Heavenly Mindedness (36)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“For heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation, so that its full content became accessible only to the patriarchs through a projection of their faith in time. The heaven for which they hoped was the heaven of redemption, enriched through the ages, become peopled with the successive generations of the saints of God, filled with the glory of Christ, the recreated paradise, towards which all the streams of grace springing up in time send their waters. The believer requires this new heaven, not simply the cosmical place that resulted from the first creation. Hence his heavenly-mindedness can never destroy interest in the unfolding of the ways of God throughout the history of the present world.” G. Vos

 

The “process of preparation” that Vos speaks of includes redemption, enrichment, and population of “successive generations.” Not only do we see successive generations throughout Hebrews Chapter 11, but we see this throughout the entire epistle with Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and others. Note the concept behind Hebrews 11:39 – 40:

 

“And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.” Our trajectory of perfection, our completeness, the possessing of the fulness of our inheritance in Jesus Christ is not so much about “me,” or “you,” – it is about “us.” Beyond “us” there is the One Man, with Jesus Christ as the Head; the Bride, the Perfected Temple – showing forth the glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

Our Father is ever gathering His elect, (mystery within mystery), and our Good Shepherd will continue to gather us together until every lamb is with the Flock, every stone is set in its unique place in the Temple, every member of the organic Body is functioning in harmony within that Body, every facet of His Bride has been cleansed and purified and made all glorious within and without in her Bridegroom. How foolish we are to think that our Perfect God will have anything less than a perfect work within His People, who have been redeemed by the perfect Atonement of Jesus Christ.

 

We witness this process of populating heaven throughout the Bible, but particularly in Revelation, “And they sang a new song, saying, Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood [people] from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth” (Rev. 5:9 – 10).

 

We see that when the Bride is unveiled from the heavens, that she has been “prepared” and “made ready” for “her husband” (Rev. 21:2). This beautiful Woman radiates the “glory of God” and she is “brilliant” (Rev. 21:11) – for “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them…” (John 17:22).

 

Christ is coming, Christ is always coming, and one Day His coming will be consummated. He is coming to be “glorified in His saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed,” “the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:10 – 12).

 

Why do we reject the glory of God when He comes to us in Jesus Christ? Why do we push our kind and loving Father back, again and again and again – refusing to accept our inheritance in Jesus Christ? After all, it is our Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom (Luke 12:32). While our Lord Jesus desires that His joy may be in us, and that our joy may be made full (John 15:11), we would rather wallow in Egypt or waddle into and out of our gatherings in grave clothes.

 

Do you realize that you have been called to participate in the grand procession, from ages past into ages future? Do you know that you have a part to play? Do you know that your congregation has a Divine part to play? Do you realize that you can only fulfill your purpose in this life as you find yourself in Christ, in His Body, His Bride, His holy Catholic Church? Does your congregation know that it is called to live and breathe and function within the transcendent Temple of God, the Place of His dwelling, of His Presence, His shekinah?

 

Any identity less than the above, falls short of the glory of Jesus Christ and the Gospel.

 

“…the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:21 – 23).

 

Are we participating in this process of preparation today?

 

How is Your Swimmng?

 “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” – “The Five Deaths of the Faith,” The Everlasting Man

Chesterton

Heavenly Mindedness (35)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“For heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation, so that its full content became accessible only to the patriarchs through a projection of their faith in time. The heaven for which they hoped was the heaven of redemption, enriched through the ages, become peopled with the successive generations of the saints of God, filled with the glory of Christ, the recreated paradise, towards which all the streams of grace springing up in time send their waters. The believer requires this new heaven, not simply the cosmical place that resulted from the first creation. Hence his heavenly-mindedness can never destroy interest in the unfolding of the ways of God throughout the history of the present world.” G. Vos

 

Returning to Joshua 1:1 – 9 from our last post, and considering, “Every place where the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses” (1:3): Yahweh is not speaking to Joshua as an individual man, but in Joshua’s capacity as Israel’s leader, as Israel’s Head. Yes, Joshua and his family have an inheritance upon which to walk, but that is, in one sense, incidental to Joshua, as the Head of Israel, leading the People of Israel – as one People – across the Jordan River and possessing the collective inheritance given to the Family of God, the People of God, the Church of God.

