- Faith and Discipline Ready Us for Heaven

09 - Faith and Discipline Ready Us for Heaven
I HAVE FOUND THERE IS an entirely new way to shock complacent Christians in our churches today. These twentieth century Christians go into shock when I say that it is an error to assume that being saved is to be automatically ready for heaven.
Very few people in our churches are willing to consider what the Bible actually teaches about discipline and chastening in preparing us for our heavenly home. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews gave definite instruction to those who were children of God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ:
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. … God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. .. . Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:8-14)
Now, I know I will have to explain what I mean about our daily Christian lives being in preparation for an eternity in the heavenly realms. First, let us see if we are in agreement about the most important proclamation we can make concerning faith.
There is no doubt about it. First in importance concerning faith is the good news—the truth that every man and woman in our lost world may have God’s gifts of forgiveness and eternal life through believing faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. It is not possible to overstate the importance of this basic truth in the Christian gospel. It has been proclaimed often. Paul gave this stark, simple instruction concerning salvation to the jailer at Philippi: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household” (Acts 16:31).
As Christian believers (I am assuming you are a believer), you and I know how we have been changed and regenerated and assured of eternal life by faith in Jesus Christ and His atoning death. On the other hand, where this good news of salvation by faith is not known, religion becomes an actual bondage. If Christianity is known only as a religious institution, it may well become merely a legalistic system of religion, and the hope of eternal life becomes a delusion.
God’s objective is our holiness
I have said this much about the reality and assurance of our salvation through Jesus Christ to counter the shock you may feel when I add that God wants to fully prepare you in your daily Christian life so that you will be ready indeed for heaven. Perhaps it is a good thing for you if you are shocked. It is my observation that many Christians are so cosmopolitan, so worldly-wise, so self-assured that they are past being shocked by anything!
Probably your first question as you come out of shock will be, “Have you forgotten the dying thief? Did not our Lord tell him his faith had made him ready for paradise?”
Let me share something with you. No one could love the Christian gospel and witness it to others without an understanding that the God of all grace has surely made a necessary provision for those who may trust Jesus in the final hours of life. We admit our humanness. We do not have God’s wisdom and discernment. Only God is all-knowing and all-powerful. He is full of grace and truth. We can trust Him to be faithful and right in all of His dealings with us.
Remember that most believers have been found of the Lord and received His love and grace at an earlier time in their lives. Many testify to faith extending back to their childhood. Thus, they have been in God’s household for a long time, and He has been trying to do something special within their beings day after day, year after year. His purpose has been to bring many sons—and daughters, too—to glory (Hebrews 1:10).
Now, if we are truly sons and daughters by faith, we will respond to the wise discipline and the necessary rebukes aimed at bringing us to the full measure of spiritual stature. God’s motives are loving. Our heavenly Father disciplines us for our own good, “that we may share in His holiness.”
I have known people who seemed to be terrified by God’s loving desire that we should reflect His own holiness and goodness. As God’s faithful children, we should be attracted to holiness, for holiness is God-likeness—likeness to God!
God encourages every Christian believer to follow after holiness. Holiness is to be our constant ambition—not as holy as God is holy, but holy because God is holy. We know who we are and God knows who He is. He does not ask us to be God, and He does not ask us to produce the holiness that only He Himself knows. Only God is holy absolutely; all other beings can be holy only in relative degrees.
The angels in heaven do not possess God’s holiness. They are created beings and they are contented to reflect the glory of God. That is their holiness.
Holiness is not terrifying. Actually, it is amazing and wonderful that God should promise us the privilege of sharing in His nature. It is impossible for any person to be as holy as God is holy. It is encouraging that God “knows how we are formed”(Psalms 103:14). He remembers we were made of dust. So He tells us what is in His being as He thinks of us: “Be holy because I am your God and I am holy! It is My desire that you grow in grace and in the knowledge of Me. I want you to be more like Jesus, My eternal Son, every day you live!”
Our Lord endeavors to prepare us for our eternal fellowship with the saints, the martyrs, the heroes of the faith who suffered through fire and flood and blood and tears when they were God’s pilgrims on this earth. Do not try to short-circuit God’s plans for your discipleship and spiritual maturing here. If you and I were already prepared for heaven in that moment of our conversion, God would have taken us there instantly!
As believers and disciples, we are satisfied to know that the mysterious quality of God’s holy person sets Him apart from all others and all else throughout His entire universe. God exists in Himself. His holy nature is such that we cannot comprehend Him with our minds.
God’s holy nature is unique. He is of a substance not shared by any other being. Hence, God can be known only as He reveals Himself. There is absolutely no other way for us to know Him.
Today we may enjoy God’s presence
In Old Testament times, whenever this utterly holy God revealed Himself in some way to humankind, terror and amazement were the reaction. People saw themselves as guilty and unclean by contrast.
Early in the Revelation, the final book of the Bible, the apostle John describes the overwhelming nature of his encounter with the Lord of glory. He says, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17). John was a man, a person born into a sinful world. But he was a believer and an apostle. At the time, he was in exile “because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Revelation 1:9). But when the risen, glorified Lord Jesus appeared to him on Patmos, John sank down in abject humility and fear.
