The Pilgrim

The Levites had no earthly inheritance because God Himself was their inheritance.  Followers of Christ have been told --

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a[special] people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies [the wonderful deeds and virtues and perfections] of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. 1 Peter 2:9

The priests had no earthly inheritance, and neither do we of the new covenant priesthood.  We are both princes and priests.

And if [we are His] children, [then we are His] heirs also: heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ [sharing His spiritual blessing and inheritance], if indeed we share in His suffering so that we may also share in His glory. [Born anew] into an inheritance which is imperishable [beyond the reach of change] and undefiled and unfading, reserved in heaven for you. - Romans 8:17; 1 Peter 1:4

No one can appreciate a good meal like those who love the one who provided it.  No one can enjoy marriage like the one who knows its Architect and understands the greater reality that marriage foreshadows.

C.S. Lewis said, “Because we love something else more than this world, we love even this world better than those who know no other.” Or as he said in a letter to a woman who feared losing the memory of her husband, "When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased."

Pilgrims have not seen heaven, but they have read about it and dreamed about it.  The live with the exhilarating assurance that at this very moment their beloved Saviour is making it ready for them.

We have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next.  And we have comfort whenever it does not.  We have the promise of a new heaven and new earth, where the worst elements of this world - sorrow, pain, death and the tears they produce - will be gone forever. Yet we also know that the best elements of this world - love, joy, wonder, worship, and beauty - will not be gone but intensified and perfected in the remade world.

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next… It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither" - C.S. Lewis

Our identity and our role

But [we are different, because] our citizenship is in heaven. And from there we eagerly await [the coming of] the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ - Philippians 3:20

So we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us; we [as Christ’s representatives] plead with you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. - 2 Corinthians 5:20

All these died in faith [guided and sustained by it], without receiving the [tangible fulfilment of God’s] promises, only having seen (anticipated) them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. - Hebrews 11:13

 These passages seem to pit themselves against a large proportion of evangelical teaching, preaching and literature that is geared toward making us more at home in this world.

You adulteresses [disloyal sinners—flirting with the world and breaking your vow to God]! Do you not know that being the world’s friend [that is, loving the things of the world] is being God’s enemy? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. - James 4:4

If you address as Father, the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in [reverent] fear [of Him] and with profound respect for Him throughout the time of your stay on earth. Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers [in this world] to abstain from the sensual urges [those dishonourable desires] that wage war against the soul. - 1 Peter 1:17; 2:11

 We must not become too much at home in this world or we'll become useless to our true kingdom.

Our earthly bodies are called tents, temporary dwelling places for our eternal soul. Paul contrasts our brief time on earth with what he regarded as the real life, of which this is but a foreshadow --

For while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened [often weighed down, oppressed], not that we want to be unclothed [separated by death from the body], but to be clothed, so that what is mortal [the body] will be swallowed up by life [after the resurrection]. - 2 Corinthians 5:4

Here is what it means to be a pilgrim --

By faith Abraham, when he was called [by God], obeyed by going to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went, not knowing where he was going.  By faith he lived as a foreigner in the promised land, as in a strange land, living in tents [as nomads] with Isaac and Jacob, who were fellow heirs of the same promise.  For he was [waiting expectantly and confidently] looking forward to the city which has foundations, [an eternal, heavenly city] whose architect and builder is God. - Hebrews 11:8-10

 Abraham didn't know where he was going, but he knew with whom he was going.  Some of the greatest Old Testament saints were those who ultimately saw beyond the temporal to the eternal becoming models for faith --

All these died in faith [guided and sustained by it], without receiving the [tangible fulfilment of God’s] promises, only having seen (anticipated) them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are looking for a country of their own.  And if they had been thinking of that country from which they departed [as their true home], they would have had [a continuing] opportunity to return.  But the truth is that they were longing for a better country, that is, a heavenly one. For that reason God is not ashamed [of them or] to be called their God [even to be surnamed their God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob]; for He has prepared a city for them. - Hebrews 11:13-16

Because they lived on earth in light of their fixation on heaven - God was not ashamed of them.

Moses also lived with an acute awareness of the eternal --

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25 because he preferred to endure the hardship of the people of God rather than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.26 He considered the reproach of the [a]Christ [that is, the rebuke he would suffer for his faithful obedience to God] to be greater wealth than all the treasures of Egypt; for he looked ahead to the reward [promised by God]. 27 By faith he left Egypt, being unafraid of the wrath of the king; for he endured [steadfastly], as seeing Him who is unseen. - Hebrews 11:24-27

 Moses could let all of these pleasures and possessions go because how could they measure up to those anticipated pleasures and possessions that would last forever.




Bible Verses about Our Identity in Christ

Four Ways Our Identity in Christ Changes Our Lives

Short today comprehending the long tomorrow

He has made everything beautiful and appropriate in its time. He has also planted eternity [a sense of divine purpose] in the human heart [a mysterious longing which nothing under the sun can satisfy, except God]—yet man cannot find out (comprehend, grasp) what God has done (His overall plan) from the beginning to the end. - Ecclesiastes 3:11

We are made for heaven, but meanwhile we live on earth.

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

From childhood most of us learn to shut out our "true country," to stifle our thirst for the eternal, replacing it with the pursuit of the temporal.

In the Old Testament, material blessing was given for obedience, yet in the New Testament many of the saints were poor.  Enjoying worldly wealth is emphasised in the Old Testament, yet the New Testament talks of giving away possessions.  By their obedience, the Israelites avoided persecution, but by their obedience Christians incur persecution.

