So, Christ himself and fellowship with him is enough. God designs pleasures and rewards not primarily as competitors but communicators of his beauty.Īnd isn’t it amazing that in Philippians 1:23, Paul says that to die and be with Christ is “far better” than anything on the earth. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20) That means, we’re all one physical, material harvest: Christ and us. Then, Paul builds on that reality by stressing that we ourselves will be raised physically from the dead, and he does it by saying our resurrection is all of one piece with Jesus’s bodily resurrection. The physical body has been united to the second person of the Trinity with a human and divine nature in one person - stunning, amazing, unbelievable almost. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). He said, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Jesus was at pains to persuade his doubting disciples that they were not seeing a ghost. In fact, that’s why there is a resurrection of the body and not just the immortality of the soul. Then the Bible makes it plain that this is not only true now, but will also be true in the resurrection.
The creation becomes one of the ways that we “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). He’s communicating something of himself in the good creation that he has made. The Bible says we are to eat and drink and do everything in our physical bodies to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), which must mean that the pleasures of God or the pleasures that God has built into the taste of food are not designed primarily as competitors with God’s beauty, but designed as means of its communication. That’s why God created a material universe and he created the earth and he created us with physical bodies and capacities to experience good through the created material existence. “God knows best how we can know Christ most completely and enjoy Christ most fully.”Īll the biblical pointers lead us to believe that Christ is revealed more fully when he is revealed not only immediately to the eyes of the heart by the Holy Spirit because of his moral and spiritual excellencies (for example, see Ephesians 1:18), but also when he is revealed mediately through things that he has made and things that he has done in creation, physical creation - things which we experience in our own created physical bodies, not only in our created spiritual souls. Paul says in Philippians 3:8, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Here’s the catch: God knows best how we can know Christ most completely and enjoy Christ most fully. The psalmist says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25), which is the heart that I hear coming out of Lisa’s mouth. It’s right to say, “Isn’t Christ enough?” The reason I say that’s a good instinct is because it’s the instinct of the psalmist. Many questions come into our inbox on eternity and heaven, including this really perceptive one from a podcast listener named Lisa: “Pastor John, what is the reward that we receive above and beyond finally getting to see Christ face-to-face, to be with the lover of our soul, forever in eternity? Isn’t he enough reward himself? Or will there be other rewards? If God is the gospel, and God is the prize of eternity, how and why would all other crowns and gifts motivate us toward heaven?”
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