A Biblical Vision for Heaven: Integrating the Telos of Heaven and the Praxis of Vocation

Sitting in a course at Regent College, I remember hearing the amusing story of the heated “signboard debates” between a Catholic church and a Presbyterian church located across from one another. One day, likely to comfort a mourner who had just lost a beloved dog, the Catholic church posted a sign that read: “All dogs go to heaven.” The next day, the Presbyterian church responded with its own sign: “Only humans go to heaven—READ THE BIBLE.”

Back and forth the exchanges went. The Catholic church countered with: “God loves all His creations, DOGS INCLUDED.” The Presbyterians fired back: “Dogs don’t have souls. This is not open for debate.” Not to be outdone, the Catholics declared: “Catholic dogs go to heaven. Presbyterian dogs can talk to their pastor.” The Presbyterians then responded: “Converting to Catholicism does not magically grant your dog a soul.” To this, the Catholics retorted: “Free dog souls with conversion.” The Presbyterians shot back: “Dogs are animals—there aren’t any rocks in heaven either.” Finally, the Catholics concluded: “All rocks go to heaven!”

This amusing conversation between the Catholic and Presbyterian churches reflects the deeply contrasting views within the broader Christian community regarding heaven. I remember, as a university student, genuinely believing that in the new heaven the old creation would be abolished—that nothing in this world would ultimately matter, that only spiritual matters and saved souls counted. This conviction led me to assume that the only vocation that truly mattered to God was a spiritual one—specifically, becoming a minister within the “sacred” walls of the church.

This, in fact, remains the understanding of heaven many Christians hold today: that only spiritual affairs will matter in the end. Such a view naturally leads one to ask: If creation itself is destined to be scrapped and replaced, then why would stewardship, the care of creation, or day-to-day work in this present world matter at all—if everything is simply going to be burned up one day? But what does the Bible actually teach about the true vision of heaven? Just as importantly, what are the implications of that true biblical vision for how Christians live—in their vocations and in the whole of their lives?

In several past articles for TWI, I wrote about our common vocation as it unfolds within the grand story of redemptive history: creation, fall, redemption, and now, consummation. In creation, God made a covenantal cosmos—a world designed as a place of revelation, relationship, and responsibility. In this world, the Lord reveals himself through the power and wisdom he displays in every part of the universe. He also reveals himself personally by initiating a covenantal relationship with us. In this relationship, the Lord shows us who he is and what he is like, and he invites us to walk with him. This relationship also carries responsibility: through our vocations, the Lord calls us to steward, care for, and develop the world in ways that bring about the mutual flourishing of people, places, and planet. In doing this, humanity was called to fill the world with the presence and praises of the glorious grace of the Lord.

Yet, the design of this covenantal cosmos—where everything we do reflects the image of God, and where our work is an expression of worship that fills the earth with God’s glory—was corrupted. Because of sin, our work became selfish and self-centered, distorting God’s original design. As a result, we see both the beauty of creation and the brokenness of the fall expressed in the deep wounds of the world.

But the grand story does not end with the fall. In the story of redemption, our Lord entered the world in the flesh. Declaring in Luke 4: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” the Lord Jesus launched a new age to fulfill the long-awaited promises of God’s jubilee—bringing the kingdom, restoring life, and reconciling all things to himself. Through the ministry of the cross and the power of the resurrection, he dealt with the root cause of the fall—sin itself—thereby opening the way for the redemption of creation.

Now, the final movement in the grand story of redemptive history is the story of consummation. This is the story that reveals where the end of all things is headed. In Greek terms, this is the telos of all things. Telos is a Greek word that means the ultimate end—often understood as a goal or purpose.

In this last chapter of redemptive history, the crucial question must be asked: What is the biblical vision of telos? Is it the renewal of creation or the abolishment of creation? To answer this, we need to turn to the Scriptures themselves and examine key passages that provide glimpses of what heaven will look like.

