To Learn To Live On Earth, Think About Heaven

We humans are future-oriented creatures. We set goals and pursue them. We have hopes and dreams. We imagine outcomes we’re longing for, and others we long to avoid. And what we expect from our future has tremendous power over our experience of the present.

That’s why the Bible puts such an emphasis on careful, cultivated thinking on the world to come as a key priority for the Christian life. And that’s why I’m so grateful for Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven, the latest book from Dane Ortlund, senior pastor of Naperville Presbyterian Church.

He writes with two goals in mind: “theological clarity” and “personal fortification” (2). On both fronts, he wonderfully succeeds.

Theological Clarity

In recent decades, the best-selling books on heaven tend to read more like travel memoirs than works of systematic theology. Books like 90 Minutes in Heaven or Heaven Is for Real have sold millions of copies because, relying on first-hand accounts of near-death experiences, they feed on understandable curiosity about what happens when we die. When you know you’re going somewhere you’ve never been, it only makes sense to ask someone who’s been there what to expect.

Aside from questions about their sincerity, or conflicting details in various accounts, books like this are grounded on the wrong person’s experiences.

For Christians united to Jesus, our anchor is what Christ has been through. Our horizon is set by where he is now (see Col. 3:1–4). And our confidence for anything we know about our future rests on the authority of his Word. Nothing less will stand up to what life will throw at anyone who lives long enough.

Ortlund gives us what God has to say about what he has in store for his people. Of course, there are chapters on the main texts about heaven—texts like 1 Thessalonians 4, or 1 John 3, or Revelation 21. But more than specific passages, he grounds his thinking about heaven in the sweeping storyline of the Scriptures.

We don’t simply need more vivid imaginations to appreciate the richness of where we’re going. We need deeper understanding of the arc of redemption, and of themes like the garden of Eden or the “the house of the Lord,” all of which find their fulfillment in the world to come.

We don’t simply need more vivid imaginations to appreciate the richness of where we’re going. We need deeper understanding of the arc of redemption.

What we need most at the center of our perspective on our future is the person at the center of all the Bible. A direct correlation exists between the tendency to drift into speculation and the tendency to drift away from Jesus. We can fixate on the possible perks and lose perspective on the One who makes heaven what it is. The Bible’s focus remains on the joy of seeing Jesus face-to-face and, in seeing him, becoming like him.

Ortlund’s focus stays there too: “What do we call heaven without Jesus? Hell” (21). All the good gifts of God’s new world are to Jesus what a frame is to a Rembrandt painting: “The frame matters. It’s the environment, the setting, in which the painting lives. But the painting’s the thing” (27).

Personal Fortification

It’s not enough to consider what we need to know about the world to come. We also need to understand why we need to know what we know. Ortlund’s book shines in making these connections for us.

For example, Revelation 21 describes heaven as a world of unblemished cleanness. Why do we need to know that? Because for now, sanctification means everyday war. We feel the guilt of sin even as we cling to our forgiveness.

Heaven is the lining up subjectively of what we already objectively are in Christ. We are positionally clean now. We will also be experientially clean then. (49)

Ephesians 2 describes heaven as a world designed by God to show us the riches of his grace forever. Why do we need to know that? So that when we’re troubled by our own unworthiness, “we may freely set aside our hesitancy to believe that the more it seems we ought not to be in heaven, the more God delights to see us there” (60).

Second Corinthians 4 describes heaven as a world whose glory is prepared by the pain we suffer in this life. Why do we need to know that? Because we crave assurance that our pain is never wasted.

A trampoline sends you only as high up in the air as you have first gone down into it. This life is a trampoline descent into pain and heartache. And as low as we go here, that high will the Lord raise us there. (118)

From beginning to end, this book is written from the heart of a pastor who loves his people and wants to help them connect what they’re going through to where they’re going.

More Devotional than Systematic

In format and tone, Finally Home reads more like Gentle and Lowly than it does, say, Randy Alcorn’s Heaven. Its structure is loose and meditative, not overtly systematic. Its chapter titles are more allusive than concrete, its text subdivided by line breaks rather than subheadings. That means it’s not the kind of book you’ll pull from the shelf for a quick summary of one subtopic or another. But it’s perfectly suited to devotional reading, with an open Bible and a pencil in hand.

It’s not enough to consider what we need to know about the world to come. We also need to understand why we need to know what we know.

Those who enjoyed Gentle and Lowly will surely love this book too. It has the same dramatic earnestness in tone. It draws on the same mine of historical sources, from Goodwin and Brooks to Augustine and Lewis. It’s a steady stream of warm, direct encouragement. And it’s unashamedly focused on our future for the perspective we need on our present. As Ortlund reminds us, “For anyone not united to Jesus Christ, this life is the best it will ever get. For anyone united to Jesus Christ, this life is the worst it will ever get” (1).

I can hardly imagine a Christian who wouldn’t benefit from a close and prayerful reading of Finally Home. Our hearts need the hope of heaven like our bodies need protein. Until Christ returns, we’ll never see a day when we won’t need more.