We fragile human beings are made by and sustained by God’s life and breath. Perhaps it’s this that leads us to live forever, conscious long after our physical bodies have worn out. It appears that we don’t have a choice about this, existence as image-bearers is eternal; it comes by having an intimate association with the holy One.
The question that anyone who’s reflected on the nature of the eternal God for long arrives at is: “How can beings made from dust exist in God’s presence?”
God is eternal glory, unapproachable light and consuming fire. We, by contrast, are temporal (we didn’t exist until we were created), we are unclean and corrupt, decaying daily and capable of great wickedness. Again, how can such beings live near God? This was the concern of the ancients. They thirsted for God, coveted his presence and wanted to live with him, in his house. They longed, you see, for a return to Eden and to the garden of God. They longed to walk with God and be in fellowship with him.
Do we share this longing or have we, perhaps, reduced the goal of existence to something far less exciting? I hear it in commonly expressed concern that “heaven sounds a bit boring…”
What is it that makes heaven heavenly I wonder? What could it be?
The Old Testament Israelites understood that to be near God was to experience the fullness of joy and to taste pleasures forevermore. It’s this that we glimpse in moments of ecstatic pleasure. It’s this that we taste when we’re drunk on longing and desire. It’s what all our experiences of awe are meant to signpost for us, and it’s what the everyday experiences of thirst and hunger invite us into.
The Heidelberg Catechism teaches that humanity was created to truly know and love God and to live with him in eternal happiness. The Westminster Shorter Catechism likewise says that the ‘chief end’ or main point of our existence is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is why we were made: fellowship with God. Friendship with the one who ‘made all of this up as a man might make up a story’.
Michael Morales writes: ‘enjoying [God] eternally, I suggest, is the story of the Bible, the plot that makes sense of the various acts, persons and places of its pages,’ and then adds ‘for this ultimate end the Son of God shed his blood and poured out the Spirit from on high, even to bring us into his Father’s house.’
Let me repeat what I said at the start: Living forever isn’t the gospel hope; living forever in God’s presence is. Our hope isn’t about mere immortality, it’s about communion with God.
All of us will live forever, meaning we will all continue in conscious existence. The difference is in the kind of life we will experience.
Whilst it doesn’t bear thinking about for long, it’s nevertheless the case that for many of us the life we’ll experience after death will feel more like eternal death than eternal life, but we will still be alive and aware. Outside of Christ, away from his presence we’ll experience the crushing weight of ongoing isolation and alienation, away from the house of God. Jesus describes it as an experience of total dissatisfaction, like never being able to scratch an itch, in a place where fire never fully consumes, in darkness and hopelessness.
We’re not capable of holding such ideas in our minds for long; they are surely too terrible for words.
Whilst that isn’t what we were made for, it does come as a necessary consequence of sharing in God’s life, a life he gave us out of desire for fellowship with us, and as the contrast between the two eternal states gets turned up it helps us sense the hope of the gospel afresh as well. The Christian hope is not just that we’ll go on living after death, but that we’ll live with God, in his house, in a creation bursting with Eden’s abundance forever.
I’ve reflected on all this whilst reading Michael Morales’ excellent book ‘Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?’ and as I’ve read it, I’ve also found myself dogged by a persistent thought.
Morales’ book is a biblical theology of Leviticus and makes the point that the central point of the Torah, indeed the central point of Leviticus, is the Day of Atonement, the day when the High Priest enters into the Most Holy Place and enjoys fellowship with God. Reading and reflecting on this book I’ve marvelled at the gift of God in the sacrificial system of the Jewish Tabernacle, the clarity of it all and the way it makes possible the goal of fellowship with the divine.
Leviticus opens in this way:
“Then the Lord summoned Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting: 2 ‘Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When any of you brings an offering to the Lord from the livestock, you may bring your offering from the herd or the flock.
3 ‘If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to bring an unblemished male. He will bring it to the entrance to the tent of meeting so that he may be accepted by the Lord. 4 He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering so it can be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. 5 He is to slaughter the bull before the Lord; Aaron’s sons the priests are to present the blood and splatter it on all sides of the altar that is at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 6 Then he is to skin the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. 7 The sons of Aaron the priest will prepare a fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. 8 Aaron’s sons the priests are to arrange the pieces, the head, and the fat on top of the burning wood on the altar. 9 The offeror is to wash its entrails and legs with water. Then the priest will burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, a food offering, a pleasing aroma to the Lord.”
Morales points out the three phase movement in each sacrificial offering in Leviticus: from expiation of sin (the blood), to sanctification (in the burnt offering) and on into union and communion with God (in the food eaten by the worshipper). It begins first with the worshipper ‘laying his hand on the head of the burnt offering.’ Something that Morales says wasn’t too impute sin but to express solidarity with the animal. He says that imputing of sin onto an animal occurs on the Day of Atonement, but then that animal is driven out of the camp, as an offering to the wilderness. Sin is not taken into God’s presence. Instead the idea contained in ‘lay his hand’ is better understood as ‘to lean his hand’. The worshipper presses his full weigh onto the animal for identification. He is saying in effect, this animal is me, my sin costs me my life, I cannot survive in God’s presence.
The thought that has dogged me throughout this study—a thought that has drawn me out of myself and into my deepest longing—is the reality on offer to all Christians.
Christ is not only our scapegoat, who carries our sin away from God’s presence, he is also our lamb, upon whose neck we lean impressing our full weight. He is me, his death is for me, I identify with him in his death. The result is that my sin has been expiated. I have died. Then, as the flames transformed the burnt offering into smoke enabling it to enter God’s presence, so the flame of the Spirit sanctifies and transforms me throughout life. Before finally being invited to eat with God, to live with him and to know him forever.
Dear friends, we don’t make enough of this. We don’t sit in his presence enough. We focus too much on self-improvement, on self-control and self-discipline, all the while the self has already been made acceptable to come into God’s house. We are able, as we are, to know him and enjoy him.
Surely we should expect more from our life with God. More, not in the sense of health and happiness, of wealth and travel, but more in the sense of peace with God, friendship with God, walking with God and living with God. This is the very thing for which we were made.
Over the past month I’ve had the privilege of being off work and away from church responsibilities. Others have very kindly picked up the things I usually do and instead I’ve been given freedom to be off, off and away. Throughout this time one of the things I’ve felt ground into my soul is the importance of slowness. Slowing my mind down from accomplishing tasks, slowing down in how quickly I share my thoughts or pass comment, or slowing down how much I try to cram into my day. Above all, slowing down to learn simply to be with God.
This, after all, is the gospel hope, the thing Christ died for. Christ’s cross, for all its wonder and mystery, was never an end in itself. It was the means by which God brings us home. I’m amazed at the cross, humbled by the cross but I must (we must) learn to love the goal of the cross. Make the most of it. Be with him. Alone and with others. On the road and in the quiet chair. Be with him now, and whet your appetite for what is to come: life in his presence forever.
Amen.