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.