Heavenly Mindedness (29)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10, and returning to work through the passage from our last post:

 

“Because it had this effect for the patriarchs, faith had so intimately joined to it the exercise of hope. It is no less the assurance of things hoped for than the proving of things not seen. It annihilates the distance of time as much as of space. If faith deals with heaven as it exists, hope seizes upon it as it will be at the end. Hope attaches itself to promises; it sees and greets from afar. As the Epistle describes it, it does not contemplate purely provisional and earthly developments, does not come to rest in the happenings of intermediate ages, but relates to the end. In one unbroken flight it soars to the goal of God’s work in history, which is none other than the finished heaven.” G. Vos

 

Vos writes:

 

“It annihilates the distance of time as much as of space. If faith deals with heaven as it exists, hope seizes upon it as it will be at the end. Hope attaches itself to promises; it sees and greets from afar.”

 

In a forthcoming section Vos will expand on “as it will be at the end,” but we’ll engage the subject as it comes to us in his message, trusting our Lord Jesus to illuminate us. How might we think of the annihilation of space and time? Let’s begin with “space.”

 

Because we live in a material world, we tend to think spatially – we have spaces filled with things, whether trees, structures, mountains, or people; we have open spaces; we have personal spaces. Some of us have learned that two automobiles cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and we’ve learned that our insurance companies frown on attempting to prove this point. Many people have special spaces when they attend church, and woe to the visitor who dares to occupy that space. When a group of people move into a new office they all want the best spaces. When we eat in a restaurant we don’t want the table space next to the restrooms. When we consider going to see someone we think about the distance between our space and the other person’s space – how many miles is it, how long will it take us to make the trip? There are some people I can see today and others I cannot see – all because of the space between us.

 

How does “space” affect your daily life?

 

Because “space” informs much of our daily existence, it is natural that we tend to think spatially and experience much of life spatially; but how else might we experience life?

 

There are numerous places in the Bible where we are told that Jesus Christ is at the right hand of the Father (e.g., Acts 2:33; Eph. 1:20; Heb. 1:3). This is a spatial image that conveys a number of spiritual realities; the approval of the Father, the finished work of Christ, the authority of Christ over all principalities and powers. It is right and good that I should hold this spatial image in my heart and receive the grace that it is meant to communicate to me and grow in the reality of that image. However, that spatial image can also convey the idea of great distance between Jesus at the right hand of the Father and me on planet earth. If that spatial image with its immeasurable distance between me and the Son dominates my thinking, if my “space” is here on earth and Jesus’ “space” is at the right hand of God, then what is the likelihood that I will live in intimate relationship with Christ? God will be a distant figure to me, and I will consider myself a somewhat distant person to Him.

 

In John Chapter 14 Jesus tells the disciples that the Holy Spirit has been with them, and will be in them (14:17). Then Jesus says that if anyone loves Him and keeps His Word, “My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him” (14:23). In John 15:1 – 11 Jesus speaks of us “abiding in Him.” What has happened to spatiality? It has collapsed, God is no longer spatially distant from us, He is living within us.

 

In Hebrews, we are encouraged to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace” (4:16). In Hebrews 10:19 - 20 we are told that “we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh.” Once again, what has happened to spatiality? Whereas in the Gospel of John we see God coming to live within us, in Hebrews we see Christ opening the way for us to come live with Him. To put it another way, in John God comes to live in our temple, in Hebrews we come into His Temple.

 

We also see our spatial orientation changing in the Scriptures, from that which is “seen” to that which is “unseen”. While we see in Genesis that Yahweh promised Canaan to Abraham and his descendants, this idea of a promised land, even in the time of the Patriarchs, was transposed upward. This is why the Patriarchs saw themselves as “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13); why they desired “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16). Jacob was not looking for a city in Canaan, but rather for “the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10).

 

Paul testifies to this spatial transposition when he distinguishes between “the present Jerusalem…in slavery” and “the Jerusalem above” which is free and the mother of the children of promise (Galatians 4:21 – 31).

 

How is it that we are so locked into our earthly spatiality that we cannot “see” that the things that are recorded in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms are recorded “as an example…written for our instruction” (1 Cor. 10:11), that they are shadows of what is to come, “but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col. 2:17) and reveals Christ (Luke 24:25 – 32; 44 – 47)?

 

We build grand theological, and especially eschatological, edifices based on earthly ideas, earthly spatiality, images and shadows and types…never leaving the natural for the revelation of Jesus Christ in the spiritual. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew that “Canaan” meant more than “Canaan”, yet we insist on earthly spatiality. It is Jesus Christ who is our Sabbath, who is our Promised Land. “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29).

 

Let’s look at one more example of the collapse of spatiality in the Kingdom of God. In John Chapter 4 a woman raises the question with Jesus of just where people ought to worship, is it in her ancestral mountain or in Jerusalem? How does Jesus respond?

 

“Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father…but an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshippers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:21 – 24).

 

Do we believe this? Where is space in this? Where is spatiality? Here, in the beginning of his Gospel, John is introducing a radical concept to his readers; who, whether Jew or Gentile, have been raised in a spatial orientation regarding shrines and temples. What happened to Jerusalem? What happened to the woman’s ancestral mountain? Jesus has gone from speaking of a radical birth by the Holy Spirit in chapter 3, to a radical worship in chapter 4.

 

Where are sacred spaces? They are where Jesus Christ dwells, in His People, the New Temple of God (Ephesians 2:19 – 22; 1 Peter 2:4 – 10). The Holy Land is Jesus Christ and the People of God, the “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16). The City of the King is that which is above, the heavenly City which is the mother of us all in Christ. Abraham knew this, Isaac knew this, Jacob knew this – they confessed that they were strangers and aliens, on pilgrimage to the City whose Builder and Maker is God.

 

We no longer journey to sacred spaces; but we do make spaces sacred as the Presence of Christ lives within us.

 

Well might Vos preach about the annihilation of time and space. The Lord willing, we’ll explore “time” in our next post.