How Heaven Changes Your Life on Earth

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Cameron Cole
You’re not going to be disappointed in heaven. All these questions about, you know, well, is this going to be the case? Is this going to be the case? Is there going to be barbecue in heaven? There be golf in heaven? Is there any skiing in heaven? You know? No, it’s, it’s, you don’t need to the question below, the question is, I’m, am I going to be satisfied, or am I going to be disappointed? And the answer to that is you will be completely and perfectly satisfied with the vision of God and with perfect communion with the Lord.

Collin Hansen
Many Christians are more curious about whether or not their dog will be in heaven than seeing the face of Jesus there. Well, that quote, If you can’t say Amen, say ouch. That quote is from my friend Cameron Cole’s new book, heavenward. How eternity can change your life on Earth, published by crossway. Cameron is founder of rooted, a ministry dedicated to fostering gospel centered student ministry now true to his opening statement, Cameron says this quote to be too long to be in heaven is to long to be with Christ. And in this book, he aims to stoke the fires of our longing for eternity with Christ. Now sometimes I’ll explain hell this way, if you don’t want to be with Christ and you won’t want heaven, or if you’re too much in love with this world, or expecting too much from this world, you won’t want heaven. Or if you think you’re basically good and the world basically works well for you might not see even the need for heaven, at least not hell, where Judge, God judges the sins that seem to go unpunished on earth. Well, no matter what your perspective is, we were made with eternity in our hearts. And Cameron writes this quote, our hearts were made for perfect Love and perfect fellowship. Nothing short of this standard will clench the pain and yearning, and nothing close to this standard will come to us in the Fallen Earth. Cameron joins me now on gospel bound to tell his heavenward story, how he envisions heaven, the biggest barriers to living the heavenward life and more. Cameron, thanks for joining me on gospel bound.

Cameron Cole
Collin, glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.

Collin Hansen
Cameron. I’m well familiar with your story as a good friend and and walked some of that heavenward story together with you. But help our audience to know, how did the hope of heaven compel you in the worst moments of your life?

Cameron Cole
Yeah, thanks for asking, Colin, and it’s interesting you were talking today this. This would be my son’s 14th birthday. You know, the this all starts, you know, with the death of my oldest child, Cameron, back in November of 2013 and so, you know he, you know, we’re having a conversation in our living room, and he lost a Lego AX, and he started to ask questions about wanting to go see Jesus. And I said, you know, we Jesus is here, we just can’t see him. So well, can we get in the car and go see Jesus? And I said, Well, when you go to Heaven, you will see Jesus, but until then, you know, we just trust that he’s here through the Holy Spirit. And you know, the conversation ended with him professing faith in Christ. He’s three years old. He said, Jesus on the cross, Jesus died for my sons. And, you know, little did I know that was really, that was his last day on earth. You know, he woke up. He died to sleep that night, which was exceedingly rare for a child over the age of one, to die in their sleep of child death between one and 18, one and 100,000 of those will be in their sleep, and so and so. Now, you know my child who lived in my house for three years and 55 days, he now was, you know, living in heaven with Christ and so, you know, obviously the grief of that was just inconceivable. And then something really interesting happened to me during that year after he died, I just was thinking about heaven obsessively. I was thinking about it all the time. It wasn’t something I was trying to do. It was just this new, heightened and magnified consciousness of eternity and so and it was impacting the way that I lived on earth. You know, I was, I was, you know, I forget to pay a bill, and I get a late fee and be like, $15 ain’t gonna matter in heaven or, you know, I might be on a plane and, you know, maybe in the past I would not want to. I was like, Oh, this will be awkward to share the gospel this person. I’m like, who cares, who cares, relative to eternity, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, you know, hit this person’s salvation is too significant for me to, you know, not break through this awkward moment. And it was. It was, you know, just impacting me all the time. And so during that year, I started reading Paul’s letters, and I’ll be honest, I felt pretty weird. I was thinking about heaven so much that I almost felt like I was crazy, like I was out of touch with reality and and so during that year, I started reading Paul’s letters, and I just started to notice with new eyes how frequently Paul references heaven and how he links it to just about, you know, every, every matter in life. And so I kind of say that I found a friend in Paul, and that this is really the basis of the book heavenward, is that I found a friend in Paul, and what I started to see is that eschatological references are all over Paul’s letters. They’re all over the place. And the big, the big observation that was so life giving, and that’s really, I think, has sustained this heavenly mindedness, is that when Paul thinks and talks about heaven, he is not he’s not just thinking about the future. He’s thinking about, what are the implications for the here and now, the here and now? What does eternity mean for me, here and now, and so that’s, that’s largely what the book Heaven words about is about. It is, you know, primarily about Paul theology of heaven and its implications for the everyday Christian life, for sanctification and hope and suffering and contentment and mission and evangelism and all of these things and so And yes, my story certainly kind of enriches or is an add on to it. It’s a big part of the of the book. But what drives the substance is Paul’s focus on the present life in terms of his eschatology.

