My family recently
drove from Arizona to Alabama and Georgia to visit family and friends. We had a
wonderful time, though there never seems to be enough time to spend with those
we love. Many people who knew about our trip asked if we were going home. The
truth is it was a trip to see family, not a trip home. Arizona is our home now,
as much as any place on this side of eternity can be, because that is where my
wife and children are. Places are not home, at least, not for me. I am not
attached to dirt or trees or houses. Home is wherever those I love most may be.
In 2 Corinthians
5:1-9 Paul speaks of his longing for the resurrection and the eternal state
with Christ. He says, “We know that while we are at home in the body we are
away from the Lord…” but “…we would rather be away from the body and at home
with the Lord” (6, 8). The word translated home
in these verses is endēmeō,
a compound word that refers to being in your own country or people. For Paul,
to be at home means to be with the one he loves most, Christ. Being with Christ
was not merely what Paul hopes for at the end of his life. To be with Christ is
to be at home, and that is always where Paul would prefer to be.
Many Christians seem to think of heaven strictly in
terms of a place and going there after death simply as the better of two
options. But this flattens the biblical doctrine of the eternal state so
greatly as to actually pervert it. What makes heaven heavenly is the fact that
Christ is there. It is home for the believer because it is where the one he loves
most resides. Christians should not, primarily, hope to go to heaven because
they do not want to go to hell, nor should the hope of heaven be merely the
desired experience once there is nothing left to enjoy in this life. Paul told
the Philippians, “My
desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Php. 1:23). Every
believer wants to go to heaven, but some seem not to want to go right now. To
remain in this world may be necessary, for a time, that we might faithfully
perform the duties God has assigned us and bear fruit for His glory and the
good of His people (Php. 1:22a, 24-25). But this world has nothing with which
to woo us if we truly love Christ, no pleasure that should ever detain us from
longing to be with the one we truly love (1John 2:15-17). -JME
