Although you may not have noticed at first reading, this passage in 1 Corinthians 13 tells us a great deal about what heaven will be like.
(1) It tells us first that heaven will be dominated by love. This is Paul’s point in saying in v. 9 that “love never ends.” Whereas the gift of prophecy and word of knowledge and speaking in tongues and healing and all other such spiritual gifts will one day come to an end, love will never end. Love endures not only now in this life but eternally into the next life. Thus Paul is telling us that heaven will be saturated and immersed in love. Heaven will be a place and an experience of God’s people where love in its highest and purest form will govern all relationships and fill every heart.
(2) Paul also tells us that heaven will be an experience of eternal, unending, unmediated intimacy with God. He tells us in 1 Cor. 13:12a that we will “see” God “face to face.” As we saw last week, this is standard biblical language describing personal intimacy with the Lord. Theologians often speak of this consummate experience of God’s glory as the beatific vision, by which is meant an intuitive, unmediated, and unprecedented apprehension of the beauty of God. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” said Jesus in the Beatitudes, “for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). And in describing life in the new heavens and new earth, John said of all Christian men and women: “They will see his face” (Rev. 22:4).
(3) Finally, we are also told here that heaven will be an experience of ever-increasing and never-ending knowledge of God. “Now I know in part,” says Paul in the second half of v. 12, “then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
We can even sum it all up with a single word, used by Paul in v. 10. There he describes heaven as perfection. So today we are going to use these three statements by Paul to help us understand what awaits us “when the perfect comes”, when we enter into the presence of God and the glory of the eternal state.
Not everyone thinks it helpful to focus on the future. They’ve bought into the old adage that people who do are “so heavenly minded they’re of no earthly good.” On the contrary, I’m persuaded that we will never be of much use in this life until we’ve developed a healthy obsession with the next. Our only hope for satisfaction of soul and joy of heart in this life comes from looking intently at what we can’t see (see 2 Cor. 4:16-18; Col. 3:1-4). Therefore, we must take steps to cultivate and intensify in our souls an ache for the beauty and perfection of the age to come.
The consistent witness of Scripture is that we should make heaven and its beauty the object of our contemplative energy, not for the purpose of fueling theological speculation, but to equip us for life here and now. Evidently there is something about heaven that makes our anticipation of its experience profoundly life-changing. And the reason isn’t hard to discern.
The essence of heaven is the vision or the beholding of God, the eternal expansion of our knowledge of God, and the ever-increasing love, joy, and delight that we will experience in God and in one another.
Before I delve into the nature of this beatific vision, consider the immediate and practical impact of the soul’s intense longing for it.
(1) A contemplative focus on the beauty of heaven frees us from excessive dependence upon earthly wealth and comfort. If there awaits us an eternal inheritance of immeasurable glory, it is senseless to expend effort and energy here, sacrificing so much time and money, to obtain for so brief a time in corruptible form what we will enjoy forever in consummate perfection.
“Our citizenship,” says Paul, “is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20a). Knowing this enables the soul to escape the grip of “earthly things” (Phil. 3:19) and to “stand firm” (Phil. 4:1). Paul in no way denies or minimizes the reality of our earthly obligations. He reminds the Philippians that their bodies were in Philippi. Their names were enrolled as Roman citizens. They had voting rights. They owed their taxes to an earthly king. They were protected by the laws of a this-worldly state.
Yet their fundamental identity, the orientation of their souls, the affection of their hearts, and the focus of their minds was in heaven! Paul appeals to their patriotic pride, not in Philippi, but in the New Jerusalem, their real residence! Therefore be governed by its rules, its principles, its values. Paul is careful to insist that our citizenship “is” (present tense) in heaven, not “will be”. We are already citizens of a new state. We are resident aliens here on earth.
Peter contends that the ultimate purpose of the new birth (1 Peter 1:3-4) is our experience of a heavenly hope, an inheritance that is “imperishable,” by which he means incorruptible, not subject to decay or rust or mold or dissolution or disintegration. This heavenly inheritance is “undefiled” or pure, unmixed, untainted by sin or evil. Best of all, it is “unfading.” Not only will it never end, it will never diminish in its capacity to enthrall and fascinate and impart joy. It is “reserved in heaven” for us, kept safe, under guard, protected and insulated against all intrusion or violation. This hope is the grounds for our joy (v. 6) that sustains us in trial and suffering.
