But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24, NKJV).
Sandwiched between the Judge of All and the Mediator of the new covenant (more on Him in a subsequent post), are the spirits of just men made perfect.
This is fitting in so many ways, and with lyrical precision, the writer of Hebrews places the departed saints awaiting the culmination of all things right where they are the safest and most secure, sheltered between the Judge who has declared them innocent ("just") and the One whose sacrifice made their reprieve possible.
Who are these saints? And how they been made perfect ("complete")? These are every man, woman, and child who has died in faith, believing that Christ is Lord and Savior, and who are abiding in Heaven until the return of the King. They have been forgiven and thus made sinless and righteous (perfect). Their access to God is unencumbered by the old nature, or fleshly life, or the cares of this world.
They are more alive than ever before and eagerly await the Resurrection when their spiritual forms will once again be clothed in physical bodies, this time glorified, ageless, impervious, and immortal.
What you must guard against here is the cynicism born of life in this often miserable world that says such an outcome is "too good to be true". We know very little of good or truth in this age - only that which has been provided for us by God through His Word and through His Son.
Our conceptions of Heaven are limited and besmirched. The modern church is defective and anemic in so many ways, not the least of which is its general neglect of Heaven.
It is presented as either a vaporous realm of clouds and harps, or an unknowable amorphous arena of pure spirit - neither of which has any resemblance to the truth of this place as revealed in Scripture.
Undermining Heaven is effective propaganda in the long war against God, but the author of Hebrews has no such erroneous filters. He understands the magnificence of the vibrant, fully-dimensioned life that is the dwelling place of the saints after death.
Think of it as a vast, immeasurable, life and light-filled universe adjacent to our own puny, fallen one, currently invisible to us, but poised to overtake and infinitely renew our own.
The laws which govern this unimaginably good place are as immutable as the laws which govern existence here, but are of an essentially different character. Nothing in this universe, in its un-glorified form, can exist in that one. It must be transformed on a level that transcends the mere molecular, though it includes it, and encompasses the very real but (to us) incorporeal sphere of the moral and spiritual.
To survive for even a nanosecond in Heaven, we must be remade, utterly, completely, irrevocably - so much so that the first step has been described as being "born again" in the Spirit.
Nicodemus, the Teacher of Israel so long ago, was gifted with this truth and reacted as do many thinking beings by asking the simple but profound question of how can a man be reborn? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb?
Jesus gave Him answer, the essence of which explains how the spirits of just men are made perfect. The transformation from sinner to saint, from dead in trespasses and sins to exquisitely, immortally alive, is accomplished through the one named energy of salvation: faith.
But it is not merely faith, nor is it faith in faith, but it is faith in a singular and utterly unique and worthy Person - Jesus Christ, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Savior, Redeemer, and Friend.
This conversion of unbelief (our default condition) to transformative belief, is that which will guarantee our final renovation into beings that can survive this heavenly realm. Without it, we are too fragile, too cumbersome, too weighed down with iniquity to continue our existence in any proximity to the Giver of Life and Love.
Without it we are fit for only one place once the remaking of our universe is complete - a place as far removed from God as is possible. A place in the outermost darkness, completely immolated in the fierce coldness of ultimate isolation. We call this place Hell.
Hell is Heaven's antithesis in every conceivable way. As we may have difficulty believing in the soaring goodness of heaven, so too we may be unable to fully grasp the crushing, illimitable despair of Hell.
Both are true, regardless of our feelings or intellectual smugness. Both are presented to us by a merciful and living God who loved us so magnificently that He sent His Son to provide a way for us to be conformed into His image, that we may live forever in fellowship with the Source of all that is good.
Otherwise, we will exists as far from Him as can be… forever in torment.
This present earth in this present time is our opportunity to become something unimaginably better - not through our own puny efforts, but through faith in what God has done to redeem us.
We have until we die, or Christ returns.
If we have not appropriated His sacrifice on our behalf by then, our fate will be sealed.
If we have, then we will join the numberless multitude in Heaven and be joyously counted among those who have been made perfect and complete through the blood of the Lamb.
