Many of us can have an over-spiritualized view of Heaven and how we will be like, Greek thought has had a huge influence on our perceptions Plato in particular, who taught that our bodies are seen as shabby and shameful .The startling truth is that this idea finds little support in the Bible.
Tom Wright says “ we know that bodies decay and die; that houses, temples cities, and civilizations fall to dust; and so we assume that to be bodily to be physical is to be impermanent, changeable, transitory, and that the only way to be permanent, unchanging and immortal is to become non-physical .Paul’s point is that this is not so”
The Real you, is not just your personality, but the whole of you, Jesus came that the whole of you might be saved, in full bodily form.
Clearly when Jesus came back from the dead he was in bodily form, Mary clung to him Jn20:17; He eats breakfast with his disciples John 21; and challenged Thomas to put his hand in his side. In Phil 3:20 Paul says: our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory.
Paul is not saying by ‘humble state’ demeaning because we are physical, but because our bodies are affected by sin, we get ill, wear out and die. We look forward to a physical body that is not compromised by any of these things.
1. Talk about why you think it is that we struggle to see that the physical is in fact something God said was good.
2. Name some of the things that sin has corrupted that was good , but that God wants to redeem
3. Read 2 Corinthians 5 and draw some points that Matthew was making out of this passage.
God could destroy the world and start again, but this is not His plan. Heaven is stored up, hidden, waiting to be brought down to new Earth. Herman Bavinck says “According to scripture the present world will neither continue forever nor will it be destroyed and replaced by a totally new one. Instead it will be cleansed from Sin and re-created, reborn, renewed, made whole ..The rebirth of human beings is completed in the glorious rebirth of all creation, New Jerusalem whose architect and builder is God himself”
1. Why would it be a cataclysmic defeat for God to scrap totally planet Earth?
2. Are you grateful that God showed his love for you and me in John 3:16 and it wasn’t the other way round?
3. Look at Romans 8:20-22 about creation
4. Talk about what life might be like in New Jerusalem, what do you think we will be doing, creating, exploring?
5. Finally why did Christ actually not spend a huge amount of time talking about Heaven, but actually most about himself? Look at the “I am” scriptures in the gospel of John.
