We Will Nev­er Cease Growing

Prepa­ra­tion for the Life to Come

Those who remain undis­ci­pled in this age will not be devel­oped as they should be for their respon­si­bil­i­ties in the next age. I don’t think, for exam­ple, that a per­son who steps into the next world as a child of God is going to have prob­lems with rebel­lion against God, doing what they know to be wrong. But there is much more to our per­son­al­i­ty than that, because life is not just a mat­ter of ​“not sin­ning.” When peo­ple have lived a life of sin, that affects every­thing about them — their capac­i­ty to live in a social con­text, or their abil­i­ty to han­dle jobs and car­ry out projects — which I believe is what we will be doing in the age to come.

I do think Scrip­ture teach­es per­son­al, though not moral, devel­op­ment in the life to come. I think the image of God in man is cre­ative good­ness, and that we are enlist­ed into God’s cause. The clear teach­ing of Scrip­ture is that we will reign with him for­ev­er and ever. We will serve him for­ev­er. So we need to under­stand that that is the capac­i­ty in which we will con­tin­ue to grow. And we will nev­er cease grow­ing in that regard.

So, sup­pose you have the respon­si­bil­i­ty of run­ning a solar sys­tem? That’s going to be a demand on you, even though you’re going to be run­ning it with God! So the rule is, if you were faith­ful over two cities, take five. Peo­ple who have matured in their rela­tion­ship with God are going to have a much bet­ter idea of how to run cities with God. Those who have not will have a lot of learn­ing to do. So I think our prepa­ra­tion now makes a lot of dif­fer­ence. Once you get over the idea that you are going to be ware­housed for all eter­ni­ty when you die, lying about on shelves, lis­ten­ing to harp play­ing on Muzak, you can see how it makes a real difference.