Someone asked:
“Is Jesus going to be faithful to this dimension of flesh and blood?”
“If the world gets transformed, do we need to go to heaven?”
“Is Christianity a way to transform the world?”
Popular evangelical presentations of the gospel have focused on the question, Where are you going when you die? Like the gospel is just a spaceship to heaven for the dead.
In contrast to that some people envisage the gospel achieving utopia worldwide before Jesus comes. They’ve even said we’re meant to get beyond just preaching the gospel.
But what do you think about some of Professor N. T. Wright’s ideas?
If I’m understanding him correctly so far (and I’m mixing some of my own ideas amd terminology in with this too), he teaches that the ‘gospel’ was announced by the apostles as the gospel ‘of the kingdom’; that it was claimed to be the very fulfilment of Abraham’s promise, of Prophecy, of the hope of Israel, of Messiah’s kingdom. It was Israel’s story coming to its intended fruition.
And so the highpoint of the original gospel was not just ‘going to heaven when you die’ although that’s true and wonderful, but their highpoint was new creation: the resurrection of the dead.
Resurrection, Wright explains, to Jews who believed in it always meant not just the existence of the soul somewhere after you die, but the restoration of the dead body to a new and transformed physicality in a way that will have some sort of continuity from the old dead body.
Merely ‘going somewhere when you die,’ discarding the dead body, Wright says is the ‘description’ of death not the ‘destruction’ of death which Jews hoped for.
It’s more of a pagan, Platonic idea than the Jewish one, Wright says. The gospel brought immortality to light.
The gospel is good news, not good advice, he says. So, more than just instruction about how to obtain a ticket to heaven while you’re dead, the gospel announced that something good had now happened as a result of which everything was now intrinsically different for the better.
Life after death is important, but it’s not the end of the world, Wright humorously says: the gospel looks further ahead, to ‘life after life-after-death’—resurrection.
The gospel announced that that new creation project had already been launched with one man: Jesus the Messiah.
The prayer the Lord taught us to pray was not, “…and take us to heaven to live with thee there…” as the carol says, but to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.
“The kingdom of heaven” teachings and parables, Wright says, weren’t just about ‘how to go to heaven”, but taught the overall scheme by which the promised kingdom of heaven was now coming to earth, exactly as prophesied.
“The restitution of all things,” Peter mentioned: God isn’t abandoning His original good-creation project, like rescuing us off a burning, sinking ship: He has crucified the whole ship and crew so to speak, in Jesus, and resurrected it altogether in Him, getting the project back on track, having inaugurated a remade and restored creation!
The ‘inheritance’ which Peter and Paul preached was therefore the same inheritance which Jews were hoping for: only it’s reserved for us in heaven for now, the apostles qualified. That doesn’t ultimately take anything away from it: it just keeps it safe and sure.
It didn’t mean heaven is now our ultimate destiny, Wright says. Anymore than your wife messaging you saying, ‘There’s a meal for you in the oven” means you’re meant to get in the oven. No, she means that at the right time the meal is meant to be taken out of the oven and placed on the table, in your world so you can enjoy it.
“The meek shall,” what—go to heaven? “Inherit the earth,” Jesus said.
“I go away to prepare a place for you,” Jesus said, “I will doubtless come again and” and what—take you to heaven? No, “and receive you to myself”. His kingdom is coming and shall appear—He isn’t coming without His kingdom to take us away to His kingdom.
“We will be caught up together with them in the clouds to”, to what—be whisked away to heaven? No, “and so shall we ever be with the Lord,” it says.
John saw the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. To the earth—a new earth.
The gospel announces “God with you”—Emmanuel—not just ‘how to be taken away to God’.
Abraham’s promise was that His seed would inherit the earth. Not just, go to heaven. Paul said God preached the gospel in advance to Abraham. Jesus said Abraham rejoiced go see His day, and he saw it and was glad.
The patriarchs indeed looked for an heavenly city which God built, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims in this present world—but ultimately their hope was that God and His city would ‘come’, not just that they would die and ‘go’ there. That’s why resurrection meant so much to them.
Christ shall bring the dead in Christ with Him—not just for a pointless roundtrip—but to raise them bodily to become coheirs of eternal life, as promised.
Paul had to reassure the Thessalonians that the dead in Christ hadn’t missed out: because the gospel he’d announced to them at the beginning was about something to come, not just about where the dead can go. So he had to reassure them that the resurrection was still future: the dead won’t miss out. But the popular evangelical gospel today portrays it in reverse, ‘cohorting with death’ Wright says.
After their resurrection, we will be caught up together with them, not to be whisked away, but to appear with Him in His kingdom-glory, to be admired in the eyes of all, and to escort Him the rest of His way back down to earth (like citizens of a Roman city went out of the city to greet a returning general from his successful campaign, and then joined the celebratory throng escorting him and his army back into the city, Wright suggests).
