Knowing Our Loved Ones In Heaven
Knowing Our Loved Ones in Heaven
Excerpted from “Heaven and Hell”
Sermon #39, 40
Delivered on Tuesday evening, September 4, 1855, in a field, King Edward’s Road, Hackney
When people we love die, we miss them and long to see them again. That’s a big part of death’s curse. But when your Christian loved ones die, if you know Christ you will see them again. In Heaven we will have eternal fellowship not only with God but also with the family of God.
I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 8:11
To my mind, one of the best views of Heaven is that it is a land of rest—especially to the working man. Those who don’t have to work hard think they will love Heaven as a place of service. That is very true. But to the working man, to the man who toils with his brain or with his hands, it must ever be a sweet thought that there is a land where we shall rest.
Soon this voice will never be strained again. Soon these lungs will never have to exert themselves beyond their power. Soon this brain shall not be racked for thought, but I shall sit at the banquet table of God. I shall recline on the bosom of Abraham and be at ease forever. Weary sons and daughters of Adam, you will not have to drive the plow into the unthankful soil in Heaven. You will not need to rise to daily toils before the sun has risen and labor still when the sun has long ago gone to his rest. But you shall be still, you shall be quiet, you shall rest yourselves, for all are rich in Heaven, all are happy there, all are peaceful. Toil, trouble, travail, and labor are words that cannot be spelled in Heaven; the saints have no such things there, for they always rest.
And mark the good company they sit with. Some people think that in Heaven we shall know nobody. But our text declares here that we shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Then I am sure that we shall be aware that they are Abraham and Isaac and Jacob!
If we have known one another here, we shall know one another there. I have dear departed friends up there, and it is always a sweet thought to me that when I shall put my foot, as I hope I may, upon the threshold of Heaven, there will come my sisters and brothers to clasp me by the hand and say, “Yes, my loved one, at last you are here.”
Dear relatives who have been separated from you, these you will meet again in Heaven. One of you has lost a mother—she is gone above. And if you follow the track of Jesus, you shall see her there.
We shall recognize our friends. Husband, you will know your wife again. Mother, you will know those dear babes of yours—you memorized their features when they lay panting and gasping for breath. You know how you hung over their graves when the cold sod was sprinkled over them and it was said, “Earth to earth. Dust to dust, and ashes to ashes.” But you shall hear those sweet voices once more; you shall yet know that those whom you loved have been loved by God.
Amy Carmichael, a missionary to India in the early 1900s, wrote,
Shall we know one another in Heaven? Shall we love and remember? I do not think anyone need wonder about this or doubt for a single moment. We are never told we shall, because, I expect, it was not necessary, for if we think for a minute, we know. Would you be yourself if you did not love and remember? . . . We are told that we shall be like our Lord Jesus. Surely this does not mean in holiness only, but in everything; and does not He know and love and remember? He would not be Himself if He did not, and we should not be ourselves if we did not.a
Bible scholar W. G. Scroggie echoes the sentiments of many believers: “If I knew that never again would I recognize that beloved one with whom I spent more than thirty-nine years here on earth, my anticipation of heaven would much abate. To say that we will be with Christ and that that will be enough is to claim that there we shall be without the social instincts and affections which mean so much to us here. . . . Life beyond cannot mean impoverishment, but the enhancement and enrichment of life as we have known it here at its best.”b
Augustine said, “We have not lost our dear ones who have departed from this life, but have merely sent them ahead of us, so we also shall depart and shall come to that life where they will be more than ever dear as they will be better known to us, and where we shall love them without fear of parting.”c He also said, “All of us who enjoy God are also enjoying each other in Him.”d
Throughout the ages, Christians have anticipated eternal reunion with their loved ones.
Paul tells the Thessalonians that they’ll be reunited with believing family and friends in Heaven: “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. . . . God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. . . . We who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them. . . . And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, 17-18, NIV).
Our source of comfort isn’t only that we’ll be with the Lord in Heaven but also that we’ll be with one another. Christ is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last” (Revelation 22:13, NIV). He alone is sufficient to meet all our needs. Yet God has designed us for relationship not only with himself but also with others of our kind. After God created the world, he stepped back to look at his work and pronounced it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). However, before his creation was complete, he said there was one thing—and only one—that was not good: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18, NIV). God planned for Adam, and all mankind, to need human companionship.
Jesus rebuked the religious leaders for imagining they could love God without loving people (Luke 10:27-37). The spiritual-sounding “I will love just God and no one else” is not only unspiritual; it’s impossible. If we don’t love people, who are created in God’s image, we can’t love God (1 John 4:8).
Puritan Richard Baxter, whom Spurgeon regarded as a pastoral mentor, looked forward to being with Christ first, but he also anticipated being reunited with dear friends: “I know that Christ is all in all; and that it is the presence of God that makes Heaven to be Heaven. But yet it much sweetens the thoughts of that place to me that there are there such a multitude of my most dear and precious friends in Christ.”e
On the New Earth we’ll experience the joy of familiarity in old relationships and the joy of discovery in new ones. As we get to know one another better, we’ll get to know God better. And as we find joy in one another, we’ll find joy in him.
a Amy Carmichael, Thou Givest . . . They Gather, quoted in Images of Heaven: Reflections on Glory, compiled by Lil Copan and Anna Trimiew (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1996), 111.
b W. Graham Scroggie, What about Heaven? (London: Christian Literature Crusade, 1940), 93.
c Augustine, quoted in Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 58.
d Augustine, On the Christian Doctrine (New York: Prentice Hall, 1958), 1:32–33.
e Richard Baxter, Saints’ Everlasting Rest (Hagerstown, MD: Christian Heritage, 2000).
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