By Jack Wilkie
Every year around the Christmas season, you’re likely to hear the phrase “It is more blessed to give than to receive” a number of times (though probably not attributed to our Lord as it should be – Acts 20:35). Small children are reminded of this as their eyes fill with the things they want and ask for, but deep down we know that lesson is lost on them a lot of times. They are focused on what they want to get.
Unfortunately, I think the same can be said about us as Christians sometimes when we consider the way we talk about heaven. We place heaven as the pinnacle of the Christian life. We long for a glimpse into what it might look like. We speculate on the cool things we’ll get to do there. Heaven is a wonderful place, and I long to be there with my Lord… but heaven is not the central point of the Christian life. Here are three reasons why we should be careful about over-emphasizing heaven.
It changes our priorities.
I heard a line in a song the other day that caught my attention as I was considering our sometimes-unhealthy emphasis on heaven. “If heaven is all that was promised to me, why shouldn’t I pray for death?” That’s a fair question if you read Philippians 3:14 to mean that the goal and the prize are heaven. Why should we stay here and suffer? Shouldn’t we be praying for as swift of an exit from this world as possible? Paul answers that in Philippians 1:20-21. Before saying that “to live is Christ and to die is gain,” Paul declared that his hope was that Christ would be exalted in him, whether through his life or through his death. Paul had his eyes in the right place. His purpose in this life was consistent with His purpose after He would die – glorify Christ. That’s what made it possible for Him to say that He can do all things through Christ who strengthened Him (4:13). He had a purpose (exalting Christ) and that didn’t change if He was rich or poor, free or in prison. Even the prize that He was pressing toward was “to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (3:10). It is only through growing in these that Paul hoped to attain to the resurrection from the dead (3:11).
We often teach children that their goal in life should be to get to heaven. While that’s not wrong, I think we can do better. At the risk of being called a heretic for citing a catechetical writing, I think the Westminster Shorter Confession got it right. “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever.” That’s exactly what Paul meant in saying that His hope was that Christ would be exalted in His life and death. When your goal is simply to get to heaven, what happens when you get there? Mission accomplished, job done, now you’ve got an eternity to spend. I remember when I was little I would think about heaven on those terms and how boring it seemed like it would be to live eternally, even as nice as heaven might be (and I suspect I’m not the only one who has had that thought). When your goal is to glorify God and find perfect satisfaction in Him alone, though, heaven becomes all the more beautiful and desirable.
It makes it about what we get.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that many of us would answer questions such as, “Why are you a Christian? Why do you obey God? Why do you follow the Bible?” with “Because I want to go to heaven.” While that certainly should be a reason, it shouldn’t be the reason. Sure, our reason is partly that we get to be with God in heaven, but that’s not typically the way we talk about it. We speculate on what it’s going to be like, what cool things we’re going to get to do, what we’re going to look like, etc. That’s why “Heaven is for Real” and other such books are so popular.
But, the song has it right in saying “Oh, how I love Jesus, because He first loved me.” We are Christians because Jesus’ self-sacrificial love for us saw our sin problem, left heaven and emptied Himself, came to earth to live as one of us, and went to the cross for us (Philippians 2:5-8). Once we begin to understand the magnitude of our sin and grasp His love for us, our attention shouldn’t be on what we get out of it but what we can give back to Him – namely, everything we have.
It puts our focus in the wrong place.
You often hear about the dangers of check-list Christianity, about how we can get caught up in trying to make sure we go through the biblical commands like some to-do list: “Go to worship, read my Bible, stop cussing…” The thought is that if we do those things, we get God’s favor. Aside from the fact that such an understanding flips the process upside down (we do those things because God has saved us), it shows us how making Christianity all about heaven has hurt us. We want to get to heaven because A) it’s a great place and, more importantly, B) it’s not hell, so we make sure we “do what we need to” to make it to heaven.
It’s at this point that people start talking about “their good deeds outweighing the bad” or how “they hope they’ve done enough.” However, when we understand Christianity as a relationship with our Lord and not a gateway to some eternal vacation spot, it all becomes much clearer. John tells us in 1 John 5:13 that we can know that we have eternal life (present tense) and that that eternal life is to know God the Father and Jesus His Son (John 17:3). When we start pursuing a knowledge of and relationship with God rather than a reward for ourselves, it is literally a life-changing realization. It’s when we understand that that we see that 1 John 5:13 might not be the greatest promise John recorded for us. The promise of heaven and eternal life isn’t avoiding hell and getting a great rest, it’s that we shall be like Him and see Him just as He is (1 John 3:2). It is for this reason that we purify ourselves (3:3).
The hope of heaven is one of the major motivating factors in my life. However, if that hope is only based on avoiding hell, getting nice things, or achieving some personal promises we’re hoping for, we’ve missed the point. We’ve lived a futile life. Consider this incredibly challenging question by author John Piper.

“The critical question for our generation – and for every generation – is this: if you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?”[1]

How is it possible to answer that question? We answer it every day. Is heaven your greatest goal, or is knowing Christ and glorifying Him in life or in death?

[1] John Piper, God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself (Wheaton, I: Crossway, 2005), p. 15.