The teleological objective, termination and destiny of man.

   God is inherently eternal, but eternality is not inherent to man in any of his levels of spiritual, psychological or physical function. Since man is part of the created order, we must not posit divine attributes of the Creator God to the creature-man, else we deify the creation and engage in idolatry. Man, the creature, was designed by God, the Creator, to be a dependent, contingent and derivative being who would of necessity be receptive to spiritual being and character. The intent of God was that man would be receptive to an ontological connection and spiritual union with the Being of God Himself in order to express God's character unto His glory.

   Because man is not eternal, reference can be made to "the end of man" in ways that could never be applied to the eternal God. Divine eternality does not allow for derivation of qualitative character, extension of time and relation, or termination of form, yet these are factors which must be considered concerning the "end" of man.

   The Greek word for "end" is telos, which can refer to termination and cessation, as well as final state, and also to the goal or objective of an activity. The "end of man" will be considered in terms of man's objective of glorification, his termination of physical body, and his destiny of a final state.

   The effectiveness of anything can only be determined by understanding its functional purpose and objective. Failure to apprehend the goal will allow for misdirected dysfunction. Much of mankind has not grasped hisraison d'etre, his "reason for being." The goal is not to evolve into godhood or create a heavenly utopia on earth. Many Christians have not understood the objective of the Christian life. Lacking clear-cut objective, they concentrate on the motion by becoming involved in the programs of the institution in order to achieve trivialized projects. A fanatic was once defined as "one who having lost his direction, triples his speed." This seems appropriate to much of humanity's efforts as well as ecclesiastical endeavors.

   God's objective for man, the divine "end" for man, can only be determined by the stated purpose of the divine Designer. Through Isaiah the prophet, God refers to "everyone whom I have created for My glory" (Isa. 43:7). His redemptive and restorational intent for Christians is later prophesied as being "the work of My hands, that I may be glorified" (Isa. 60:21). By creation and re-creation God has determined that His intent is to be glorified through man. This is why the Westminster Confession asks, "What is the purpose of man?" and answers the question, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." In the vision and revelation that John saw, he records the heavenly worshippers as saying, "Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they existed, and were created" (Rev. 4:11).

   God is glorified when His all-glorious character of perfection, purity and holiness is manifested within His creation. He is glorified by the ontological expression of His own being and character, not by the best efforts of man to please and appease Him. Through Isaiah, God says, "I will not give My glory to another" (Isa. 42:8); "For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; for how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another" (Isa. 48:11). The glorification of God can only be a result of the expression of His own all-glorious character.

   By the fall of man into sin the ontological presence of God in man's spirit was removed, thereby making it impossible for man to derive God's character unto His glory. "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Only by the spiritual re-creation of man in Jesus Christ is the ontological presence and activity of God restored. "This is the mystery," Paul writes, "Christ in you the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27), the confident expectation of manifesting the character of God in our behavior unto the glory of God. "By Him (Jesus Christ) is our Amen to the glory of God through us" (II Cor. 1:20).

   The end-objective of man is not self-glorification in the accolades and affirmations of human performance. The Psalmist rightly said, "Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name give glory" (Psalm 115:1). We are to "do all to the glory of God" (I Cor. 10:31), but this can be accomplished only when we derive all from Him. "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever" (Rom. 11:36). Spiritual derivation determines doxological direction and destiny. Only when the origin of the activity is from God can the operative behavior achieve the objective of glorifying God.

   God's objective of glorifying Himself through man is not limited to this earthly existence, but extends into the eternality which we partake of by spiritual union with His Being. In the "eternal weight of glory" (II Cor. 4:17) when we become "partakers of the glory that is to be revealed" (I Peter 5:1), we shall continue to derive God's character expression unto His glory. We shall "be glorified with Him" (Rom. 8:17) in the glorification of the final heavenly state. The end-objective of glorification continues to be man's purpose, both presently and forever. "Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death" (Phil. 1:20).

   Human physicality is not eternal. The physical body of man terminates its life function at physical death. James explains that "the body apart from the spirit is dead" (James 2:26), apparently indicating that the physical body is non-functional and non-viable at that point, and therefore terminal.