 

Dear friends, our life in Christ is not about me obtaining my individual inheritance in Jesus Christ – it is about us obtaining our inheritance in Jesus Christ. Whatever portion of my inheritance I may possess today, is for the purpose of helping others possess their portions tomorrow. If I do not use what I have been given in Christ today for the benefit of others, it will surely become moldy and stink and turn putrid.

 

Why is it that we can quote John 3:16, but we cannot quote 1 John 3:16? “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” We proclaim John 3:16 to the world and to provide assurance to Christians, but we must preach and live 1 John 3:16 within the Church – for to be sure the world will have no better testimony to the Gospel, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love one for another” (John 13:34 – 35).

 

One of the motifs of Hebrews Chapter 11 is the People of God and their collective experience, for while the Holy Spirit weaves the tapestry with Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others – these threads portray a People, a People to which we, in Christ, belong, for “…apart from us they would not be made perfect” (Heb. 11:40b).

 

The feet which are called to walk upon the inheritance, and by walking possess it, are the feet of the Body of Christ, the Body of which Jesus Christ is the Head. We are called to preserve and build upon what has been given us by those who have gone before us in Christ, and to expand the possession of our inheritance for those who are coming after us in Christ. This includes the subjection of the enemies of God, not by earthly means, but by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God (Ephesians 6:10ff; 2 Cor. 10:3ff). The Father is in the process of putting all things under the feet of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 15:27; Psalm 8:6; Hebrews 2:5 – 18; and throughout Revelation).

 

Joshua is a portrayal of Jesus Christ, and God’s Word to Joshua is the Father’s Word to the Son. We belong to the transcendent Body of Christ, and the “feet” are that element of the Body which are touching earth; as we saw previously in Ephesians 4, the Body of Christ is growing on a trajectory of maturity unto the “measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

 

While we all, in one sense, have our individual inheritance in Christ, in another sense we don’t – for the inheritance of the Body of Christ is indivisible, it cannot ultimately be divided any more than the Trinity can be divided. We are “joint heirs” with Christ (Romans 8:17); to be a joint heir is to receive and hold an inheritance with another, or others, indivisibly.

 

We see this image in 1 Peter 3:7 when Peter writes that husbands and wives are “joint heirs of the grace of life.” English common law acknowledged what is termed the “unity of person” when it came to holding title to real estate – that is, it recognized that in a marriage the “two become one.” When I practiced real estate in Maryland, and a husband and wife were taking title to property, they took it as “tenants by the entirely” – this meant, among other things, that they held the property as husband and wife, as one person. Only a man and woman, as husband and wife, could take title as “tenants by the entirely.” because only in marriage do “two become one.”

 

This is why, if a husband or a wife wanted to borrow money and use the house as collateral that the lender would only agree to the loan if the other spouse signed the loan documents, otherwise, the lender could not go against the house in a loan default because the house wasn’t the property of Mike Smith, and it wasn’t the property of Joan Smith – it was the property of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, husband and wife – and this one person – this unique person, had not agreed to use the house as collateral.

 

I imagine that this may be an unfamiliar concept, this idea of “unity of person” and “joint and indivisible heirs,” but this language and these concepts permeate the Bible. I also imagine that the image of the transcendent Body of Christ is difficult, yet again this is found throughout the Bible, and the New Testament opens up a Niagara of vision and understanding the sweeps back and forth from Genesis to Revelation.

 

To go back to the previous post, when Christians tell me that they don’t have time for God’s Word, when they tell me that they are too tired for prayer, the Bible, fellowship with others; I want to say to them that this is selfish, because life is not about me, or you, it is about us. Our brothers and sisters, and this dying world, need us to participate in possessing the inheritance that we have in Christ, we need one another in Christ to function as the Body of Christ.

 

Once again, our American individualism has invaded the professing church, where often all that matters is that we have our “ticket” punched for heaven - certainly a false teaching (consider again the Parable of the Sower).

 

If we cannot “see” the transcendent Church of Jesus Christ, we will not “see” what Vos means when he speaks of heaven being in a process of preparation.

 

What do you “see” today?