A few verses later he exhorts his readers to “set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13). This is a commanded obsession. Fix the focus of your heart and mind on the grace that you will receive when Christ returns. Tolerate no distractions. Entertain no diversions. Don’t let your mind be swayed. Devote every ounce of mental and spiritual and emotional energy to concentrating and contemplating on the grace that is to come. What grace is that? It is the grace of the heavenly inheritance described in vv. 3-6!
The expectation of a “city that has foundations” energized Abraham’s heart to persevere in a foreign land. All the patriarchs are described as “seeking a [heavenly] homeland” (Heb. 11:14). Their determination in the face of trial was fueled by their desire for a “better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16). As pleasant as it may be now, what we see and sense and savor in this life is an ephemeral shadow compared with the substance of God himself. Earthly joys are fragmented beams, but God is the sun. Earthly refreshment is at best a sipping from intermittent springs, but God is the ocean!
(2) A contemplative focus on heaven enables us to respond appropriately to the injustices of this life. Essential to heavenly joy is witnessing the vindication of righteousness and the judgment of evil. Only from our anticipation of the new perspective of heaven, from which we, one day, will look back and evaluate what now seems senseless, can we be empowered to endure this world in all its ugliness and moral deformity.
Apart from a contemplative fixation on the glories of heaven, you will always struggle to read the newspaper righteously! If you insist on taking the short view of things you will be forever frustrated, confused, and angry.
(3) A contemplative focus on heaven produces the fruit of endurance and perseverance now. The strength to endure present suffering is the fruit of meditating on future satisfaction!This is the clear message of several texts such as Matthew 5:11-12; Romans 8:17-18,23,25b; Hebrews 13:13-14; and 1 Peter 1:3-8.
Romans 8:18 is Paul’s declaration that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” We do not lose heart because we contemplate the unseen things of the future and nourish our souls with the truth that whatever we endure on this earth is producing a glory far beyond all comparison! Christians are not asked to treat pain as though it were pleasure, or grief as though it were joy, but to bring all earthly adversity into comparison with heavenly glory and thereby be strengthened to endure.
Nowhere is this principle better seen than in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. Gazing at the grandeur of heavenly glory transforms our value system. In the light of what is “eternal”, what we face now is only “momentary”. Suffering appears “prolonged” only in the absence of an eternal perspective. The “affliction” of this life is regarded as “light” when compared with the “weight” of that “glory” yet to come. It is “burdensome” only when we lose sight of our heavenly future. The key to success in suffering, as odd as that sounds, is in taking the long view. Only when set over against the endless ages of eternal bliss does suffering in this life become tolerable.
There is yet another contrast to be noted. In v. 18 Paul contrasts “transient” things “that are seen” with “eternal” things “that are unseen.” He says that our "inner nature" is being renewed as we look or while we look at the unseen, eternal things of the age to come. If you don’t “look” you won’t change! The process of renewal only occurs as the believer looks to things as yet unseen. As we fix the gaze of our hearts on the glorious hope of the age to come, God progressively renews our inner being, notwithstanding the simultaneous decay of our outer frame! Inner renewal does not happen automatically or mechanically. Transformation happens only as or provided that we "look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen" (v. 18).
Paul is here describing in his own terms the battle for the mind of mankind. On what shall we set our sights (cf. Col. 3:1-4)? To what shall we give our allegiance? On what shall we meditate and ponder and focus? At no time in history has this been a more relevant issue given recent statistics concerning television viewing habits in our country. The typical American teenager today watches 18,000 murders and 35,000 commercials before he/she graduates from high school! Someone has calculated that by the time one reaches the age of 65, he/she will have spent 10 years watching TV!
(4) Nothing exerts such purifying power on the heart as does a contemplative focus on heaven. Meditation on the unseen glories of heaven energizes the heart to say no to fleshly desires. This is the clear witness of Colossians 3:1-4; 1 John 3:2-3; and 2 Peter 3:11-13.
The Nature of Heaven
We’re now ready to concentrate on the nature of our heavenly experience and the beatific vision of God for which we long. This is what gives heaven its irresistible appeal and its present impact. Again:
The essence of heaven is the vision or the beholding of God, the eternal expansion of our knowledge of God, and the ever-increasing love, joy, and delight that we will experience in God and in one another.
