The Eternal Significance of WorkSample

Yesterday we learned that earth is not a place to be escaped, but rather a place to be redeemed. In today’s excerpt from my podcast conversation with N.T. Wright, the great theologian shares more about God’s plan to make all things new. Here’s N.T. Wright:

When we then talk about heaven, I often say to people, feel free to use the language of heaven if you like, for where you go in between times. For how it is when, as Paul says, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, which is far better” (Philippians 1). Or in 2 Corinthians 5, [when] he says something similar, that our desire is not to be in a mess down here, but to be with the Lord. That's fine, but that is only ever a temporary thing because God is going to make new heavens and new earth, and He's going to raise us from the dead to be dwelling within that new heavens and new earth. 

Here's the irony; this is so clear in Romans 8. But because since the reformation and before actually, people have read Romans 8 as the story of how we get to heaven at last. The key bits have been misunderstood or misinterpreted. When Paul talks about creation itself, being rescued from its slavery to decay in order to have the freedom which comes when God’s children are glorified, people have just thought, “Oh, this is some rather complicated old language. We're not sure we understand it.”

If they had read that in the light of 1 Corinthians 15 or Revelation 21 and 22, then they would have seen, here is the biblical vision of new creation. If we persist in talking about going to heaven, we're doing something the New Testament doesn't do. I know Jesus said to the [man] beside him on the cross, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Paradise was only ever the waiting room in between the present world and the world to come. 

Then the really tricky bit actually…is how you then give a Christian account of that waiting period if you don't want to use the platonic idea of the soul. It seems to me that the New Testament uses the fact of the spirit that the Holy Spirit has indwelt us in this life. Then after our death, the Holy Spirit who has indwelt us still knows us, remembers us, holds on to us, so we continue to exist in the saving embrace and love of the spirit. Paul says our life is hidden with Christ in God, which I think means substantially the same thing. So that then, when God makes all things new, the spirit will give life, as Paul says, to our mortal bodies in the way that He gave life to Jesus’ mortal body.