Heaven on Earth | Stephen Nichols

Stephen J. Nichols. Heaven on Earth: Capturing Jonathan Edwards’s Vision of Living in Between. Crossway, 2006. 144 pp.

Introduction

In heaven we will enjoy perfect, unbroken fellowship with the Triune God. We will relish the glory of God. We will savor the sweetness of Christ. We will have perfect fellowship with the Holy Spirit. Why not start now?

In heaven, bickering, complaining, and acts of injustice will all have fallen away. Peace and harmony and justice will be the order. We will love God perfectly. We will even love all our brothers and sisters in Christ perfectly. So why not begin now? There’s no reason not to. In fact, there’s every reason in the world to do so. . . .

We learn from Edwards that heaven isn’t only about the future. It has everything to do with life on earth, life in between. He reminds us of our duty to live on earth in light of heaven and to endeavor to bring the realities and the beauty of heaven to earth—even if only in miniature.

Just about anywhere you look in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, you bump into his thoughts on heaven and how those thoughts should make a difference in our lives. . . .

One way to describe Edwards sees him emphasizing mind and heart together. Actually, it might be better to say mind and heart together and on fire. Edwards, when he spoke of the Triune God, used words like relish, savor, enjoy, and desire alongside a vocabulary of know, understand, and contemplate. He was a rare example of this dangerous (in a good way) combination.

On the Way to Heaven

On the surface, Edwards seems an unlikely spokesperson for living the vision of heaven on earth. He seems to fall more on the side of being too heavenly-minded. . . . This, however, only appears to be the case. Dig a little deeper, and you will find that his vision of heaven has everything to do with life on earth. He had a great deal to say about heaven, but it wasn’t simply relegated to the sweet by-and-by. He had a great deal to say about this life that far outstrips merely escaping it and the wrath to come. . . .

Will the Real Jonathan Edwards Please Stand Up?

In 1738 Edwards began a sermon series on Paul’s famous poem in 1 Corinthians 13. . . . His series reached a crescendo with the final sermon, “Heaven Is a World of Love.”

This is not the Edwards that most people know. The overwhelming judgment of contemporary readers is that Edwards was dour and calloused and that when he preached, he breathed the smoke of hellfire and brimstone harangues. This stems from the one sermon of his that most are familiar with, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” . . .

His sermons overflow with the words sweetness, pleasure, joy, love, and beauty. Edwards never pulled back from proclaiming the wrath of God on sin, but he just as forcefully and readily proclaimed the abundant mercy and grace of a good and loving God. And this language meets us on every page of the “Charity and Its Fruits” sermons. By the time he gets to the final installment, it’s as if the floodgates are opened and he can no longer contain the overflow of God’s goodness, pleasure, sweetness, beauty, and love. If you want a one-sided picture of Edwards, simply be content with reading “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” If you want the full picture, read it and then read “Heaven Is a World of Love.” . . .

Love Supreme

In heaven, love and union reign supreme without obstacles and hindrances. There are no petty jealousies or the posturing of individuals advancing their own selfish agendas. We will love God for his own sake, not for what we might gain. The saints will love each other without even a hint of selfishness or ulterior motives. As Edwards puts it, “There shall be nothing within themselves to clog or hinder the saints in heaven in the exercises and expressions of love.” In heaven, love will be perfect and pure and holy. In heaven, love will not go unrequited. There will be no disappointment, no shattered hopes, and no unfulfilled desires. Love and union reign supreme in Edwards’s vision of the life to come. . . .

He has cast a grand vision of heaven, exhausting language to display its glorious radiance. But Edwards does not stop here. He has yet to make his application. He doesn’t simply point his congregation to heaven; he doesn’t simply fill his congregation with blissful thoughts of glory. He points them to heaven with one hand, while with the other he directs their attention back to earth. He wants these blissful and high and lofty thoughts to land squarely on earth. . . .

In one of his points of application, Edwards offers us some advice as we wait for heaven and the fulfillment of God’s promises to us. His vision of heaven helps ease that tension of waiting by reminding us of the taste of the happiness and love that we enjoy now. This mere taste of God’s goodness, he argues, is not only enough to satisfy us while we wait, it also whets our appetite for more to come. We are convinced by our own experience, Edwards tells us, that not only is God good, but he is the best good. . . . This isn’t simply waiting for God’s goodness in the future—it’s experiencing it now. . . .

Edwards is concerned that we do more than passively wait, enjoying happiness. He calls us to action. In the sermon so far, he has handily argued that heaven is a world of love. Now that he’s made his case, he draws the logical conclusion. “As heaven is a world of love,” he declares, “so the way to heaven is the way of love.” He even puts it more boldly: “If you would be in the way to the world of love, you must live a life of love.”