   Throughout human history man has attempted to understand and explain the terminus of physical death, the phenomenon of human mortality. Some have suggested the explanation of annihilationism, indicating that when man dies he just passes out of existence, ceases to be, terminates into non-existence at every level of his function, spiritual, psychological and physical. There is no eternality attributed to man in annihilationism. Others have advocated the theory of cyclicism, whereby the physical death of man sets man free to come around again in another physical form. Such theories of the transmigration of the soul and reincarnation presuppose an eternality of soul and spirit that is cyclically embodied in a sequence of temporal physical forms. The explanation of Christian religion has sometimes been based on the alleged eternality of the physical body which will be resurrected and restored in the heavenly realm, as well as an inherent eternality of soul and spirit whereby all men allegedly will live forever either in heaven or in hell. A more Scriptural explanation is to recognize that there is no inherent eternality to man in spirit, soul or body. Man was created as a contingent and derivative creature who derives his nature and identity from spiritual solidarity with either God or Satan, which extends in a perpetuity of that connective identification to another environmental context, another realm, after physical death. Physical death then involves a discontinuity of bodily form, but a continuity of spiritual connectivity and derivation.

   Divine life is eternal and cannot be terminated. Such spiritual life is made available to man in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is eternal life. "I am the way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6). "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life" (I John 5:11,12); "...you may know that you have eternal life" (I John 5:13). Despite the tombstones that read, "So and so departed into eternal life on such and such a date," eternal life is not a commodity or state of existence that is dispensed after physical death. Eternal life becomes functional in an individual when they receive the life of Jesus by faith at regeneration. Jesus said, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life" (John 3:16). "He who believes Him who sent me has eternal life, and has passed out of death into life" (John 5:24). "He who believes has eternal life" (John 6:47). "Believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:31).

   The continuity of the eternal life that we have received in Christ Jesus is assured. Jesus said, "He who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die" (John 11:25,26). Paul explained to the Colossians that "your life is hidden with Christ in God...Christ is our life...you will be revealed with Him in glory" (Col. 3:3,4). There is a continuity of spiritual life-content in Jesus Christ.

   There is also a continuity of embodiment. When the physical body dies we do not become disembodied spirits. We "shall not be found naked" (II Cor. 5:3) without bodily covering, but will "put on the imperishable and immortal" (I Cor. 15:53,54) body. We will not be left homeless, for though we "lay aside the earthly dwelling" (II Peter 1:14) and "the earthly tent is torn down; we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" and "will be clothed with our dwelling from heaven" (II Cor. 5:1,2). We will continue to have bodily expression.

   The discontinuity effected at physical death is in the context and form of our bodily expression. Paul took pains to correct the mistaken Jewish emphases on physicality. Those Jews who believed in bodily resurrection conceived of such in terms of the reconstruction and reanimation of corpses, the reactivation of distinctively Jewish physical bodies in a future nationalistic kingdom-community. In the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, Paul explains the discontinuity between a fleshly body and a glorified body (15:39,43), between an earthly body and a heavenly body (15:40), between a perishable body and an imperishable body (15:42,53,54), between a body of dishonor and a body of glory (15:43; Phil. 3:21), between a body of weakness and a body of power (15:43), between a natural body and a spiritual body (15:44,46), between a mortal body and an immortal body (15:53,54). This discontinuity of bodily form and feature corresponds with the discontinuity of environmental context in which those bodies function, changing from the earthly context to the heavenly context (15:46-49).

   When our physical bodies come to their terminal end at physical death, that body is then disposed of by burial, cremation, or otherwise. The Spirit-permeated soul then passes from that body to be embodied with a resurrected and transformed body in the heavenly realm. Though there is the discontinuity of bodily form and contextual realm, there is a transitional continuity of spiritual life within embodiment. This "graduation to glory" is preferable in many ways to the present earthly existence, for we are free from the limitations, hindrances and encumbrances of man's fall into sin. "We are set free from the slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21). This is why Paul could declare that it was his "desire to depart the be with Christ, for that is very much better" (Phil. 1:24), to be "absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord" (II Cor. 5:8). "For me to live is Christ," Paul exclaimed in recognition of the spiritual continuity of Christ's life, and "to die is gain" for the discontinuity of bodily form and environmental context is indeed preferable.

