We saw last time how the New Testament speaks generally about heaven. We now want to look a little deeper into the relationship that exists between heaven as the dwelling place of God and us as believers.
In the New Testament, we can distinguish three kinds of relationships between heaven and believers:
- Heaven and living believers on earth,
- Heaven and deceased believers and
- Heaven and the risen believers, the believers who have been given a glorified body.
That relationship with heaven is different for each of these three groups.
About the living believers, the believers living on earth before the return of Jesus, that is, us, we read in Philippians 4:20,
`We are citizens¹ of a kingdom in the heavens, from which we also expect the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.
Thus, believers have their homeland in heaven; they form a colony of heavenly citizens on earth.
Even more intimately, the relationship with heaven is described in Ephesians 2:4-6 where we read:
"God, however, who is rich in mercy, for his great love, .... made us, though we were dead in trespasses, alive together with Christ ...., and raised us up together and gave us a place in the heavens.
So heaven is not just the place where our blessings come from, but is more.
At the same time, believers living on earth are already living in a heavenly reality. Heaven is not only far away, but also near. It is a spiritual reality can already be experienced by believers here and now.
Since the first coming of Christ to earth 2,000 years ago, the kingdom of heaven has been among us. It is all in part and not yet perfect. But the powers of this kingdom can already be tasted here and now.
[1] The Greek politeuma here means `commonwealth, state association'. W. Bauer, `politeuma', Wörterbuch, s.v.
Author: Gijs van den Brink
From: Study Bible Magazine
This is a condensed version of an article from Study Bible Magazine, which we will be posting a portion of online each week in the near future. We hope this will help you understand the Bible better!