The first thing you need to know about what it will be like when “the perfect” comes is that our knowledge and joy and love will always and forever be on the increase.
Heaven is not simply about the reality or experience of knowledge, joy, and love, but their eternal increase. The blessedness of the beauty of heaven is progressive, incremental, and incessantly expansive.
The happiness of heaven is not like the steady, placid state of a mountain lake where barely a ripple disturbs the tranquility of its water. Heaven is more akin to the surging, swelling waves of the Mississippi at flood stage. With each passing day there is an increase in the level of water. And as the rain of revelation and insight and discovery continues to fall throughout the endless ages of eternity, so the water level of love and joy and happiness rises higher and higher, never to abate or to any degree diminish.
In the summer of 2002 the central region of Texas, just north of San Antonio, was hit by a devastating flood, a tragedy of almost incalculable proportions. My ears perked up one night when the television news anchor reported that “the flood waters had finally receded.” The river had “crested” the night before and people were now able to return to their homes (or at least what was left of them). Although this was certainly good news for them, you will never hear anything of the sort in heaven, at least when it comes to the “river” of God’s “delights” (Psalm 36:8). The waters of divine knowledge in the age to come bring, not devastation, but delight. The heavenly river of revelation will never crest! The waters of our enjoyment will suffer no such limitations. “Recede” is a word absent from the heavenly dictionary.
Ever-Increasing Grace
Look with me at what Paul says in Ephesians 2:7. God made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” If you ever wondered what God’s going to do in heaven, there it is!
The ultimate motivation in God’s heart for saving lost souls was so that they might become, throughout all eternity, trophies on display for all to see the magnificence and the surpassing riches of God’s grace in kindness in Christ!
He employs the plural “ages” to make the point that Like waves incessantly crashing on the shore, one upon another, so the ages of eternity future will, in endless succession, echo the celebration of sinners saved by grace, all to the glory of God. There will not be in heaven a one-time momentary display of God’s goodness, but an everlasting, ever-increasing infusion and impartation of divine kindness that intensifies with every passing moment.
God is going to put on a continuing and perpetual public display of his “grace” toward us! Heaven is not one grand, momentary flash of excitement followed by an eternity of boredom. Heaven is not going to be an endless series of earthly re-runs! There will be a new episode of divine grace every day! A new revelation every moment of some heretofore unseen aspect of the unfathomable complexity of divine compassion. A new and fresh disclosure of an implication or consequence of God’s mercy, every day. A novel and stunning explanation of the meaning of what God has done for us, without end.
In heaven our experience of God’s grace won’t be a bit here and a bit there. Paul says there will be a display of the “immeasurable riches” of his grace. His grace cannot be quantified. His grace exceeds calculation. God isn’t simply gracious: his grace is deep, wide, high, wealthy, plentiful, abounding, infinitely replenishing.
There will never be an end to God’s grace and kindness to us in Jesus. Never! Not for all eternity! The point of Paul’s effusive language is to emphasize that the grace of God in Christ is endlessly infinite, endlessly complex, endlessly deep, endlessly new, endlessly fresh, endlessly profound. God is infinite. Therefore, so too are his attributes. Throughout the ages to come, forever and ever, we will be the recipients each instant of an ever increasing and more stunning, more fascinating, and thus inescapably more enjoyable display of God’s grace than before.
With that unending and ever-increasing display will come an unending and ever-increasing discovery on our part of more of the depths and greatness of God’s grace. We will learn and grasp and comprehend more of the height and depth and width and breadth of his saving love. We will see ever new and always fresh displays and manifestations of his kindness. The knowledge we gain when we enter heaven will forever grow and deepen and expand and intensify and multiply.
We will constantly be more amazed with God, more in love with God, and thus ever more relishing his presence and our relationship with him. Our experience of God will never reach it consummation. We will never finally arrive, as if upon reaching a peak we discover there is nothing beyond. Our experience of God will never become stale. It will deepen and develop, intensify and amplify, unfold and increase, broaden and balloon. Our relishing and rejoicing in God will sharpen and spread and extend and progress and mature and flower and blossom and widen and stretch and swell and snowball and inflate and lengthen and augment and advance and proliferate and accumulate and accelerate and multiply and heighten and reach a crescendo that will even then be only the beginning of an eternity of new and fresh insights into the majesty of who God is!
