FamilyLife Today®

Dane Ortlund: The thing that delights God is not telling us how to behave. He does do that for our good. What delights him is, on terms of grace and grace alone, welcoming us into his open arms through the merits of his son.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today. Welcome to FamilyLife Today. It's going to be a great day. We have Dane Ortlund, the author of Gentle and Lowly, a pastor in Chicago, and a good friend. He and Stacy are amazing people. Today we're talking about heaven.

Dave Wilson: He's written a book about heaven. Don't we all have questions like, what will heaven be like? We're going to answer those questions today.

Dane Ortlund: Eden was the first temple. God told Adam to work it and keep it. Those are bland English words. Work and keep, so what? They're the same two Hebrew words that the priests are told to do with the tabernacle later in the Old Testament. Work it and keep it. Adam was the first priest.

He had perfect communion with God and was meant to facilitate it for others. His calling was to spread God's glory and make the entire planet earth Eden, a temple. It was to be a place where God and humanity dwelt in perfect harmony. Adam and Eve sinned, God withdrew, and a wall went up.

From one perspective, the rest of the Bible is simply a temple recovery project. The tabernacle had a bright, beautiful blue sky. It had a lampstand that looked like a flourishing tree because it is the tree of life. It was a little Garden of Eden that they'd pack up and carry around. When you go into the tabernacle, you're meeting with God. You're doing what Adam and Eve got to do before they fell.

Ezekiel’s last nine chapters picture this coming temple with a river flowing out of it. It's lush and luxuriant. It’s the Garden of Eden recovered. Jesus shows up and John 1 says the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Jesus was what Ezekiel was prophesying.

Jesus was the garden. Jesus was the temple in the sense that he was where the immortal and the mortal can connect yet again. The old temple says to get out if you're a leper or you're sick or you're unclean. Jesus, the new temple, walks around and tells you to get over here if you're a leper or unclean. In the old temple, clean plus unclean equals unclean.

In Ephesians 2, Paul says Jesus is the cornerstone of the temple and you all are living stones being built up. When you get united to Jesus Christ, we are part of the temple. It means we now have that full perfect access that Adam had before the fall and that the high priest had just once a year.

The book of Revelation says I saw no temple. What Adam was supposed to do has happened. The whole planet earth has become a temple where the immortal and the mortal, the divine and the human, are now connected in perfect fellowship because there's no more sin. That's the house of the Lord. I can't wait to get there.

Dave Wilson: Talk about resurrection. We all know John 11. Lazarus gets raised from the dead. Jesus is told that Lazarus has died and he says he is going to go help them out. He travels to see him and Mary and Martha greet him and say he could have saved Lazarus from dying if he had been there.

Dane Ortlund: It's very poignant because it doesn't say he wept when he heard that Lazarus had died. The text says when he saw the others weeping, he began to weep. He knows he's about to raise this guy and turn sorrow into joy, but he is in such emotional solidarity with his friends that he starts crying. It’s beautiful.

He raises Lazarus and says, "Lazarus, wake up." One theologian speculates he used Lazarus's name because if he hadn't, all the dead people would have risen. Such is the power of Christ's voice. He tells Lazarus to wake up and rise.

Lazarus was raised back to the kind of life and body he had. If he had lower back pain right as he died, he woke back up into that. He was raised to mortal, not immortal existence. Christ is raised to immortal existence. Jesus tells the people to go and unwrap his face. Lazarus is so weak and mortal still he can't even get out of his funeral clothes.

I suspect he shot Jesus a look of disappointment as that thing came off of his eyes. Jesus, what's going on here? Why did you wake me back up into this? The reason he raised Lazarus was as a foreshadowing of his own resurrection and to show the contrast between them. When Jesus was raised, it was to an immortal existence. It was to the life of the age to come.

Richard Gaffin says if the apostle Paul were to walk into a theology conference talking about eschatology and join the panel, someone would ask when the final end-time resurrection of the dead is going to happen. Gaffin rightly says that what Paul would say is that it's already begun.

When Jesus walked out of his tomb, he was the first instance of what every listener in Christ is going to experience. The Bible uses the word first fruits. Jesus in his risen state is the first fruits. That means the first ingathering of one harvest. If he was raised, we will be. We will not be raised with a Lazarus body back to mortal existence, but to an immortal existence.

Ann Wilson: Don't you wonder what age we will be? A lot of people think about that.

Dane Ortlund: What I suspect, and this is sanctified speculation, is that we will be ageless. If I'm with my grandson in the new earth and I meet someone, they may momentarily mix up which is the grandfather and which is the grandson because we're going to be ageless. C.S. Lewis gets at this in his book The Great Divorce in a beautiful way.

