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Ask NT Wright Anything
What Did Jesus Mean By "My Father's House"? How should we think about euthanasia, and what are the rewards of Heaven?
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A
Hello and welcome to the Ask NT Write Anything podcast, the program where we try to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College, joined
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B
by by Tom Wright from Wycliffe hall in Oxford.
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Now, Tom, can you think of any cool pop songs that mention heaven? I mean, I can think of several, like Mariah Carey's, you know, Heaven is a Place on Earth.
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I've heard of that. I mean, I confess I really stopped listening to regular pop music around the time that Maggie and I got married. We were both heavily into classical music and, you know, you can't listen to everything all the time. But the one that jumps into my mind inevitably is John Lennon. Imagine there's no heaven, which, which actually, though it was clearly intended to be kind of a flag waving atheist protest. There's no heaven, there's no hell, it's only sky. And we're all just living our lives today. There's a lot of actually good things in there, some of which would go straight back to the gospels about don't worry about possessions, et cetera. And instead of having to fight for everything, we should live at peace. Now, in some ways, Lenin was onto something, though he thought that meant rejecting Christianity. Anyway, that's beside the point, I've discovered, by the way, if you try to quote that song in a book, Yoko Ono will charge you heavily for the copyright, even for a few lines of it. Which is kind of amusing since one of the lines in the song is imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. And the answer is, obviously she can't.
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A
Yes, well, and that's always the problem of hypocrisy. Everybody loves, everyone loves a lack of possessions, except when it comes to their own. There we go. Well, the reason, the reason I'm. I'm talking about pop songs in heaven, Tom, is that we've got two questions today that do touch on heaven. One is, you know, re about rewards in heaven. Then there's another one about, you know, Jesus Talking in John 14 about my father's house, which many people are quote from heaven. And in the midst of that we've also got a question about the value of human life. So let's get in onto our heavenly minded questions. Our first question is from Trey in San Antonio. And this is the one about rewards in heaven. Hello, Tom and Mike. I understand that much of your teaching discusses how the goal was never for us to be spirits living eternally in heaven, but rather for be resurrected in new glorified bodies in the new creation and new heavens and God dwelling with man. Yet there are many passages in the Bible which refer to storing up treasure or rewards in heaven and our citizenship or dwelling is in heaven. How do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements regarding heaven? Thank you. Well, Tom, I imagine you're going to tell Trey that these are not really contradictory. And you know what the New Testament means by store up and is in heaven waiting for you or kept in heaven for you may not be quite what Trey and several other people's mean, but we're eager to hear your explanation.
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B
Well, Mike, as you will realize, the shortest answer I could give is, Trey, please do read both my book Surprised by Hope and my new book, God's Homecoming, because I address these very specific questions and the very specific passages that you're talking about. But I grew up believing that all this language about rewards in heaven, et cetera, meant that when we get to heaven there will be a reward or whatever it is. And so I had to go around the loop of relearning what that language was when I was gradually maturing as a New Testament reader, et cetera, et cetera. And let's be quite clear, in the Bible, heaven is God's space. And one of the things that happens in God's space or place is that that's where God keeps his future purposes ready and waiting for the time when they can be brought out and put into effect. It's like a theater director having various bits of scenery which are kept quite safely in the wings of the. Of the stage, ready to be brought out when it's time for them to be displaying the new scene, whatever it is. And that's how the language of heaven is regularly used. So that the example, the illustration that I've often given runs something like this. Supposing, Mike, you were going to be coming to stay with me and I was going to be out when you arrived. But I might say to you, here's a front door key and there's some beer kept safe in the fridge. That doesn't mean that when you arrive you've got to get in the fridge to drink the beer. It means it's kept safe for you there. And when you arrive, you can get it out of the fridge and have it in the normal way, only please don't drink it all, because I'll be wanting some when I get back too. But the point then is that heaven is where in say, 2 Corinthians 5, heaven is where our future body is stored up against the day when God is gives it to Us, Paul says we have an eternal dwelling place in the heavens. He's not talking about us going to heaven in order there to get our resurrection bodies. Resurrection bodies belong on a renewed earth. And so Paul is assuring them that God already knows the real you, the person that he knows he wants you to become in the new creation, the resurrection person, person. And that's there. It's not uncertain. God has got it ready. And in Philippians 3:20, famous passage, Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await the Savior, the King, the Lord Jesus, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power which enables him to subject everything to himself. Now, the idea of citizenship and being citizens in heaven, we must not misunderstand that. People have often said, and I've heard quite famous theologians say in public, that, well, the Philippians, many of them, were Roman citizens, and