If you are a Christian, it can be easy to forget the fact that God, in Christ, has seated us with Him in the heavenly places. We look around today, seeing so much brokenness and a world that is far from what heaven may look like. So the Christian’s place in heaven is a challenging thought to hold internally against the world we presently see. Our eyes do not show us this spiritual reality, so we wrestle with God and are challenged by this problematic dichotomy.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Eph 2:4–7.
From these verses alone, one might presume that the resurrection of the body is only for believers through the power of the Holy Spirit, but we read in Acts that the bodily resurrection also occurs for the wicked:
15 having a hope in God, which these men cherish themselves, that there shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ac 24:15.
The Nicene Creed affirms the resurrection of the dead, but it is not explicit that it is the resurrection of all peoples. It’s not really until the Athanasian Creed, where we find something more explicitly pointing to both the righteous and wicked rising from the dead:
At whose coming all men will rise again with their bodies; And shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire. This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved.
It’s not sufficient merely for our bodies to be raised, since this happens to the unregenerate, but if believers’ bodies are raised, in what fashion will the unbelievers’ bodies be raised? Question 87 of the Westminster Larger Catechism says: “the bodies of the wicked shall be raised up in dishonour by him, as an offended judge”1. And “the bodies of the just, by the Spirit of Christ, and by virtue of his resurrection as their head, shall be raised in power, spiritual, incorruptible, and made like to his glorious body.”2 The wicked are raised in dishonour by Christ, and the just are raised in power by the Spirit of Christ.
So it is not enough to just look forward to a resurrection, but Christians must also look forward to heavenly position where they will ascend to. God will have “seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). Looking at the Greek for seated, συνεκάθισεν (synekathisen), it is interesting to note that this is not spoken about in the future tense, but in the past tense. Paul is writing about an event which has already happened — the resurrection of Christ and His seat in the heavenly places. So believers can find assurance in a present reality where we are resurrected and seated with the Father, in Christ.
Christians are called to a cosmic reality that appears to us as if it has not yet occurred, but a true belief in the heavenly position which has been granted from the glorious riches and immeasurable love of God should elevate our understanding of how we live our lives today. God is calling Christians to no longer be children of disobedience, as Paul writes about in the beginning of Ephesians 2, who walk “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air.” Death of ourselves must precede resurrection, so in order to be resurrected, Christians first put to death their flesh just as Christ was crucified in the flesh. And by the Spirit of God that raised Christ and seated Him at the right hand of the Father, by the same Spirit we are raised and seated, “with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected”3 both to Christ and through Christ, to us.
John 5:27-29 and Matthew 25:33
1 Corinthians 15:21-23, 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, Philemon 21
1 Peter 3:22