Collin Hansen
One more question about about cam. One of the images you talk about is cam sitting in Christ’s lap, engulfed by Jesus embrace. That’s a vision that you have. Did you envision that for yourself? Or how did you come to think that way. It’s very compelling to me as a as a father, of course, with kids around that same age. Where did that come from?

Cameron Cole
Yeah, you know, I think that it’s heaven can be so, can seem so, you know, abstract and ethereal until it’s your own flesh and blood, until it’s your child in heaven. And then heaven starts to become increasingly concrete. And, you know, especially when you’re thinking that, you know, I had been parenting this child on earth, but the Lord is now parenting my child in heaven, you know, and and it will for eternity, and will system when we get there, but, but, so, yeah, these, images and this kind of eternal imagination. It really has really bolstered by by the reality that I had a child there. And so what it what it leads to Colin, is just this top down thinking. And I talked about that a fair amount in heavenward, but, you know, I’ll tell you a place where you see a great deal of this top down thinking is in the writings of Jonathan Edwards. You know, Stephen Nichols wrote a book about Edwards and his theology of heaven and and he talks about how, you know, he thought about, what is eternity, what is the vision of heaven, and then, how does that impact the here and now? So I’m teaching on Revelation. One of the things that I shared with the people in the study is as we, as we think about the problems of our own lives. You know, if we consider what, how would I view these problems that I’m facing here and now, if I could see God in his full glory, if I could, if I could see the full glory of God as I will in heaven, as my loved ones do here and now in eternity, how would I view this problem, this conflict that I’m having at work, or this issue that my child is having in little league baseball, and it just settles you down, you know? It prevents us from complaining about the leaves in our pool.

Collin Hansen
This is quite true and and vivid, by the way, if anybody wants a good place to look at. Jonathan Edwards work here recommend his sermon, Heaven is a world of love, which is an exposition of first, Corinthians, 13, eight to 10. Now, Cameron, in this book, you describe how the primary theological problem the spiritual lives of Christians is eschatological in nature. You’ve alluded to that a little bit, but tell us more of if I had developed that conviction, and was that something that that came afterward through your own experience, or was this something that you had perceived even before that, that day 11 years ago?

