Our Future Hope

As Christians, our ultimate hope is to be with God. When the world speaks of their heaven it is one of riches, doing whatever we want, and being around only the people we love. It often lacks any mention of Jesus or God. Their heaven does not have that. For the Christian, Heaven involves those things above in some capacity. The best part of Heaven is that we finally get to be with Jesus. The world looks to the best it has, and thinks Heaven is more of that. We know that paradise cannot exist without Jesus. We know that eternal wealth and health is less desirable than an eternity with God.

When we think of eternity, we often put the wrong flavors on it. We think of Hell as full of suffering and pain, but do not ask why. We think of Heaven as joyful bliss, but do not ponder over what makes these realities so. Hell is so awful because it is the wrath of God, it is His judgement. Everyone in Hell has chosen it though. Everyone in Hell has chosen separation from God. Christopher Hitchens said that Heaven would be Hell for him because he does not want to be near God. In Romans 1, we see that one judgement of God is to allow people to pursue sin and to be able to reject Him. Hell is the ultimate reality of being separated from God’s love and grace. It is a reality that has the grace and love of God removed. Evil people today can have the common grace of God. They can have a capacity for love, their crops like ours get rained on, and so on. These common graces like love are marred. In Heaven we get to have God. We get love and joy that is no longer tainted by sin, while Hell is the accumulation of all that evil, marring, and taintedness, without it possessing any love or grace.

Heaven is amazing, because it is eternity with God. I was at a funeral where the pastor spoke on the deceased lady’s favorite song. It was a song about crossing the river to Heaven. The hymn said she would be on the other side waiting for her loved ones, so that they could all go worship Jesus together. Heaven is magnificent in that we get to be with all those who wanted and tasted God’s grace, but it is ultimately desirable because that is where Jesus is. Are you looking forward to Heaven?