No book better demonstrates the relationship of |Old and New Testaments, and the two worlds on which they centre, than the book of Hebrews.

But as it is, Christ has acquired a [priestly] ministry which is more excellent [than the old Levitical priestly ministry], for He is the Mediator (Arbiter) of a better covenant [uniting God and man], which has been enacted and rests on better promises. - Hebrews 8:6

The Old Testament is copy and type and shadow.  The new covenant brings not the temporal inheritance promised Israel, but an eternal inheritance.

The Israelites were citizens of the Promised Land.  We're told our citizenship is in heaven.  We are to stake our claim in the ultimate Promised Land --

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels [in festive gathering] - Hebrews 11:12

 The earthly Jerusalem isn't our destination.

Hebrews speaks of promised blessings, a great inheritance of lasting possessions.  These promises must be patiently awaited, because they come not in this world but the next.

Every time we seek a short-term payday, we lose out on the long-term.

A place we call home

Tertullian (c. 160–c.220)
Born in Carthage, Tertullian lived a permissive life until he became a Christian in his thirties. Then he devoted his life to the defense of the Christian faith against heresy and immorality. His solid education in Greek and Latin and the practice of law prepared him to be one of the church’s leading apologists. The work excerpted here, Octavius, sets up a dialogue between a pagan and a Christian. It is one of the oldest church documents we have that was originally written in Latin.

Octavius (the pagan) charges:

Look: some of you, the greater half (the better half, you say), go in need, suffer from cold, from hunger and toil. And yet your god allows it, he connives at it; he will not or he cannot assist his own followers. This proves how weak he is—or wicked.

Minucius Felix (the Christian) answers:

I now come to the accusation that most of us are said to be poor; that is not to our shame, it is to our great credit. Men’s characters are strengthened by stringent circumstances, just as they are dissipated by luxurious living. Besides, can a man be poor if he is free from want, if he does not covet the belongings of others, if he is rich in the possession of God? Rather, he is poor who possesses much but still craves for more.

And so it is that when a man walks along a road, the lighter he travels, the happier he is; equally, on this journey of life, a man is more blessed if he does not pant beneath a burden of riches but lightens his load by poverty. Nevertheless, we would ask God for material goods if we considered them to be of use; without a doubt, He to whom the whole belongs would be able to concede us a portion. But we prefer to hold possessions in contempt than to hoard them: it is rather innocence that is our aspiration, it is rather patience that is our entreaty; our preference is goodness, not extravagance.

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.

William Burns - " If a man have Christ in his heart," he used to say, " heaven before his eyes, and only as much of temporal blessing as is just needful to carry him safely through life, then pain and sorrow have little to shoot at.... To be in union with Him Who is the Shepherd of Israel, to walk very near, Him Who is both sun and shield, comprehends all a poor sinner requires to make him happy between this and heaven." - quoted from the Memoir by the Rev. Islay Burns

Scripture directs us to set our minds on heaven --

Therefore if you have been raised with Christ [to a new life, sharing in His resurrection from the dead], keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above [the heavenly things], not on things that are on the earth [which have only temporal value]. - Colossians 3:1-2

We'll be in heaven and that's all that matters

Paul spoke of a loss of a reward as a great and terrible loss.  The fact that we're still saved is a clarification, not a consolation --

But if any person’s work is burned up [by the test], he will suffer the loss [of his reward]; yet he himself will be saved, but only as [one who has barely escaped] through fire. - 1 Corinthians 3:15

Receiving reward from Christ is unspeakable gain with eternal implications.

In 1888, Alfred's brother Ludvig died while in France. A French newspaper erroneously published Alfred's obituary instead of Ludvig's, and condemned Alfred for his invention of dynamite. Provoked by the event and disappointed with how he felt he might be remembered, Nobel set aside a bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes to honor men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, and for working toward peace. Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, established the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1968 in honor of Alfred Nobel.

Believer's Judgment of Works

What heaven is like

As He was about to leave this world, Jesus said to His disciples --

In My Father’s house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you, because I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and I will take you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also. - John 14:2-3

For Christians, heaven is our home.

So then, being always filled with good courage and confident hope, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight [living our lives in a manner consistent with our confident belief in God’s promises]— we are [as I was saying] of good courage and confident hope, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. - 2 Corinthians 5:6-8

This city will have all the freshness, vitality and openness of the country with all the vibrancy, interdependence and relationships of a city.

For he was [waiting expectantly and confidently] looking forward to the city which has foundations, [an eternal, heavenly city] whose architect and builder is God. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are looking for a country of their own. But the truth is that they were longing for a better country, that is, a heavenly one. For that reason God is not ashamed [of them or] to be called their God [even to be surnamed their God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob]; for He has prepared a city for them. - Hebrews 11:10,14,16

Heaven will have an endless supply and we'll meet and converse with other inhabitants.  We'll open our dwelling places to entertain people. Heaven will offer much-needed rest to the weary.

We'll reign with Christ. Reigning implies specific delegated responsibilities for those under our leadership.  We'll rule over the world and even over angels.

When God brings heaven down to the new earth --

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be death; there will no longer be sorrow and anguish, or crying, or pain; for the [a]former order of things has passed away. - Revelation 21:4

People of every tribe and nation and tongue will worship the Lamb together.

Heaven is the Christian's certain hope, a hope that can and should sustain us through life's darkest hours.  But this doesn't happen automatically.  We must choose to think about heaven and centre our lives around it --

Therefore if you have been raised with Christ [to a new life, sharing in His resurrection from the dead], keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above [the heavenly things], not on things that are on the earth [which have only temporal value]. - Colossians 3:1-2