“I have a longing for the world above
where multitudes sing the great song, for my soul was never created to love the
dust of earth. Though here my spiritual state is frail and poor, I shall go on
singing Calvary’s anthem.”
I love Hebrews 11:8 – 16, for it is not
only the testimony of our fathers and mothers of faith, it is our testimony too
– or at least it should be. Our spiritual ancestors were “looking for the city which
has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” They confessed that they
were “strangers and exiles on the earth” making it “clear that they are seeking
a country of their own…a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”
“Therefore, God is not ashamed to be
called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.”
Our forebearers knew that the promise of
a land was a shadow and type of a greater inheritance, a greater and lasting
City and Land. Abraham was not focused on his descendants inheriting a strip of
land in the Middle East, he was focused on what that land represented, becoming
“heir of the world…through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4:13). The world
which he was called to inherit was a heavenly world, kingdom, and City which
would encompass and envelop and renew all things, heaven would (and will)
descend upon earth.
Hence Paul writes that the earthly city
of Jerusalem is not our mother and should not be our identity and focus, but
rather the heavenly Jerusalem – the mother of those who live in the faith of
Abraham (Galatians 4:21 – 31). How foolish we are to identify with earthly
things when Jesus has said that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).
Paul writes that we are to “keep seeking
the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your
mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Col. 3:1 – 2).
One of the great lies in our society is
that a person can be so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly good. I have
never encountered such a person, I have never read of such a person. On the
contrary, it is often those who are heavenly minded who lead the way in caring
for others – the poor, the refugee and alien, the homeless, the prisoner, the
orphan and widow, the outcast, the sick. Those who are heavenly minded are
those who point us to our destiny, to God our Creator and our Father, to the
Christ of the Cross. Those who are heavenly minded insist that we do not
prostitute ourselves to this present evil age, to its values, to its systems,
to its prison of conformity to this world.
Those who are heavenly minded proclaim
that, in Christ, we are citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20). Those who are heavenly
minded have the courage to live against the grain of the world, the flesh, and
the devil; to witness for Jesus, to give their lives for Him and others. They also
have the courage to live against the grain of a professing church that, at
least in the West, has sold itself to the powers of the present age.
Those who are heavenly minded remind us
that our souls were “never created to love the dust of the earth.”
Those who are heavenly minded sing Calvary’s
Anthem, inviting us to sing the Great Song of the Ages.
Shall we join them?
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