Heavenly Mindedness (37)

 

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

 

 “Neither grows he [the believer] impatient when the promise seems to tarry. For his hope also is in him a vitalizing power. It lives by the things that are not as though they were already, and makes the future supply strength for the present. Amidst all the vicissitudes of time the Christian knows that the foundations of the city of God are being quietly laid, that its walls are rising steadily, and that it will at last stand finished in all its golden glory, the crowning product of the work of God for his own.” G. Vos.

 

I don’t know about not growing impatient, after all, we see the “souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God…crying out, How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Rev. 6:9 – 10). James tells us that we are to allow “patience [endurance] to have its perfect work, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4).

 

Does not patience grow as it is challenged and tempted with impatience? Isn’t there an interplay of impatience and patience, a tension? Doesn’t impatience, or the temptation of impatience, provide the weight on the bar to strengthen our patience? If we are participants in the process of heaven’s preparation (see previous posts), then as we “see” the goal, the perfect, the completeness of God’s work; we are driven to close the gap between what is and what shall be, between the perfect and the imperfect, between that which is complete and that which is being completed.

 

And yet we learn, “Unless Yahweh builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless Yahweh guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1). We learn the reality of, “I am the Vine…apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). This is not our work, this is God’s work; we are participants, we have the joy of working alongside our heavenly Father and our Brother, our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Vos writes, “For his hope also is in him a vitalizing power. It lives by the things that are not as though they were already, and makes the future supply strength for the present.”

 

The man or woman who will learn to live in the New Jerusalem now, who will walk the streets of Revelation chapters 21 and 22 now, who will draw closer and closer to the Light of that glorious City now, will find a vitalizing power that continues to draw him or her onward and upward, from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; Prov. 4:18).

 

When we come into a relationship with Jesus Christ, we “rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2), for here we have a down payment of that glory, a foretaste in the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13 – 14; 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5), and we live in growing anticipation of the fulness of the glory when we see our dear Lord Jesus (1 John 3:1 – 3). The Apostle John writes, “Everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 Jn. 3:3).

 

Hope fixed on Jesus purifies us, and the complete working out of that hope is that we will be pure “just as He is pure.” How is this possible? It is possible, it is certain, it is guaranteed by His grace, because as we behold Jesus we are transformed into His image (see again 1 John 3:1 – 3; 2 Cor. 3:17 – 18); the same grace that called us is the same grace that will perfect us in Christ…not simply as individuals, but as His People – for without “one another” there is no completeness, no perfection.

 

And so Paul can write that “in hope we are saved” as we “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 8:18 – 25).

 

We learn to look at the things that are unseen, because these are the eternal things (2 Cor. 4:18); we allow the Holy Spirit to teach us to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). This is a way of life developed in the Word of God by the Holy Spirit, a way of life that lives in the “already and the not yet.” As Abraham, we learn to trust the One who calls “things which are not as though they were” (Rom. 4:17).

 

The context of Vos’s message, Hebrews Chapter 11, contains the theme of not only seeing things which are invisible, but also of seeing Him Who is invisible (Heb. 11:27). Another theme is that of endurance and perseverance (Heb. 11:25); from Abel through the saints of verses 32ff, those who cultivate a life of faith, of seeking that City, of pursuing the Face of God, will always find themselves going against the grain of this present age.

 

“For his hope also is in him a vitalizing power… the Christian knows that the foundations of the city of God are being quietly laid.” In order for me to know this vitalizing power, I must know this hope; to know this hope is to live in this hope, and to live in this hope is to seek its continual expansion, both in my own soul and in us as His People. This foursquare expansion is expressed by Paul in Ephesians 3:18, “…may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breath and length and height and depth…”

 

I desire to live with the Fathers and Mothers of our faith and to see what they saw, to have the hope that they had, an animating and vitalizing hope anchored in the invisible God and His son Jesus Christ.

 

I do not want to be numbered among the people of Haggai Chapter One, who only care about themselves and their own houses; whether those houses are our individual lives, our families, our congregations, our denominations, or our distinctives – we have been set free for the express purpose of building the Temple of God and the City of God and we are called to look beyond ourselves and our own wants and needs.  Let us refuse to be captives of the temporal, of the immediate, of the pragmatic, of our self-preservation. We can hardly have the hope of the eternal when our hearts and minds swim in the temporal. Let us not navigate life using the weathervane of the world, but rather the compass of the Word and the Cross. No matter the pressure upon us, let us not barter our birthright for a mess of temporal stew – whether that be political, economic, national, or any other of the false identities that seek to rob the people of God of their calling in Jesus Christ – a calling which transcends this present age, its powers, its cultures, and its religious games.

 

The hope that Vos speaks of, the hope that Hebrews Chapter 11 testifies of, the hope we have in Jesus Christ as His People (not as isolated individuals or individual groups) – is a hope that empowers us from here to eternity, a hope that conquers all in Christ, a hope that serves others, a hope that will be satisfied with nothing less than the fulness of the Father’s will and His ultimate intention in His Son. This is the hope of the heavenly – minded!

 

Let us allow the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to purify our hope in Christ, and to purify us in that blessed hope.