Telos…

First, heaven will be a place where we occupy space and time with our resurrected bodies. In 1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul emphasizes that bodily resurrection is at the very heart of the Christian faith. In verses 12–19, he confronts those in Corinth who claim there is no resurrection of the dead. Paul reasons that if there is no resurrection at all, then not even Christ has been raised. Further, Paul argues, if their argument is true that if Christ has not been raised, then his preaching is useless, faith is empty, sins remain unforgiven, and hope is lost. He drives the point home in verse 19: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” In other words, without resurrection, the gospel collapses and Christianity itself has no foundation. Paul terms our resurrection bodies a “spiritual body,” but that spiritual body is most clearly still a body. Jesus’ disciples could touch him, cry with him, and even eat with him.

In verse 20, Paul declares: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” “Firstfruits” is a metaphor for the first harvest, which serves as a guarantee of the full harvest yet to come.[1] Paul’s use of this metaphor strongly affirms that Jesus’ resurrection is both a sign and signpost of what is to come. Because Christ has been raised, the bodily resurrection of all who trust in him is guaranteed.

Later in the chapter, in verses 54–57, Paul proclaims that Jesus Christ has achieved complete victory over death through his resurrection: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” He explains in verse 56 that “the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” But he triumphantly concludes in verse 57: “Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Gordon Fee comments on the depth of this victory:

…death is not simply the result of decay through normal human processes. Rather, it is the result of the deadly poison, sin itself, which became all the more energized in our lives. Hence, in exulting in Christ’s victory over death, Paul is reminded that victory is the final triumph over the sin that brought death into the world.[2]

Through his redemptive work, Jesus Christ has dealt with the fundamental problem of creation: sin. Sin is the deadly poison that brought death into the world. But in light of Christ’s resurrection, the power of this poison has been broken, and the work of renewal has already begun. Paul assures us that this reality—the resurrection of Christ—guarantees the resurrection of the physical bodies of all who belong to him in the world to come.

This means that, contrary to Gnostic or Platonic views of heaven, our eternal destiny will not be a disembodied existence where free-floating souls drift aimlessly. Rather, heaven will be the place where we inhabit space and time in resurrected, glorified bodies—just as Christ himself was raised.

Second, heaven will be a place where not only our bodies are resurrected, but also where the whole of physical and material creation is redeemed and restored. If salvation involves not only our souls but also the resurrection of our bodies, then it cannot be that we are raised into a purely spiritual world. God will one day completely heal and renew the brokenness of material creation as well.

In Romans 8:20–21, the Apostle Paul explains that God’s creation has been subjected to futility because of the fall. Yet, he also points to a future hope: when the day of redemption comes for God’s children (v. 23), creation itself will be liberated and share in that same freedom. Douglas Moo puts it this way: “Creation, helplessly enslaved to the decay that rules this world after the Fall, exists in the hope that it will be set free to participate in the eschatological glory to be enjoyed by God’s children.”[3]

The apostle John describes this very day of liberation in his vision of the new creation in Revelation 21:1–4:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

John’s vision in Revelation 21:1–4 does not describe God discarding the world and starting over from scratch. The word John uses for “new” (kainos) means renewed or transformed in quality, not brand-new in the sense of total replacement. This aligns with Paul’s teaching in Romans 8, where creation longs to be set free from its bondage to decay—not destroyed.

What John sees is creation finally liberated and restored. The New Jerusalem “comes down” from heaven, showing that God’s dwelling place is no longer separated from his creation but fully united with it. In this renewed creation, God himself will dwell with his people, every tear will be wiped away, and death and sorrow will be no more.

N.T. Wright explains the biblical vision of heaven in this way:

It is not we who go to heaven, it is heaven that comes to earth; indeed, it is the church itself, the heavenly Jerusalem, that comes down to earth. This is the ultimate rejection of all types of Gnosticism, of every worldview that sees the final goal as the separation of the world from God, of the physical from the spiritual, of earth from heaven. It is the final answer to the Lord’s Prayer, that God’s kingdom will come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It is what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 1:10, that God’s design, and promise, was to sum up all things in Christ, things both in heaven and on earth.[4]

Similarly, Paul Marshall emphasizes that our eternal hope is not an escape from the world but the renewal of it:

It is also an unbiblical idea that earth doesn’t matter because we are going to go to heaven when we die. The Bible teaches that there will be a ‘new heaven and a new earth.’ Our destiny is an earthly one: a new earth, an earth redeemed and transfigured. An earth reunited with heaven, but an earth, nevertheless.[5]

The biblical concept of heaven, then, is not a merely spiritual realm. As Ephesians 1:10 declares, God’s plan is to unite “all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Heaven is where the spiritual and physical realms are finally brought together under the lordship of Jesus Christ. This is the telos of our world—the fulfillment of God’s design from the beginning.