Aging is a result of the fall. I don't think we're all going to be the exact age of 19. Age simply will have melted away. We will be who we were meant to be.

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Dave Wilson: How does understanding all that you've talked about today about heaven affect you as a husband and a dad? Can you apply it to the family? Can you apply it to marriage and the space where we help people?

Dane Ortlund: Thank you, Dave. I love that question. There are many directions we could go. With what mindset am I going through my fathering and husbanding? If heaven is a thin and not a thick reality to me, if it's not something I'm acutely aware of, then I am going to raise my kids with all kinds of pressure and I'm going to burden them down. I may not use these words.

Dave Wilson: Because this is it.

Ann Wilson: Exactly.

Dave Wilson: I will be sending the message to them to not screw this up. Maybe I'll project onto them ways that I know I have failed and I want them to succeed. I see a lot of dads with athletics doing this where I live.

Dane Ortlund: If I am aware of heaven and I'm teaching them about it, then they can go through life failing. It's okay. Stumble your way forward. This life matters tremendously. Let's not understate it. Give your heart to the Lord. Trust in God. Leave brightness, glory, joy, and beauty in your wake in how you treat other people.

It is preparation. It's a trailer for the movie. It's just the first page of the novel of what we will experience forever. It's a freeing thing. Actually, it takes all that pressure off.

Dave Wilson: That's huge. Not just for the parent, but I'm thinking of all the kids that grow up in homes where they feel that unwarranted pressure from mom or dad. We're parents and we want them to be great. If we've let that go in our own life, understanding we are set apart as saints, everything changes. Nothing we do is going to get us into heaven. It’s who we know.

Ann Wilson: We should have that eternal perspective all the time. I was just thinking about this yesterday while I was praying. Lord, it feels like I still don't quite get it because I still worry. I worry about my kids and my grandkids. I hate for them to feel pain or go through trials.

If I really understood who Christ is and what he's done for us and that he's with us, I don't think I would worry. I think I'd be like, "Lord, there's a lot going on but you have it."

Dave Wilson: I think we all do it because I'm thinking, "What's my part?" You have a part, but what's my part, Lord? I can't always distinguish that.

Ann Wilson: If I have eternity in mind and I'm remembering what's ahead, remembering the temple, that whole thing just blew my mind. He is with us. He has tabernacled among us and he's in me. I can trust him for all of it because nothing is worrying him. He's got so much in store.

Dane Ortlund: Let's carry that a little further. I'm thinking of one application for parenting and one for marriage. One for parenting you just touched on, Ann, is pain. What if one of the tools in our toolbox as parents when our kid is cut from the team or is sick is to say, "Isn't it going to be awesome in heaven?"

We can build that in them at age four and nine. We can coach them into knowing this is not all there is. We can leverage their heartache and pain into a time of eternal joy in age-appropriate language.

Application number two is marriage. Will there be marriage in heaven? The answer is no and yes.

Dave Wilson: I've never heard no and yes. Let's go.

Ann Wilson: I haven't either. Dane's going to give us some new theology.

Dane Ortlund: In Matthew's gospel, Jesus says people are not given in marriage. They do not marry but are like the angels. Will there be weddings in heaven? No. I do believe that I will have a close and unique relationship eternally with my wife, as you two will. I believe every marriage in Christ will experience that.

Ann Wilson: If you've been married before, there won't be jealousy.

Dave Wilson: Way to go, Ann. You just had to bring that. If you're a widow and now you have two wives.

Dane Ortlund: Awesome thought. Why does Jesus say though that there's no marriage in heaven? The symbol has given way to reality. The Bible speaks of our being with Christ as his bride. Ephesians 5 and Revelation mention this. God created marriage to give us a picture of what salvation in Christ looks like.

That for which marriage exists we are all going to experience with Christ. None of us are going to wish we still had our marriage because it was pointing to what we will be experiencing. Every Christian who dies with a terrible heartache because they always wanted to be married will not miss out. They will experience that for which marriage exists.

Ann Wilson: When you talk about heaven with young kids, I've had multiple grandkids tell me they can't wait to die. We've talked about heaven and it sounds so incredible to them that they can't wait. They're not thinking about the fear of death. All they're thinking is that it is going to be unbelievable.

I like that for them. There's this purity in them that understands it is going to be amazing. I think we as adults could have that, but the fear of death gets us.

Dane Ortlund: We go through life and we're piling up scars and wounds. As an emotional defense mechanism, we get cynical and we withdraw that childlike wonder and longing. It atrophies and we kind of close our heart off to that.

Ann Wilson: What does the cynical part sound like?

