Systematic Theology – Eschatology

The Covenant Consummation - Paradise

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 25 of 32

Track: #25

Year:

Dictation Name: 25 The Covenant Consummation – Paradise

[Rushdoony] Let us pray.

Our God, what is man that Thou hast made him, that Thou hast crowned him with glory and with honor. Thou hast created Him so that all things are ordained to be set under his feet. Give us grace oh Lord by Thy mercy and by Thy spirit to be mindful of this our calling, of our created task so that we may go forth in Jesus Christ, to set our foot upon Thine appointed place. To bring all things into dominion to Christ our Lord, to bring into captivity every vagrant thought, and to put all things to Thy service, and to make this earth resound with Thy praise, with Thy service, and with the majesty of Thy government and glory. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is first of all Luke 23:39-44 and then II Corinthians 5:1-5. Our subject is The Covenant Consummation – Paradise. The Covenant Consummation – Paradise; first of all Luke 23 verses 39-44. Our first text has reference to thee crucifixion:

“39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.

40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?

41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.

42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

43 And Jesus said unto him, verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

And now II Corinthians 5 verses 1-5

“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:

3 If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.

4 For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

5 Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.”

It is a common place fact of theology that theologians and preachers speak about the soul of the redeemed at the point of death separating from the body and going to heaven, and the body being resurrected the last judgment. Now there’s nothing wrong with that presentation except that it is usually set in the context of the Greek view of man, as man as a duality, of man as body and soul, two different substances; and the Biblical picture is radically different. The soul we read about in scripture is not the Greek soul. Soul means the person, so that our English word “person” and “soul” are interchangeable, and what happens at death is that one part of our being is shed, an outward layer as it were, just as we are told that our skin continually renews itself, and the old skin imperceptibly is continually sloughing off, being washed off, and the like; but we’re not aware of it; so too, at the point of death, there is a much more dramatic sloughing of a part of our physical being.

To say that a man’s soul goes to heaven therefore means to say that he as a person goes to heaven. The body he has sloughed off is buried. It is like a seed, out of that comes the resurrection body. In other words what the Bible teaches us is that the person, the soul, is not to be seen as a ghost. The person is more than a ghost, he is the whole man. In heaven we are there, still, complete. More complete than we are here so that instead of seeing it as kind of an interlude, we must see ourselves now, as we are a physical being, advancing a stage in our realization of our person; and then finding the full realization of our person with a resurrection of the body.

Our attitude towards heaven is pagan; a ghostly place. But the significant fact is that in a key moment of His life our Lord used the word for heaven that was very material, and the words are used interchangeably through the scripture and in II Corinthians 5 they are used interchangeably. The one word is “ouranos” - a lifted up place, heaven. The other word is, our English word is very similar to the original Greek word, paradise. And on the cross when our Lord was only a few hours, or less, away from death he spoke of it as paradise. I indicated that it comes from an old Persian word. It is a word that is common to the Middle East, and a number of languages. It has a common meaning everywhere, an enclosed garden, a walled garden. It is walled to keep out intruders, people who don’t belong there, it is walled to keep out wild animals or anything that will harm the garden. We’re told that Eden was a garden, a paradise; which means that it was somehow by God enclosed, protected in a special way. Protected so that there Adam and Eve might have an opportunity for a pilot project, to learn opinion and then to apply it to the whole of creation.

Now when Paul in II Corinthians, the 12th chapter, in verse 4 speaks of being caught up into the third heaven, he uses the same word “paradise”; in that same passage in II Corinthians 12 verse 2 he uses ouranos, heaven, the lifted up place. So they are the same contrary to what a few theologians have tried to say, that heaven and paradise are two different places. They’re the same. The word is used interchangeably, and it has reference to something that is physical, material, very definitely; a garden, a walled, an enclosed place. Revelation 22:7 speaks of the tree of life being in the paradise of God in the new creation. When the resurrection of the body is taken place we are in the paradise of God, but somehow we are also in the paradise of God in a preliminary sense in what we call heaven.

In the Septuagint we find this word paradise used in the Genesis 2 verse 8 passage and Numbers 24:6 and Isaiah 1:30, and Jeremiah 29 verse 5, Ezekiel 31 verse 8 &5; all have reference to very material gardens. So our Lord, just before His death, speaks of heaven as paradise. “Thou shalt be with me in paradise.” This should disabuse us of a ghostly heaven, the idea is Greek. Thus our life in heaven is not a ghostly life, we are less limited in heaven then we are here upon earth. Here we have a fallen body, a fallen world, we have the sway of sin and death. But heaven, or paradise, is a step towards the resurrection of the body, towards the fullness of our material life. The life we have now, physically, will be improved upon in paradise, and reach it’s culmination in the new creation.