 

Heavenly Mindedness (34)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“For heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation, so that its full content became accessible only to the patriarchs through a projection of their faith in time. The heaven for which they hoped was the heaven of redemption, enriched through the ages, become peopled with the successive generations of the saints of God, filled with the glory of Christ, the recreated paradise, towards which all the streams of grace springing up in time send their waters. The believer requires this new heaven, not simply the cosmical place that resulted from the first creation. Hence his heavenly-mindedness can never destroy interest in the unfolding of the ways of God throughout the history of the present world.” G. Vos

 

Continuing with the question from our previous post, what does it mean that “heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation” and in particular what might “enriched through the ages” mean? In the last post we considered enrichment in light of Ephesians Chapter 4, today we’ll consider Joshua Chapter 1, in which we see Joshua preparing to lead Israel into Canaan, the Promised Land, the inheritance which God had promised to their ancestors.

 

Key concepts in Joshua 1:1 – 9 are:

            “Every place where the sole of your foot treads shall be yours” (verse 3).

            “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success” (verse 8; see also Psalm 1 and Psalm 119).

 

In order for Joshua to lead the people into their inheritance two things had to occur in unity; the Law of God needed to dwell ever-presently in the words and thoughts of Joshua and the people, and Joshua and the people must actually put their feet on the land in order to possess it. Without the Law of Yahweh, the people would not have the wisdom and knowledge needed to walk on the land, nor would they be living in daily communion (koinonia) with Him, a fellowship which would make them holy as God is holy and thus, among other things, protect their hearts and minds from the demons of that region. Sadly, the fulness of the inheritance was never possessed because the people, especially once Joshua and Caleb died, failed to have the Law of God and relationship with God as their center of gravity, their source of light and life – and so they worshipped the demons of the region, they lived as those who did not know God, and “everyone did what was right in his own eyes,” certainly a picture of the church in present-day America.

 

Friends, having Bibles in our homes is worse than being without Bibles if we are not meditating in the Word of God, teaching the word of God, speaking the Word of God to one another, and walking the entire length, breath, depth, and height of the Word of God. If we are not doing these things we often have a false sense of security, a false sense of who we are, a false sense that we are obedient; we both excuse ourselves and others for our laziness and disobedience.

 

In 2 Peter 1:2 – 4 there are key concepts that mirror Joshua 1:1 – 9:

            “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (verse 3).

            “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (verse 4a).

            “For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust” (verse 4b).

 

As Jesus makes clear in the Gospel of John, especially in chapters 13 – 17, we are called to share the life of the Trinity, we are called to be partakers of the divine nature (see also Hebrews Chapter 2). We are the sons and daughters of the Living God, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ (Romans Chapter 8).  The Holy Trinity ought to be the core identity of all those who belong to Jesus Christ.

 

We receive grace and peace as we live a life of knowing God, a life of deepening and secure intimacy with God. This is not about “data” and information, this is about informed relationship in which we live in the Trinity and the Trinity lives in us (see John chapters 13 – 17).

 

Make no mistake, God has called us to His own glory and excellence. Let us recognize that there is a true knowledge and false knowledge (there is also love that abounds with wisdom and judgment and informed love – Philippians 1:9-11, contra much of the practice of the professing church in America).

 

Just as God placed the land of inheritance before ancient Israel, so God has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness (see 2 Cor. 1:19 – 22). But how are we to experience this everything?

 

We do this through His precious and magnificent promises, through which we become partakers of the divine nature.

 

O dear friends, Joshua and Israel could have read travel books about Canaan, they could have watched videos about Canaan, they could have had people who had been to Canaan share their experiences (which of course they did and which led to unpleasant results) with them – but doing these things would not make them possessors of their inheritance.

 

In the same fashion we can read what others say about the Bible, we can watch videos about the Bible, we can listen to others tell us about the Bible (and these may all have their place); but unless we are walking the land of the Bible, reading the Bible, meditating in the Bible; making the Word of God, in Christ, our source of light and life – then we are living outside our inheritance and are falling short of the calling of Jesus Christ in our lives. After all, Jesus said that we are to disciple and teach others to obey all that He has commanded us (Matthew 28:16 – 20). Where, please tell me, did we ever get the idea that we can be Christians and not know and obey God’s Word? God is not a heavenly therapist, Jesus Christ is not trying to win friends and influence people, the Trinity is not Las Vegas, Hollywood, Disney World, Washington, D.C., or Wall Street (see Psalm 2 and Daniel Chapter 2).