   The living God is inherently and essentially life. "The Father has life in Himself" (John 5:26). He is the source of all life, for "He gives life to all" (Neh. 9:6) living things. Being Spirit (John 4:24) and eternal (Rom. 16:26), His life is spiritual life and eternal life. As such He is immortal (I Tim. 1:17); He experiences no death; and "He alone possesses immorality" (I Tim. 6:16).

   Man, on the other hand, is contingent upon a spiritual being and source for his identity and existence. Man is not independent and autonomous, but dependent on an ontic-identification with either God or Satan.

   The teaching of Christian religion has often accepted the Platonic premise that man has an inherently immortal soul which lives forever (eternally), and will go to one place or the other, to heaven or to hell after physical death. Many theological writers have attempted to expose the fallacy of this teaching:

"This widely-accepted idea (of the immortality of the soul) is one of the greatest misunderstandings of Christianity."1

"Our traditional thinking about the 'never-dying soul,' which owes so much to Graeco-Roman heritage, makes it difficult for us to appreciate Paul's point of view."2

"the heresy about man's immortal soul ...is one of those doctrines that have been inherited by the Church from Platonic philosophy, that has simply been received without criticism and without being judged in the light of Scripture. No man is by nature immortal, either as to body or soul. Immortality is the word that can be applied only to the state of the glorified saints in Christ."3

   God alone is essentially immortal. "God alone possesses immortality" (I Tim. 6:16). Man can only derive immortality from God, for "all immortality except God's is derived."4 "Christ Jesus, abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (II Tim. 1:10). The Christian derives immortality and eternal life from the essence of Christ's life ontologically present and active within his spirit, soul and body. The continuum of that immortal, non-dying, eternal life functioning within man after his physical death is the end-destiny of the heavenly realm.

   Popular religious concepts of heaven have often been ethereal cosmomorphisms of clouds, angels, harps and pearly gates. Finite human thought fixes on such figures to provide some form to spiritual abstraction; "things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which has not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him" (I Cor. 2:9). The danger is that these figures can become conceptual idols concretized in religious dogma. For this reason Jewish religion has usually refrained from speculating about heaven, lest it lead to forbidden idolatry.

   Even the conceptualization of heaven as a "place," a localized entity which for finite minds demands space/time parameters, may be but another inadequate attempt of man to fit heaven into human formulation. If heaven is infinite and eternal, then does such allow for localization within space and time? Jesus did tell His disciples that He was "going to prepare a place for them" (John 14:2,3), but a dwelling-place "near to the heart of God" does not necessarily demand localization.

   Jesus Christ is the eternal and spiritual life of God. We have received His life in regeneration. His eternal and immortal life remains in continuity beyond our physical death. Heaven is the eternal continuum of the eternal life of Jesus Christ which we now have as Christians which "shall never die" (John 11:26). Heaven is the presence of the perfect life of Jesus in an environmental context free from all imperfection and hindrance. Jesus prayed for Christians, "Father, I desire that they be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory" (John 17:24). Heaven is the perpetuity of the ontic-expression of the life of Jesus Christ. "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And besides Thee, I desire nothing on earth" (Psalm 73:25).

   Hell, on the other hand, is the continuity and perpetuity of spiritual identification and union with the being and destiny of the devil. When physical death occurs in man while in a state of spiritual death, such spiritual identification with "the spirit that works in the sons of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2) will be perpetuated after the judgment in everlasting death. Such death should not be defined as termination, cessation or annihilationism, but as the absence of the presence and quality of God's life in Jesus Christ. The quantitative and qualitative perpetuity of spiritual derivation from Satan will be most unpleasant "in the everlasting fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41), agents and messengers.

