Enjoying God Together Forever: The Beatific Vision and Friendship

What is our hope in heaven? Christianity’s resounding answer to that question throughout the centuries has been the beatific vision—that we shall see the face of God. Christians throughout the ages have said with Paul, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). That blessed vision is what all our godly enjoyments in this life point to. It is the promised land we march toward. We shall see God. While Christians have many aspirations, the central point of every single one of them is the same as David’s: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4).

Evangelicals—even Reformed evangelicals—may be unfamiliar with the doctrine of the beatific vision. Nonetheless, they are primed and ready to embrace it. After all, John Piper has taught us that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him” and that the chief delight of the soul is “seeing and savoring Christ.”^{11 .} See John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, rev. ed. (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2011). If someone has learned from C. S. Lewis to reject playing with mud-pies in the slums for the sake of a holiday at sea;^{22 .} See C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). from Jonathan Edwards that heaven is “a world of love”; from Augustine that we’ll find no rest until we rest in God, then that person is ready to grasp the doctrine of the beatific vision.

In this essay, I want to show how this doctrine enriches the Christian life in one particular area: Christian fellowship, especially fellowship found in the context of our local churches.

The Law of Love

To make the central concern of heaven the enjoyment of God in Christ is more than appropriate. Yet the God-centeredness of the beatific vision does not render other heavenly joys nonexistent. Instead, those joys take their rightful place in the hearts of heaven’s inhabitants. Whereas joy in God often fades into the background of this life, decentered by lesser loves, all of our loves in heaven will be rightly ordered. There will be no excessive love for that which is not God. Everything that we love we will love for God’s sake. Therefore, all that is right and good in this life will not be obliterated by the beatific vision, but rather resurrected and transfigured.

We cannot fully comprehend all that heaven will include from this side of it. And yet, we can know that certain continuities will remain, one of which is our friendships made in Christ. It has never been “good” for man to be alone (Gen. 2:18), and in the eschaton, we see a glimpse of what the creation mandate fulfilled looks like. The garden will have grown to a city, and the redeemed will have filled and subdued the earth (Rev. 7:9–17, 21:1–22:5; cf. Gen. 1:28).

Of all the figures in church history, few have spoken on the topic of friendship and the beatific vision as effectively as Anselm of Canterbury. Reflecting on the presence of saints and angels in glory, he asks,

Ask your heart whether it could comprehend its joy in its so great blessedness? But surely if someone else whom you loved in every respect as yourself possessed that same blessedness, your joy would be doubled for you would rejoice as much for him as for yourself. If, then, two or three or many more possessed it you would rejoice just as much for each one as for yourself, if you loved each one as yourself. Therefore in that perfect and pure love of the countless holy angels and holy men where no one will love another less than himself, each will rejoice for every other as for himself.^{33 .} Anselm, Proslogion, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 25.102.

Indeed, we experience reflections of this phenomenon even in this life. When we see those who are less mature in the faith stumbling forward in godliness, we delight to see their progress. Our love for them turns their joy into our joy. Such delight is often mingled with pride and smugness; but that sensation reflects “the old man,” whom we hate and whom we love to put off with increasing consistency. In glory, no vestige of pride or boasting will shadow our hearts with a hint of temptation. We will perfectly fulfill the law of love.

Distance, Loss, Estrangement, and the Beatific Vision

The promise of friendship in the beatific vision also infuses our present pilgrimage with hope amid the aches of separation, the ebb and flow of relationships, and even estrangement. At this point in my own life, I have lived nineteen years in Kansas, one year in Southern California, eleven years in Missouri, and nearly three years in Abu Dhabi. Each home is indelibly marked with great friendships. Those relationships forged “in Christ” particularly stand out. God the Holy Spirit is faithful to knit hearts together in love (cf. Col. 2:2).

These relationships give us a glimpse of the beatific vision. Not only will these very relationships persist into the beatific vision itself, but they are also imperfect previews of coming attractions. This fact has important implications for the way we view our local churches. Not in vain does the author of Hebrews warn against the habit of skipping church (Heb. 10:25). He goes on to say that, in a very real sense, when we gather together for regular worship, we go to heaven (Heb. 12:18–29). In other words, on those frantic Lord’s Day mornings, when you are trying to get your kids out the door with pleas of “time to go to church!” you would not be lying if instead you said, “time to go to heaven!” This would do wonders for the way we look at our humble little churches and the relationships we forge there. The prospect of the beatific vision motivates us to redouble our efforts to press in and invest in these relationships. The deeper, more sanctifying, more intimate, more God-glorifying our relationships are here, the more they reflect our heavenly homeland and give us a taste of future glory.