they knew that being a Roman citizen meant you had the right of return, that when you were fed up with life in Philippi, you would one day go back and live in Rome where you were a citizen. That's precisely not how the image works. The reason that the Romans had planted colonies in northern Greece and in western Turkey and elsewhere, and the reason why there were citizens of Rome in those places was that Rome was already overcrowded and had a food shortage problem. And the last thing they wanted was old soldiers, which is what these people had started out as coming back to Rome, swaggering around and stealing people's farms and so on. The point of being a Roman citizen in Philippi was not that one day you would go back to Rome. Was that rather you were to be an agent of Roman civilization in northern Greece. The point of being a citizen of heaven on earth is to be an agent, an active agent of heavenly value, worth, way of life here on earth. And so that's why Paul then says that Jesus will come back, not in order to take us away to heaven, but in order to complete the work of renewing the whole creation, as in Romans 8 and other passages will be touching on John 14. In answer to another question, I suggest it might be good if we just postpone the John 14 bit of the question for that, but so that the idea of rewards in heaven again doesn't mean one day you'll get to heaven and there will be a reward. I do think we should rejoice in the fact that when we have served Christ as best we can in the power of the Spirit in this life, one day we will hear God saying, well, Done good and faithful servant. But I don't think this is because we will go to a place called heaven, a non spatio temporal, purely spiritual quote unquote place, and there we'll get a reward, whatever such a reward could be in a Platonic heaven. I'm not entirely sure. Rather the idea is God has kept safe elements of the new life which are already designed to be given to us and shared with us in the new creation. And the idea of them being in heaven means it's secure. God's got them ready, don't worry. God knows the way we're going. God knows what he intends to do eventually and that's all taken care of. So I think once we get the direction of travel right, that the Bible is talking about God coming to be at home with us rather than us going forever and permanently to be at home with him, then gradually it all comes straight.
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Tom, I think that's a great way to put it and I hope that answers Trey's question that there's not a disparity between our hope for the new creation and things like rewards in heaven. Because the rewards may be stored up in heaven, but eventually the rewards, much like heaven, is coming to earth where we will enjoy them and benefit from them. And in whatever future dimension God has plans for us, that's where we'll exercise them.
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Yeah, I remember when I read Christopher Rowland's book Christian Origins, towards the end there it struck me and this goes back many years and I remember it vividly. The last scene in the Bible is not about saved souls going up to heaven, it's about the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth. And one of the things that, that rules out is all forms of Platonic or Gnostic ideas that the reality is a non spatiotemporal reality and that that's what we aspire to. No, the reality is a this worldly but transformed reality. And it's no surprise that Chris Rowland, who wrote that, was very active working with Christian aid and so on for justice and hope for people in the two thirds world. Because once you've seen that vision, that's what God is going to do in the world finally. And because we have the Spirit and because we follow Jesus, we get to participate in some of that in advance here and now.
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Yeah, well that's, that's something that people do need to be periodically reminded from time to time lest we become so heavenly minded we become of no earthly use. But speaking of earthly matters and earthly dilemmas, now we've got a really Tricky question or a real sensitive one from Mickey Denon from Xenia, Ohio. And this is all about the value of human life. Mickey writes to us as background I have been a practicing physician for almost 40 years and had the pleasure to care for prematurely born infants as early as 24 weeks post conception and adults older than 100 years old. I have sadly watched the pain of families and colleagues struggling with the answer to what do we do next when all of the modern medical technology has to offer seemingly fails? Professor Wright has often spoken and written about humanity's commission to be God's image bearer and we are to operate as a small working model of new creation. I'm wondering about how this affects medical ethics in the realms of care for severely premature infants on the one hand and and end of life care on the other. Considering this commission, it would be too easy to choose a utilitarian view that this person in front of us is struggling to continue mortal life no longer can or will be able to be a small working model of new creation. The only logical next step is to compassionately pull the plugs and go home. Does Professor Wright have any thoughts or insights on the correct balance of maintaining human dignity and how that works with our commission as Jesus followers and being God's image bearers? Thanks. Well, we certainly thank Dr. Mickey for his question and we thank him for his service to his community and his patients. As a physician caring for people in some of the most tragic circumstances, it is a hard one. And I know Tom, in the UK there have been huge debates recently about things like euthanasia. And if I understand correctly, I think the legalization of euthanasia was defeated, if not in the Commons, then definitely in the House of Lords. Where do Christians need to take their stand when caring for people who are in a position where their life would not normally be considered viable, where they're in the last stages of life or where, you know you're facing a potentially stillborn pregnancy. What's the wisdom of the Christian tradition we can apply here? Tom?
