N.T. Wright On Faith And WorkSample

We can’t grasp the eternal significance of our work until we have a more accurate understanding of heaven itself. On a recent episode of my podcast, The Call to Mastery, I (Jordan Raynor) asked N.T. Wright to summarize what the New Testament actually says about heaven. Here’s what he said:

Western society, including sadly, Christianity, has become very platonic. That is to say…that our souls are exiled from their true home, which is in heaven, and that we are looking forward to escaping this rather shabby old world and getting back to heaven as soon as we can.

When I first read that [line of platonic thinking], I thought, “This is funny, because that's what a lot of my Christian friends think Christianity is.” Then I thought, “Can I find any place in the New Testament which says that?” The answer is no, I can't, because that is simply not an early Christian point of view. [This line of thinking] comes into Christianity by probably the third or fourth century through some of the fathers. Though some of the fathers resist that strongly, because the New Testament view is the Jewish view, which is that creation is not a bad place to be escaped, but a good place to be redeemed. That makes all the difference in the world… 

The narrative of the Bible is not how do we get out of this world and go and live with God? But how does God so prepare this world that He will be able to come and live with us? That of course is what the temple is all about. Before that, what the wilderness tabernacle was all about, those were pointers to the fact. This is what God wanted to do, to come and live with His people. But those were never meant to be permanent. This is from the point of view of the New Testament, of course. They were signposts pointing forwards to the time when God would come in and as a human being. 

John says, the Word became flesh and tabernacled in our midst, pitched his tent in our midst. This is what it's all about. The high priestly prayer in John 17 is a moment when we are in the temple. We are with Jesus, which means that heaven and earth have come together and Jesus is talking about, “I in them and thou in me, that the world might believe.” This is the establishment of a new unity of heaven and earth consisting of Jesus and His followers, which then is reaching out into all the world so that in the end, the world shall be full of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. That's the great biblical vision.