Cameron Cole
Think I perceived it a little bit, but it was magnified significantly by my own experience. Because, you know, you just, you just see how, how, how we live our lives in such trivial ways, sometimes and if we really have an intensified sense of eternity, it really does change the way that we live. It gives us a greater sense of urgency with prayer and eternity and mission and. And it, and it kind of sanctifies and purifies the way that we live our lives. And, you know, I think that basically what I came to came to observe. What I came to observe is that the kind of normal worldview that most people are living under is what we would call Epicureanism. Then you have to use words like that. When your parents made a ton of money for you to major in Latin, which my parents did. But you know, Epicureanism is an ancient worldview that basically the notion is Carpe Diem seize the day, which is basically maximize pleasure and minimize pain. That’s kind of Epicurus. But what a lot of people a lot of people know Carpe Diem, what a lot of people don’t know is that the next phrase that follows it is trusting in the future as little as possible. And you can just see that I think the general lifestyles and worldviews of most people in the modern age is hedonistic. People are just trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. But what drives Epicureanism, the basis of it, is there’s no there’s no belief in the afterlife. They don’t believe that there’s any heaven or hell or anything like that. And so the response to that is to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. And so I just with that, that lack of an eschatology, that lack of heavenly mindedness, not just in secular people, but also in Christians, is is, I think, a lot of what drives the lifestyles that we live. And I’ll tell you one example of that is just sexuality, just, you know, just kind of a rejection of celibacy and the notion of lifelong celibacy. And it’s you kind of have to ask the question like, Why? Why are people so insistent that people be sexually active, whatever that may look like, you know, What? What? What is so cruel, or what is so intolerable about celibacy? Because, after all, there will not be sex in heaven like it’s not that’s not something you’re going to do in heaven. And, you know? And part of, I think, what drives this insistence of sexual activity is there’s no thought of heaven. There’s, you know, if this life is it, and you’re telling people to not enjoy that pleasure, that that that would be cruel if this life is it, but this life is not it, you know, if you’re a believer, and the ultimate pleasure of this life, but particularly the life to come is going to be the vision of God and communion with Christ.

Collin Hansen
You started to answer this question in the what you just said, but what else can we expect from heaven? I think typically, my own view of Heaven is too abstract, ethereal. Help me to know what exactly is my hope for heaven?

Cameron Cole
Yeah, I think that it’s and I think it’s helpful, you know, to make the delineation between, you know, the new heavens and the new earth, and then the intermediate state, which is, you know, where, if you if you were to die tonight in Christ, that’s where you would go. But you know, on one hand, you know, we think about heaven, we can think about, what is it the absence of, you know, it’s the absence of pain, it’s the absence of sin, it’s it’s the absence of separation. So we’re delivered, we’re delivered from those things. But what do we gain? You know, I think the core of Heaven is that we gain the vision of God, and we gain perfect union with Christ, and we experience that forever, and certainly we have that union with others in heaven. But you know what makes heaven? Heaven is Jesus. That’s what makes it so glorious. You know what makes heaven? Heaven is that you know we have these moments in our Christian lives where we feel close to the Lord in an existential way and and we have joy and we have a sense of serenity and peace in that. Well, that’s just going to be your perpetual baseline existence in heaven. And you know, we have glimpses of God doing things, or we see God and His Word, and we see images of the Lord and creation. But we’re going to see Jesus in all of his glory. We’re going to see Jesus in all of his glory. And heaven. And that is what’s gonna make heaven so great. And so, you know, a lot of times, people are very caught up on the activities of heaven, and it’s my dog gonna be in heaven, and so on so forth. It’s like, look the what it what’s gonna make heaven so great is, is the absence of sin and pain and the vision of God and perfect communion with the Lord.

Collin Hansen
Have you ever met someone too focused on heaven? I mean, a lot of this is why we’re not focused enough. Have you ever seen the flip side?

Cameron Cole
Yeah, you know, it’s funny. You say that because, you know, there’s the Oliver, Oliver Wendell. Holmes quote, you know that people are so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good. I just think that’s just totally bogus. I think, you know, I haven’t met a person who’s who being very heavenly minded does not make them, does not refine them. In this life, you know. And CS Lewis, in Mere Christianity, talks about this. He talks about, you know, a lot of the most impactful Christians throughout all of church history. You know, from the Middle Ages the apostles to English abolitionists were people who had an extremely high sense of heavenly mindedness in their Christian life. And so I think that what I found in my in my life, particularly since my son died, and since, you know, I’ve been engaging Paul’s theology of Heaven and the implications for the present life for about 10 years now, is that the more heavenly minded I am, the more perseverance I have in suffering, the more contentment I have, the more perspective I have, the more motivated I am to serve the Lord and to live for the judgment seat of Christ, and the more, the more my affections are set in the right place. Because if you think about what makes heaven, heaven, well, like I said before, it’s the vision of God and communion with the Lord, access to sin and absence of pain. We can’t control absence of pain, but, but what? What that really translates to is a life where we’re repenting from sin. We’re seeking to we’re seeking to be as close to Christ as possible. We’re seeking to to pray and see God’s work in our lives and in the world. And we’re seeking to serve God, you know? And that’s that we want to translate, kind of, the fundamentals of what heaven will be like into our day to day Christian life.

