On Location
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies with Christ Ephesians 1:3
Heavenlies – Where is heaven? Is it “up there” somewhere, or is it found in the recesses of the heart? The mysterious location of a place called heaven causes all sorts of speculation. The word in this verse helps clarify some of the confusion. You see, this is not the usual word for “heaven.” The usual word is ouranos, but this word adds a tiny prefix to form epouranois. The addition emphasizes the nuance of a location, namely, in the heavenlies (plural). So, where is this location? The answer requires a bit of Hebrew background.
The Hebrew view of God’s abode is spatial. It is the place where the God who rules all the earth and all the nations of the earth has His throne. It is the place where He exercises His government. Since the resurrection, it is also the place where Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. The New Testament adds more to the picture. “To the heavenly world belong tens of thousands of angels, the festal congregation, the community of the first-born, those who are written in heaven, the Judge, the God of all men, and the Mediator of the new covenant, Jesus.”
“OK, I get it. But where is heaven?” Are you ready for answer that is a bit difficult to comprehend? Heaven is the future, true reality purposed by God. It is the “place” where God’s full intentions come to be. It is the place of the perfect lordship of Christ, made manifest by His absolute rule and dominion. It is an already present reality that is becoming what it is as God unfolds His plan. Heaven is here and it is there in the future when Jesus reigns over all.
In the last few days we have considered the concept of redeeming opportune time. We spoke about the differences between our clock time and God’s pregnant moments, expanded into revelation. Now we can make a connection. Heaven finds itself located in kairos time, that redemption of our temporal world into Kingdom purposes. In that expansion, heaven slices into this reality with the message that the real world, the one of eternity, is not made of our chronos clock structure. The real world is the place of heaven, here already, hidden in the expanded moments, but waiting for full revelation, when the march of chronos no longer fits the reality of the eternal God. You and I are called to be citizens of this heavenly realm, to experience the blessings of the heavenlies now, in anticipation of the storehouse waiting when chronos no longer matters. So, heaven is a place, but it is not the kind of place we can point to on our maps. We don’t have the right measurement systems to find it, but we can certainly feel its presence. It’s where Jesus is.