Dane Ortlund: Our lives have been so full of pain that we think heaven can't make up for it. We think heaven will be a consolation prize. We don't realize the Bible teaches clearly that as deep as your pain has gone, that high will your beauty and joy rise. 2 Corinthians 4 says our present afflictions are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory that is beyond comparison.

If a listener right now is in a terrible heartache, perhaps their marriage is awful or they have a grown child who's totally ghosting them, the hope of heaven is that this pain is seeding and investing in solid brightness and glory. It's actually the paradigm of crucifixion to resurrection. As deep as our sorrows go here, that high will our joy rise in the new earth. We can't lose.

Dave Wilson: Here's a question a lot of parents would ask. I had a little brother die when I was seven. He was five. Is he in heaven?

Dane Ortlund: Will not the judge of all the earth do what is right? Genesis 20. The answer is yes. Based on the logic of Romans 1, I believe that all those who perish before they are at an age where they can consciously make a decision are safe in the arms of Christ.

God will do what is right. He is not only fully divine in his sovereignty and perfect in his love, but he's fully divine and perfect in his wisdom. In heaven, we will never say that was not fair or right.

Ann Wilson: I think about that even with miscarriages. I've talked to women that have had abortions and they're carrying the consequences and guilt.

Dane Ortlund: I suspect my grandmother might be right about that kind of situation. She said that for a woman who is in Christ who aborted her child, she will be able to raise that child in the new earth. Whatever the joint experience of raising that child in the new earth would be, they will have because they will have perfect joy and be reunited with that little one.

Ann Wilson: So they will be in heaven. I believe that for sure. That's a comfort in and of itself.

Dave Wilson: Last question. What would you say to the listener who wants to go to heaven but is not sure they are going to get in?

Ann Wilson: You keep saying "in Christ." Let's talk about that.

Dane Ortlund: That's how the New Testament talks about being a Christian. This is the question of all questions. How do you get to heaven? The answer is to know you shouldn't be there. Heaven is filled with people thinking they deserve to be in hell.

Dave Wilson: I love that you put that in the epilogue. It's filled with people thinking they deserve to be in hell and dancing.

Dane Ortlund: Hell is filled with people thinking they deserve to be in heaven and raging. It’s the logic of grace. Grace cuts against the way we naturally think God works. The way you get to heaven is for free. You say, "I shouldn't be there. I am sinful and I've rebelled against God in ways I'm conscious of and in ways I'm not."

My rebellion and sinfulness make it hard to feel my sinfulness. We say, "God, I'm a mess. Can I please go because of what Jesus did? Would you let me trade places with him?" God says he would be delighted to. That's the number one thing on his job description.

The thing that delights God is not telling us how to behave. He does do that for our good. What delights him is, on terms of grace and grace alone, welcoming us into his open arms through the merits of his son. Father and son, as the Puritans would talk, had this conversation in time immemorial.

They agreed together that the son would take on flesh, go to earth, and live the life that we should have lived but didn't. He would die the death that we should die and no longer have to. Our death is a door, not a wall. It’s a trampoline into paradise instead of a trapdoor into misery. You get it for free by saying, "I don't deserve it, but Jesus does. Can I please go?"

Ann Wilson: It's simple. I just told our grandkids about that in the back seat of my car while going through the prayer. I asked them how they think they'll get to heaven. Those conversations should just be a topic that's on our tongue.

Dave Wilson: It's really important to allow them to know it's for free. You don't have to do anything to get there. It's by the blood of Jesus. Maybe today's your day. Maybe you're listening or watching and you heard what Dane just said. That's the gospel. You can be driving in your car.

A guy came up to me once after a FamilyLife Weekend to Remember marriage getaway. On Saturday morning we share the gospel. It's a marriage conference where you realize you need Jesus. I ended with a prayer and this guy told me he gave his life to Christ during that last session.

He told me he said, "Jesus, I'm a sinner. I realize it now and I need to repent. I'm giving you my life." He didn't close his eyes or bow his head. He asked if it worked. I said, "Yeah, dude, you're in." When you admit that, you're in Christ, which means you're in heaven one day. Dane, thanks. What a conversation.

Ann Wilson: Thanks for tackling a topic not many people dive into. You've done an incredible job of painting an exciting picture.

Dane Ortlund: You are most welcome. I needed it and I can't wait to be there.

Dave Wilson: Again, Dane's book is called Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven and you can get that by going to familylifetoday.com and just click on the link in the show notes. We're on YouTube at youtube.com/familylife.

Ann Wilson: I love watching YouTube clips. You get a lot more out of it when you're watching people.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of God's faithfulness as marriages grow stronger and families flourish in him.