of God. The Tabernacle is God’s dwelling place on earth. It is the place from where he reigns over creation through his human agents, his chosen race. It is the throne of God on earth.
The resurrection of Jesus is the launching point of the New Creation. In the bodily resurrection of Jesus we have God’s promise to recreate that which has been corrupted fulfilled. This is (one of the reason) why we must hold tightly to the bodily resurrection of Jesus in Christian orthodoxy.
You know what’s beautiful? That both collectively and individually, the Church of Christ is the new Tabernacle. You are the Tabernacle. With the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16), you are the place in and through which God’s redemptive reigns manifests on earth. This doesn’t make each Christian a divinely selected political dictator. What this does mean, however, is that each Christian can fully experience the heavenly, peaceful, just, loving, gracious, merciful reign of God in the midst of their lives and circumstances.
Too often this reality goes overlooked. Too often our thinking about our faith tends to center on ourselves and our sin crisis. No. We should be centered on the fact that you are both the mission of God and the means for the mission of God. God reigns in you and through your for his glory. In you heaven has come down. Along with this, through you, heaven has come down to earth. The end of salvation isn’t the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins is a means to an end an that end is the restoration of the reign of God in and through his chosen people.
May he reign in and through you.