Peter indeed said the elements shall melt with fervent heat—but ‘elements’ didn’t mean then quite what it means in modern chemistry textbooks. It’s one of the most difficult to translate expressions in the New Testament, Wright says. But he points out that fire is often used in relation to purifying, not only to total destruction.
But either way—whether it’s going to be a whole new earth, or a restored earth, the apostles’ glad announcement had as its point: God is restoring all things, not just abandoning ship and salvaging us off to heaven.
Even the trees look forward to God’s coming and judgment, Psalms says.
The creature itself groans, waiting not for ultimate destruction, but for the manifestation of the sons of God when the creature itself shall be delivered from bondage to corruption.
Our citizenship is indeed in heaven—but that city where our citizenship is is seen coming down from God out of heaven. That’s what Israel’s prophecies all ultimately looked forward to.
Yes it’s a heavenly kingdom. Yes it’s God’s kingdom. It’s in heaven. But it’s coming to earth. That was the ancient promise. The gospel is the announcement that that project has now begun, in Jesus. And God now invites us to believe and be part of it.
That was ancient Israel’s hope. Ancient Jews weren’t primarily concerned just with finding out how to go to heaven while they’re dead. They had promises about the kingdom coming. The gospel announces its inauguration—only with a few unexpected schemes, which although in the Word weren’t thoroughly understood until after His resurrection:
Like, the centrality of the cross and resurrection of the Messiah; the equal inclusion of Gentiles; the putting aside of the ethnic and Torah distinction; His departure and reign from heaven for now, necessitating a future second coming when we’ll see the full and final rollout of what he’s already inaugurated.
Those central elements of the gospel don’t mean the gospel is something else besides Israel’s hope: rather, it’s a central part of what Israel’s promise really meant and how it was always going to come about.
He’s waiting (in heaven) til all His enemies (on earth) are made His footstool, the last enemy to be destroyed being death.
But for now for us it’s a two-sided coin, Wright says. Kingdom, on one side—a cross on the other. For now it’s a cruciform kingdom. It’s given to us not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His Name. We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
We do kingdom the way the Lion exemplified it: as a lamb for the slaughter.
If that’s all somewhat correct, then I suppose the question now is: how much of ‘new creation’ is meant to be installed this side of the second coming and resurrection? Utopia? Or the opposite: a decline?
Jesus did say the tares would be allowed to continue alongside the wheat until the harvest, the end of the world. So I think there’ll always be a dual reality until then: the devil’s work and the children of the kingdom.
The gospel of the kingdom is to be preached among all nations, then cometh the end. So we’re never meant to get beyond preaching the gospel until the End.
Israel’s hoped-for new world has come to pass, in inauguration, but the final, eternal rollout and second coming for all mankind is still to be seen—meanwhile some things are obtainable and achieved in-between, as a result of the inauguration and hope. But we need to to attempt to rightly divide between which is when.
Something of the new creation can be experienced now—because the final picture of Revelation includes present realities not just the ultimate future reality. Paul spoke not just about the coming Salvation, but of having been saved already and experiencing it.
The New Testament says not just that new creation is coming, but that if any man be in Christ, behold: new creation!
The new Jerusalem—tears have not yet been wiped away from all eyes, so there’s still a future element—however the river that flows in the city is now open for one and all to come and drink; the leaves of the trees in the middle of the city are for the healing of the nations—that’s going on now: it won’t be applicable after the End. The wicked can’t enter, but the nations bring their wealth into the city: there won’t be nations and economics after the final judgment, will there? So the final scene of Revelation includes present gospel-realities, not just the ultimate future.
The book of Revelation takes all the themes and imagery of Old Testament promise, shadow and prophecy, makes it all Jesus-centred and gospel-shaped.
It seems therefore that not everything in Revelation is linear. It’s not a strict timeline of future events, but was a series of visions which somewhat circularly depicted both present and future gospel realities about the King and His kingdom, to encourage believers who’d been promised the world but were about to suffer.
I’ve tried sharing the gospel with this focus, to people on the street—and I felt it went really well!
Instead of trying to swing a conversation around to “Where are you going when you die?” I continued their conversation seamlessly, from them talking about the problems in their world, to telling them the good news that God has already visited us (in His Son) and done something about it (by His ministry, and His cross and resurrection), now He invites us to be part of it, by being baptised, and if we should happen to die before He returns and rolls it out fully, He’ll raise us up to be part of it.
It had a good effect, I felt—comparable at least with the “If you died tonight…” angle (which isn’t untrue, and sometimes it might still be the angle to take).
