In his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul challenges us to set our minds “on things above, not things on the earth” (Col. 3:1–4). The great motive for doing this—being truly heavenly-minded—is that the believer is “raised with Christ.” He has a new life, an everlasting life, through faith in Jesus as his Savior.

Paul also reminds us that the risen Jesus is even now in heaven “sitting at the right hand of God.” He is located there in His body, with our humanity, exalted as Lord and “head over all things to the church” (Eph. 1:22).

In thinking about Jesus’ heavenly glory, we can, however, easily gloss over the fact that God the Father is there. Jesus is, after all, at the right hand of the Father. Indeed, it is the presence of God there that defines Jesus’ glory. Jesus is exalted and glorified because He is with His Father in His glorious presence. You see this in Psalm 16:11, where David, in the language of prophecy, records Christ saying to the Father: “In Your presence is fullness of joy: at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” God is the definition of glory. He is the source of joy forever.

The same thing is found in another well-known passage. The Lord’s Prayer begins “Our Father in heaven” (Matt. 6:9). I dare say that when we pray these words, we are so focused on the person of the Father, as the Hearer of prayer (Ps. 65:1–2), that we hardly think of the significance of where He is. Our Father is in heaven. He is revealed as located in that place, that sphere of being. He is not portrayed as being dispersed elsewhere or everywhere. It is from that somewhere called heaven that He projects His omnipresence into every corner of His Creation.

Heaven Is a Real Place

When I was a boy, in a theologically liberal church in Scotland, I was taught that heaven was a state of mind rather than a real location. This “heaven” in its eternal outworking was conceived of as something like a dream, in which souls float around communicating with each other and with God. Any idea of a place with three dimensions or real resurrection bodies walking on real ground in a new earth under new heavens was dismissed as fanciful and unbelievable. Scripture was just employing the primitive language of the time to express truths we now understood with greater sophistication.

Louis Berkhof says very little about heaven in his fine Systematic Theology (only on p. 737 of the 738 pp. of text!), but he is on target in saying that Scripture “clearly presents heaven as a place: In fact, the Bible speaks of three distinct heavens, all usages of the Greek ouranos (from which, incidentally, the planet Uranus is named).

The first heaven is that of air and weather: the atmosphere, the sky above our heads in which we live and breathe. When it has rained heavily, we will say, “The heavens opened.” In a similar sense, “the windows of heaven were opened” in the Flood (Gen. 7:11), the psalmist says that God “covers the heavens with clouds” (Ps. 147:8), and Daniel speaks of the dew of heaven” (Dan. 4:15, 23, 25, 33; 5:21).

The second heaven is that of space and the heavenly bodies: the sun, moon and stars, and space—the universe beyond the atmosphere. This is the “firmament” of Genesis 1:14–17, in which the sun and moon are set “to give light on the earth.”

The third heaven is where God is. It is explicitly called the “third heaven” in 2 Corinthians 12:2, where Paul describes being “caught up” in a unique miracle of God’s grace to him. It is the heaven beyond the heaven of our senses. Solomon repeatedly prays that the Lord would “Hear in heaven Your dwelling place” (1 Kings 8:30, 39, 43, 49 ). Isaiah quotes God as identifying Himself as “the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15). As we have seen, Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer says simply “Our Father in heaven…” Also in the Sermon on the Mount, He challenges us: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). There are many similar references in the New Testament, and, of course, we have mention of heaven as God’s throne, the kingdom of heaven, bread from heaven, and the emphatic expression “heaven itself” (e.g ., Matt. 5:34; 12:50; 16:17; 18:10; Heb. 9:24). This third heaven is a place, a location, although clearly it exists in a different plane alto gather from the two heavens above us.

Heaven Is for Christians

Scripture assures us that although Christians die, they “have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1). The contrast is with “our earthly house, this tent” which is “destroyed,” that is, our bodies. So Paul’s point is that we eventually have a body in heaven. This clearly envisages heaven as a place with dimensions, which the redeemed inhabit in their resurrection bodies. It is a created place in which saved creatures and unfallen angels will live in the presence of the glorious God and the exalted Christ.

