INTENTIONAL FAITH · THE PROMISE
Some folks feel a little guilty spending time thinking about heaven. It can seem like escapism, or like a distraction from the real work in front of us. But Scripture doesn’t treat it that way. In fact, it treats thinking about heaven as a command.
“Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.”
Colossians 3:1
The Greek verb Paul uses here is zeteo, the word for seeking. It’s the same word used when the shepherd searches for his lost sheep (Matthew 18:12), when the woman sweeps her house looking for her lost coin (Luke 15:8), and when the Son of Man comes to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). It describes a diligent, active, single-minded search. And it’s in the present tense, which means it isn’t a one-time event. Paul is saying, keep on seeking.
Think about how a family prepares to move overseas. J. C. Ryle once pointed out that a settler bound for a new country is naturally eager to learn everything he can about his future home: its climate, its people, its work, its customs. It would be strange if he weren’t. If we expect to live forever in that “better country” the writer of Hebrews describes (Hebrews 11:16), shouldn’t we want to know all we can about it before we arrive?
And notice that Paul has to command it. We aren’t told to avoid things we’re never tempted to do. The fact that God tells us to set our minds on heaven tells us something about ourselves: left to drift, our minds settle on earth. Everything around us pulls our attention downward and inward. Heavenly thinking doesn’t happen by accident. We have to work at it.
But won’t I become “so heavenly minded I’m no earthly good”?
Relax. That’s rarely our problem. Most of us are so earthly minded that we’re of no heavenly or earthly good. C. S. Lewis observed that the Christians who did the most for this present world were the very ones who thought most about the next. The apostles who turned the Roman Empire upside down, and the evangelicals who fought to end the slave trade, left their mark on earth precisely because their hearts were anchored in heaven. Lewis put it memorably: aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you get neither.
Jonathan Edwards understood this. As a young man he resolved to spend this life as a journey toward heaven and to let every other concern of life take its place behind that one. That wasn’t selfishness. It was simply aiming his longing for happiness at the only place it could truly be satisfied: in the person of Jesus and the place called heaven.
For reflection
- What have you been doing day by day to “seek the things above”? What might you do differently?
- Where in your life do you sense earth pulling your attention downward and inward?
- Can you think of someone whose hope of heaven made them more useful, not less, here on earth?