As God is glorified in the display and communication of His holiness and happiness, and as that display and communication is by the grand medium of Christ in His redemptive work, so the saints’ happiness in heaven will be as participants in God’s ultimate purpose in viewing and loving Christ and His redemptive work. “The beatifical vision of God in heaven consists mostly in beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, either in his work or in his person as appearing in the glorified human nature.”[1] The saints will view God’s glory in Christ as “the image of the invisible God,” whose perfections shine forth most prominently in the acts and fruits of His redemptive work.[2] The souls of the saints in heaven will be “ravished” in beholding the “beauty and amiable excellency of Christ as appearing in his virtues,” in viewing the “height” and “sum” of His glory, “appearing in and by the exercise of dying love to them.” In viewing Christ “they see the transcendent greatness of his love shining forth in the same act that they see the transcendent greatness of his loveliness shining forth.”[3]
They see everything in Christ that tends to kindle and enflame love, and everything that tends to gratify love, and everything that tends to satisfy them: and that in the most clear and glorious manner, without any darkness or delusion, without any impediment or interruption.[4]
What is seen by saints in their earthly body is mingled with darkness and the spiritual deformity of sin, but the vision of their “glorious redeemer,” the “Sun of righteousness,” will be seen “without clouds” and in full light in heaven.[5]
Moreover, the saints “have the additional pleasure of considering that this lovely virtue is imputed to them. ‘Tis the lovely robe, and robe of love, with which they are covered.”[6] Thus the glory of Christ’s righteousness by which they are overwhelmed with joy is the righteousness in which they are covered, providing an additional basis of their great happiness in Christ.
[1] M 1137, Jonathan Edwards, The “Miscellanies,” 833-1152, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw, vol. 20 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 515. See also “True Saints, When Absent from the Body, Are Present with the Lord,” Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1743-1758, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach, vol. 25 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 238. Edwards included the view of the ongoing works of redemption on earth as viewed by the saints already in heaven as part of the happiness of the saints in heaven. See M 917 and M 1061, Works 20:166, 429-30.
[2] M 777, Jonathan Edwards, The “Miscellanies,” 501-832, ed. Ava Chamberlain, vol. 18 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 431. See also M 1137, Works 20:515.
[3] M 791, Works 18:494-5.
[4] “True Saints, When Absent from the Body, Are Present with the Lord,” Works 25:230.
[5] Ibid., Works 25:230-1.
[6] M 791, Works 18:495.
© 2023 Craig Biehl, author of God the Reason, The Box, The Infinite Merit of Christ, and Reading Religious Affections