If this is the telos of our world—that God is bringing all things to renewal by resurrecting those who trust in the Lord and by restoring our broken covenantal cosmos—then how should this reality shape our lives and vocations? In other words, what does it mean to live in light of this future even now?

Praxis…

The question is one of praxis. The Greek term praxis refers to the process by which a theory, vision, or lesson is enacted, embodied, and put into practice. A vocation inspired by the telos of the world—that God is renewing all things in creation—must therefore be considered in terms of its concrete praxis. How does the heavenly vision of renewal take root in the daily unfolding of our vocations?

First, the true telos of heaven—the renewal of creation—implies a profound connection between the work we do in the present world and its fulfillment in the world to come. In John 21, Jesus’ disciples were engaged in their vocation as fishermen. After toiling all night, they caught nothing. The next morning, a man on the shore instructed them to cast their net on the other side. As seasoned fishermen, they may have questioned who this man was to offer such advice. Yet they obeyed, and immediately the net was filled with a great catch of fish. In that moment, they recognized the man was none other than the risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

What follows is deeply interesting. Jesus did not perform a heavenly miracle meal or summon down a divine banquet. Instead, he invited them: “Bring some of the fish you have just caught… Come and have breakfast.” The resurrected Lord honored their toilsome, earthly work by incorporating it into his resurrection meal.

Steven Garber reflects on this scene in Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good:

What he chose to do was honor their work and then eat with them. ‘Bring your fish, too!’ It is obvious that as the Lord of heaven and earth, he could have insisted that they eat the fish he provided—and that would not have been a bad thing. But what he did instead was acknowledge that they had been working through the night, and in truth, had been working their whole lives. Bring yourselves, the work of your hands, into this resurrection breakfast, and add your fish to mine—because we are in this together.[6]

By receiving the work of their hands into his own resurrection meal, Jesus affirmed that human labor—however ordinary—has eternal value in his presence. The risen Lord was declaring that our earthly work matters in his resurrected presence, and that it will be an integral part of the unfolding of the new heaven and the new earth to come.

Second, the true telos of heaven implies that the work now can serve as both a sign and signpost of the new world to come. At another point in Visions of Vocation, Steven Garber tells the story of his friend Hans, the founder of Elevation Burger, a restaurant chain with locations across the eastern United States. After graduating from a seminary, Hans longed to serve on the mission field overseas. Yet when he came to Washington, D.C., he discerned the Lord’s calling in a surprising direction: to start a hamburger business. Seeing that there were no affordable fast-food options made with healthy, organic ingredients, Hans launched Elevation Burger with the slogan, “The burger that is meant to be.”

Garber calls Elevation Burger “eschatological hamburgers.” Eschatology is the theological term for the study of the end times. Elevation Burger may not print John 3:16 on its packaging, but its burgers are designed to serve as signs and signposts of what burgers were always meant to be—pointing toward the feast of the Lord’s Supper that is yet to come. At the end of all things, our Lord promises a great banquet, where he will gather his people to celebrate his victory over sin and death. On that day, every meal at the Lord’s table will be both healthy and satisfying, a perfect expression of life in his renewed creation. Hans’s burgers, crafted to be both wholesome and delicious, are a foretaste of that coming meal in the new world.

Third, the true telos of heaven inspires us to persevere in our vocations with hope. When J.R.R. Tolkien was struggling to complete his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, he came to a standstill. He was attempting to write a grand story unlike anything the world had ever seen, yet his perfectionism weighed him down. Every detail had to be precise, every plot point carefully crafted. By this time, Tolkien was over fifty years old and increasingly aware that he might not have the time or strength to finish. To complicate matters, World War II had just begun, and Britain faced the very real threat of invasion. With such uncertainty, Tolkien was tormented by the fear that his life’s work would remain incomplete and worthless.