Collin Hansen
Now, there are a lot of barriers to us living this heavenward life that you write about, you’ve you’ve touched on a number of them. We could mention, love of sin. You brought that up, perhaps related to the questions of sexuality or love for this world, the fixation on those leaves in the pool and that kind of stuff could just be our busy screen based lives, or just the mundane routines of life. But in your ministry, what do you see as the biggest barrier?

Cameron Cole
I can think of three, but I tell you one and right off the bat is just a lack of biblical knowledge about heaven. When I first started teaching on this at my church, you know, there are people who’ve come from all different kind of context in my church, but I sent around a sheet of paper, and I said, I want you to write down, you know, on one side, how many years you in the Christian church, and on the other side, I want you to write down how many lessons about heaven you’ve been taught in your whole life, and it boiled down to about one less than every 22 years. People just had people don’t teach on it enough. And on top of that, there’s been a real problem, you know, in the church over the last, you know, 15 years will say, of people getting their Bible, getting their not their biblical knowledge, but their knowledge about or the information about heaven from these Near Death Experience Books and like that’s not why would we go there when we have the word of God? So I think it’s a real that’s a real admonition that in churches, we really need to be teaching people about heaven from Scripture. Because if you don’t, it’s hard to be heavenly minded. It’s hard to meditate on the wonders of eternity and the glories of heaven if you don’t know anything about it, and what you know about it is actually false. So one is a lack of knowledge, then I’d say, you know, a second thing is, like you alluded to, as some of it is especially, you know, in the in the affluent West, is just how numb we are, how numb we are because of business and social media and the internet and Netflix, whatever it is, how numb we are to that just ingrained eternal longing that the Lord has placed in us, and how numb we are, just how how difficult life is. We obviously can’t completely, completely block it out. But you know, one of the one of the sources of Christian literature that I cite quite a bit in this book is from American slave spirituals. And you know, if you’re a slave in the American South you are, you are crystal clear that you are not made for this life, and you were crystal clear that your only hope was an eternity and so and so. I think the ways that we are so numb to the difficulties of this life and so so forth, I think it does kind of deaden our eternal longings. But I mean, a final part of it is just our sin. You know, when you look at the imperatives, particularly in Paul and Christ Himself in the gospels, to, you know, to seek things that are above and to, you know, to store up treasure in heaven like that. That tells. Tells us that we are just not inherently in our flesh, heavenly minded. And so those admonitions and those imperatives in Scripture, with the help of the Holy Spirit, are telling us to, you know, to raise our meditations and our affections to eternity.

Collin Hansen
You mentioned union with Christ earlier, but could you tell us more about how our union with Christ relates to this heavenward posture, right?