 

To possess our inheritance in Jesus Christ we must walk on the land as we receive the Word of God. Dear friends, while Jesus said that we are to be as little children, He did not teach us to be childish. It is childish to say, “I don’t like to read. I don’t have time. I am too tired.” We are to be as children as we trust of Father and Lord Jesus, as we explore the delightful and fragrant land (the Bible, the Living Word in Christ) that He has given us; but we are not to childishly spout dozens of excuses of why we can’t open the Book, call on the Holy Spirit (John 16:12 – 15; 1 Cor. 1:18 – 2:16) and grow in friendship with God and with one another.

 

Many of us have had the experience of purchasing real estate, most often a home. Most of us think that once we’ve signed settlement documents and money has been transferred and the deed recorded that the real estate we’ve purchased is now ours. While I am not certain of current “technical practice,” when I was getting into the real estate business in Maryland years ago there was an element of English common law that was still practiced – and that is that the purchaser needed to take physical possession of the property, he or she needed to “walk on the land” in order to consummate the transaction. Does this sound familiar? Can you “see” Joshua and Peter in this concept?

 

My heart breaks for the church today, we have the Treasure of the Ages in our midst, we have Canaan spread before us…but like Esau we are trading it for pottage…well…worse than Esau, we can’t even live off what we’re getting for the trade.

 

Are you a man or a woman of Psalm 1?

 

If you are, then have others join on this pilgrimage.

 

If not, then this can be the first day of a grand adventure and you can learn, as C.S. Lewis would say, “To take the adventure that Aslan gives us!”

 

With all love and care,

 

Bob

 

Heavenly Mindedness (33)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“For heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation, so that its full content became accessible only to the patriarchs through a projection of their faith in time. The heaven for which they hoped was the heaven of redemption, enriched through the ages, become peopled with the successive generations of the saints of God, filled with the glory of Christ, the recreated paradise, towards which all the streams of grace springing up in time send their waters. The believer requires this new heaven, not simply the cosmical place that resulted from the first creation. Hence his heavenly-mindedness can never destroy interest in the unfolding of the ways of God throughout the history of the present world.” G. Vos

 

Continuing with the question from our previous post, what does it mean that “heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation”?

 

Have you ever considered that American Christians tend to think upside-down when it comes to Biblical prophecy and trajectory? While the Bible’s focus is the ever-expanding Kingdom of God, the growth of the Temple of God, the glory and purification of the Bride, the maturation of the Body of Christ, and the formation of each member of this Body into the image of Jesus Christ; our focus tends to be on the trajectory of evil, the headlines of evil, what (we think) the Bible says about evil. This is what aviators call “spatial disorientation.” Our mindset often is, frankly, that evil wins and we must escape; rather than the Biblical trajectory of Daniel Chapter 2 - the Stone conquers and brings the kingdoms of this world, all its kingdoms and political entities, to an end.

 

This upside-down thinking is a challenge to understanding Vos’s “heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation” because we are unaccustomed to seeing what God in Christ in glory is doing, we are rather accustomed to focusing on evil; buying books that purport to interpret headlines about evil, satisfying our curiosity about evil and darkness. May I gently point out that we do not see in darkness, we see in light, and there is only one true Light that we can truly see by, that of Jesus Christ and His glorious redemptive work on this earth – a work that, while it does contain judgement, is focused on the glory of God, the perfection of the saints, and the deliverance of Creation from the “bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

 

Our upside-down thinking is a disability that only an unrelenting focus on Jesus Christ can deliver us from (Hebrews 12:3), a focus that our Fathers and Mothers have maintained throughout the ages (Hebrews 11).

 

As we saw in our last post, Vos notes that elements of the process of preparing heaven include redemption, enrichment, and people. We touched on “redemption” in the last post; what might “enrichment” mean? I imagine there are many facets to the answer, I’ll share what comes to my mind and you can ponder others than come to you in your meditations.

 

I see two paradigms, one in Ephesians 4 and the other in Joshua 1. In Ephesians 4 we see that the “Mature Man” is growing up into the “measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ,” into “all aspects” of Him “who is the Head, even Christ.” We see that every member of His Body is “being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the Body for the building up of itself in love.”