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Yeah, I mean we are in an extraordinary moment in that the advances of medical science in the very recent past, I mean, we're only talking a couple of hundred years and in the cases we're dealing with here, really much less than that. Still, this is a very new thing and, and people have been struggling with it. Once they realize that you can actually keep alive for some time people who until very recently in human history would simply have died of, quote, natural causes, unquote. No, we can actually do this and we can put them on this life support machine and we can do that with them. And then they will still be alive, won't they? And that's when many people have faced this struggle and particularly when watching a relative or loved one go through this. Is it actually right to prolong life when the life which is being prolonged is pretty miserable and actually has no hope of ever getting better? That's when the very difficult thing of reverence for life, which was Albert Schweitzer's great motto comes in. Do we still have reverence for life even when that life is. Is miserable and getting worse and bids fair to get even more worse? And likewise with the very tiny infant who might, in days gone by, simply not have survived. We can now do things which do make them survive. And if we can, then perhaps we should. And I have a family member I know who was. Was born two months prematurely and was not expected to live and in fact was baptized almost immediately because she was not expected to live. And remarkably, that lady now is nearly 80 years old and has played a rich and fulfilled family life role and also in wider community. So you just never know. And that was talking about going back to the 1940s. It was amazing to think that she would live. And I have had knowledge, quite close knowledge of other cases where you might think, oh my goodness, this is the end, and then actually we can turn a corner and there can be some value still to be had, even in difficulties. So there are many tricky issues and I would always tend to go with, yes, if there's the slightest chance of life, let's seize that and work with it. Because who knows what God can then do. At the same time, I fully recognize that there are times when it's pretty obvious that this person is simply not going in any meaningful sense to get better. And people talk, and it always slightly sticks in my throat to say this. People talk about somebody who has become effectively in a vegetable condition rather than an animal condition where they're no longer really alive. And that's very difficult. As a non physician, as a non medical person, I wouldn't be able to make those adjudications. But if that is really the case, then it seems to me there is an argument to be said for then. Well, Dr. McGee Denon says a phrase, pull the plugs and go home. That sounds a bit heartless, but actually there may be a time saying, okay, it's time for this person simply to go to sleep. And as Christians we believe that when you go to sleep in the Lord, you are with the Lord and that then one day when God makes his new world, you will be raised from the dead. So I have no problem about saying that if somebody reaches that conclusion out of compassion, it's not saying goodbye to this person forever. It's not casting them off callously. It's saying this is the wisest and best thing now. And we grieve over this person, but we don't grieve as those who have no hope. So I think always to go with life, if that's possible. And who decides what's possible? That's the difficult thing. And I certainly, watching the debates about euthanasia going on in the British Parliament and so on, I am very firmly on the side of those who say we just shouldn't be doing this. And the case studies from Holland and from Oregon and other places and Canada. Canada, yes, where they've had euthanasia legislation. It's pretty hair raising stuff. And all sorts of people say, well, my life stopped being worth living for all sorts of extraordinary reasons. And where they actually need, whether psychotherapy or whatever, something to help them discover how life can be worth living. And so simply I feel like committing suicide. So please will you help me? That really isn't good enough. And society needs to adjudicate that and to say no, that's not the way that we treat one another. And if people are trying to treat themselves like that, we have to talk them down like somebody talking somebody down who's up on a high ledge threatening to jump into the street and so on. So that would be the position I would have. And Dr. Denon talks about the correct balance of maintaining human dignity and what that means as image bearers and so on. The last thing I would say is that as Christians, ourselves, as image bearers ourselves, and if these people that we're talking about are themselves image bearers, go to Romans 8. And in Romans 8 you find this extraordinary picture where we are groaning with the pain of all creation. And the role of the Christian medic or the family member who's beside somebody's bed or cotton, is not to have all the answers necessarily, but in prayer to hold the pain of the situation before the love of God. And as we do that, then the groaning which we feel we understand from Romans 8 is the groaning of the Spirit which God the Father is listening to. And somehow we are then able to bring the message of the cross, which is a message of the glory of God revealed in the midst of the horror of the world to bear upon that situation. I'm not saying that necessarily gives us any easy answers at the end of the day, but it contextualizes it in a way which should then provide the step by step, way forward, whatever that may be.
