Truth Unites - Heaven is Not What You Think

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Gavin Ortlund addresses whether or not we will eat in heaven.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Lots of people struggle with looking forward to heaven or with seeing it as a happy place in any way. As a pastor, I've discovered a lot of Christians are afraid of heaven. Why would that be? I think one factor is we don't understand that it will be physical. Even though in the Apostles' Creed, we say, I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. What we tend to think is more like I believe in the survival of the soul and the life everlasting. In my video in the Apostles' Creed, I talk a little bit more about that. But I think this is really important because when we misunderstand the nature of heaven, that affects kind of everything. Heaven, for Christians, for followers of Jesus, heaven is supposed to be the

great hope of our life. And if you're not a Christian, heaven, the idea of heaven should be maybe one of the things that makes you consider Christianity the most, because if it's that happy, it's worth looking into. So we want to understand heaven accurately. Let me just ask one question for the sake of this video, and that's will we eat and drink in heaven? Will we eat and drink in heaven? there be food, for example, in heaven? And I want to make the argument that, yes, we will. And even though that might seem like a very specific conclusion to arrive upon, I think it actually is a window into some broader questions that can help us look forward to heaven and understand its physicality. At the end of this video, I'll flesh that out just a little bit. So here's my case.

When we think about heaven, the best way to start is with Jesus, and specifically his resurrected body. The resurrected body of Jesus tells us what heaven will be like. Easter morning is a kind of prototype or blueprint for heaven. Why do we say that? Well, Paul calls Jesus's resurrection the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. This is a farming metaphor. The first fruits is the first batch of a harvest that tells you about the rest of the crop. So if you imagine you're standing like in the movie Field of Dreams or something like that,

you're looking at a huge field of corn, and you go up and you pluck off one bit and see what it's like, and it's a representative sample that will tell you what the rest of the crop will be like. This is what it's like for Jesus' resurrection and then the rest of us who trust in Jesus. He's the prototype. He's the representative sample. What happened to his body is what will happen to us. We'll have a resurrected body like Jesus. This is why all throughout church history has been so important for Christians to reject

Gnosticism and the denial of the body. But it's not just our bodies. Physical bodies need a physical environment to function in. We're not going to be floating in the nether world. You know, our bodies won't need astronaut suits in heaven. Paul actually teaches that all creation will participate in the glory of the children of God. Note the verb obtained here in Romans 821. And this is why Revelation 21 speaks of a new heaven and a new earth where God says,

I'm making all things new. Now, the word new here doesn't mean brand new, like ex-Nehalo or from scratch. It means renewed. or resurrected or redeemed. It's new in the sense that Jesus' Easter morning body is new. It was the same body, but it was resurrected. Jesus didn't obliterate his old body and then create a new one ex-Neilo. Similarly, God doesn't obliterate the world of Genesis 1 and then whisk us away.

He resurrects this world. His redemption is as wide as creation, like the hymn puts it, far as the curse is found. I like that language. Just think of it like this. After the return of Christ, after final resurrection, final judgment, when the new heavens and new earth are inaugurated, the people of God will dwell with God in a resurrected world. That will be a theater for the glory of God. And Easter is the first fruits of that. So this is why theologians call Easter morning the beginning of the new creation, the emergence within history of the life of the world to come, the embryonic principle of cosmic transformation,

the womb of the new eon, the beginning of the new and final world order. Think of Easter morning as the antidote starting to spread throughout the rest of the body, bringing healing everywhere there is sickness. Now why is this such good news? Because of the nature of Jesus' resurrected body. Jesus' resurrection body is a new kind of reality. It has no precedent in either history or eternity. It's as new as Genesis 1-1.