Jesus at once reassured him, stooping to place a nail-pierced hand on the prostrate apostle. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus said to John. “I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” Then Jesus proceeded to give His apostle a writing assignment: “Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now, and what will take place later.”
I notice particularly that the Lord did not condemn John. He knew that John’s weakness was the reaction to revealed divine strength. He knew that John’s sense of unworthiness was the instant reaction to absolute holiness. Along with John, every redeemed human being needs the humility of spirit that can only be brought about by the manifest presence of God.
This mysterious yet gracious Presence is the air of life eternal. It is the music of existence, the poetry of the Christian life. It is the beauty and wonder of being one of Christ’s own—a sinner born again, regenerated, created anew to bring glory to God. To know this Presence is the most desirable state imaginable for anyone. To live surrounded by this sense of God is not only beautiful and desirable, but it is imperative!
Know that our living Lord is unspeakably pure. He is sinless, spotless, immaculate, stainless. In His person is an absolute fullness of purity that our words can never express. This fact alone changes our entire human and moral situation and outlook. We can always be sure of the most important of all positives: God is God and God is right. He is in control. Because He is God He will never change!
I repeat: God is right—always. That statement is the basis of all we are thinking about God.
Holiness takes time
When the eternal God Himself invites us to prepare ourselves to be with Him throughout the future ages, we can only bow in delight and gratitude, murmuring, “Oh, Lord, may your will be done in this poor, unworthy life!”
I can only hope that you are wise enough, desirous enough and spiritual enough to face up to the truth that everyday is another day of spiritual preparation, another day of testing and discipline with our heavenly destination in mind. For as I hope you have already seen, full qualification for eternity is not instant or automatic or painless.
I hope, too, that you may begin to understand in this context why our evangelical churches are in such a mess. It has become popular to preach a painless Christianity and automatic saintliness. It has become a part of our “instant” culture. “Just pour a little water on it, stir mildly, pick up a gospel tract, and you are on your Christian way.”
Lo, we are told, this is Bible Christianity. It is nothing of the sort! To depend upon that kind of a formula is to experience only the outer fringe, the edge of what Christianity really is. We must be committed to all that it means to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. There must be a new birth from above; otherwise we are in religious bondage and legalism and delusion—or worse! But when the wonder of regeneration has taken place in our lives, then comes the lifetime of preparation with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
God has told us that heaven and the glories of the heavenly kingdom are more than humans can ever dream or imagine. It will be neither an exhibition of the commonplace nor a democracy for the spiritually mediocre.
Why should we try to be detractors of God’s gracious and rewarding plan of discipleship? God has high plans for all of His redeemed ones. It is inherent in His infinite being that His motives are love and goodness. His plans for us come out of His eternal and creative wisdom and power. Beyond that is His knowledge and regard for the astonishing potential that lies resident in human nature, long asleep in sin but awakened by the Holy Spirit in regeneration.
Yes, God is preparing us by making us disciples of Christ. A disciple is one who is in training. Being a disciple of Christ brings us to the day-by-day realities of such terms as discipline, rebuke, correction, hardship. Those are not pleasant words.
To be admonished and instructed, to be punished and reproved, to be trained and corrected—no one chooses these things because they are neither pleasant nor entertaining. But they are in God’s plan for our spiritual maturity.
What will be our response?
In times of testing and hardship, I have heard Christians cry in their discouragement, “How can I believe that God loves me?” The fact is, God loves us to such a degree that He will use every necessary means to mature us until we reach “unity in the faith” and attain “to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
A critic may cringe and charge that God is breaking our spirits, that we will be worth nothing as a result, that we will wear only a sad, hang-dog look for eternity. Oh, no! That is not true. What God plans is to bring us into accord with the wisdom and power and holiness that flow eternally from His throne.
God’s loving motive is to bring us into total harmony with Himself so that moral power and holy use fullness become our sin this world and in the world to come.
This has been a message from my heart about down-to-earth preparation that will result in readiness for heaven’s joys. Let me therefore conclude with a simple, down-to-earth illustration—the example of a newborn baby brought suddenly into the confusion of our noisy world.
Is the little fellow “ready” for this world in which he must live? When the time of his birth neared, the doctor told the parents-to-be, “The baby is ready!” So, as the baby was born, it could have been said in the biological sense that he was “ready.”
But what do you really think? You must know that the baby is not really ready at all! From the first little whack he gets to make him cry and get his breath right on for the next eighteenth or twenty years, that baby and child and young man will need to learn much about his environment. He will need to mature day by day.
In the broader social and human sense, he is not ready for this world until years have passed and he has completed his formal education. So it is with the Christian believer who has confessed his or her faith in Jesus Christ. Oh, yes, he or she is forgiven and “saved.” But is he, is she automatically prepared for heaven and all of the eternal glories above?
To say yes is to be ridiculous. You might as well say that you can pick up a newborn baby, prop him up in the chair of the nation’s President or Prime Minister, and whisper in his ear that he is ready to govern.
My mind returns frequently to some of the old Christian saints who often prayed in their faith, “O God, we know this world is only a dressing room for the heaven to come!” They were very close to the truth in their vision of what God has planned for His children.
In summary: Down here the orchestra merely rehearses; over there we will give the concert. Here, we ready our garments of righteousness; over there we will wear them at the wedding of the Lamb.