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?