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Part 2: A Theology of Christmas Presents

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Introduction

In the first message of this series, we considered that there are three basic kinds of gifts—the mandatory gift of the tithe, where God is teaching us how He runs the world, the free will gift of the offering, where the student demonstrates that he is beginning to grasp the lesson, and the celebratory gift, which God has placed deep within our nature.

So we already considered the ground of our giving, which is the ultimate gift of Christ, the gift that God gave to us in order to restore the world that we had ruined. We have now come to the second point, which is the nature of giving. In future messages, we will look at the nature of receiving, and the goodness of the material world.

The Text

“And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:32–35).

Summary of the Text

Our text here is the conclusion of Paul’s exhortation to the elders of the church at Ephesus. He is reminding them that his dealings with that church were entirely aboveboard. He first commends them to God and the word of God’s grace, which can do two things. First the grace of God can edify them and build them up (v. 32). And second, the grace of God can give them an inheritance among the sanctified (v. 32). His interest is in them receiving their inheritance, and he moves seamlessly into the next point, which is that he had been no apostolic bandit among them. During his time there at Ephesus, Paul had coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or clothing (v. 33). He calls the elders of the church as witnesses—they know this (v. 34). Paul could hold out his hands and tell them that they know that “these hands” supplied the needs of Paul himself, along with his entourage (v. 34). They did not leech off the church. What Paul taught them to do Paul also did himself (v. 35), showing them how Christians ought to work in a way as to support the weak (v. 35). And Paul then quotes the Lord Jesus, and this is interesting, because it is a saying that none of the four gospels records. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Both giving and receiving are most necessary, as we will see by next week, but if you have to choose between them, choose to be among those who give. It really is more blessed to give than to receive. But as we shall see, because of our finitude it is not possible simply to give.

So Not So Fast . . .

Now notice something here. The Lord Jesus did not say that it is “more proper to give than to receive.” He did not say that it is “more noble to give than to receive.” And He did not say that it is “more polite to give than to receive.” No, not at all. Jesus said that it is more blessed to give than to receive. But what is it to be blessed? It is to receive. There is no way to receive the blessing associated with not being a “receiver” except by receiving. A blessed man is a recipient of a blessing, given by another. In this case, the giving is done by God.

It is therefore more blessed to receive by giving than to receive by receiving. We are finite creatures and this means that some kind of receiving is inescapable.

Everything we give away is on loan to us from God, and when we give to Him, we are simply returning to Him what He has given to us. We are like little children buying our father a Christmas present at the dollar store, using a dollar that He gave us for the task.

The word for blessed (makarios) means to be happy, fortunate, enviable, one to whom God has extended His benefits. Another way of seeing this is to understand that for every finite creature, there is a built-in reciprocity for every act of generosity. Like one of Newton’s laws of motion for the spiritual realm. If we are creatures who want to live in the favor of God (which is to say, if we want to live in Christ), there is no escape from giving and receiving.

A System That Cannot be Gamed

So the thing that distinguishes an ungodly giver from a godly one is not the fact that they get from giving. The issue is what they want to get from their giving. When carnal men give anything (with their carnal eye on the carnal prize), they receive what they wanted and they already have their reward. So they already have their reward (Matt. 6:2), and it comes to pieces in their hands. “And he gave them their request; But sent leanness into their soul” (Psalm 106:15).

When spiritual men give anything (with their spiritual eye on the spiritual prize), God honors and blesses them. They refuse to do what they are doing in order to be seen by men (Matt. 6:1). But notice what happens if they sin in this matter, and are showboating for the grandstands. What do they lose? They lose their reward from our Father in heaven (Matt. 6:1).

Now when Paul gave to the Corinthians, he was jealous to protect that reward. “But I have used none of these things: neither have I written these things, that it should be so done unto me: for it were better for me to die, than that any man should make my glorying void” (1 Cor. 9:15).

Back Around to Christmas Presents

So bring this back to the matter of Christmas presents. That is what we are supposedly talking about, right? What is the difference between a carnal prize and a spiritual prize? To make matters really confusing, sometimes the prize itself can appear to be identical. You shopped long and hard to find that “perfect gift” for your father, and the difference between joy at Christmas and misery in Christmas is to be found in that dark little ego-center of your heart. Compare: “That is just what he wanted—God must be rejoicing to see my father rejoicing” over against “That is just what he wanted—I’m glad I found it before my sister did.”

The Joy Set Before Him

Jesus endured the agonies of His trial and crucifixion because He knew what was in store for Him on the other side of the agony.

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds” (Heb. 12:1–3).

