The Promise of Heaven

If you are a Christian, someone trusting Christ alone for your salvation, Scripture promises that the moment you leave this life you will go to Heaven. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. To depart this life is to “be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23). Indeed, “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

Heaven is a perfect place for people made perfect. Perfection is the goal of God’s sanctifying work in us. He’s not merely making us better than we are; He is conforming us to the image of His Son. He is making us fit to dwell in His presence forever. It is the purpose for which He chose us before the foundation of the world.

God begins the process of perfecting us from the moment we are converted from unbelief to faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit regenerates us. He gives us a new heart with a new set of holy desires (Ezekiel 36:26). He transforms our stubborn wills. He opens our hearts to embrace the truth rather than reject it. He enables us to believe rather than doubt. He gives us a hunger for righteousness and a desire for Him. And thus the new birth transforms the inner person. From that point on, everything that occurs in our lives—good or bad—God uses to make us like Christ (Romans 8:28–30).

In terms of our moral and legal status, believers are judged perfect immediately—not on the basis of who we are or what we have done, but because of what Christ has done for us. We are fully justified the moment we believe. We are forgiven of all our sin. We are clothed with a perfect righteousness (Isaiah 61:10; Romans 4:5), which instantly gives us a standing before God without any fear of condemnation (Romans 5:1; 8:1). This is the great position of privilege Scripture refers to when it says God has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). And when Paul writes that God has “raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6), he is again speaking of this position of favor with God that we have been granted by grace alone. We are not literally, physically seated with Christ in the heavenlies, of course. But legally, in the eternal court of God, we have been granted full rights to Heaven. But God does not stop there. Having judicially declared us righteous (Scripture calls that justification), God never stops conforming us to the image of His Son (that is sanctification).

If you are not a Christian, you need to lay hold of this truth by faith: the sin that will keep you out of Heaven has no cure but the blood of Christ. If you are weary of your sin and exhausted from the load of your guilt, He tenderly holds forth the offer of life and forgiveness and eternal rest to you: “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). No one will be turned away. Jesus said, “Whoever comes to Me I will never cast out” (John 6:37). All are invited: “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Revelation 22:17).

—Condensed from The Glory of Heaven by John MacArthur