   Understanding of the continuity and perpetuity of spiritual identification with either God or Satan in the end-destiny of our final state should serve to remove some of the crassly materialistic and mercenary expectations that some Christians have concerning the future heavenly state. Keying off of Biblical statements of treasures in heaven (Matt. 19:21; Mk. 10:21; Lk. 12:21; 18:22); rewards in heaven (Matt. 10:41,42; Lk. 6:23,25; I Cor. 3:8); crowns (II Tim. 4:8; James 1:12; I Pet. 5:4; Rev. 2:10); and mansions (John 14:2-KJV), self-concerns have tainted and polluted many Christians' understanding of the heavenly reality. Many seem to think that they are going to get something more, in addition to what they already have spiritually, when they get to heaven. Although Paul does indicate that "to die is gain" (Phil. 1:21), this does not imply that we will receive something more than we already have in Jesus Christ. To suggest that more is to be "gained" is to suggest that what we have received in Jesus Christ is limited or insufficient. God forbid! "All things belong to us in Christ, things present or things to come" (I Cor. 3:21-23). "God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3). We "have been made complete" in Christ (Col. 2:10). The "gain" that Paul refers to is not something in addition to Jesus' life, but is the discontinuity of bodily form which replaces the hindrances of physicality with the unencumbered glorified body, and the "gain" of a contextual environment to express Christ's life and character without antagonism or constraint.

   The "treasures in heaven" are all inherent in the spiritual "treasure" of Christ's life that now indwells our "earthen vessels" (II Cor. 4:7). The "crown" is the victory wreath (Greek word stephanos), the "crown of life" (Rev. 2:10), indicating participation as "overcomers" in the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ. The "mansions" are but spiritual "dwelling places" (John 14:2) in the presence of God. "Rewards in heaven" are not additional acquisitions, for there is nothing more than "the reward of the inheritance" (Col. 3:24) of the eternal life of Jesus Christ (cf. Heb. 11:26).

   When Christians display a languid and listless approach to their Christian life here on earth, longing for the future heavenly state where they expect to gain complete spirituality and full progress unto perfection, I am tempted to respond, "I don't think you are going to like heaven when you get there!" "What do you mean," they might reply. My explanation would be, "If you do not appreciate and enjoy the life that you have in Jesus Christ right now, what makes you think you will appreciate and enjoy the continuum of that same spiritual and eternal life in Jesus Christ throughout the eternal heavenly existence?" Progress in the development of such appreciation and expression of Christ's life must take place in our present Christian lives, for there is no Biblical basis for expecting further spiritual progression beyond this life. Heaven is the perfect presence of the life of God in Jesus Christ, and that which is perfect allows for no progress or development in perfection. Progression is alien to the concept of heaven. Progress is only required when things are imperfect, and is the unique quest of man after the fall. Robert Browning wrote,

"Progress is man's distinctive mark alone ­
Not God's, and not the beast's;
God is, they are,
Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be."5

   "Now is the day of salvation" (II Cor. 6:2), for progression and growth in spiritual awareness and appreciation of the life of Jesus. The extent of our capability for appreciation and expression of the divine life is developed in the present. As we are "being saved" (I Cor. 1:18), being "filled with the Spirit" (Eph. 5:18), and "growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (II Peter 3:18), we are developing such appreciation. Our present availability to the life of Jesus Christ allows for a greater capability of appreciation, and such is the "greater reward" of one Christian over another. All competitive and comparative elements will be eliminated, though, and there will be no envy or dissatisfaction. All Christians will see Jesus (I Cor. 13:12), glorify God, and enjoy Him forever. Everyone will be completely satisfied with the fulness of joy they have in Jesus Christ, but some will have developed a greater capacity to enjoy and appreciate the eternal life of Jesus, while no one else will know or care. All will be filled full to the extent that they are capable to glorify God forever.

   Such is the "end" of man as God intended man to be!

1    Cullman, Oscar, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead. New York: Macmillan Co. 1964. pg. 15.

2    Bruce, F.F., Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1977. pg. 311.

3    Hoeksema, Herman, In the Midst of Death. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1943. pg. 97.

4    Bruce, F.F., in the foreword to The Fire That Consumes by Edward W. Fudge. Houston: Providential Press. 1982. pg. vii.

5    Browning, Robert, "A Death in the Desert." 1864.