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Yeah, I think that is a wise word to the situation. We live in a strange age where you can go online and you can Google suicide prevention, but you can also google suicide or assisted dying as a means. So if you've got depression, you can call the suicide prevention hotline, or if you've got depression, you can applied for, you know, medically assisted dying. And I, I just don't think the, the contradiction can last. And either we're going to come back from this the brink or else we're going to have a view of human life that says the minute you stop having maximal joy, then the fitting thing or the responsible thing is to end your life or someone to end your life for you, for you. Because the thing about voluntary euthanasia is it can be followed by involuntary euthanasia when people say, well, we've done the sums of keeping you alive and how much you can contribute to this world, and the odds are not in your favor, my friend. So that is, that is the danger of the world we live in. But yes, we thank you for that question from Dr. Mickey, a very good one, and our heart and prayers certainly rest with him and the difficult ministry he has to carry out. We're gonna have a break now, and when we come back from the break, we're going to return to our heavenly theme and look at what did Jesus mean when he referred to my Father's house? If you care about understanding scripture more deeply, I'd encourage you to spend some time with the new living translation. What I appreciate about the NLT is its ability to communicate the meaning of the biblical text in the natural English we all speak today. It is a translation produced by a team of more than 100 scholars, but its real strength is that it helps modern readers hear the Scriptures with the force and emotional resonance the first audience would have experienced. Check it out for yourself. Visit Tyndall.com and in celebration of the NLT's 30th anniversary, listeners to this show can use the code NT30 to receive 30% off any NLT Bible.
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Foreign.
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Welcome back. We've got a final question for this week from Ralph de Jong from McKellar, Ontario, about John 14. This is what he asks. Hi, Tom and Mike. Thank you for your many insightful answers to the questions raised in this podcast. They help us grow in our faith as we understand Better his word. Truly a blessing. Thank you, Ralph. My question is this. In John 14, 2, 4, Jesus says, In my Father's house are many dwelling places, and that he is going away to prepare a place for his disciples. I have always understood my Father's house as heaven, but I'm wondering if the imagery is richer. In the New Testament, my father's house often refers to the temple, John 2, Luke 2. So is it possible that my Father's house in John 14 could refer to the new spiritual temple, that being the body of believers and that the dwelling place is the Father's house, are all the believers? Ephesians 2, 20, 23 refers to the body of believers as the temple and that we are the dwelling place of the Spirit. The second part of the question, what does it mean that he is going away to prepare a place for us? He is this a future new heavens and new earth, or something inaugurated through his death, resurrection, ascension, and occurring right now in the ongoing kingdom work, which will be consummated in his coming on the last day. Thank you very much. Wishing you God's blessing. Yeah, this is a good one. I mean, how do we align the new creation language, the church as the temple, with Jesus saying, I go to prepare a place for you? You know, in my Father's house, there are many rooms. You know, I. I'm hoping my room is next to JI Packer and John Stott's room. I'd like us, you know, have our rooms next to each other and, you know, me and these two great Anglican theologian and churchman, we could have some good chats, you know, round about the times about the Bible and the theology. Maybe we could pull in CS Lewis, assuming he is in heaven. I think he will be. I. I think he will be. Just to be clear. But, Tom, what does Jesus mean by my Father's house?
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What?
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I mean, this is something kept in heaven. How is this expressed in the new creation? Or is it something we experience now when we think of the church as the temple of the living God?
