What will stop sinning in Heaven?

[StephanieSomer]

Very simple. Current body is flesh. Flesh is corruptible. New body is spirit. Spirit not corruptible.

So, you do not believe that we will have actual physical bodies, just "spiritual" ones?

I'm not going to go find the verses right now, so I can't give you a reference, but it does say that "When we see Him, we shall see Him as He is, because we shall be Like Him". And when Jesus first appeared to the disciples after the Resurrection, He asked for a piece of fish and ate it before them, then said, "Spirit does not have flesh and bone as you see I have."

Our new body is not spirit. It is actual flesh and bone. Flesh in and of itself isn't corruptible. The whole creation has been subjected to corruption. Our new bodies will not be a part of THIS creation, but of the new. The lack of corruption in our new bodies is a result of being from a different, and holy, creation.

 

[gord44]

...

 

[ViaCrucis]

So why couldn't I be made without being affected by sin but still have free will?

The popular view often presented is that human beings both have free will and are sinful.

Lutherans, which I'm on of, don't share that opinion. The human will is not free, it is a slave to the flesh, it is held captive to sin. We don't have a free will, but a sinful will. It is, at present, part of our fallen, mortal, human nature.

But don't misunderstand. That doesn't deprive someone of having a volition--to choose what pair of pants to wear, what cereal to eat in the morning, who to marry or not marry, etc. It's not "free will" in the generally philosophical sense, but the theological sense.

Now as for your question, that seems like it will ultimately come down to the issue of Theodicy--why is there suffering or evil at all? Why didn't God create me, an individual, apart from this brokenness in the world so that I wouldn't be mortal, that I wouldn't be turned inward toward myself.

As to answer the problem of Theodicy, I don't have an answer.

Though as a point of faith regarding the second--about being created separately from the rest of creation--it seems to me that the restoration of this good created world is a better thing than its eradication and starting over. And, likewise, you and I, as members of the human race, as part of this world, are to partake in the restoration of all things. Our redemption is the redemption of all things, the redemption of the cosmos is our redemption.

It is more than about you and I as individuals, but about creation being delivered up and out from death.

Why did God ever allow that to ever be a problem in the first place, again see my address to Theodicy: I've no idea.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Emmy]

Dear alexiscurious. In Matthew 5: 48: Jesus tells us:
" Be ye therefore perfect as God in Heaven is perfect." There is no sinning in Heaven. Jesus our Saviour told us to Repent and to be Born Again, we give up all selfish wishes and wants, and start Loving and Caring: " Love God with all hearts, with all souls, and with all minds. ALSO: Love our neighbour as we love ourselves." In Matthew 7: 7-10: we are told: "Ask and ye shall receive,"
then we ask God for Love and Joy, then thank God and share all Love and Joy with our neighbour. God will see our loving efforts, and God will Bless us.
In Matthew 22: 40: we are told: " On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." God wants our Love, freely given and NO conditions tagged on. When our time on Earth comes to end, and we follow Jesus into Heaven, we shall be as God wants us to be, NO SINNING IN HEAVEN.
We will all be Loving God and loving our Christian brothers and sisters.
I say this with love, alexiscurious. Greetings from Emmy, sister in Christ.

 

[alexiscurious]

What makes us so incorruptible the second time around and why should there even have to be a second time around? Why wasn't this mysterious immunity to sin not given the first time around?

 

[bling]

What makes us so incorruptible the second time around and why should there even have to be a second time around? Why wasn't this mysterious immunity to sin not given the first time around?

Like I said: “sin has purpose on earth so we all sin, but in heaven there is no purpose for sinning”.


In heaven we will have already experienced sin (it is not an unknown) and the pain sin creates and we will have already experience satan and can recognize him.


Satan is not in heaven to tempt us and we have knowledge of what satan did and the outcome so there is no need for us to repeat what he did to see what would happen.


Our sexual bodies on earth have wonderful requirements and purpose, but they also generate natural competition and differences that can be coveted. In heaven we are like the angels and might be able to take on any form, but not sexual.


On earth Christians do have an indwelling invisible spiritual, Holy Spirit, and yes, with Him and Godly type Love, we can keep from sinning. The problem is we can virtually unknowingly quench the Holy Spirit and go on our own, resulting in sinning again. In Heaven there will be no reason for the Holy Spirit to remain hidden, so we are not going to quench Him unknowingly.


In heaven there is the “Been there done that, do not want to do it again”, But there is also a ton of stuff you have not done, but can now do and the Spirit of God is with you, to do it together.


Adam and Eve were tempted by the desire for knowledge; in their casethe knowledge of Good and Evil, we have that knowledge and God is providing all the other knowledge we might desire, so there is really nothing to desire that is not given us.


Earth is a place where: we can see people sinning, some of those people experience the “pleasures of sin for a season”, some people, we do not witness the bad that happens from their sinning, and we might even experience that in ourselves. That is not the case in heaven.


Could Adam and Eve kept from sinning if satan had not been around, the tree only provided a way to spit further, the fruit on the tree was ugly and smelled bad, the tree was far away with a deep pit around it, the Spirit of God was visibly constantly with them, they had Godly type Love and free will?

