FamilyLife Today®

Dane Ortlund: I think of the Christian life in four stages: bad, good, better, best. We're born bad. We're the image of God, for sure. Lots of good and glory coming out of us, but until you are saved, that's bad. We're condemned. I mean, that's not good. You become a believer. You go from bad to good. This is good. You are now a child of God.

The day you die as a believer, you go from good to better. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. That's Paul's own words. Now here's the thing. I think a lot of Christians view phase three as the final permanent phase. But there's a fourth phase.

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

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today. All right, we've got Dane Ortlund back in the studio.

Ann Wilson: This is always like an epic day when Dane is with us.

Dave Wilson: Dane, are you as excited to be with us as we are with you?

Dane Ortlund: I'm twice as excited.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, what else can you say?

Dane Ortlund: I love talking to you two. And actually, I said this on the way over here ten minutes ago. I think it's harder to interview than be interviewed. I think people think the person being interviewed has to think up answers right on the fly. No, you guys have the harder job. You have to keep the conversation going, and you do a great job at it. So it is always a joy being with you both, really.

Dave Wilson: Part of it is you're so authentic. That's the word. Deep, grounded, biblical, but real. And I have to be honest, your laugh makes me laugh.

Ann Wilson: Me too. I think what happens when we're with Dane, we'll cry because you remind us of the beauty of the gospel. But then we're also going to laugh. So this is going to be a really fun time. But this topic that we're going to today, we haven't hit with Dane. I don't know if we've hit this with any guest that we've had on.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, I'm not sure. You are it. You are the guy. But hey, before we go there, I made a little call to your dad a couple weeks ago when I found out you're coming in and said, "Hey, if you could say something to Dane, what would you say?" And he recorded something. So we thought we'd play it for you and you can respond. Hit that button, Bruce.

Ray Ortlund: The Bible says a wise son makes a glad father, and I'm a very glad father. Let me tell you two things about my dear son Dane. One, he's the real deal. There is nothing artificial about him. He really loves the Lord and he really believes the gospel. I've learned a ton from him.

Secondly, Dane is downright fun. When I don't see him for a week just because of geography, I miss him and our great times together. I feel so privileged to be Dane's dad. I wish I could be with you all. Have a blast.

Dane Ortlund: He said the same things we said. Real deal. Well, you already started talking about crying, Ann. That was a prophetic word, perhaps. He is the real deal too. He's the greatest guy I've ever known, hands down. A verse that I would attach to him and to his dad. Oh, I wish you two could have interviewed his dad at some point, and mom. Psalm 34: "Those who look to him are radiant."

Isn't that a great text? When you look to God, you get a little brighter. Both of them. You get a little more resplendent glow, spiritual. And that's them. So yeah, I love them with all my heart.

Dave Wilson: I don't know how in the world your voices sound identical.

Ann Wilson: I know, they do. I'm crying already, guys. Don't mind me.

Dave Wilson: Me too. When I heard him, I was like, "My sons do not sound like me." You guys, it's crazy how you do. Do any of your other brothers sound like your dad?

Dane Ortlund: I've been told I sound a little bit more like him than the other two, but I can't hear my own voice.

Dave Wilson: Uh oh, Dave's pulling out the guitar.

Dane Ortlund: People laughing and crying. Wilson's pulling out the guitar.

Dave Wilson: I figured to give our listeners and our watchers—hope you're watching—a little introduction of where we're going today. Here are some songs that talk about this topic. Do you know this one? Imagine there's no heaven... Come on, you have to know 1971 John Lennon.

Ann Wilson: He was not even born in 1978.

Dave Wilson: Imagine there's no heaven... It's easy if you try... No hell below us... Above us, only sky... I'm not going to do the whole song. But here, I know you don't know this one. This is '70s too. When I die and they lay me to rest, gonna go to the place that's the best... When they lay me down to die, goin' up to the spirit in the sky... You don't know that song?

Ann Wilson: Dave, he's born in what year, Dane?

Dane Ortlund: 1978.

Dave Wilson: I know you're born '78, but you know this song. (Plays Stairway to Heaven)

Ann Wilson: Everybody knows this song.

Dave Wilson: There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway to heaven... That's a terrible introduction to this topic. But why did you decide to write about heaven?

Dane Ortlund: Anything I write, guys, actually is me working my way out of my own state of being underdeveloped in something. So I came to the conviction that I am not drawing strength from what I am going to be experiencing forever in this little two-second blip of a life on my way there.

So I sat down and started doing some reading about it and thinking about it and thought I think we need to bring our hearts and minds back to both clarity about what the scripture actually gives us in terms of our future. I think there's a lot of lack of clarity, but way more than that, through that clarity, getting happier because of it, enjoying it, being a little bit more radiant in light of it. So that was why.