Ever-Increasing Knowledge
Our knowledge of God will increase in heaven as “time” passes. Consider the angels. They are perfect and sinless, yet their knowledge increases and their joy intensifies each time a sinner repents (Luke 15:7,10). Clearly, growth of insight and new grounds for joy characterize angelic experience in heaven. If this be true of them, why not of us?
There never will come a time in heaven when we will know everything that can be known or see or feel or experience or enjoy all that can be enjoyed. We will never plumb the depths of gratification in God nor reach its end. Our satisfaction and delight and joy in him are subject to incessant increase. When it comes to heavenly euphoria, words such as termination and cessation and expiration and finality are utterly inappropriate and inapplicable.
One of the greatest misconceptions of heaven is that it is static, unchanging, and immutable, as if to say that all we get we get all at once, at the beginning. The idea many have is that we are transformed at its inception as much as we ever will be. No! To think that the happiness of heaven is unchanging minimizes its glory.
If our ideas and thoughts of God increase in heaven, then so also must the joy and delight and fascination which those ideas and thoughts generate. We enter heaven with a finite number of ideas about God, with obvious limits on what we know of him. There is no indication that everything that can be known of God will be known all at once and forever. How could a finite being ever know all there is to know of an infinite being?
With increased knowledge comes intensified love. As understanding grows, so too do affection and fascination. With each new insight comes more joy, which serves only to stoke the fires of celebration around the throne. All of this accelerates our growth in holiness. When the soul is filled with ever-increasing depths of knowledge, love, joy, and worship, the more it is conformed to the image of Christ. In other words, the more we like God the more like God we become!
New ideas, new revelation, new insights, new applications, together with new connections between one idea and another all lead to deeper appreciation for God and thus fuel the flames of worship. And just when you think you’re going to explode if you learn anything more or hear anything fresh or see anything new, God expands your heart and stretches your mind and broadens your emotions and extends every faculty to take in yet more and more and more, and so it goes forever and ever.
If God’s desire is to be glorified, then it seems that he must do whatever is necessary that his glory may be seen and honored in ever increasing ways. My guess is that in heaven God will enlarge our intellectual capacity to know him and heighten the sensitivity of our affections to love him and transform every faculty of soul, spirit, and body to enjoy him to a degree never before attained or imagined. Our minds and wills and emotions and bodies and spirits will no longer be limited by the corruptions of the flesh or the boundaries of earth.
The basis for knowing this to be true is the biblical reality of God’s inexhaustible plenitude.
We must never forget that even in heaven only God is immutable or unchanging. We are ever subject to greater transformation and improvement. But it is always a change from one stage of glory and knowledge and holiness to the next higher stage of glory and knowledge and holiness. It is one thing to be free of imperfection, but another to experience perfection perfectly. We will be perfect in heaven from the first moment we arrive in that we will be free from defect, free from sin, free from moral corruption and selfishness. But that perfection is finite, because we are finite. It is always subject to expansion. There is change, but always for the better!
Heaven is not simply the eradication of earthly sin and imperfection. My love can be free from corruption and selfishness without being as perfect and intense as is possible. To say that my love for God is absolutely perfect and cannot be improved upon implies that I know everything that can be known of him and that I know it in exhaustive detail. This is worse than absurd, it’s arrogant.
All aspects of our “perfection” in heaven admit of degrees precisely because we are and always will be finite. Whatever is finite has boundaries and boundaries, by definition, are capable of being exceeded and extended. Knowledge that is perfect and free from error is not necessarily comprehensive. Our happiness will be perfect in that it will be entirely free from trouble and trial and evil, but that perfection, as strange as it may sound, is always subject to improvement.
Now Counts Forever
What you do now, in this life, by the grace of God, will count for ever in the age to come. In fact, your life now and your obedience to the will of God determines the depths of your joy and knowledge in heaven.
To think that everyone in heaven is equally knowledgeable, equally holy, equally capable of enjoying God, is to argue that the progress we make now on earth is irrelevant to our heavenly state. But we are often exhorted to do things now precisely because it will build up and increase for us treasure in heaven. Not everyone responds to these commands in the same way or to the same degree or with the same measure of faithfulness. Thus people will enter heaven at differing degrees of holiness, love, and joy. All will be subject to increase and expansion based on the depth and measure of our development here on earth. What we do and know and achieve now, by God’s grace, will have eternal consequences.