For some people, entering heaven will be quite uncomfortable; they won’t feel at all at home. The language and the customs will confound them, and they will feel like a stranger in a strange land. . . . Entering heaven, Edwards argues, should not be startling. Entering heaven should be as natural and comfortable and desirable as returning home after a long trip.

Such smooth transitions . . . only happen when we live in light of heaven, when we agree with Edwards that the way to heaven is no mystery, that the way to heaven corresponds to the very nature of heaven itself. But while we may strive to live in the way of love, and while we long deeply for heaven on earth, we still must contend with earth. We want to love free of hindrances, unclogged, as Edwards might say, but we have hindrances and obstacles and clogs in our way.

Spirituality for Humans

Perhaps we can gain something from the life of Edwards and some of the struggles that he faced. Edwards, easily the most famous pastor ever born on American soil, was kicked out of his church at Northampton. We could put what Edwards learned from his own experience this way: while “heaven is a world of love,” congregations can be full of strife. . . . The realities of his ministry with all of its rumblings and strife kept his vision of the redeemed community living the way of love from being fully realized. The realities of life broke in. . . .

This is not to say that he was conflicted, hopelessly naive, or fatally pessimistic. It is to say that he lived in between. And so do we. We long for heaven. We want peace and love and harmony to rule in our relationships. We want never to be at odds with others, and we don’t like conflict. . . .

Edwards is right: the way to heaven should be the way of love, and that love and harmony should mark us through and through. But this doesn’t always happen. Petty jealousies and posturing will dissolve in the sweet by-and-by, but for now they are all too real. We long to say a kind word in a tense situation, take the high road in times of conflict, or go out of our way to serve others before serving our own needs. In reality, our words all too often fuel the fire, and our selfishness crowds out our impulse to lift a hand to help our neighbor.

So how are we to take Edwards’s beatific vision? One way would be to leave it in the future. . . .

Another way to respond to Edwards’s sermon and his beatific vision goes in the opposite direction. This may be best described as naivety. Here one says rather uncritically that as it is in heaven, so shall it be on earth. . . .

There is a third way. . . . Against the odds, we strive to live the way of love on the way to heaven. We never give up hope, and we never waiver in our loyalty. Here is how we begin to live the vision of Jonathan Edwards. We don’t throw that vision into the future, nor do we ignore the realities of the present. Living in between means we take both worlds into account. We are on the way to heaven, but we are not there yet. We applaud its breakthroughs in this world, but we know there are far better things to come.

Foretastes of Things to Come

Edwards was fully aware that his sermon and its application would be quite challenging. He acknowledges the difficulties of living the vision of heaven on earth, and even accounts for them. First, he tells us that we are to strive to live the way of love. This tells us that it does not come automatically, easily, and certainly not perfectly. But we are nevertheless to strive.

He then says something that, while brief, goes a long way to inspire us to live this unique vision. He tells us that as we strive to live in the way of heaven, we “have, on earth, the foretastes of heavenly pleasures and delights.” When we live the way of love, then we have heaven on earth, even if it is in miniature. . . .

Love reigns when we sow harmony where there is strife, when we speak a kind and gracious word into the midst of conflict, when we bring beauty into a world of malice and darkness. Love reigns when we, even in our frailty, offer to ease each other’s burdens as we help one another carry our collective share of woe (Gal. 6:2). . . . Redemption and grace provide an answer to our fallen condition that applies not merely to setting things right in the next world—redemption and grace mean we can live differently in this one.

The Good and the Bad

The reality is that we are fallen human beings living in a fallen world. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that because we are sinners in a fallen world, Edwards’s sermon “Heaven Is a World of Love” doesn’t work. It would even be wrong to see this sermon and its goals as a nice piece of inspiration but short on real-world application. . . . The life of love is not on reserve until the future; it is to be lived now in this world.

And in this world we are called to live as Christians. We are ambassadors of another land, with a different set of customs and laws, and even a different language. As we represent this land and its Monarch, we must bear the marks of our home. We must live by its customs and speak its language, however foreign they may be.

Jonathan Edwards was right. If heaven is a world of love, then the way to heaven is the way of love. Easier said than done, to be sure, but as we live the way of love, we find that God’s grace meets us at every turn. And we “have, on earth, the foretaste of heavenly pleasures and delights.”

From Heaven on Earth by Stephen J. Nichols, © 2006, pp. 11-13, 29-43. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.com.

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