Dave Wilson: So this wasn't like, "I'm doing a sermon series."

Dane Ortlund: No. We did a little actually, we did a little sermon series more on hell than heaven.

Ann Wilson: But we don't preach on that much in churches these days.

Dane Ortlund: No, we don't. And Jesus said a lot about it. So I did do we did like five weeks on hell and heaven a couple years ago, but that did not really transpose onto this book. This book was just sitting down and thinking myself clear and bringing readers along with me.

Ann Wilson: The book is called *Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven*. So I'm excited to talk about this because I don't think we know much about heaven. There aren't all that many books. There are a few books that are great, but I don't think there are many. And I don't think we have a really clear view of what heaven is like. Did anything surprise you as you started studying?

Dane Ortlund: Several things. First of all, the number one misconception to clear up, I think, Ann—and we were just talking about this a few minutes ago together offline—is the intermediate state. So if I die today and Jesus returns a year from now, without getting into all the details of millennial views and that kind of thing, we can all agree: if I die today and Jesus returns a year from now, I will spend one year without a body floating about in heaven.

And one year only. Then he will return to earth and we will all, the scripture teaches, be raised and be on this planet forever. That's our after-afterlife. That's our permanent situation.

Ann Wilson: And you're not talking about purgatory.

Dane Ortlund: No. Let's do that for just a minute. Purgatory: what is purgatory? The Catholic teaching that you need to spend some time getting finally cleansed before you get into heaven. Actually, Paul opens a letter like Ephesians and he says, "To the saints."

What does he mean by saint? In Roman Catholic teaching, a saint is the top 1% most virtuous people. I think they had to perform two miracles that are verified and so on. No, if you're a Christian, you're a saint. What is a saint? It's a clean one. We have been rinsed clean. We have been given a gospel bath. If you're united to Christ, you are as clean as he is objectively.

Subjectively, we have a lot of messiness. But in terms of in God's sight, objectively, I don't need purgatory. I'm already a saint. That's my name. That's what we are. Saint Ann, Saint Dave, Saint Dane.

Ann Wilson: And that takes away fear. All of that. We are saints.

Dave Wilson: I mean, what you just taught is deep truth that a lot of even church-going Christian people do not understand. You are a sanctified, set-apart saint.

Dane Ortlund: Not a Catholic saint that's revered. If you are in Christ, you are a saint. Dave, the worst-behaving Christian is as much a saint as the best-behaving Christian objectively. They both are saints. They both have sainthood. Our saintliness goes up and down, but our sainthood is fixed. And that is deeply comforting.

So in heaven, we are going to experience subjectively the cleanness that actually we already have at the level of identity and name and objectively. You asked Ann a minute ago what surprised you. Here's one thing that surprised me. Tell me what you guys think about this. The beatific vision. Hang with me here.

Beatific means being happy. It means happifying. It means you're given joy. Beatific vision: when you see God, you get really, really happy. That's actually what heaven is. Reunion with loved ones, that's a great part of it too, but that's secondary and derivative.

Ann Wilson: Which is crazy that that's secondary and derivative.

Dane Ortlund: Right, because that's going to be such an exquisite joy. But what makes heaven heaven is seeing God, seeing Christ. What do you call heaven without Jesus? Hell. Seeing him, the theologians say this: heaven goes on forever and what it is is, because God is infinite, seeing more and more of him all the time without that ever ending, never hitting bottom on seeing him and getting happier as a result.

That's what Jonathan Edwards and Gregory of Nyssa and Thomas Aquinas and Augustine describe heaven as being. And that's biblically defensible because of some texts in Revelation 21 and 22. That's an amazing thought.

Dave Wilson: Reading your book, I told Ann, I said, "I am so excited to go to heaven right now." Not that I want to die today, but it really inspired me. And when you live with that revelation and inspiration, it impacts who you are as a husband, as a dad, as a mom, as a wife, right? It impacts everything.

Dane Ortlund: Absolutely. I mean, what would it look like to go through a Wednesday with our kids? What is changing a diaper in the middle of the night? How is that affected by the doctrine of heaven? Well, not that we're always consciously thinking about where we're going to be forever, but if my joy is invincibly settled elsewhere because of what I'm going to experience forever, I'm untouchable by the mundane things of life, by the hardships of life.

I'm going through my life and I am saying to my kids and I am drawing strength myself from the fact that this short little thing, I'm just going to give myself in love to these kids, to my family, and then it's just going to be here and gone. I'm going to be at rest, calmed, at peace, happy forever. It affects the way we conduct ourselves, the way we feel, the way we are going through a normal day.

