Seeing What We’ve Always Longed To See
Seeing What We’ve Always Longed to See
Excerpted from “Creation’s Groans and the Saints’ Sighs” Sermon #788, January 5, 1868
We can’t yet see things clearly because we can’t yet see God clearly. However, in the midst of our squinting and straining, we can anticipate the day we will see him as he truly is—when our joy will be complete.
As it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 1 Corinthians 2:9-12
The whole creation is fair and beautiful even in its present condition. I have no sort of sympathy with those who cannot enjoy the beauties of nature.
Climbing the lofty Alps, wandering through the charming valley, skimming the blue sea, or traversing the lush green forest, we have felt that this world, however desecrated by sin, was evidently built to be a temple of God, and the grandeur and the glory of it plainly declare that “the earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1).
The Earth in ruins reveals a magnificence which shows the sign of a royal founder and an extraordinary purpose. Creation glows with a thousand beauties even in its present fallen condition, yet clearly enough it is not as when it came from the Maker’s hand—the slime of the serpent is on it all—this is not the world which God pronounced to be “very good.”
We hear of tornadoes, of earthquakes, of tempests, of volcanoes, of avalanches, and of the sea which devours its thousands. There is sorrow on the sea, and there is misery on the land, and into the highest palaces as well as the poorest cottages, death, the insatiable, is shooting his arrows while his quiver is still full to bursting with future woes.
It is a sad, sad world. Thorns and thistles it brings forth, not from its soil alone, but from all that comes of it. Earth wears upon her brow, like the mark of Cain, the brand of transgression.
If there were no future to this world as well as to ourselves, we might be glad to escape from it, counting it to be nothing better than a huge penal colony, from which it would be a thousand mercies for both body and soul to be liberated.
At this present time, the groaning and anguish which are general throughout creation are deeply felt among the sons of men. There is a general wail among nations and peoples. You can hear it in the streets of the city. May God in mercy put his hand to the helm of the ship and steer her safely.
The apostle Paul tells us that not only is there a groan from Creation but this is shared in by God’s people (Romans 8:22-23).
We were once simply a part of the Creation, subject to the same curse as the rest of the world, “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3). But distinguishing grace has made a difference where no difference naturally was. We are now no longer treated as criminals condemned but as children and heirs of God. We have received a divine life by which we are made partakers of the divine nature, having “escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Peter 1:4).
The Spirit of God has come unto us so that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). God dwells in us, and we are one with Christ. We have at this present moment in us certain priceless things which distinguish us as believers in Christ from all the rest of God’s creatures. “We have,” says the text (1 Corinthians 2:12), not “we hope and trust sometimes we have,” nor “possibly we may have,” but “we have, we know we have, we are sure we have.”
Believing in Jesus, we speak confidently—we have unspeakable blessings given to us by the Father. True, many things are yet in the future, but even at this present moment, we have obtained an inheritance. Brethren, we have repentance, that gem of the first water [baptism]. We have faith, that priceless, precious jewel. We have hope, which sparkles—a hope most sure and steadfast. We have love, which sweetens all the rest.
We have that work of the Spirit within our souls which always comes before admittance into glory. We are already made new creations in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17) by the fully adequate working of the mighty power of God the Holy Spirit.
So, brothers and sisters, when God gives us “faith, hope, and love . . . these three” (1 Corinthians 13:13), when he gives us “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just” (Philippians 4:8), as the work of the Holy Spirit, these are to us the promises of the coming glory. If you have the Spirit of God in your soul, you may rejoice over it as the pledge and token of the fullness of bliss and perfection that “God has prepared for those who love him.”
In Heaven the barriers between redeemed human beings and God will be gone forever. “The groaning and anguish which are general throughout creation” that Spurgeon speaks of will be replaced by the joy of seeing things clearly for the first time. Why? Because not only will we see God, he will be the lens through which we see everything else—people, ourselves, and the events of this life.
To look into God’s eyes will be to see what we’ve always longed to see: the One who made us for his own good pleasure.
What is the essence of eternal life? “That they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3, NIV). Our primary joy in Heaven will be seeing and knowing God. All other joy will be derivative, flowing from the fountain of our relationship with God.
Jonathan Edwards, who lived a century before Spurgeon and whose theology Spurgeon shared, describes in one of his sermons the delight we can anticipate in Heaven: “God himself is the great good which [the redeemed] are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. . . . The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things . . . but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.”a
The psalmist Asaph says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25, NIV). This may seem an overstatement—is there nothing on Earth this man desires but God? Yes, we desire many other things—but in desiring them, it is really God we desire. Augustine called God “the end of our desires.” He prayed, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”b
In Heaven we’ll at last be freed of self-righteousness and self-deceit. We’ll no longer question God’s goodness; we’ll see it, savor it, enjoy it, and declare it to our companions. Surely we will wonder how we ever could have doubted his goodness. One look at the scarred hands of our Savior will suffice, for then our faith will be sight—we shall see God.
Jonathan Edwards, with Spurgeonesque eloquence, said in a 1733 sermon, “God is the highest good of the reasonable creature, and the enjoyment of him is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows. But the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.”c
a Jonathan Edwards, The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach, Kenneth P. Minkema, and Douglas A. Sweeney (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 74–75.
b Augustine, The City of God, 22, 30, and Confessions 1, 1, quoted in John E. Rotelle, Augustine Day by Day (New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1986).
c Jonathan Edwards, “The Christian Pilgrim,” sermon preached in 1733, quoted in Alister E. McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 115.
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