Groaning For Perfection

Groaning for Perfection

Excerpted from “Creation’s Groans and the Saints’ Sighs” Sermon #788

Delivered on Lord’s Day morning, January 5, 1868, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

There is no getting around it: groaning will always be part of our story here on this fallen Earth. But Spurgeon encourages us to wait and hope for the day when God will make all creation new, the day Heaven will literally come to Earth.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8:22-23

Spurgeon • I wish you to observe that we are linked with the creation. Adam in this world was in perfect liberty. Nothing confined him. Paradise was exactly fitted to be his home. There were no wild beasts to devour him, no rough winds to cause him injury, no blighting heats to bring him harm. But in this present world, everything is against us.

Ungodly men prosper well enough in this world. They root themselves and spread themselves like green bay trees: this world is their native soil; but the Christian needs the greenhouse of grace to keep himself alive at all. Out in the world he is like some strange foreign bird, native of a warm and sultry climate, that being let loose here under our wintry skies is ready to perish.

God will one day change our bodies and make them fit for our souls, and then he will change this world itself. It is no speculation to say that we look for new heavens and a New Earth where righteousness dwells, and that there will come a time when “the lion shall eat straw like the ox” and “the leopard shall lie down with the young goat” (Isaiah 11:6-7).

We expect to see this world that is now so full of sin to be turned into a paradise, a garden of God. We believe that the Tabernacle of God will be among men, that he will dwell among them and they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. We expect to see the New Jerusalem descend out of Heaven from God.

In this very place, where sin has triumphed, we expect that grace will much more abound.

If such be the bright hope that cheers us, we may well groan for its realization, crying out,

“O long-expected day, begin; Dawn on these realms of woe and sin.”^a

Brothers and sisters, we are like warriors fighting for the victory; we don’t as yet share in the shout of triumph. Even up in Heaven [the saints] have not yet received their full reward.

When a Roman general came home from the wars, he entered Rome secretly and slept at night and tarried by day, perhaps for a week or two, among his friends. He went through the streets, and people whispered, “That is the general, the valiant one,” but he was not publicly acknowledged. But, on a certain set day, the gates were thrown wide open, and the general, victorious from the wars in Africa or Asia, with his snow-white horses bearing the trophies of his many battles, rode through the streets, which were strewn with roses, while the music sounded, and the multitudes, with glad acclaim, accompanied him to the Capitol. That was his triumphant entry.

Those in Heaven are blessed, but they have not had their public entrance. They are waiting till their Lord shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the trump of the archangel and the voice of God. Then their bodies shall rise; then the world shall be judged; then the righteous shall be divided from the wicked. And then, the Prince at their head, the whole of the blood-washed host, wearing their white robes, and bearing their palms of victory, shall march up to their crowns and to their thrones to reign forever and ever!

For this fulfillment the believing heart is panting, groaning, and sighing.

A Christian’s experience is like a rainbow, made up of drops of the griefs of Earth and beams of the happiness of Heaven. It is a checkered scene, a garment of many colors. He is sometimes in the light and sometimes in the dark.

The text says, “We groan.” It is not the hypocrite’s groan, when he goes mourning everywhere, wanting to make people believe that he is a saint because he is wretched. We groan within ourselves. Our sighs are sacred things; these griefs and sighs are too hallowed for us to tell abroad in the streets. We keep our longings to our Lord, and to our Lord alone.

It appears from the text that this groaning is universal among the saints: there are no exceptions. To a greater or lesser extent we all feel it. He that is most endowed with worldly goods and he who has the fewest, he that is blessed in health and he who is racked with sickness—we all have, in our measure, an earnest, inward groaning toward the redemption of our body.

The apostle says we are waiting, by which I understand that we are not to be irritable, like Jonah or Elijah, when they said, “Let me die.” Nor are we to sit still and look for the end of the day because we are tired of work. Nor are we to become impatient and wish to escape from our present pains and sufferings till the will of the Lord is done.

We are to groan after perfection, but we are to wait patiently for it, knowing that what the Lord appoints is best. Waiting implies being ready. We are to stand at the door expecting the Beloved to open it and take us away to himself.

I do not know a more beautiful sight to be seen on Earth than a man who has served his Lord many years and who, having grown gray in service, feels that he must soon be called home. He is rejoicing in the firstfruits of the Spirit which he has obtained, but he is panting after the full harvest of the Spirit which is guaranteed to him. It is a pleasant and precious thing to so wait and to so hope.

Oh, before those days fully come, quit the service of the false master who never can reward you except with death! Cast your arms around the Cross of Christ, and give up your heart to God. Then, come what may, “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

While you shall for a while sigh for more of Heaven, you will soon come to the dwelling places of happiness where sighing and sorrow shall flee away.

Alcorn • Spurgeon says of those now in Heaven, “They are waiting till their Lord shall descend from Heaven. . . . Then their bodies shall rise; then the world shall be judged; then . . . [they] shall march up to their crowns and to their thrones to reign forever and ever!” When Scripture speaks about the coming New Earth, much of what it says may not apply to the Heaven we go to when we die. For instance, Scripture makes it clear that we will eat and drink in our resurrection bodies on the New Earth (Isaiah 25:6; Matthew 8:11; Luke 22:18, 29-30; Revelation 19:9). But that doesn’t mean we will eat and drink in the present Heaven—the place where God’s people who have departed from Earth now live.

Remember, those now in Heaven do not yet have resurrection bodies. (Theologians debate whether the saints have temporary physical forms there, but certainly our current bodies will remain in the grave until the resurrection of the dead.) Likewise, when we describe the present Heaven, it will not necessarily correspond with what the eternal Heaven—the New Earth—will be like.

Does this sound confusing? I understand. But once you abandon the assumption that Heaven cannot change, it all makes perfect sense. God does not change, but God says that Heaven will change. For one thing, he will eventually relocate Heaven to the New Earth (Revelation 21:1-2).

The present Heaven and the future Heaven can both be called Heaven because they are God’s dwelling place. Yet they are not synonymous. The present Heaven is in the angelic realm, distinctly separate from Earth. By contrast, the future Heaven will be in the human realm, on Earth, in a resurrected universe. The dwelling place of God will be the dwelling place of humanity: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God’” (Revelation 21:1-3).

When the New Jerusalem comes down out of Heaven from God, where will it go? To the New Earth. From that time on, God’s dwelling place—Heaven—will be with his redeemed people, on Earth.

God, who is omnipresent, may dwell centrally wherever he wishes. Wherever he chooses to put his throne is Heaven. When he puts his Kingdom throne on the New Earth, it will transform the New Earth into Heaven.

Jesus says of anyone who would be his disciple, “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). This is a picture of God’s ultimate plan—not to take us up to live in a realm made for him, but to come down and live with us in the realm he made for us.

When Jesus Christ came to Earth, one of the names given to him was Immanuel, which means “God with us.” The Incarnation means that God came down to live with us. And when Jesus ascended to Heaven in his resurrected body, he demonstrated that the Incarnation wasn’t temporary. The New Earth will be Heaven incarnate, just as Jesus Christ is God incarnate.

Though utopian idealists are wrong to believe that humans can achieve “Heaven on Earth,” the fact is, there will be Heaven on Earth. That’s God’s dream. It’s God’s plan. And he—not we—will certainly accomplish it.

^a From the hymn “Lord of the Sabbath, Hear Us Pray,” by Philip Doddridge, 1737.