is new. You can think of Easter morning as created reality 2.0. So because here you have this body that's physical and yet permanent. Jesus is never going to die again. You know, in our bodies, our cells start to decline in function and they have a reduced ability to divide and replicate over time and so forth. Our bodies start to break down for a while. Jesus' resurrection body doesn't go through that. In the year 90 or 110 AD, 60 to 80 years after having a resurrected body, Jesus is not getting any gray hair. The book of Hebrews calls his power or his life, the power of an indestructible life. I like that word indestructible there. So Jesus doesn't just come back to life. He comes back to a new kind of life. Unlike others who are resurrected, like Lazarus and had to die

again, Jesus came back to a permanent, indestructible life, and yet it's still a physical body. This is like, nothing like this has ever happened until Easter morning. For example, when he appears to the disciples in Luke 24, he's saying, touch me and see. He's trying to reassure them that he's not a spirit or a ghost, and he's saying, a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And then he says, basically, give me some fish to eat, and he eats the fish. So here you have the resurrected body of Jesus, and he says, I have flesh and bones, and he has them touch his flesh, and then he eats. So he not only has teeth, but he has a stomach. He's capable of digestion.

So this tells us a little bit about heaven and the new earth. If this is the first fruits, then what we have here is a body that doesn't get gray hair, but that can eat. This is the kind of continuity, discontinuity we're trying to highlight here. It's physical, and yet it's immortal. It's touchable, but it's indestructible. Okay? And that kind of physical but permanent status, that new reality that emerges on Easter morning is characteristic of heaven. It's the invasion of the future into the history. It's what will happen come early, preemptically thrown back into the middle of history. So that leads to the conclusion. The argument can be this simple for why we will eat in heaven. Jesus ate. Jesus is the first fruits, therefore we will eat in heaven. Now, what will we eat? How often will we eat? How will that work? I don't know. You know, we can leave

the details open. But I think the question of food is helpful because it raises a broader question about our heavenly experience. Think of it like this. Heaven will not require you to leave behind the best experiences of creation. Heaven is the place that's actually been whispering to you through the best experiences you've ever had in this world. I think when we make it to heaven, if we're followers of Jesus, we'll be like the character in the Chronicles of Narnia, who says, this is the land I've been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.

The reason we love the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little bit like this. So here's a challenge for you, a devotional challenge. I did this a few years ago. It was so edifying. Take one month, or a different amount of time, if you prefer. And every morning, when you finish your devotions or when you're driving to work or whatever works for you, think about heaven and just imagine heaven based upon what you see in Scripture to the best of your ability and do so until it makes you happy.

It can be a small thing, it can be a big thing, it can be something that's you already know about, it can be something you've never thought of before, it can be a person you will see or an experience you will have. Of course, the best thing about heaven is we'll be with the Lord. We'll see God and dwell with him. That's the best thing. We've got to have God in the center of heaven. But there's so many great things.

And doing this helps you. It changes your perspective. It helps you remember what the hope is that we have. Because we're meant to have that as our anchor in this life if we're following Jesus. We will have trouble. There will be tumultuous suffering in this world. We're promised that. But we know we have a hope that outlast this world.

And we need to remember that and look forward to that. Here's my final thought. My favorite aspect of the resurrection accounts is in John 20, where it says that they found the grave cloth, specifically the face of... cloth, not lying with the linen claws, but folded up in a place by itself. I'll never forget reading through and discovering that and thinking, wow, you know, we don't know what time Jesus rose from the dead. I don't know. Was it at 6 a.m. or 5 a.m. or, you know, presumably, evidently, the first thing that he did, that moment when his heart begins beating and his body,

you know, heaven was right there, is he folds the grave cloth, because they find it folded there. And I love the thought that like, okay, the first thing Jesus does is fold the grave cloth. It's kind of like, okay, back to work. You know, I'm going to reset the universe. So let's start right here with this very clothing. And again, this captures that if the resurrection is a blueprint for heaven, heaven is not a place of inactivity. It's a physical place, a place of intelligence and planning and friendship and life and joy like you can't imagine. The best of this world will not be, you'll never look back and say, oh, I wish I could do that again, you know. And there's immense planning and joy and intelligence and life. Heaven right now is teeming with life, with angels,

and so on and so forth. I'm reading through Revelation, hearing about angels being released and all these things, and you realize heaven is more real than this world. That's the real place. And we're kind of a shadow realm. So hopefully that helps us set our hearts upon it a little bit more. Thanks for watching, everybody.