- Lesson 3 in the Connect360 unit “Heaven & Angels: Our Eternal Home and Its Heavenly Hosts” focuses on 1 Peter 1:18-19.
What Peter emphasizes in this passage is the visible—silver and gold—versus the invisible— the spiritual transaction that took place to purchase your place in heaven. Money cannot buy you love or a place in heaven,
Think about it this way. What part of “you” goes to heaven? You have a visible, outward presence that is getting older every day, as well as an invisible, inward presence that is ageless. That is the premise taught throughout the Bible. When you look at me, you can only see the “outer me,” but there is also an “inner me.” That inner person is often called the ego, the personality, or the soul of a person.
I do not have much control over the aging of the outer me. If you ask me, the man in the mirror looks a lot more like my father than the way I feel on the inside. I have a friend who is an oncologist who tells her patients, “If you want to live forever, you’re in the wrong clinic.”
The human body is not designed to live forever. But the soul is. The Bible says, “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer person is decaying, yet our inner person is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).
As we grow older many of us can relate to this truth. We have a variety of aches and pains that come with age, but on the inside, we still feel as we did when we were teenagers or young adults. Here is the great truth. While your tent is getting more and more feeble, it is possible for your spirit to renew itself each day. This is the part of you that enters heaven after you die, courtesy of the free gift of God.
You cannot take anything with you after you die, because everything you need will be provided for you in heaven. A body. A home. Things to do. Just like you were given an earthly suit (a physical body) to enjoy your time on Earth, all the equipment you will need to enjoy your time in heaven starts with “trading up” for an eternal body.
You cannot earn your entrance into heaven any more than you can buy something that has already been paid for. It is free. The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Hallelujah!
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