And we are told, in all our trials, all our striving, all our struggles, all our pilgrimage, all our shopping, to imitate Him in this. We are to look to Jesus, considering His behavior, as we look to modify our own behavior. Otherwise, we are going to grow weary and faint in our minds. We are going to grow weary and faint in our giving, and this applies to giving of whatever magnitude. Do you think anybody grows weary and faint in the Christmas rush, forgetting the whole point?

So everything is to be cruciform—but not a crucifix. And the difference between the two is this. Every cross is a cross in a story, and every Christian story has the blessedness of joy at the end of it. In all your giving, try to give like Jesus did. But also, in all your giving, repent of the folly of trying to be more spiritual than Jesus. He did not remain on the cross because the joy was before Him. We are not supposed to seek to remain there either. We must not try to evade the cross, and we must not try to perpetuate the cross. The story is a cruciform story, not a crucifix story.

And Christ is the one who shows us.

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Honest With God: Growth in Grace

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Introduction

We are considering the two components of growth in grace. The first is getting rid of impediments to that growth, which is a necessary thing—but preliminary. The second thing is actual growth in grace. This growth in grace is a form of life, and like all life it requires food. Our spiritual life in Christ must be nourished as much as our physical lives require nourishment.

The Text

“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied” (1 Peter 1:2).

“And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all” (Acts 4:33).

Summary of the Text

We must always remember that the Christian life cannot be reduced to a series of techniques. It is not a thing you can tinker with. In all of the epistles, we receive the benediction of grace and peace. In most of the epistles we receive this grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit is usually not mentioned (although He is here in this passage). Why is that? I am following Jonathan Edwards in this, believing that this is because the grace and peace is the Holy Spirit. And so the pious wish that grace and peace be multiplied can be translated into personal terms. This too is related to honesty.

And as we see in the passage from Acts, when God visits a congregation in reformation and revival, He is poured out on everyone—and not just on the religious professionals. Sometimes it comes to the religious professionals last. One time in the nineteenth century, in Cornwall, a man named William Haslam was preaching a sermon entitled “What Think Ye of Christ.” During the sermon he was convicted of his own dry Pharisaism, and the Holy Spirit came on him. Another local minister who happened to be present stood up and shouted, “the Parson is converted!” And so we should yearn for the statement from Acts to be true of us as well—and great grace was upon them all.

Another Brief Word

As we strive for engagement with the means of grace, we want to make sure that we do not take what was said last week about the reality of remaining sin to discourage us. What is the point? As Christians we are called to the mortification of sin, and there are three kinds of mortification. The first is one that all true Christians have experienced—God has transformed our weed patch into a garden. “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” (Gal. 5:24). The second is what all backslidden Christians are called to. “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). The tense of mortify here indicates that it is to be an “over and done” action. You are digging up big weeds from your garden. You are not permitted to “phase out” the big weeds. The third kind of mortification is daily and ongoing. “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13). This is tending the garden also, but it is the gardener going out every morning at 5 am to pull weeds. And you always find something.

Worship

The last thing I would want to do is upbraid you over not worshiping the Lord when the only reason I could speak to you is that you are here. But I do want to remind you of the importance of weekly worship. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” (Heb. 10:25).

This is not a lecture, and you are not coming here for mere data. This is a covenant renewal service, and you are coming here to be strengthened, edified and built up. “For thou verily givest thanks well, but the other is not edified” (1 Cor. 14:17). Paul is constantly after edification. The worship service is a construction zone. There should be spiritual sawdust all over the place. The word for edified there is oikodomeo, a compound word meaning to put the roof on the house. Mark a difference between an emotional blessing, say where you get choked up, say, and edification, where you come out of the service with a wall knocked out and a load of two-by-fours on the lawn.

And remember that the service culminates in the Lord’s Supper, where all the blessings of the entire service (the music, the readings, the preaching) are sealed for us. The relationship between the sermon and the sacrament is not that of paired items that complement each other, like wine and cheese, or ham and eggs. Rather the relationship of preaching (and the whole service) is like cooking and the Lord’s Supper is like . . .  eating. Services with great preaching and no sacrament are like watching celebrity chefs on television. Services with little mini-sermons (for all the mini-Christians) and Big Eucharist are like some kind of raw foods thing. Here’s your bag of carrots.

Read the Word

We are Christians who worship God the Father through the Word. As people of the Word, we are people of the Word. We are to be steeped in the Scriptures. Our lives are to marinate in it.

