On Death by Timothy Keller

Author:Timothy Keller
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: John Murray Press
Published: 2020-03-04T22:00:00+00:00

Material Hope

Our hope is also material. Notice that Paul does not say merely that we will go to heaven. He says that the “dead in Christ will rise.” Yes, we believe our souls go to heaven when we die, but that isn’t the climactic end of our salvation. At the end of all things, we will get new bodies. We will be raised like Jesus was raised. Remember that when the risen Jesus met his disciples he insisted that he had “flesh and bones,” that he was not a spirit. He ate in front of them to prove the point (Luke 24:37–43). He taught them that, unlike all other major religions, Christianity promises not a spirit-only future, but a renewed heavens and earth, a perfected material world from which all suffering and tears, disease, evil, injustice, and death have been eliminated.

Our future is not an immaterial one. We are not going to float in the kingdom of God like ghosts. We’re going to walk, eat, hug, and be hugged. We’re going to love. We’re going to sing, because we’re going to have vocal cords. And we will do all this in degrees of joy, excellence, satisfaction, beauty, and power we cannot now imagine. We’re going to eat and drink with the Son of Man.

And this is the final defeat of death. This is not merely a consolation in heaven for the material life we lost. This is a restoration of that life. It’s getting the love, the body, the mind, the being we’ve always longed for.

You see, there’s a real you, a true self down inside you, but then there are all the flaws and weaknesses that bury and mar and hide it. But the Christian hope is that the love and holiness of God will burn it all away. On that day, we’re going to see each other, and say, “I always knew you could be like this. I saw glimpses of it. I saw flashes of it. Now look at you.”

Paul, knowing something about the other cultures and religions of the world, says our future is not an impersonal, immaterial world of abstract spirituality, but a personal future of love relationships and the restoration of all things.

If the knowledge of this future was always present in our minds, would we become as downcast as we do? Why ever think of payback for people who have wronged you when you know you’re going to get not just all you’ve ever wanted, but more than you dare ask or think? Why envy anyone? This hope is transforming.

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