A taste of heaven

Read Romans 8:22-23

22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan,even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory,for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We,too,wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children,including the new bodies he has promised us. (NLT)

If followers of Jesus feel deeply uncomfortable in a state of tension at times,then a text like this helps explain the problem. We live in two worlds which overlap. Jesus has come once to inaugurate his rule,but only at his second coming will this rule be perfected. Till then,we live between the comings and thus experience tension.

There are those who will have us believe heaven has come to earth in such a way as to promise heavenly blessings to us in their fullness here and now. Don’t believe them. As Paul says,we groan and we wait. The full blessings of heaven are not yet.

Then there are those who will have us believe that heaven is something that is only a reality after we die. Till then we grit our teeth and wait for something better. Don’t believe them either. As Paul says,we have in the Spirit a foretaste of heaven. We can expect to taste something of God’s rule here and now. There is life before death,not just after death.

Paul further describes this tension when he reminds us we are right now adopted children of God but we don’t yet enjoy all the rights of those children. God’s rule is both now and not yet. So there is no place for either cheap triumphalism or despondent defeatism. We are on the way,we are sure of our destination. But we have not got there yet.

Blessings
David Reay