Consider what the Word says about our relationship to the Word. “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart” (Deut. 6:6). The king was required to copy out God’s law by hand for himself (Dt. 17:18-19). He was to have this Word so that he might learn to fear God. “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Ps. 119:11). Indeed, for a robust understanding of the role of Scripture, meditate on all of Psalm 119. “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Pet. 2:2). When the Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost, one of the results was that the people dedicated themselves to the apostles teaching (Acts 2:42).

This is why, incidentally, the Bible Reading Challenge has been such a good thing. Read the Word.

And Pray

The prayers we offer up together on the Lord’s Day are the prayers of this congregation. They are not meant to replace your own prayers. Rather, they help to train and shape your prayers.

“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). “Brethren, pray for us” (1 Thess. 5:25). “Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms” (Jas. 5:13).

For many Christians, private prayer is a great trouble spot. So let me conclude with two bits of counsel on learning how to pray. First, don’t be too proud to learn how to pray by learning to pray the Lord’s Prayer. Let Jesus teach you. That’s what that prayer is for. And second, start taking risks by asking for specific things. That way you will know if the prayer is answered, right?

And don’t forget to offer it all in the name of Jesus.

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The Apostles Creed 19: The Forgiveness of Sins

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What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction

One of the central features of the new covenant is the glorious reality of forgiveness of sins. In Hebrews 8, Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant is quoted at some length (Heb. 8:8-12). But several chapters later, it is quoted again, but this time in abbreviated form. This abbreviation shows what aspects of the new covenant are being emphasized as central. There are two such aspects—they are the internalization of the law (Heb. 10:16) and the remission of sins (Heb. 10:17-18). It is therefore not surprising to find the forgiveness of sins included in the Creed.

The Text

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord.  He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin, Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.  He descended into Hades. On the third day He rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.  I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Summary of the Text

“And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts 26:15–18).

The apostle Paul is recounting his conversion, and how the Lord Jesus appeared to him. He asked the Lord who He was (v. 15), and received the answer that it was Jesus, the one he was persecuting. Jesus then told Paul to stand up so that He could make him a minister and a witness, both of what he had seen and what he would in the future see (v. 16). The Lord promised to deliver him from the people and from the Gentiles, those to whom he was being sent (v. 17). As he preached to them, there would be three aspects to their coming into their salvation, which is described as “forgiveness of sins” and an “inheritance among the sanctified.”

Three Stages of Conversion

The first thing is that his preaching would “open their eyes.” The second is that they would be turned “from darkness to light.” The third is the transfer; they are moved from the power of Satan unto God. This is what it means to be ushered into the forgiveness of sins.

To have your eyes opened is here to be made aware of your need. A person in the dark who has had his eyes opened becomes aware of the fact that he is in the dark. But to be in dark despair is no solution; it is simply the awareness of the need for a solution. The second thing is to turn them toward the light, which is the gospel message. At this point they are made aware of the fact that they are in the dark here, but the light is over there. The third stage effects the actual change, where the person is moved from the dominion of the dark into the dominion of the light. That dominion of light is described as receiving forgiveness of sins, and the inheritance of the saints.

Intelligent Evangelism

Giving the gospel to people who have not had their eyes opened is like turning blind people toward the light. Giving the law to people without preaching grace is like healing a blind man down in the depths of a dark cavern. How would he know he was healed?

The holiness of God’s law, God’s righteousness, is what opens eyes. The message of Christ crucified and risen is what shines the light. When the person’s eyes are opened, then they should be turned. The last step is

What Forgiveness Entails

Forgiveness does not mean that God will now accept your excuses. Forgiveness does not mean that God has somehow lowered His standards. Forgiveness does not mean that things weren’t that bad to begin with.

Forgiveness, being grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, has to be complete and total. You are cleansed. You are washed. There is nothing in between you and God. In the Book of Life, there is no asterisk by your name. If someone is forgiven at all, they are forgiven completely. There is nothing shaky about it. All your sins, past, present, and future, have had anvils tied to them all, and have been thrown into an ocean of mercy, there to drown at their leisure (Micah 7:19). In the resurrection, you will be at the eastern end of forever, and your sins will be at the western end (Ps. 103:12).

“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7).

“In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14).

Freely You Have Received

Those who are recipients of God’s gifts truly are people who are prepared to give in the same way they have received (Mark 10:8). If we received forgiveness, but are surly when required to extend it, this demonstrates that we never really grasped the concept. A man who refuses to forgive is not a man who has had his eyes opened, or who has been turned from darkness to light, or from the power of Satan to the power of God. No, he is just a man who said that happened. We can see whether it happened or not in the forgiveness he shows.

“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:12).

“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14–15).

So is forgiveness of others a “work” we must perform in order to earn our own forgiveness? Not a bit of it. Rather, it is simply a recognition of the truth that when God rescues a man from drowning He does not leave him on the bottom of the pond.