Cameron Cole
There are two aspects to union with Christ that I really focus on in heavenward and you know, the first one is, you know that we don’t really teach about or talk about a whole lot as you know, what you may call either past union with Christ. That’s what I refer to it as in the book. Or what Gaffin refers to is redemptive, historic union with Christ. So basically, the notion that and the reality that we see in Paul that we are unified with Christ in the entirety of the Christ event. We are unified with him in his life, in his death, in his resurrection. But a lot of times we don’t really think about, we don’t think about or realize that we are also unified with Christ in His ascension. So, you know, in Ephesians, two Paul, he says, you know, we were made alive to get made alive together with Christ by grace, you have been said. He says, and raised us up with Him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ. And so Paul is referring to how we are unified with Christ in His ascension, such that in some mysterious way, we are unified with him in a manner where we are seated in Him in the heavenly realms. And so, you know, that’s in Colossians three, where Paul says, you know, to set your mind on things that are above where Christ is seated on the heart of seated at the right hand of the Father. He says, He begins that by saying, if you’ve been raised with Christ, and that raising that he’s referring to is not in resurrection, he’s referring to being raised with Christ in ascension. And so you know that, I think that that is this, this idea that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, that aspect of union with Christ, past union with Christ, that’s pretty compelling in terms of of of giving us a vision of what heavenly mindedness might look like. But then there’s also, you know what, what, what I refer to as present union with Christ, which is just the reality that, through the Holy Spirit, Christ dwells in you, and you dwell in him. You know, as Jesus says, and John 14, that I am in the Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you, Abide in me, and I in you, and so and so. You know that is, in many ways, like a foretaste, you know, an appetizer of what we’ll experience in heaven, the the oneness that we have with Christ here and now, is the deposit of what and an appetizer of what we’re going to have with Jesus and what will make heaven so great is that oneness, that intimacy, that communion with the Lord and so and so. Yeah, that I think in terms of thinking this, this idea of being heavenly minded, it can seem kind of difficult because Heaven can seem so future oriented, but that’s a that your union with Christ in the here and now is a present, a present blessing of the heavenly realms that God gives us here and now. Let’s say, let’s keep in mind, at the beginning of Ephesians, that Paul says that you must be the godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms, those things come to us through union with Christ, via the dwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Collin Hansen
Do you see heaven as something we should emphasize in evangelism with non Christians? I think the answer is obviously yes, but there are a lot of objections to heaven and a lot of confusion, part of why he wrote this book, of course, talking to Cameron Cole here about heavenward, how eternity can change your life on Earth, we hear that heaven is too good to be true. That’s actually an article that I’m working on right now. Or that just an assumption that everyone will go to heaven, or at least that anybody who goes to heaven, they’re not as bad as Hitler, so they’ll go to heaven, right? What do you think?

Cameron Cole
Yeah, I mean, I do, you know, I think obviously in evangelism, since we live in such an instant gratification culture, and I, you know, my career has been in youth ministry, like youth and family ministry. And so, you do have to show people in evangelism the present benefits of knowing Christ. It can’t just be all afterlife oriented. But I you know, if a person is not in touch with the reality that they’re going to die, and they’re not in touch with the reality that. When they die, if they’re not perfect, they’re not perfectly righteous, then they will be separated from God forever and under under judgment. They need to be awakened to that reality. And yeah, that that might not be like what’s on their mind right then and there, but there’s gonna be a day death is undefeated. You know, death is undefeated, except with Jesus and so and so. Yeah, I think we do need to talk about heaven and evangelism, if not, if it doesn’t resonate today, at least, to plant a seed for the for the mortal realities for every human being.

Collin Hansen
All right, Cameron got three, three more questions here, and they’re going to all be fairly focused and really dealing with my own personal edification as it comes to comes to heaven. One question is, we value the dignity of all life in sickness and in health. Christianity is a material religion. Means a physical religion, the physical resurrection of the body, the physical new heavens and the new earth. So we love this world, and especially the people in it. If I know that I’m nearing death, do I want and pray that I’ll go quickly so I can be with Jesus? Is that what the heavenward posture is, or do I want to be here with my family and friends and church and work for Christ as long as possible? Should where should my prayers go in that scenario?