Ann Wilson: Well, it's interesting too as we talk to our kids and even our grandkids, we can talk about the joy and not the fear that we have of dying. I think one of the number one fears a person has is death. And I can remember—I don't know if you know this, Dane—I had a heart stent put in last May.

Dane Ortlund: I did not know that, Ann.

Ann Wilson: I had the heart stent. We flew to be on Focus on the Family three days later because I had a new book coming out.

Dave Wilson: Before everybody judges me for taking my wife to Colorado three days after, the doctor said it was okay. I asked him several times.

Ann Wilson: I was on the table and I asked him if we could go and he goes, "Yeah, he'll be fine." He'll be fine. But altitude change, dehydrated, all kinds of things. We ended up in the ER at 2:00 in the morning all night, almost all night. And so we had three hours of sleep.

But we come home from the hospital and I remember I still wasn't feeling quite right. The stent was three days old and you have all these fears like, "What if it didn't work? What's going on with my heart?" And I remember Dave just prayed over me, which was incredible. But then I remember thinking, well, if I die and these are my last moments, it will be glorious because I'll just wake up with Jesus.

And there's no fear. And if I live, well, that means there's more for me to do. Because as long as we have breath in our lungs, God has things for us on the planet to do. And just that peace of knowing... It's like Paul: "To live is Christ, to die is gain." And so both of those things, I was like to not have the fear of death, that's a big deal. And to then know, like what your book talks about, what it's going to be like, unbelievable. You get excited.

Dave Wilson: And by the way, Dane, we're in the hotel room, just came home from the hospital or ER basically for several hours. And I know she's asleep because she starts twitching. I'm holding her and she fell asleep. And I didn't know she was thinking, "Well, if I die I'll be in heaven." I was like, "She might die." I was awake the whole night.

Because it's not the fear of where she's going, it's the fear of losing her. So talk about both of those realities because you've got both sides of that: one side is we get to be with Jesus, the other side is the people we leave really struggle.

Dane Ortlund: You're right. It's a both-and, and you just articulated it so poignantly and wonderfully and autobiographically. And it's just what Paul says in Philippians chapter one where he says, "I would like to go to heaven," paraphrased. "I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is," he says, "better by far."

But I know the Lord has work for me here to do still. And what a relief to know, actually, guys, it's a win-win. You just said it, Ann. This is a win-win. Nothing is at stake. And we can tell our kids this. Nothing's at stake here either. I get door number one: release and rest. Not a trap door into hell, an escalator up to perfect happiness. Door number one. Door number two: I stay here and God has a little bit more work for me to do in my work and family and loving my spouse and kids and training them to get ready for heaven. That's a win-win.

Dave Wilson: Every single day, families around the world are facing real struggles, and FamilyLife is here with gospel-centered help and hope. And when you become a FamilyLife partner, your monthly support fuels this work. Together, we're helping families really grow stronger in Christ, so join us. Just go to FamilyLifeToday.com and tap the donate button at the top of the page.

Now, let me ask you. You said a little earlier the intermediate state. You're floating until Jesus. I mean, that's a theological position different people have. When you said that, I was thinking of Denny Ellen's, one of our good friends in Holland, Michigan, who just died of a heart attack coming down a mountain in Arizona. So three or four weeks ago, he dies.

Dane Ortlund: Denny. He's there. Christ said to the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise." Philippians 1: "Desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better." Second Corinthians 5 gets at the same idea. Those are the three passages that teach us that I think of it like this. I think of the Christian life in four stages: bad, good, better, best.

Real simple. We're born bad. We're the image of God, for sure. Lots of good and glory coming out of us, but until you are saved, that's bad. We're condemned. That's not good. You become a believer. You go from bad to good. This is good. You are now a child of God. You are justified, you're rinsed clean as we just said earlier and all the other blessings of salvation. That's good.

The day you die as a believer, you go from good to better. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. That's Paul's own words. The intermediate state: floating about in heaven, no body, but no sin. Now here's the thing. I think a lot of Christians view phase three as the final permanent phase. Kind of just tacitly. I did for most of my life.

But there's a fourth phase. Ancient Greek thinking—Plato and others—would teach that actually that is the better thing to just leave this body behind. But Hebrew and Christian teaching is the body is good. It's a good thing. It's fallen, but it's good. God didn't give us bodies in Genesis 3 when we fell. It wasn't like Genesis 1 and 2 they're spirits, "Oh, now you sinned I'm going to give you a body." They had bodies, the bodies got corrupted.

Phase 4 is best. No sin, but getting your body back. And guys, here's the amazing thing. First Corinthians 15 is very clear: the kind of body that Jesus had when he was raised is the exact... He's the first model off the assembly line of what every Christian is going to get. Now I think we tend to think Jesus is God and so he had a really... he had like the varsity version body, we get a JV version.

