Heaven & the Joy of the Master

Now that my class is finally graduating from school, I can’t help but think about how we started it all out. My freshman year at UCLA changed my life. As I began to study theology for the first time, it made me love our Lord with a passion that I had never experienced before. And as I began to grow in my love for Christ, I could not help but grow in my anticipation of seeing Him. You see, as Jesus became the center of my life, I became enamored with the thought of seeing Him. The Lord whom I had loved from afar all this time, and whom I could see only in part, I so wanted to be with Him in person to see Him fully. This God-man, who was not only the King and Savior of mankind but my personal Savior and Lord.

And so as the year progressed this desire to see Jesus spread throughout our freshman class (specifically the guys I think). We were all about the return of Christ. The Parousia, the Great arrival of our King, the final consummation of life, love, creation, and salvation. We talked about it all the time, hanging out, at prayer meetings, at church, after fellowship, after sermons which touched on the topic. We talked about the rapture with relative consistency too, all of us feeling the imminence of Christ’s return. And since we talked about the rapture we talked also about how we would position ourselves in the rapture…hence, rapture positions. I still remember hearing the fire alarm in the dorms and thinking that the trumpet sound announcing the Rapture had sounded forth. Alas, it was just a lame dorm fire drill.

I think part of the reason people don’t really look forward to the Parousia is that they don’t understand Kingship very much anymore. Nobody thinks about honor, glory, and the greater realities that surround us like they used to in the past. But if you watched or read J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, you might have caught a glimpse of Kingship; of loftiness and honor. At the end of the last book of Lord of the Rings, there is a great coronation ceremony wherein Aragorn is finally crowned and recognized as King. Everybody, out of sheer reverence and love falls to their knees, commiting themselves to him. That’s just a glimpse of what our relationship to the Lord Jesus ought to look like. The God of all things, the King of all Kings. Jesus Christ, when he is finally recognized in His return as the glorious Lord of all, he will be marveled at among all who have believed. Every knee will bow. And it will be no wonder. The God who is too great to be seen, will through the Son be seen truly in all His glory and power. In that moment the word beauty will strain to describe Him. The beatitude says blessed are those who are in pure in heart for they shall see God. No kidding, it will be by far the greatest blessing of all time.

But what’s so great about seeing God? You could start by saying that our eyes were fashioned in order to apprehend the beauty and handiwork of God. When we see God, our eyes will be seeing what they were created to see. The most beautiful thing you have ever seen in your life, the landscape that took your breath away, the picture that caused your skin to tingle, the magnitude and meaningfulness of all these things are small fry compared to the infinite ocean of the beauty of God. And it will hit you like a tidal wave the size of an ocean.

Okay, then what’s so great about being with God? Do you really have to ask? You and I were made for One. Who is this One? It is not our best friend, not our wives, not our children. This One is our Maker. God made us for Himself. The only time you can say “I was made for this” legitimately is when you stand before God in the courts of Heaven and fall down to worship Him. You cannot stand before your bride at the altar and say “I was made for this”, you cannot share in the joy of brotherhood and say “I was made for this.” You cannot even find your perfect career and say “I was made for this.” You were made for one thing, that is to worship the Lord God in His presence for the rest of eternity’s days. And so the joy that you feel when you stand at the altar and make your wedding vows, when you hang out with your best friends or your little close-knit band of brothers, that feeling of fulfillment you get when you find yourself at work doing what you’ve always wanted to do…that’s just a preview of the feeling you’ll get when you stand next to God, and all of those things will immediately be outdone in the first second of standing with Him.

There’s of course a lot more that could be said concerning the return of Christ and its many joys. Its relation to sanctification, to the church, to Israel, to the plan of redemption. But in this brief entry, I just wanted to talk about why I think it’s so incredible, why I can’t help but get excited about it, why I love to use my imagination to engage in the possibilities of what Heaven may be like.

There is coming a day when we will all stand before the One for whom we were made. And He will give us the approval that our hearts were made to hear. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” No earthly father has ever said nor will ever say any words that will ever come close to these in their meaning, in their impact, in the sheer delight they cause their earthly sons. The words of our Heavenly Father will certainly bring a river of tears from our heart.

Furthermore, you ought to know that there is a Trintarian joy between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It has existed before the creation of the Universe, a holy celebration, a divine joy from eternity past, perfect in its expression and infinitely abundant, Emotionally and spiritually fulfilling even the infinite deep of God Himself.

When God finishes saying well done to us, his following words will be these, savor them with me. “Enter into the Joy of the Master.” That’s trinitarian joy to you baby.

So, I don’t know what that really means, but I’m willing to bet my life that it’s something good, really, reeeeeeeally good.