Heaven is for Real, but There Is So Much More!

(The following article was published in the April 2014 edition of The Voice of the Village)

The book Heaven is for Real has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for three years now. Heaven is clearly important to a lot of people. But is heaven all there is? The popular New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has said, “Heaven is important, but it is not the end of the world.” Of course this might seem to be a bit of a shock. Is it just a statement of one of those biblical scholars who attempt to dismantle the faith? Well, no. What he means is this: there is something far more important and central to the Christian faith and its goal than dying and going to heaven. It’s the Resurrection.

The Christian faith proclaims that God has created us as body and soul. The two go together and that is what God has always intended for us. However, our sin has caused separation. It puts separation in our relationships with other people. Sin puts separation between God and us. Paul says, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Death is the separation of body and soul.

However, Christ has come and has taken on sin so that he was even “made sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). He was executed and God’s judgment against sin was carried out. But because Jesus was the only true and faithful Son of God, the Father raised Him from the dead to never die again. Here, I am not going to attempt to “prove” that Jesus rose from the dead. Don’t get me wrong—the evidence is there and if Jesus did not physically rise from the dead, my faith is in vain (1 Cor. 15:58)—but rather, I want to speak about what this means for the world. All who are in baptized into Christ have been reconciled with God freely by His grace and His merit—not of works, lest anyone should boast (Eph. 2:8-9; Rom. 6:3-11). Not only that, but they will rise again to newness of life on the Last Day.

Christians are not people who are better or without sin. Otherwise, our bodies would not die! Death is a separation of our soul from our body. We can be honest about it; it hurts us and it’s a bad thing. People get it wrong when they turn death into a good thing. It is true that sometimes death means the end of suffering for someone and with that comes a sense of relief. But sometimes more hurt is given when someone tells a grieving person that it was God’s will for a loved one to die. It is true that those who are baptized into Christ are at peace with Christ; but there is more to come! Heaven is an intermediate state where people wait for the Resurrection.

Here is the point of the Resurrection: there is more to come! God has even better things for everyone who is baptized into Christ! The hope of the Resurrection is the finishing of God’s plan. Not even this death that we experience will have the final say. We have the true hope that Jesus has defeated death completely. He was the first person ever to rise from the dead and because we have been baptized into Him, we will rise from the dead too! Our souls will be joined to our perfected, changed, and resurrected bodies. We at Faith Lutheran confess this in the Creed every Sunday: “I believe … in the Resurrection of the body.” We confess that Jesus’ Resurrection is the beginning, the first fruits. It is not a secret, but something that was seen and heard with eyes and ears. It means that God has done something about the realities that we experience in our flesh and blood; He has raised Jesus from the dead to never die again.

This is what makes the Resurrection so important. It allows people to grieve the death of loved ones. But it also points to the great hope, the “even more” that God has promised. So on the Last day, we will be able join in with Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:55-56—even as we do now—“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Heaven is for real, but there is so much more!