No, as the God-man, the body he got, First Corinthians 15's very clear, we get the kind of body he had, which is what? He could appear in locked rooms. Mary had trouble recognizing him on the one hand. On the other hand, John 21, the risen Jesus is broiling fish and eating bread. And he says that wonderful sentence to the disciples when they're in the boat, "Come and have breakfast."

He's eating fish, he tells Thomas, "Stick your hand in my side." Fully physical. But he can appear in locked rooms. What's going on? Here's how to understand it. The laws of nature are no longer the master of someone who's been given a resurrection body, but the servant. But fully physical. That's the body we're going to have on this planet earth.

We will be bright and strong. Thomas Aquinas says we're going to be bright and very fast and finally. So that's best. The best thing is back on this planet with actual bodies that eat and run and play and laugh.

Ann Wilson: That's crazy too. Even to think of Jesus, to think of us walking through a door. You don't even walk through, you don't open the door, you just walk through the door. Like, what? Which makes you think: how will we travel? Will we just... There's so many questions. But it's exciting.

Dave Wilson: I mean, that blows away some myths though. A lot of people, and I grew up in a traditional church with my mom, and I think I heard "heaven is floating around on clouds, playing harps, singing hymns forever." Sounds boring, actually. Very boring. And as a kid, I was like, "Yeah, that is really... that's our eternity?" Where does that come from? I literally heard that.

Ann Wilson: Well, you said let's define the better because you said bad, good, better, best. So what is the better? You said we're floating around, which sounds like... what is that?

Dane Ortlund: Better's the intermediate state. It's where we're with Christ. We do not have a body, but we can never undress from our soul. Our soul is who we are.

Ann Wilson: So it's our soul is with God.

Dane Ortlund: That's right. That's what better is.

Dave Wilson: Will we feel the time? Like if I die today and Jesus doesn't come back for 10 years, will I know it's 10 years or it'll be pretty quick?

Dane Ortlund: The answer to that question, Dave, is we don't know. So we go as far as the scripture is explicit or with our sanctified speculation it gives us trajectories to understand, but we also need to say there's mystery here too and we can't parse it out exactly. So I don't know the answer to that. We'll find out.

Ann Wilson: But with our soul, we will still have emotion and joy.

Dane Ortlund: I believe so. Oh, yeah. We'll get the best though. So best is here on this planet. In better, in the intermediate state, you'll be with Christ, but you can't hug him.

Ann Wilson: Well, that's depressing.

Dane Ortlund: Right. It will be better than being here. Here we are in Christ, but not with him in the way that we will be with him in the intermediate state. But in best, when we all have bodies, then just like he would sweep up little kids into his arms in the gospels, then you can hug him. Then you can hug him.

And here's one way that I think of it. Just as in Revelation, the end of Revelation it says—it doesn't say there is no sun, S-U-N, in the new earth, the final best—it says there is no need of a sun. Why is there no need of a sun? I believe there will be a sun, because God created the sun and the moon, Genesis 1 and 2, before the fall.

The created order will be there, animals. Genesis 1 and 2 recovered in an escalated and unfallable way. That's the best, that's the new earth. And there's no need of a sun. The reason is we're there with the S-O-N. So the way I like to put it is sunlight has become the new sunlight. S-O-N light has become the new S-U-N light.

So if you think, "Oh, we're finally going to be with Christ, good, and we'll all have bodies, but there's going to be lines of millions of people to talk to him and to actually hug him." Hang on a minute. When you go to the beach, are there lines to enjoy the S-U-N? No, you are just basking in it. You're just enjoying it. It's just everywhere, just look up, just receive it.

That must be analogous to what it's going to be like with Christ. He has a body, he has a body right now. He was incarnated, he took on flesh and he never put it off. We will always have it, including in the new earth. But in some way, we will all be enjoying him. What a candle is to the S-U-N, the S-U-N is to Jesus Christ in the new earth.

Dave Wilson: Why do you think we love Dane so much?

Ann Wilson: He is so biblically sound. He is so full of joy. There's an enthusiasm and joy that exudes out of him and part of me thinks it's because of what we're talking about today: heaven. I did too. Did you see him almost coming out of his seat at times? Like, "I can't wait to talk about this!"

And I feel like when we talk to Dane, there are always little nuggets that he shares biblically that I've never even thought about before. So it's going to be fun to be with him again tomorrow.

Dave Wilson: He'll be with us tomorrow, but if you'd like, go right now to get his book. It's called *Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven*, and you can get it at FamilyLifeToday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes and join us back tomorrow. We're going to have Dane back talking about heaven.

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