Amid this struggle, Tolkien wrote a short story called Leaf by Niggle. The story tells of Niggle, a perfectionist painter much like Tolkien himself. Niggle dreamed of painting a magnificent picture of a great tree with mountains and villages in the background. Yet distracted by the demands of daily life and the needs of others, he made little progress. Eventually, the time came for Niggle to depart, leaving his unfinished canvas behind.

In the story, Niggle hears two voices in judgment. One accuses him of wasting his time, pointing to his unfinished work. The other acknowledges that while Niggle never completed his painting, he had chosen to live a life of sacrifice and service to others. As a reward, when Niggle enters heaven, he sees before him the Tree—not just the sketch on his canvas, but the Tree itself, whole and real, more glorious than anything he had ever imagined painting on earth.

Through this story, Tolkien expressed his profound understanding of our work in light of the grand story of redemptive history: even if our labors on earth seem small, and even if they remain unfinished in the here and now, they will nevertheless endure in the presence of our resurrected Lord. They will become an integral part of the true reality of the new heaven and new earth, where God himself will complete and consummate the whole story of redemption.

I remember visiting France two years ago and going to the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel. From afar, we were absolutely amazed by the massive, majestic structure rising solidly from its rocky island, completely surrounded by the sea.

The history of Mont-Saint-Michel dates back to 708, when Bishop Aubert had a vision of the Archangel Michael instructing him to build a sanctuary on the island then known as Mont-Tombe. Its construction spanned centuries. Beneath the main level lies the church of Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre, a pre-Romanesque structure from the 10th century. Above it, builders erected the Romanesque choir, which collapsed in the 15th century and was later replaced by the soaring Gothic choir that stands today.

Mont-Saint-Michel is also a place of deep spiritual significance. In 966 it became home to Benedictine monks, and since then it has been an essential pilgrimage site throughout Western history. During the Hundred Years’ War, despite constant threats, the abbey remained unconquered, its strength reinforced by massive ramparts against the relentless tides. It became a powerful symbol of resistance and triumph for the Kingdom of France.

Today, the abbey draws pilgrims, leaders, and tourists alike. As I wandered through its halls and stood on the ramparts, I looked out over the foreshores, where the tides can range more than 15 meters (49 feet). I imagined how pilgrims, after traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles, must have felt when they finally saw these waters recede, revealing the way to this sacred destination.

Watching the sea recede along the abbey’s shores, my imagination carried me back to the biblical world of Exodus, when God’s people walked through the parted waters with hope for the Promised Land. Then I looked up, and there, high above on the Gothic choir, stood the golden figure of Saint Michael—triumphant, pointing as a signpost toward the end of time. The whole scene reminded me of the world we live in today within the grand story of redemptive history: a story that reveals what our world was meant to be, where it now stands in brokenness because of the fall, what it can become through our Lord’s redeeming work, and what it will one day be when Christ triumphantly consummates his presence upon the earth.

Just as the Israelites continued their journey sustained by the hope of the telos of the Promised Land, so too the biblical vision of heaven—the telos that reveals what the world will ultimately become—invites us to weave the praxis of this true telos into the very fabric of our vocations. The biblical telos of heaven reminds us that the future heaven will not be a disembodied escape but a renewed space and time, where we will live with resurrected bodies and where the praxis of our vocations here and now will find its fulfillment in the fully consummated kingdom to come. In this light, our vocations on earth truly matter. Within the consummation of the grand story of redemptive history, they are an integral part of bringing in the kingdom and are also meant to serve as signs and signposts of the world to come. The true vision of heaven therefore calls us to integrate telos and praxis—to allow the hope of God’s renewal to be embodied in the daily practice of our vocations, in this time of the “now and not yet,” in the midst of the messy middle of our world.

[1] Gordon Fee, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 20.

[2] Ibid., 806-807.

[3] Douglas Moo, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 517

[4] N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 104.

[5] Paul Marshall, Heaven Is Not My Home (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1999), 11.

[6] Garber, Steven. Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good. IVP Books, an Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2014, 129.