Larry's Heaven Question

Larry’s Question

Hey brother buddy hope everything’s going well with you, I know that you study the Bible a good bit. I would like your opinion on something, there’s a person that is born again covered in the blood and they die and make Heaven their home.... do they have the ability to look over heavens banisters and see us as we walk the walk to be able to join them one day? I know the Bible says that we are compassed about what so great a cloud of witnesses. Do you have any other scripture verses for or against this train of thought?

My Answer

Please allow me to start by saying that I am in no way truly qualified to address this situation. Although I know something about the loss of a loved one from the experience of losing my lovely grandparents, I cannot pretend that I always keep it all together. In fact, I probably try to hide from the heartache more than I’d care to admit. Until this question was presented to me, I would only ponder in brief spurts so I wouldn’t feel their absence as much. I should have known better, because I do feel more in-tune with my grandparents and the Lord now that I have addressed it more biblically.

Here are my current thoughts for what they may be worth: To more fully understand the depths of this question, I feel we must first pause and take a panoramic snap shot of who a Christian is. When a sinner accepts their salvation in Jesus, repents, and begins to walk in the newness of life, they are baptized by the Holy Spirit into the “body of Christ” (Romans 6:1-14, 1 Corinthians 12:12-27, Galatians 3:26-29, Colossians 2:8-15). The moment we accepted God’s gift of salvation, we experienced a death to our old nature, a burial by baptism, a resurrection into Christ. We forfeited our previous lives to the point of death, and Christ was born into our lives. However, as a seed holds its physical shape until it is fully transformed into the fruit it was originally created to become, we temporarily retain the same physical elements (i.e. same earthly name and body), but look forward to the day when even those will be gone and we will be given a new glorified body and called by a new name (1 Corinthians 15). When a believer is transitioned from this world to the next, we must come to see them as simply coming more fully into union with Christ. The very purpose of their living is now at its fullest bloom. What once was faith is now sight.

The passed believer’s current place is beyond the temporary and mortal, and is well secured in the everlasting. However, their initial entrance to salvation offered them access to God via the person of Jesus. This induction also then brings every believer of the past, present and the future to a common strand of unity. Christ is the DNA of every born again person who has ever existed. This is why we have been called to operate as the body of Christ in this world. From the first believer until the last, Christ’s life will be the access point by which we Christians “…live, move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This is also the common thread that keeps us so intertwined with believers of the past, present and future.

Although I cannot respond with chapter and verse that there are definite moments when our passed loved ones watch our earthly lives from the safety of God’s presence, I can find great comfort in the fact that we still share the same life source. As long as Christ is alive in me as He was in them, they are never really gone. Every beautiful characteristic our loved ones carried came from Him. Every smile, every twinkle of the eye, every moment of laughter, every gentle touch are all the good things which flow from above (James 1:17). In attempting to survey the facts from a heavenly perspective, we can see where our believing loved ones had themselves already died when they first surrendered their lives to Christ. This is what revokes the powerful sting out of death’s domain; Christ arose! He lives forever, and we will continue to be part of the same Body, even when they take their last breath and we seem separated in anguish. I reckon that if the natural man could bear to somehow view it in terms of a simple metaphor, one may attempt to think of it as the physical eye not being able to see their own hand when clothed by a glove for the sharp chill of a winter evening; still very much there, just covered in greater protection. Our Christian loved ones still remain with us as Christ’s body, they are simply better tucked away in Christ’s protection than before. Safe now from the bitter chill of what continues to be our present reality. The closer we move to Christ, the closer we too will move to those who have died in Him. Most importantly, our loved ones who have left us to continue contending for the faith, if they may indeed be heard cheering us on from the balcony of Heaven, they are telling us not to look for them, but away from all of the temporal distractions and “unto Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-4).