Your capacity for happiness in heaven is shaped by the development and refinement and depth of your capacity on earth. What we do now is not discarded once we enter eternity. What we learn now is not erased in heaven. Nothing in Scripture leads us to believe that everyone will be instantaneously, equally, and exhaustively educated at the inauguration of our heavenly existence. What we experience in joy and understanding and insight now is not destroyed, but is the foundation on which all our eternal experience and growth is based.
Heavenly Frustration?
But if we are never able to reach consummate perfection and complete knowledge of God, won’t we feel frustrated and disappointed and anxious? No. Because there will never be a time when we are denied what we desire. Happiness consists in part in the satisfaction of desire. In heaven, with each desire there is fulfillment. We will desire only what is good and righteous and honoring to God, and it would be hell if such desire were left unsatisfied. Each new desire is but a fitting prelude to the delight that comes with its satisfaction.
Frustration and disappointment and anxiety are the fruit of not attaining what your heart longs for. But in heaven whatever we want we get. If we want more knowledge, we’ll learn. If we want more enjoyment, we get it. With each new desire comes a corresponding satisfaction. And with each new satisfaction, with each new discovery, yet unseen and unexperienced possibilities of enjoying and knowing God will emerge to which our hearts will reach in desire, which desire will in turn be fulfilled, which in turn will open up new vistas not yet attained, which when desired will then be fulfilled and satisfied, and on and on forever and ever.
Often people doubt the happiness of heaven to come because of their misery in this world. They find that divine providence seems to deprive them of happiness now. What reason, then, do they have for believing that they will have happiness later? This question fails to realize that God limits the happiness and pleasure we have now precisely so we might not become attached to this world or dependent upon it or fearful of leaving it (dying), as well as to stir in our hearts a longing and yearning and holy anticipation for what is yet to come.
That we will grow in happiness in heaven seems evident from the fact that the ideas and thoughts and insights into the nature and work of God will forever increase. We are mistaken to think that what we perceive to be beautiful now is the limit or boundary for what will be beautiful in heaven. With a new heavens and a new earth there will undoubtedly be new colors, new combinations, new hues, new depths of radiance, new sounds, endlessly infinite and diverse melodies and rhythms, together with new faculties of mind, sense and spirit to apprehend new disclosures of God’s infinite splendor.
What We Won’t See There
Three texts in Revelation tell us who and what will be absent in heaven. In 21:4 we see that no tears of grief, no death or sorrow or pain will be present. In 21:8 we are assured that no one who is cowardly, lying, or unbelieving will be present, nor murderers, or anything abominable, immoral, or idolatrous. And, as if to sum up, we are told in 21:27 that nothing unclean will be allowed to enter.
Think of the implications of what is being said! When we get to heaven there will be nothing that is abrasive, irritating, agitating, or hurtful. Nothing harmful, hateful, upsetting or unkind. Nothing, sad, bad, or mad. Nothing harsh, impatient, ungrateful or unworthy. Nothing weak, or sick, or broken or foolish. Nothing deformed, degenerate, depraved or disgusting. Nothing polluted, pathetic, poor or putrid. Nothing dark, dismal, dismaying or degrading. Nothing blameworthy, blemished, blasphemous or blighted. Nothing faulty, faithless, frail or fading. Nothing grotesque or grievous, hideous or insidious. Nothing illicit or illegal, lascivious or lustful. Nothing marred or mutilated, misaligned or misinformed. Nothing nasty or naughty, offensive or odious. Nothing rancid or rude, soiled or spoiled. Nothing tawdry or tainted, tasteless or tempting. Nothing vile or vicious, wasteful or wanton!
What We Will See There
Wherever you turn your eyes you will see nothing but glory and grandeur and beauty and brightness and purity and perfection and splendor and satisfaction and sweetness and salvation and majesty and marvel and holiness and happiness.
We will see only and all that is adorable and affectionate, beautiful and bright, brilliant and bountiful, delightful and delicious, delectable and dazzling, elegant and exciting, fascinating and fruitful, glorious and grand, gracious and good, happy and holy, healthy and whole, joyful and jubilant, lovely and luscious, majestic and marvelous, opulent and overwhelming, radiant and resplendent, splendid and sublime, sweet and savoring, tender and tasteful, euphoric and unified!