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Apostles Creed 15: From Thence He Will Come to Judge the Living and the Dead

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What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction

We believe that there was a time when the world was not. God spoke, and all of it came into being out of nothing. We believe that there will be a time when the world (as it is now) will cease to be. That will come about in the same way—God will say the word, and it will be done. But it will not go back to nothing. There will be a transformation, a glorification, a completion. And those who are in Christ will dwell with Him forever.

The Text

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord.  He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin, Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.  He descended into Hades. On the third day He rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.  I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Summary of the Text

“Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

Not only is it appointed to each man once to die (Heb. 9:27), a final day, a last day, is also similarly appointed for the entire world. The world will have a death bed. The world will end on that fixed day, and God the Father Almighty knows when that day will be. Not only will the world end, but just as it is with individual men (“and after this the judgment”), so also it will be with the planet. Jesus will judge the world in righteousness. The world is appointed to end, and Jesus is ordained to judge it.

If any are disposed to challenge this, God has given assurance to all men that this will in fact happen. This assurance (the word in our text is pistis, commonly rendered as faith) was given through the vehicle of Christ’s resurrection. Modern apologetics too often spends its energy trying to prove the resurrection. In Scripture, the resurrection was not the datum to be proved, it was rather the proof of something else. That something else is this phrase in the Creed. Jesus will come again, from the right hand of the Almighty, and He will do so in order to judge the living and the dead.

Partial and Full Preterism

One quick point before turning to the main theme. You have been taught that many passages traditionally thought to be about the end of the world were actually prophecies about the end of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. What you have been taught about this is called partial preterism. Some of the prophecies in the New Testament were fulfilled in the first century (e.g. Matt. 24:29). But there is another school of thought which holds that all of the New Testament prophecies were about the end of Jerusalem, and that we have no prophecies about the end of the world. This view is called full preterism, and because it denies the Second Coming of Christ, it is heretical.

There are many doctrinal views and variations concerning the Second Coming (as I am sure you know), and the Christian church universal has made only one statement in all her history about eschatology. That solitary statement, made here in the Creed, is that full preterism is wrong.

The Fault Line

The Bible teaches that there are two humanities, two races, two ways of being human. One exists in Adam, Adam as he fell into sin. The other is a reestablished humanity, a renewed humanity, created in Christ Jesus, the last Adam. The first humanity was corrupted and turned aside from the way. God could have written the whole thing off as a loss, but in His good pleasure He determined to re-create a new and glorified humanity out of the raw material provided to Him by us—raw material that was hopelessly diseased. Christ was born into this old race (without sin), and lived a perfect and sinless life. He was executed by our rebel leaders in such a way as to pay the debt for our sins, and He was resurrected into new life in such a way as to enable us to participate in Him—to join with Him in that life by faith. If we look away from Adam, and look to the new Adam in faith, we are translated from one race to the other.

Now Scripture speaks of these two ways of being human under many different figures. Here are just a few of them. They are wheat and tares (Matt. 13:30). They are sheep and goats (Matt. 25:33). They are sons of the devil and sons of God (John 8:44; 1:12-13). They are fruitful branches and fruitless branches (John 15:1-2). They are land that bears a harvest and land that grows thistles (Heb. 6:7-8). They are maidens with oil and maidens without (Matt. 25:1-13). They are guests in wedding clothes and guests in sweat pants (Matt. 22:11-14). This basic division is not the same thing as the division between the visible church and the world.

The One Thing Needful

There is another division among men that is irrelevant. Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead both. That is not the fundamental division. Whether you are alive the moment He returns or have been dead for a thousand years will not matter in the slightest. Nor will your position in Christ or out of Christ affect whether your body will be raised. There is a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. Every last man, woman, and child will stand before God in the body.

“And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust” (Acts 24:15).

“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28–29).

The Bema Seat

We will all appear before the throne of Christ. This judgment seat (bema) means that our lives will be evaluated, whether we are justified or not.

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences” (2 Cor. 5:10–11; cf. Rom. 14:10-12).

The Criterion of Ultimate Judgment 

It is singular, criterion, not plural. How you will fare in the judgment is not based on criteria. How will we fare? What work must we do to prepare ourselves for that day? There is one work, and only one work that will suffice, and it is to look upon the one who actually did the work.

“Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:29).

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Apostles Creed 13: Ascended Into Heaven

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What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction

The intersection of heaven and earth, the boundary between the two, is not the same kind of boundary that we might find between two countries. If you were not on a road, crossing between countries is not necessarily something you would even notice. But crossing between earth and heaven necessitates a qualitative difference in experience.