It is true, as Solomon says of the immensity of God, that “heaven and the heaven of heavens”—that is, the two visible heavens and the third heaven—”cannot contain” Him (1 Kings. 8:27). What a marvelous condescension to finite human beings it is, then, that the infinite God should choose to manifest His glory in a place designed and adapted for everlasting human habitation—”a new heavens and a new earth.” The earth and the first two heavens are renovated and reconstituted in what is now the third heaven precisely so that the new humanity in Christ will have a glorious consummation in an altogether new creation “in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13).

The fact that heaven is a space-time location for redeemed and re-embodied people is evident from a passage like Revelation 7:9–17, which, while it is a vision and not a video of heaven, nevertheless envisages real-time worship of God in the world to come by resurrected believers and angels. In this instance, those who came through the great tribulation are seen “before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them” (Rev. 7:15). Later we learn that this heavenly temple is not a building, “for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Rev. 21:22). The arena of worship is a three-dimensional location nonetheless.

Heaven Is Where Jesus Is

The reason that heaven is where Christians will be forever is that the Lord Jesus Christ is there with His Father.

• Jesus is exalted in heaven to rule as sovereign over this world in the interests of His people. The Father’s acceptance of Jesus’ perfect sacrifice for sin, in turn, guarantees His acceptance of those for whom Christ died and secures their salvation in time and eternity (Phil. 2:9–11; Eph. 1:20–23; Heb. 1:1–3; 1 Pet. 3:22).

• Jesus is preparing a place for believers to the end that they may be with Him forever and behold His glory. He knows those who are His (John 14:2; 17:24; 2 Tim. 2·19).

• Jesus is nurturing a living hope in believers that focuses on the anticipation of their heavenly inheritance (1 Pet. 1:3–5).

• Jesus is going to come again. so that His people will be with Him in the glory of heaven (John 14:3). Jesus, then, is the key that opens heaven for those who are saved by His grace. Indeed, it is in and through His death as the only Mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5), that sinners are saved and adopted as sons to God, and so come to know Him as their heavenly Father (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). No one comes to the Father except through Jesus (John 14:6). There is no heaven and no Father-God for anyone apart from saving faith in Jesus Christ.

Hand in Hand with God

This has tremendous practical implications for the way we live. With every passing day, “our salvation is nearer than when we first believed” (Rom. 13:11). Setting our minds on things above is meant to be second nature for those who love the Lord.

We have a Father in heaven, when by faith we embrace Jesus as our Savior. Our praying is to begin with “Our Father in heaven,” because our new life in Christ in itself has its source and its goal in heaven. “Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’ ” (Matt. 25:34). We are therefore called to live our lives here “sub specie aeternitatis*—that is, with reference to eternity, to our Father in heaven.

We are called to live lives of practical heavenly holiness. Jesus tells us, “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:43–48). Glory calls us to godliness. That is why we must strive to live as those who are laying up treasure in heaven (Matt. 6:19–23). “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Where is your heart? Is it set on heaven, or rooted in this world?

We are promised that as we follow the Lord, He will guide us in life and bring us to heaven. Paul tells Timothy how to persevere in a faithful life, especially when buffeted by sufferings for the faith. He says. “For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day” (2 Tim. 1:12). He does not cling to some hope of earthly relief or success, but anchors his confidence in the Day of Christ’s return and His consummation of the work of the gospel of the kingdom. Heaven is the great goal, not some earthly glory. In Psalm 73:23–24, Asaph reflected on the challenge to his faith of living for God in a wicked world, where, if anything, it was the openly wicked who seemed to have successful lives and easy deaths. The answer, of course, was found in relation to sin, salvation, and eternity, both lost and redeemed. And so the psalmist praises the lord as his Father in heaven and looks forward to the glory yet to be revealed:

Yet evermore I am with Thee:

Thou holdest me by my right hand.

And Thou, ev’n Thou, my guide shalt be;

Thy counsel shall my way command;

And afterward in glory bright

Shalt Thou receive me to Thy sight.

(The Book of Psalms for Singing, 73C)

Gordon Keddie is the pastor of the State College Pa., RPC. He is the author of several Bible commentaries and is a member of the RPCNA.