 

This is certainly a portrait of enrichment. It also may be a challenge for us as we consider the likely disconnect between the Holy Spirit’s vision of the Body of Christ and our vision and practice. Sadly, many (most) of us who have been academically trained for vocational ministry have either lost sight of the fact, or have never known, that our calling is to “equip the saints for the work of service/ministry, to the building up of the Body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11). We are products of a system that spans virtually all traditions, that thinks upside-down in terms of those called to elder-type service and the rest of the Body. This is a primary reason that I do not use the term “laity,” the clergy – laity dichotomy is a dichotomy of death, along with the sacred – secular dichotomy.

 

But let me be quick to say that this upside – down thinking is embraced and defended by most congregations, by most people, because it is much more comfortable to place the burden for ministry on the few, rather than to expect the members of the congregation to actually know the Bible, live the Bible, and be devoted to Jesus Christ. We want the professionals to take care of religious things, and to serve us the way we want to be served, to entertain us the way we want to be entertained, to be our therapists. Let’s recall that it was the Man who washed the feet of others Who was crucified – thus it shall be until that Man comes in the fulness of His Kingdom.

 

The leadership of a parish once criticized me in an annual review for expecting them to “read too much.” I wanted them to read because I wanted to equip them to equip others, and my reading requests were modest – but what was a child’s toy pail of reading to me, was a front-end loader’s bucket of sand to them. I have worked with small groups in which I’ve received the same pushback, we simply do not want to “till our land that we may have plenty of bread.” We want others to feed us. (I am amused when I hear Protestants accuse Roman Catholics of seeing the priest as a mediator – Protestants are no different.)

 

Perhaps this is enough to ponder for now, I’ll circle back to Joshua Chapter 1 in the next post. In the meantime, what do you see regarding enrichment in the Kingdom of Heaven in Joshua Chapter 1?

 

 

 

Heavenly Mindedness (32)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“For heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation, so that its full content became accessible only to the patriarchs through a projection of their faith in time. The heaven for which they hoped was the heaven of redemption, enriched through the ages, become peopled with the successive generations of the saints of God, filled with the glory of Christ, the recreated paradise, towards which all the streams of grace springing up in time send their waters. The believer requires this new heaven, not simply the cosmical place that resulted from the first creation. Hence his heavenly-mindedness can never destroy interest in the unfolding of the ways of God throughout the history of the present world.” G. Vos

 

Continuing with the question from our previous post, what does it mean that “heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation”?

 

Vos notes that elements of this process include redemption, enrichment, and people. While Vos speaks of a “recreated paradise,” he also notes that this is “not simply the cosmical place that resulted from the first creation.” We do not seek a return to the Genesis creation before the Fall, anymore than we seek to become what the First Man, Adam, was before the Fall; we seek a New Heavens and Earth in the Second Man, Jesus Christ. We do not seek to bear the image of the earthly Man, but of the Heavenly Man. Let us remember that contrary to popular usage, even in academic circles which should know better, that Jesus Christ is NOT the Second Adam, He is the LAST Adam (1 Cor. 15:45). Adam is the First Man, Jesus Christ is the Second Man (1 Cor. 15:47). Those in Christ no longer trace their genealogy back to the First Adam, they trace it to Jesus Christ – when we are in Christ we are a new creation, and have been brought into the New Creation (2 Cor. 5:17).

 

In Jesus Christ as the Last Adam, we have Adam’s race put to death on the Cross, buried in the earth; Christ, the Last Adam, becomes a life-giving spirit and a Second Man comes forth from the grave on Easter. (Consider Romans 5:12 – 7:6). The process of preparation in heaven is the process of the growth and maturity and completion of the corporate Second Man (Ephesians 4:11 – 16), the purification and presentation of the Bride (Ephesians 5:22 – 32), and the completion of the Living Temple (Ephesians 2:17 – 22). As Ephesians 2:11 – 3:13 makes abundantly clear, the purpose of our Father from ages past is to have One People, and on the Cross Jesus Christ made Jew and Gentile One People, making “one New Man” (Eph. 2:15).