Cameron Cole
Yeah, and I think this is a, I think this is a great question. At one time, I was in a closed country in East Asia, and I was sharing the gospel someone who’d never heard of this at all. And I was talking about heaven. He said, Why doesn’t person just commit suicide, if they can be and if they can be in paradise right now? I mean, this seems like I want to get there as quickly as possible. And the apostle Paul, he wrestled with this in Philippians, one, you know, he he’s saying, basically, I don’t know if I’m going to live or die. And, you know, he says, Really, it’d be my preference to go and be with Christ, but it would be but, but for me to remain with you is fruitful labor. And so, you know, I think, when I think, you know, I used to say, this is so terrible. Be confessing my son here. I used to say, like, if I could live to be 80, but I can’t drink Diet Coke for the rest of my life. Or I can live to be 85 No, sorry, I can live to be 85 but I can’t drink Diet Coke for the rest of life. Or I can live to 80 and drink Diet Coke for every day. I’d be like, I’m gonna live to 80 and drink Diet Coke every day. Okay? But I think when you have a real appreciation of just how long eternity is, you know, trillions upon trillions upon trillions of years for eternity, then it gives you this ability to hang on, you know, to persevere and just to trust the Lord with your days, and to seek to make all those days fruitful, to commit Those days to the Lord. And, yeah, and knowing that when the Lord delivers you, you’re like you’ll be delivered permanently, forever.

Collin Hansen
Just a couple more questions here with Cameron Cole talking about heavenward, how eternity can change your life on Earth, we’ve mentioned a lot of Scripture passages here, Cameron, what’s a good passage of scripture if I want to spend some time meditating on the hope of heaven. Yeah.

Cameron Cole
So the first thing I would say is, I would, I would say, we, we need to get over our fear of Revelation. I used to have a fear of studying revelation till I took Michael Kruger’s class at RTS, and he got me over that hump, and now it’s my favorite book of the New Testament. But I think we, I think it’s, you know, church leaders need to teach the book, and I think Christians need to try to dive in. So I think that’s one thing. But I think if they were one passage, I’ll tell you. The passage that’s been most instrumental for me is Colossians three one. If you’ve been since you’ve been raised with Christ, set your mind on see things that are above where Christ is. He has the right hand that right there, there’s just so much encouragement and so much richness to to set our hearts on eternity. And there’s this reminder that we have died and we are hidden, hidden with Christ and God, meaning that we’re unified with Christ here and now, and with Christ, who’s our life appears, we also will appear with him, like we will be with Christ’s Second Coming.

Collin Hansen
All right. Last question Cameron, the one that everybody’s been waiting this whole podcast to be able to hear. Will my neighbor’s dog be in heaven?

Cameron Cole
Your neighbor’s dog?

Collin Hansen
I want to know if my neighbor’s dog is gonna be in heaven.

Cameron Cole
Well, let’s answer the easy question. First all, cats are in hell. They’re burning. Okay? Just kidding, just kidding. But not no, no. I, you know, I wrote an article for TGC about this, about, we know, will my dog be in heaven? And so here’s, here’s what I would have to say. And this. Might this might, you know, ruffle some feathers, but I’ll say, first off, an intermediate state. No, your pet is your neighbor’s dog is not going to be in the intermediate state when you die and go to heaven, yeah, Toto spot, whatever your dog’s name was, isn’t going to be there. There is a possibility in the new heavens, and the new earth. Since you know all death is product of the fall, there’s a chance, maybe, maybe, that your neighbor’s dog will be redeemed in the new heavens and earth with the redemption of creation. I’m not really sure, but here’s what really matters, is it you’re not going to care. You’re not going to be disappointed in heaven. All these questions about, you know, well, is this going to be the case? Is this going to be the case? Is there going to be barbecue in Heavens? There be golf in heaven? Is there skiing in heaven? You know? No, it’s, it’s, you don’t need to the question below, the question is, I’m, am I going to be satisfied? And am I or am I going to be disappointed? And the answer to that is you will be completely and perfectly satisfied with the vision of God and with perfect communion with the Lord. So you can, you can imagine these things and ask these questions, but you do not have to be worried about being disappointed, because you eternally, perpetually and perfectly satisfied in Christ in Heaven.

Collin Hansen
Great place to wrap up. My guest on gospel bound has been Cameron Cole book we’ve been discussing is heavenward, how eternity can change your life on Earth, new from Crossway. Thank you, Cameron.

Cameron Cole
Thanks for having me, Collin.