Will I Be Myself In Heaven?
Will I Be Myself in Heaven?
Excerpted from “Departed Saints Yet Living”
Sermon #1863
Suggested by the decease of the earl of Shaftesbury
Delivered on Lord’s Day morning, October 4, 1885, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
Will I be myself in Heaven? Will you be yourself? Will we recognize other people? In this sermon Spurgeon emphasizes the personal nature of Heaven—that we will be more ourselves, not less, in Heaven.
That the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him. Luke 20:37-38
God is not the God of the dead—that cannot be! If Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob are reduced to a handful of ashes, God cannot be at this moment their God.
We cannot take a dead object to be our God; neither can Jehovah be a God of lifeless clay. God is not the God of rotting flesh and utter destruction. God is not the God of that which has ceased to be. We only have to put the idea into words to make it dissolve before the glance of reason. A living God is the God of living men; and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive.
God is not only the God of Abraham’s soul but of Abraham as a whole—his body, soul, and spirit. God is the God of Abraham’s body. We are sure of that because the covenant seal [circumcision] was set upon the flesh of Abraham. Where the doubt might be, there is the confirming seal, namely, in his mortal body. There was no seal set upon his soul, for the soul had life and could not see death. But it was set upon his body, which would die, to make sure that even it would live.
The Lord intends that the material nature of man and of creation shall be uplifted and that the body shall be raised incorruptible, and therefore he has given seals which touch the outward and material. The water in which the body is washed [baptism] and the bread and wine with which the body is nourished [communion] are tokens that not only spiritual and invisible blessings are coming to us but that our mortal bodies will be redeemed and purified.
The grave cannot hold any portion of those God has chosen: eternal life is the portion of the whole man. God is the God of our entire being—spirit, soul, and body—and all live unto him in their entirety. The whole of the covenant shall be fulfilled to the whole of those with whom that covenant was made.
It is clear that they live personally. It is not said, “I am the God of the whole body of the saints in one mass.” But “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God will make his people to live individually. My mother, my father, my child—each will personally exist.
Abraham is Abraham, Isaac is Isaac, Jacob is Jacob. The three patriarchs were not all melted into one common Abraham, nor Isaac into one imaginary Isaac. Neither was any altered so as to cease to be himself. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all literally living as actual men—and the same men as they used to be. Jacob is Jacob, and not an echo of Abraham; Isaac is Isaac, and not a rehearsal of Jacob. All the saints exist in their personalities, identities, distinctions, and idiosyncrasies.
What is more, the patriarchs are mentioned by their names; and so it is clear they are known: they are not three anonymous bodies but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Many inquire, “Shall we know our friends in Heaven?” Why should we not? The saints in Heaven are never spoken of in Scripture as moving about anonymously, but their names are spoken of as written in the Book of Life. Why is this?
The apostles knew Moses and Elijah on the Mount though they had never seen them before. I cannot forget old John Ryland’sa answer to his wife:
“John,” she said, “will you know me in Heaven?”
“Betty,” he replied, “I have known you well here, and I shall not be a bigger fool in Heaven than I am now; therefore I shall certainly know you there.” That seems to be clear enough.
We read in the New Testament, “Many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 8:11)—not sit down with three unknown individuals in iron masks nor three spirits who make a part of the great pantheistic cosmos nor three spirits who are as exactly alike as pins made in a factory, but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Within a very short space you and I shall be among the shining ones. Some of us may spend our next Sunday with the angels. Let us rejoice and be glad at the bare thought of it. Some of us are not doomed to live here through another winter. We shall pass beyond these autumn fogs into the golden light of the eternal summer before another Christmas Day has come. Oh, the joy which ought to thrill through our souls at the thought of such amazing bliss!
Concerning those that have gone before us, we gather from this whole text that they are not lost. We know where they are. Neither have they lost anything, for they are what they were and more. Abraham has about him still everything that is Abrahamic; he is Abraham still. And Isaac has everything about him that properly belongs to Isaac. And Jacob has all about him that makes him God’s Israel.
These good men have lost nothing that really pertained to their individuality, nothing that made them precious in the sight of the Lord. They have gained infinitely. They are Abraham and Isaac and Jacob now at their best, or rather they are waiting till the trumpet of the Resurrection shall sound when their bodies also shall be united to their spirits, and then Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob will be completely Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, world without end.
As Abraham is not lost to Isaac nor to Jacob nor to God nor to himself, so are our beloved ones by no means lost to us. We are by no means deprived of our dear ones by their death. They are; they are themselves; and they are ours still.