The Text

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord.  He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin, Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.  He descended into Hades. On the third day He rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.  I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”

Summary of the Text

“And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:9–11).

After the resurrection, Jesus continued to appear to His disciples, teaching them and reminding them of things, doing so for forty days. After almost a month and a half of this, He gave them their final instructions, and then was taken up out of their sight. They watched as He ascended, and they watched continually until He disappeared into a cloud—indicating a significant height. The disciples were gazing steadfastly at Him, until they were interrupted by two men in white apparel. These two men were obviously angels, and asked them why they were staring up into heaven. This same Jesus, they said, was going to come back again, and He was going to come back again in the same way He departed. This means that the Second Coming of Christ will involve His return in the body.

Ascended

When Jesus ascended, it says that the disciples were able to watch Him ascend. They did so until He disappeared into a cloud. Now let us—as the apostle says elsewhere—be adults in our thinking (1 Cor. 14:20). We do not believe that Jesus just kept going, at approximately 30 mph, until He came to occupy His sky palace behind the moon. Neither did he continue at that same speed on His way to highest heaven—30 mph after two thousand years would place Him about 500 million miles away, which would mean He is well past Mars, but still in the solar system. We are Christians, which means we are committed to faith in the miraculous. But this does not mean that we committed to child-like absurdities.

The Scripture teach that heaven and earth have undergone a “divorce,” and an essential part of Christ’s work was to bring them back together into union again. “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Col. 1:20). Because of man’s sin, heaven and earth were thrown out of joint. And through Christ we are being introduced into a completed nature that is being transformed, and reunited again.

Facing the Difficulty

When we reject the materialist cosmology, which we do, with its endless concourse of blind atoms, this does not mean that to be pious Christians we must adopt a view of the cosmos that is a triple-decker stage set (Heaven, earth, Hell), made out of painted plywood. The language used for us is metaphorical, and the enacted language of the Ascension is metaphorical.

“All the accounts suggest that the appearances of the Risen Body came to an end; some describe an abrupt end about six weeks after the death. And they describe this abrupt end in a way which presents greater difficulties to the modern mind than any other part of Scripture. For here, surely, we get the implication of all those primitive crudities to which I have said that Christians are not committed: the vertical ascent like a balloon, the local Heaven, the decorated chair to the right of the Father’s throne.”

“The records represent Christ as passing after death (as no man had passed before) neither into a purely, that is, negatively, ‘spiritual’ mode of existence nor into a ‘natural’ life such as we know, but into a life which has its own, new Nature. It represents Him as withdrawing six weeks later, into some different mode of existence. It says—He says—that He goes ‘to prepare a place for us’. This presumably means that He is about to create that whole new Nature which will provide the environment or conditions for His glorified humanity and, in Him, for ours.”

As Lewis argues elsewhere, we cannot talk about the arrival of the Lord in this world (or His departure from it) without using metaphorical language. We can impoverish our metaphorical language, but we can’t make it less metaphorical. If we say the Lord “entered” this world instead of saying He “came down,” we are substituting a man coming into a room for a parachutist. But both images are metaphors, describing the intersection of spiritual/physical with an image of physical/physical. But that intersection is not actually physical/physical. At the risk of being misunderstood, it is spiritual|physical/physical|spiritual. In short, we are in over our heads

Into Heaven

The Scripture uses the term heaven to refer to different realities. We have the heavens to refer to what we call sky. Birds are creatures of heaven (Gen. 6:7). Jesus says the same thing (Matt. 6:26). Heaven is where rain comes from (Jas. 5:18).

A second use of heaven refers to what is commonly called outer space. After describing the sun going dark, and the moon not giving its light, Jesus says that the powers of the heavens will be shaken (Matt. 24:29). Believers are to resist the temptation to worship these celestial bodies (Deut. 4:19). The stars are called the host of heaven.

But there is more. A third heaven contains realities beyond what we can see—called the highest heaven (Deut. 10:14), or the heaven of heavens (Ps. 148:4). This third heaven is where God’s presence is manifested, even though He cannot be contained by the heaven of heavens (1 Kings 8:27). And yet, God’s presence is somehow localized in this Heaven (Heb. 8:1; Acts 7:55). The presence of God is in this Heaven. “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Heb. 9:24).

The Third Heaven

Considering all these things, we should locate the “third heaven” that Paul equates with Paradise (2 Cor. 12:2, 4), with the highest Heaven, where the presence of God is manifested. An alternative to this would be to equate it with the third sphere of the ancient cosmology (Venus), a view I find much less compelling.
“Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession” (Heb. 4:14).

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