There’s another important fact. Man’s history began in the Garden of Eden, in paradise, a covenant place. A place for fellowship with God and work under God, and heaven is called paradise and therefore the fulfillment of the Garden of Eden, or the closest stage to the final paradise, the final new creation. The earth in the fall was accursed and became a wilderness. The last Adam, Jesus Christ, was tempted in a desert place in the wilderness, what sin had made of the world. And we have to see our bodies as comparable to the wilderness, compared to the Garden of Eden the wilderness, the desert, is a desolate place; compared to what God created our bodies to be in the Garden of Eden, what our bodies are now, represented desolation by comparison. Because our present bodies have the limitations of the fall, of the curse, and of sin and death, and these divide us from Christ.

Paul says very plainly in II Corinthians 5 verse 6, the verse after our scripture text, “While we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.” He doesn’t say we are at odds with the Lord, simply we’re still absent from Him in a certain sense. The idea here is not of conflict. Paul is not saying the redeemed are at war with the Lord, or at odds with Him, but we’re still separate. Moreover he says, in the first verse of that passage, II Corinthians 5 verse 1 “for we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made of hands, eternal in heavens.” He’s talking about death.

To make clear the continuity he first uses the word “house” but then he goes on to “tabernacle” or “tent”, a tabernacle is a tent. And so he says “our body here is like a tent, it’s a very temporary thing, a very insubstantial thing. No matter how big a tent you have, and some tents could come very big, it still doesn’t have the conveniences of a house. A house has permanent features, it has walls that don’t collapse, and our bodies in the life are like a tent; collapsible, fragile, a windstorm or a tremendous hailstorm could destroy that tent. But even though this tent is dissolved, we have a building of God, something more permanent. You see the imagery? It is physical, the tent is physical, the house or the building is physical, but more substantial; a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; so there’s a progression, this house on earth, to the house in paradise, to the house in the new creation.

For in this we groan, this present tabernacle, this present tent or body, we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our body which is from heaven. What is Paul saying? We know, as we live our lives in this body, we have a sense of limitation. We don’t feel all the strength, the potential mentally, the expressions of our persons physically, that we feel is there. We are not given full expression; because of course sin has permeated from the soul outward, from the innermost part of our being, our heart, the whole person has been destroyed, and yet because we are created by God, we bear His trademark in us, and in terms of that trademark, His creation. We know we were created for something more. We have a potential we don’t realize in this life.

One of my favorite lines in poetry is from William Blake, very much a heretic with some very weird Gnostic ideas, but this line I always enjoyed. I laughed when I first read it, and it tickles me every time I think of it. Whenever Blake looked at himself in the mirror this line apparently came to his mind, and he set it down: “Oh why was I born with another face?” [audience chuckles] In other words “this isn’t the one that I feel inside of me, my inside face is much better than my outside face.”

Well in a sense that’s what Paul is talking about here, he’s talking about the Christian, the inside face as it were of the ungodly, is going to be far different in hell, much worse. So he says “we groan, we feel within ourselves this urge, to be clothed upon with the reality of that which we are capable. If so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked” because we feel in a certain sense, that we aren’t realizing ourselves, we’re not satisfied with the way we look, with the way we express ourselves, with the way we function. For we that are in this tabernacle, in this tent, in this body, do groan being burdened. We feel the limitations; so much to do, so little time to do it. Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon. He says our goal is not like those out there who are suicidal, we don’t want to die. We don’t want to get rid of our body and our life, but to be clothed upon, to realize that potential which God, having created us gave us, and which with His regeneration of us has made us realize, we were made for Him and we have a potential, a life in Christ that we’re not fully realizing here, because we’re not perfectly sanctified here. And so we groan. Paul uses that word twice, to be clothed, to realize ourselves, to be that person that God created us to be, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

Now that’s an interesting passage. Paul doesn’t say that mortality might be swallowed up of immortality; he makes that point elsewhere in another context, but here when he’s talking about our being and its realization; our person, our soul, and what it is going to be in Christ, he says our mortality, our death, which is a product of sin; that our death potential might be swallowed up, totally wiped out, by life, by life, so that we are going to be realizing ourselves. You see He’s talking about heaven, paradise. And he says “so, we know when we die here death is going to be swallowed up by life, and we’re going to be a giant step closer to the fullness of being a person, to realizing what it is to be a creation of God, and our body now like a tent will then be a solid building.

“Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing as God” Who created us to have this progression when we are born again, when we are His creation; from this tabernacle, to this body, to the eternal resurrection body? Why it is God who hath given unto us this earnest of His spirit. So we have a foretaste of this. We’re here in this body, in this tabernacle, but we meantime have the Holy Spirit given to us, to all who believe. So that having the Holy Spirit we know this, we feel this urgency to be more ourselves in Christ, to grow in grace, to grow in holiness, to serve Him more fully. So that as we look around us we say “this world, we’re going to leave a better place under God because we’ve been here and we’ve done the work he’s appointed for us.” And this person, born unto sin and death in Adam, reborn in Christ is going to be a better servant of God because He has called me to that task. The Spirit tells us this; the Spirit leads us stage by stage, to a higher state. So we have our birth in Adam, our rebirth in Christ. The earnest of the spirit, His sure work, His surety, His bond, He’s gone bond for us, and He testifies to that fact, that He is our bondsmen. So in all our being we know; “Yes I’ve been born again, to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, of paradise, and everything in my being as I work day by day to serve God is going to have a greater glory in the world to come, and the fullness of it will be realized at the end of the world.

This is why in Philippians 1 verse 21-24 Paul speaks of dying as gain. Death enables us to live more perfectly for Christ, to have life more abundantly. Moreover, paradise is the home of the covenant God according to Deuteronomy 26 verse 15. It is the habitation of the heavenly host according to Nehemiah 9:6, it also the home of the redeemed according to I Peter 1:4. The covenant, you see, is a treaty of life, and so the covenant home is a garden, a place of life, a protected, eternally protected, place of life. It is our home. The covenant we saw when we studied the doctrine of the covenant is a treaty of law, and an act of grace. But we saw also that at the covenant always involves a domain, land, property; and so the covenant domain is where the covenant people shall dwell and where the covenant law shall prevail.

Before the fall earth was give to man for dominion, with the garden of Eden as the pilot project area. With Moses the promise of the covenant land and a place, Canaan; with Christ in Matthew 28 verses 18-20 the covenant domain is now the whole earth “go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, bring them into the covenant, because the whole earth is now to be the covenant land”; and then finally the whole creation, the whole creation; a new heave and a new earth.

There’s another aspect to the covenant consummation, Hebrews 4 deals with it, time, time. The covenant domain is not only in space and in the life, but in time. The covenant domain in time began with the Sabbath as an armory where the people of God were armored to take that rest and then to apply it to the whole of creation, so that rest would go forth from them, from the day of rest. We rest that we might carry rest forth into all the world. The time rest, and then the Canaan rest, the rest applied to the land, the conquest of the earth, and the universal reign of peace, to the New Creation. Rest.

The covenant domain is thus over time and space and over our own beings. It is in paradise and in the new creation, and we are clothed more fully and totally with life in Christ in paradise and in the new creation. Let us pray.

Glory be to Thee oh God who has called us to be citizens of the kingdom of paradise and has clothed us now with Thy salvation, and given us the indwelling Spirit, and has prepared a better place for us, that were Thou art we may be also. Oh Lord our God make us ever joyful in our citizenship so that we may face the Caesar’s of this world, knowing that we are citizens of no mean city, but of the kingdom of God, the ruler of all creation. Send us therefore as more than conquerors, that we may bring all things into submission to Jesus Christ, that Satan’s head may be crushed under our feet as we go forth in Thy name. Grant us this we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now?

Yes?

[Audience member] It talks about you inherit a new earth, it says nothing about hell. Does that mean that’s just what it is forever?

[Rushdoony] Yes, well next time I shall be dealing with hell, so we’ll postpone that till next week. But indeed there is no communion, no community, nothing in hell. Life means growth, and there is no life apart from Christ, so it is indeed static.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes?

[Audience member] If there’s a new heaven and a new earth I think of a new earth being an earth without sin, in what sense would heaven be unique?

[Rushdoony] We’re not told [chuckles]. We’re simply told that all things are going to be made new, and the distinction between heaven and earth, or paradise and earth, will disappear. It will all be one. Now this is beyond our capacity to imagine. I’ve used the illustration more than once, it’s impossible to describe color to a person born blind, and to one who does not know what is beyond the grave, what paradise and the new creation is like, it’s equally impossible. So by faith we simply know that this is so.

Any other…yes?

[Audience member] In your mentioning of the resurrection of the body and then the land being involved, renewing the land, I was in a theological meeting in a Jewish synagogue some years ago and a Jewish protestor there was saying that whenever a Jew dies in the United States, and I guess throughout the world, I don’t know, they take a little leather sack, and put dirt in it from the Holy Land tied round their neck with them in the coffin. And all Jews are buried with the little sack of dirt from the Holy Land, signifying that they’re part in the Holy Land and in the new creation.

[Rushdoony] Yes, it’s a very important bit of symbolism.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Lord and our God it has been good for us to be here. Thou art ever a spring of refreshing unto our souls, a strength to our daily walk, and a Sabbath to our being. And so we rejoice in Thee, in our fellowship with Thee, and with one another in Thee. Dismiss us now with Thy blessing. Now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide you and keep you, this day and always, amen.