Charles Dickens lived in London much of the time Charles Spurgeon did, and he wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, when Spurgeon was nine years old. Most likely Spurgeon read it or had it read to him while growing up. In the story, Ebenezer Scrooge is terrified when he sees a phantom.
“Who are you?” Scrooge asks.
“Ask me who I was,” the ghost replies.
“Who were you then?” says Scrooge.
“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”
Contrast Jacob Marley’s ghost with Job, who said, “After my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another” (Job 19:26-27, NIV).
Jesus called people by name in Heaven, including Lazarus in the present Heaven (Luke 16:25) and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the future Heaven (Matthew 8:11). A name denotes a distinct identity. As Spurgeon insists, the fact that people in Heaven can be called by their earthly names demonstrates that they remain the same people—without the bad parts—forever.
Spurgeon says of believers who have died, “They are what they were and more. Abraham has about him still everything that is Abrahamic; he is Abraham still.” He rightly points out that Isaac and Jacob haven’t been melted into Abraham. Rather, Abraham is with his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. And so we will forever be with our parents and children and siblings and friends who love Jesus. You will be yourself in Heaven. Not someone who never before existed, but someone who has been transformed into a better person than you’ve ever been.
Spurgeon says the patriarchs are not “three spirits who make a part of the great pantheistic cosmos.” That notion of spiritual anonymity has gained increased traction in our era. In Buddhism, Hinduism, and New Age mysticism, individuality is obliterated or assimilated into nirvana. Biblically, however, even though we may feel lost in God’s immensity, we ultimately find our identity when we are found in him. “Whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25, NIV).
Just as each of us has a unique genetic code and fingerprints here on Earth, we should expect the same in our new bodies. God is the creator of individual identities and personalities. He makes no two snowflakes alike, much less two people. Not even “identical twins” are completely identical. Individuality preceded sin and the Curse. It’s God’s plan, and he receives greater glory through our differences than he would if we were all alike. I love what Spurgeon says about how our uniqueness will manifest itself in Heaven: “All the saints exist in their personalities, identities, distinctions, and idiosyncrasies.” It is not sin that sets us apart from one another but God, our Creator. Yes, even many of our idiosyncrasies are not the result of the Curse but of God’s playful creativity!
Heaven’s inhabitants don’t simply rejoice over nameless multitudes coming to God. They rejoice over each and every person (Luke 15:4-7, 10). That’s a powerful affirmation of Heaven’s view of each person as an individual, someone whose life is observed and cared for.
When Jesus was resurrected, he didn’t become someone else; he remained who he had been before his resurrection: “It is I myself” (Luke 24:39). In John’s Gospel, Jesus deals with Mary, Thomas, and Peter in very personal ways, drawing on his previous knowledge of them (John 20–21). When Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28, NIV), he knew he was speaking to the same Jesus he’d followed. When John said, “It is the Lord!” (John 21:7, NIV), he meant, “It’s really him—the Jesus we have known.”
“‘As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,’ declares the LORD, ‘so will your name and descendants endure’” (Isaiah 66:22, NIV). Our personal histories and identities will continue from one Earth to the next. Jesus said that he would drink the fruit of the vine again, with his disciples, in his Father’s Kingdom (Matthew 26:29).
When the Bible says that the names of God’s children are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Revelation 20:15; 21:27), I believe those are our earthly names. For instance, God calls people in Heaven by their earthly names—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To have the same name written in Heaven that was ours on Earth speaks of the continuity between this life and the next.
In addition to our earthly names, we’ll receive new names in Heaven (Isaiah 62:2; 65:15; Revelation 2:17; 3:12). But new names don’t invalidate the old ones.
A man wrote to me expressing his fear of losing his identity in Heaven: “Will being like Jesus mean the obliteration of self?” He was afraid that we’d all be alike, that he and his treasured friends would lose the distinguishing traits and eccentricities that make them special. But he needn’t worry. We can all be like Jesus in character yet remain very different from one another in personality.
Distinctiveness is God’s creation, not merely a fleeting whim. What makes us unique will survive. In fact, much of our uniqueness may be uncovered for the first time in Heaven. We’ll be real people with real desires, but holy ones. We’ll have real feelings, but feelings redeemed from pride and insecurity and wrong thinking. We’ll be ourselves—with all the good and none of the bad. And we will consider it, in just the right sense, a privilege to be who God has made us to be.
a John Ryland (1753–1825) was an English pastor, a theologian, and the director of a Baptist seminary at Enfield. He is also the author of various works, including the three-volume Contemplations on the Beauties of Creation.
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