 

Any theological system that seeks to separate the “one New Man” that Jesus Christ created in Himself, seeks to cut the Body of Christ in two and do violence to the work of Christ on the Cross. We cannot appreciate the process of the preparation of heaven unless we appreciate and honor our Father’s eternal purpose to have a Body for His Son, a Bride for His Son, a Temple in which to live. We are called to be the City of God, to live in God and for God to live in us – within the unity and koinonia of the Trinity.

 

The individualism that Americans live in is a prison, the “personal freedom” that we worship is an idol without Biblical foundation, the Babylonian confusion of the national flag, and its mythological national history, with the Gospel is a poison. If I am in Christ then I am called to live for the People of God, the City of God, and to share the Gospel with others. If I am in Christ then my life is no longer my own, I belong to Jesus Christ. If I am in Jesus Christ then I am a citizen of heaven and I realize that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” including all nations and political entities.

 

We will not see what Vos is writing about if we do not confess that we are strangers and aliens on this earth, that we are seeking that City with foundations, whose Builder and Marker is God; for only then will we not only begin to see what Vos sees, but we will become participants in God’s grand process of preparing heaven. When the fulness of the New Jerusalem in manifested (Revelation chapters 21 – 22), there will be those who have participated in its building (1 Cor. 3:10ff) and those who have not – which group would you like to be in?

 

Please take some time and ponder the Word of God regarding these things, they do not come to most of us easily because of way we have been raised in society and in church.

 

Heavenly Mindedness (31)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“For heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation, so that its full content became accessible only to the patriarchs through a projection of their faith in time. The heaven for which they hoped was the heaven of redemption, enriched through the ages, become peopled with the successive generations of the saints of God, filled with the glory of Christ, the recreated paradise, towards which all the streams of grace springing up in time send their waters. The believer requires this new heaven, not simply the cosmical place that resulted from the first creation. Hence his heavenly-mindedness can never destroy interest in the unfolding of the ways of God throughout the history of the present world.” G. Vos

 

Heaven is in a process of preparation, the patriarchs had a sense of its coming fulness as they saw and touched it transcendently through time, it was a heaven of redemption they saw, the culmination of a process through the ages, populated with saints from all generations – the glory of Christ permeates this glorious heaven which surpasses the first creation; this heavenly-mindedness does not negate interest and concern in the present world, in fact we engage the world because God’s ways are unfolding throughout history.

 

What does Vos mean, “For heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation”? Is this something we think about? Can it be that we are such prisoners of the “here and now” that our thinking and horizons have collapsed into distracted nanoseconds from which we cannot escape? Sustained thinking and conversation seem to be a foreign practice for us, we want to respond to everything “now,” we want fulfillment and gratification “now,” we demand attention “now.” This makes as much sense as getting on an airplane and not caring about its destination as long as we are given food and drink and entertained during the flight. Suppose the airplane is going to fly over the ocean until it runs out of fuel? Suppose it lands in a nation torn by war or famine or disease? It does not matter as long as we are entertained and catered to during the flight.

 

In approaching the idea that “heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation” I’m going to share some of my customary words of caution; we can only know what the Holy Spirit reveals to us through the Word of God, and in conformity to the Word of God. There is much around us that can inspire us and instruct us, such as our Father’s glorious Creation, even in its state of disarray and corruption; but our foundation and bearing walls must always be the sure and certain Word of God in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:10 – 15).

 

Having said the foregoing, it is our Father’s firm desire to reveal Himself to us through the Holy Spirit, “even the very depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10). Jesus says concerning the Holy Spirit, “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore, I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you” (John 16:14 – 15). And yet, with all of this, we still “see through a glass darkly” and we “know in part” (1 Cor. 13:12).

 

Peter teaches that the ancient prophets did not fully understand what the “Spirit of Christ” was speaking through them, however, “It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you…” (1 Peter 1:10 - 12). A good dose of humility and wonder is helpful as we consider what it means when Vos writes, “heaven itself is subject to a process of preparation.”