And yet, as I reflect on these sweet relationships, they retain a note of bitterness, with distance having made their sweetness temporal and seasonal rather than permanent. In this earthly pilgrimage, we collide into one another, knit our hearts together in love, and experience great consolations and comfort. Yet then the sinews tear as we depart from one another’s lives—partially or entirely. “We will stay in touch,” we assure each other, knowing that despite our best intentions, distance demotes relationships. Death also, no matter how predictable, always comes as a surprise. The absence or loss leaves an imposing and unfillable void.

In other words, it is not simply our communion with God that is partial and incomplete in this life, it is also our communion with one another that is never quite complete. Living in Abu Dhabi, I will get homesick from time to time—longing for the consolation of friendships I had in our previous season of life. And yet many of those friends have moved on to other places. Were I to return, the sense of loss would not fully abate. Besides, any significant time spent in our previous “home” would, before long, give way to homesickness for Abu Dhabi. We are all pilgrims on this side of the New Jerusalem. No home is truly home.

Additionally, some relationships are severed not only by distance and death, but unresolved conflict begets the altogether different loss of estrangement. I have experienced the unwelcome pain of broken relationships with friends and colleagues over theological and interpersonal differences. In my time as a pastor, for example, I have borne the sacred responsibility of leading a local congregation through the heartbreaking reality of church discipline. On more than one occasion, the excommunicated had been a cherished friend. Thinking back on such cases is a jarring and wounding experience. I can hardly exaggerate the heart-wrenching gravity of leading a congregation to say to one once loved and trusted, “We can no longer affirm your confession of faith. Given your persistence in unrepentant sin, we must revoke the affirmation we gave upon your baptism and/or admission into membership and, with heavy hearts, express our concern for the danger of your soul.” Such a reality is almost too much to bear.

What does the hope of the beatific vision offer in the face of such heartache? More than we can describe! If Jonathan Edwards is right to identify heaven as a world of love, we can also identify it as a world of loose ends tied up. In this life, the unspeakable joy of Christian fellowship always ends with a letdown. Not because there is anything deficient about earthly Christian fellowship in itself but because such friendship is intended to awaken a desire that will only be consummated in glory. In that world, we will never feel the absence of friends separated by time and distance. We will never feel the absence of loved ones stolen by death. We will never feel homesick. Even estranged relationships shall be mended.

The lofty view of Christian fellowship portrayed above actually highlights the glory of that consummation. The loss of shallow relationships creates no ache for the beatific vision precisely because it does not reflect the relationships we will experience in heaven. There are no relational shallows in that world of love. The finitude of our earthly relationships is painful to the degree that those relationships prefigure their telos in the beatific vision.

With the beatific vision in mind, our hearts grow in love for one another. I am inspired, for example, to continue praying for these individuals, even those who are estranged and excommunicated. None of our stories are yet complete, and who knows what the Lord will work between now and then? Even excommunication, after all, does not infallibly or efficiently expel someone from heaven. Rather, it is a Christ-sanctioned judgment call, liable to fallibility and ignorance. “Based on all that we can judge by,” the church says, “it seems that this person is not bound in heaven, so we therefore loose them here on earth” (cf. Matt. 16:19; 18:15–20). Perhaps Christ will graciously use excommunication to bring unbelievers to true repentance and faith. Perhaps he will graciously use the sting of church discipline to bring true believers back from their backsliding waywardness. Perhaps in God’s providence, time will heal the wounds of disagreement and estrangement. And perhaps none of these things will be resolved in this life. I don’t know all that God will do, but I do know that all true believers are siblings in Christ, and their presence in the eschaton will enhance my enjoyment of the beatific vision. So, I am reminded to live with an open heart—in such a way that I do not blush at the thought of celebrating in the glories of Christ with those who have broken my heart in this life. In her song, “We Will Feast in the House of Zion,” Sandra McCracken writes:

“He has done great things!” We will say together
We will feast and weep no more.^{44 .} Sandra McCracken, “We Will Feast in the House of Zion” in her album, Psalms (2015).

What a splendid consolation it is to know that “He has done great things” will be the joyful declaration of all of heaven’s inhabitants—even among those whose relationships were irrecoverably strained on earth. Before the face of God, we will trace out the great and marvelous things he accomplished through all our suffering and confusion and tensions. We will piece together the chords of sanctification he wove through heartbreak, church discipline, death, and separation, and we will all be enriched for all of it.

We will regret nothing. We will resent nothing. We will harbor no bitter grudges. Instead, we will glory in the beatific vision, side by side, with all the saints, forever.

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This essay has been adapted from To Gaze Upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice by Samuel Parkison. Copyright (c) 2024 by Samuel Guy Parkison. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com