Why will it be all these things? Because we will be looking at God (see Mt. 5:8; John 17:24; Heb. 12:14; Rev. 22:4). This beatific vision will be utterly transparent. Now we “see in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12a), obscured and blurry. But God will one day unveil himself in all his resplendent brilliance, glory, and clarity for us to behold.
This beatific vision of God will be utterly transcendent, and will in every conceivable way outstrip and exceed and transcend the glory and beauty and majesty of anything we have ever seen on this earth. Hence we will never grow weary or bored with looking at God.
What We Will Do There
For one thing, we will no longer enjoy sin! For example, envy and covetousness and spite, all those things which fill our hearts when we see others exceeding us in prosperity, surpassing us in success, elevated beyond us in worldly affairs, will be forever absent from heaven.
In heaven, when the perfect comes, hardly anything will bring you more joy than to see other saints with greater rewards than you, experiencing greater glory than you, given greater authority than you! There will be no jealousy or pride to fuel your unhealthy competitiveness. There will be no greed to energize your race to get more than everyone else. You will then delight only in delighting in the delight of others. Their achievement will be your greatest joy. Their success will be your highest happiness. You will truly rejoice with those who rejoice. Envy comes from lack. But in heaven there is no lack. Whatever you need, you get. Whatever desires may arise, they are satisfied.
The fact that some are more holy and more happy than you will not diminish your joy. There will be perfect humility and perfect resignation to God’s will in heaven, hence no resentment or bitterness. Also, those higher in holiness will, precisely because they are holy, be more humble. The essence of holiness is humility! The very vice that might incline them to look condescendingly on those lower than themselves is nowhere present. It is precisely because they are more holy that they are so very humble and thus incapable of arrogance and elitism.
They will not strut or boast or use their higher degrees of glory to humiliate or harm those lower. Those who know more of God will, because of that knowledge, think more lowly and humbly of themselves. They will be more aware of the grace that accounts for their holiness than those who know and experience less of God, hence, they will be more ready to serve and to yield and to go low and to defer.
Some people in heaven will be happier than others. But this is no reason for sadness or anger. In fact, it will serve only to make you happier to see that others are happier than you! Your happiness will increase when you see that the happiness of others has exceeded your own. Why? Because love dominates in heaven and love is rejoicing in the increase of the happiness of others. To love someone is to desire their greatest joy. As their joy increases, so too does yours in them. If their joy did not increase, neither would yours. We struggle with this because now on earth our thoughts and desires and motives are corrupted by sinful self-seeking, competitiveness, envy, jealousy, and resentment.
In this life it’s often hard to be happy when you hurt. In heaven, with new and glorified bodies, there will be no fatigue, pain, discomfort, chronic aches or itches. There will be only pure physical pleasure with no bodily obstacles to diminish our ability to see and feel and hear and touch and taste and smell the glories of paradise. Now, on earth, physical pleasure often competes with spiritual happiness, but in heaven they are one! The physical and emotional and intellectual pleasures of heaven will infinitely exceed the most ecstatic of physical and sensual pleasures on earth.
There will be no bodily lusts to pull you down, no physical fatigue to cloud your mind, no wicked impulses against which you must fight, no dullness of heart to hold you back, no lethargy of soul to slow you down, no weakness of will to keep you in bondage, no lack of energy to love someone else, no absence of passion to pursue what is holy.
Insofar as our bodies will be glorified in heaven and thus delivered of weakness and frailty and obscurity and our senses all heightened and magnified and their capacity to see, touch, feel, hear, and smell greatly increased and no longer hindered by disease or distraction, our experience will be indescribably joyful.
Finally, you need never live in fear that any heavenly joy will ever be lost or taken away! We struggle to enjoy life now from fear that it will soon end. We hesitate to savor what little happiness we have for fear that it may be taken away. We hold back and hedge our bets and restrain our souls, knowing that disaster may soon come, economic recession may begin, physical health may deteriorate, someone may die, or something unforeseen may surprise us and take it all away. But not in heaven! Never! The beauty and joy and glory and delight and satisfaction and purity will never ever end, but only increase and grow and expand and multiply!
And all this, for hell-deserving sinners!