 

Jesus tells us that He goes to prepare a place for us (John 14:3). We see in Hebrews 11:10 that God is the builder and architect of our City, and that “He has prepared a City” for those who seek Him (Heb. 11:3, 16). There is an ongoing work of preparation by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 2:19 – 22 we see that we are “being fitted together” and are “growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”

 

Hebrews 11:39 – 12:1 speaks to us of the collective nature of God’s preparation in His People, “so that apart from us they would not be made perfect. Therefore, since we have a great crowd of witnesses surrounding us…”

 

Peter witnesses to this process and preparation in 1 Peter 2:4 – 10, “…you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house…” Paul gives us a picture of a Maturing Man, “which belongs to the measure of the stature of the of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:10 – 16).

 

A problem we face with the above passages is that we don’t think like this, we don’t see ourselves as God’s People, as Christ’s Body, as the Holy Spirit’s (collective) Temple – at least in the United States we don’t. We have been corrupted by an individualism that trumps everything. Our congregations, regardless of their polity, functionally consider themselves individual entities. Some traditions are strident in their insistence that each congregation must be self-governing and self-accountable. While this is not the place to explore the issue of polity, I don’t see how a fair reading of the New Testament, indeed of the entire Bible, can support the idea that congregations are accountable to no one but themselves. The Bible was written to the universal and transcendent People of God and demonstrates time and again that we are accountable to one another.

 

Our individualism, including congregational individualism, hardly conforms to the prayer of Jesus that, “…they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me, I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me” (John 17:21 – 23; see also Ephesians 4:1 - 6).

 

We functionally dismiss what Christ is saying, our actions do not indicate that we think it relevant to our collective testimony and evangelism. The professing – church is a religious Babel and we don’t seem to care.

 

If we do not submit our thinking to the Bible, we will not see what the Bible is saying. We must learn to submit to God’s Word, to allow God’s Word to form our thinking and perspectives – no matter what our cultural backgrounds may be, even American individualism.

 

As I was writing this, I received a well-intentioned email from an organization inviting me to join a thirty-day program “to find God’s purpose for my life.” In all charity, if I do not understand God’s eternal purpose to be glorified in Jesus Christ, and for Christ Jesus to be glorified in His Body, His Bride, the New Jerusalem, the City which God is building, His Living Temple – then I will not likely find God’s purpose for my individual life. Life is not about me, it is about Christ and His People.

 

If we do not understand this, we will not understand that heaven is in a process of preparation, for this process is about the glory of Christ and His People, and I only find my purpose and calling as I see myself as a member of the transcendent Body of Jesus Christ.

 

We’ll continue with this in the next post…

Psalm 56 – Excerpts from Augustine

 

Psalm 56 – Excerpts from Augustine

(Updated with some paraphrase by R. Withers)

 

“Held in a winepress is His Body, that is, His Church. What does it mean to be in a winepress? It means to be subject to pressings. A grape on the vine doesn’t experience pressing, it appears whole, but nothing flows from it. When the grape is thrown into a winepress, it is walked on, stomped on, it is pressed down; it appears as if it is being harmed, but this harm is not barren; if fact, if there had been no harm, if no pressure, then that grape that appeared whole on the vine would have been barren – nothing would have flowed form it.

 

“Do not fear because man has pressed you down; let wine be produced, in fact, you’ve become a grape in order that you might be trodden down in the winepress.

 

“The first cluster pressed down is Christ…Let His Body likewise say, looking upon its Head, “Be gracious to me, O God, for man has trampled upon me,” [Psalm 56:1a]…If you look at your life and don’t have troubles, if you cannot relate to this passage and image, then perhaps you have not really begun to be a Christian…If you have not yet suffered any persecution for Christ, you should be concerned whether or not you have really started to live a godly life in Christ [2 Timothy 3:12], you should be concerned whether or not you have entered into the winepress of Christ; prepare yourself for pressings, do not be a dry grape, for then when you are pressed there will be no juice flowing from you.

 

“A grape I was, wine I shall be.”  

 

This was true of Christ, let it be true of me. This was true of the Head, so it will be true of His True and Faithful Body.

It sure seems as if much of our preaching and teaching is about avoiding the Cross of Christ, avoiding suffering for Him. Are you living your life avoiding the winepress? Or, are you embracing the Cross of Jesus Christ? Are we living in the winepress? Are others partaking of the wine of the Head poured out through His Body? Are we, in Christ, broken Bread and poured out Wine?

 

Mark 8:34 – 38; Galatians 2:20; 6:11 – 16.