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Yeah, people always come back to John 14, and in a sense, I don't blame them. I would myself if I, for the first time, was reading, say, a book like my own, surprised by hope or my recent God's homecoming. I should say to Ralph and anyone else who's Interested in John 14, I have a whole section on this very passage, John 14 in my new book, God's Homecoming, where I go through all the passages which might seem on an ordinary reading to be going in a different direction from What I'm suggesting, because there's two or three things right off the top about John 14 which we need to bear in mind. One is that if you read the chapter as a whole at a run and don't stop with the first three or four verses, you find that the climax of the chapter is when in verse 23, Jesus says, those who love me will keep my word, and my father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. That's the ultimate promise. God the Father and Jesus the Lord will come and make their home with us. That's the direction of travel. And so that the idea of Jesus going away to prepare a place for us seems to be part of a larger reality, which then, yes, we do need to borrow the temple idea. My Father's house is the temple. But now in the new creation which is launched by Jesus, we're not talking about a temple in Jerusalem. We're talking about this community of believers who are as Jesus, people indwelt by His Spirit. When Jesus breathes on the disciples in John 20 and says, Receive the Holy Spirit, this is like the divine glory in the Old Testament coming to dwell in the tabernacle. This is the house. This is where Jesus is preparing a place for us to be, a place where we will be valued and honored members of the Father's house. Ephesians, chapter two says much the same thing, that when Judean and Gentile come together in faith, then they are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. So that's the larger perspective. And I want to say as well, read John 14 in parallel with John 15, because the image of the vine and the branches in John 15 is another way of saying the same thing. Jesus is the great reality, the vine, which is Israel according to the Psalms and Isaiah and so on the vine, which is the new community into which Jesus own followers are now engrafted and with his life flowing through them. So these are not to be taken as a woodenly literal thing, as though we were to go out into a garden and look for an actual vine called Jesus, and we were to somehow graft ourselves into that. And in the same way, the idea of going away to prepare a place has so often been read in a Platonic sense of, well, there is this place called heaven, and Jesus has gone there for us. The other thing, thing to say is that the word for rooms or dwelling places, in the older translation, many mansions, is a very specific Greek word, which is mone m o n e with the E being a long E. And I did some research on this a while ago, and it's in the footnotes to my book God's Homecoming. If you look up in the Greek dictionaries, the dictionaries of ancient Greek, what the word mone means, it's not a place where you go to make what we would call a final home. It's a place, a wayside rest, a place where you go to be refreshed while you're on a journey somewhere else. And there are many passages in ancient Greek literature which use it in exactly this. If an army's on the march and they have to stop overnight, where they pitch their tents is their Monet. They're not going to stay there forever. They're on the march again the next day and so on. Many other examples like that. And it's only when the passage becomes read platonically about going to heaven that then it's almost like a new meaning of the word Monet, which doesn't come until maybe the 3rd or 4th century AD in the writers of the early church fathers. So I would be very careful about interpreting John 14 in the way which it's very natural to interpret for those of us who are brought up in this Western going to heaven tradition. And we need to see it in terms of that larger reality which, as I say, if you read the whole chapter, this is where it lands. And the point is, Jesus is promising the gift of the spirit. And when he's talking about coming back, he's talking about the gift of the spirit which will make Jesus present to his people in the here and now, so that already we are indwelt by God himself. And so we are part of that new temple which is the Father's house. Now, that and several other passages that people regularly quote to me when I lecture on these subjects. These are dealt with one by one in God's homecoming. So forgive the repeated advertisement, but once I've said it in one place, seems otious to go on saying it in too many others.
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Well, that is a good reason to pick up a copy of the book God's Homecoming. And I should add, we're going to be discussing your book, you know, pretty much chapter by chapter in our bonus episodes. So for the price of one coffee a month, you know, some from something from Starbucks or Nero's, you get four bonus episodes of Ask NT Wright Anything. Great way to get some great content, support the show, and support the great work at Premier Christian Media. Well, Tom, I think that's all we have time for this week. We'll have another batch of questions in the coming weeks, but you people need to send them to us. I mean, we want to. We want to get your questions about the Bible, about the Christian faith, about what it means today. So go to askantewright.com send us your questions. And remember, our good friends at Premier, They've got a YouTube page. Unbelievable. Where they do excellent interviews and debates with people like John Lennox, William Lane Craig and many, many others. So I think we'll leave it there. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College.
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And I'm Tom Wright from Wycliffe Hall.
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And we'll see you on the next episode of Ask NT Write Anything. Until then, God bless you and take care. Of.