 

[aiki]

What makes us so incorruptible the second time around

We have been raised from the dead into a glorified state. The flesh, the source of our selfish, sinful behaviour has been made anew, without the curse of the Fall upon it. What's more, the believer's spiritual union with Christ achieves full consummation after death and this, more than anything, I think, makes the believer forever "immune" to sin.

and why should there even have to be a second time around?

Because God had His Plan of Redemption to enact the first time around.

Why wasn't this mysterious immunity to sin not given the first time around?

Because, initially, it wasn't necessary. And making Adam and Eve immune to sin would have meant disabling their capacity to freely choose to love and obey God. The Christian believer's after-death immunity to sin has everything to do with their spiritual union with Christ, which is a feature of post-Calvary salvation.

Selah.

 

[Lenny3]

Sin doesn't exist on Earth ... why would it exist in Heaven?

 

[rich1540]

I had the impression that sin was the consequence of commision or omission rather than the act.

Is this correct?

Some great posts in this thread, especially from ViaCrucis and Abandonedbarns. Thank you.

 

[ChesterKhan]

Sin doesn't exist on Earth ... why would it exist in Heaven?

All depends: what do you mean by sin?

 

[Emmy]

Dear alexiscurious. God is in Heaven and God is Love. Where there is Love, sin cannot be found. In Matthew 22: 35:40: Jesus tells us: " The first and great Commandment is: Love God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. The second is like it: Love thy neighbour as thyself." We are told that on these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
God is Love and God wants Loving sons and daughters, our sin-natures will not be allowed into Heaven. What will stop sinning in Heaven?
Everything and everybody which will be allowed into God`s Heaven.
God`s Love for all of us, and our Love for God our Heavenly Father, and also:
our Love for our Christian brothers and sisters. It will be:
Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. ALSO:
Love our brothers and sisters as we love ourselves.
I say this with love, alexiscurious. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

 

[alexiscurious]

Dear alexiscurious. God is in Heaven and God is Love. Where there is Love, sin cannot be found.

But if this statement was actually true then Satan could not have possibly ever sinned in Heaven because God is there?

Same thing goes in the garden as well?

 

[BobRyan]

What will stop sinning in heaven? Adam and Eve were with God and they still sinned in the garden. If we are with God in heaven what will stop us from doing it all over again? How exactly can he guarantee eternal life to Christians as he does in the Bible while knowing sin is just as big a possibility in heaven as it is on earth?

Rev 14:12 - the saints are those who "keep the Commandments of God and their faith in Jesus".

In heaven - the saints have no sinful nature.

The result is - no sinning in heaven because already on earth they were the ones who 'keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus" even with a sinful nature.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

But if this statement was actually true then Satan could not have possibly ever sinned in Heaven because God is there?

Same thing goes in the garden as well?

That is true.

The statement was an oversimplification.

Lucifer sinned.

Adam and Eve sinned.

When the 6000 year sin "experiment" is over the universe will have been inoculated against sin. One reason for that can be seen in job 1 and Job 2.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[alexiscurious]

We have been raised from the dead into a glorified state. The flesh, the source of our selfish, sinful behaviour has been made anew, without the curse of the Fall upon it. What's more, the believer's spiritual union with Christ achieves full consummation after death and this, more than anything, I think, makes the believer forever "immune" to sin.

How exactly does flesh make us more prone to corruption then any other body God could have given us?

So what union with God are you referring to that Adam and Eve didn't already have in the garden?

Because, initially, it wasn't necessary. And making Adam and Eve immune to sin would have meant disabling their capacity to freely choose to love and obey God. The Christian believer's after-death immunity to sin has everything to do with their spiritual union with Christ, which is a feature of post-Calvary salvation.

So wouldn't making us immune to sin in Heaven still disable our capacity to freely love and obey God?

 

[alexiscurious]

That is true.

The statement was an oversimplification.

Lucifer sinned.

Adam and Eve sinned.

When the 6000 year sin "experiment" is over the universe will have been inoculated against sin. One reason for that can be seen in job 1 and Job 2.

in Christ,

Bob

They sinned, we sinned, so tell me how this sinful nature suddenly disappears like a magic trick once we are all in heaven?

 

[ChesterKhan]

But if this statement was actually true then Satan could not have possibly ever sinned in Heaven because God is there?

Same thing goes in the garden as well?

Again, the question comes down to: well, what is sin?

A lot of our Protestant brethren on the forums, well, I cannot say what they think sin is, aside from that which God dislikes. And for a Christian, that is a sufficient definition of sin.

But for someone who is trying to understand why sin is bad, such as yourself, such as myself, it will not do.

Aquinas did not begin with the question you asked - "What will prevent sin in Heaven?" - but whether God could exist, and what He was. Leaving you to discover Aquinas's five proofs, I will give you the results of his logic. Logically, Aquinas concluded, God must be something which 1) is the definition of existence, and therefore 2) must be "actual" - that is, as it should be, capable of being no different.

Also, as a result, time and space is very different for God than it is for us. He does not "choose" in the sense of moving back and forth between things, spatially or temporally, the way one might choose to sleep one hour in his bed and then eat the next hour in his kitchen 20 feet away.

So it is not possible for God, in His mode of existence, to be any different from what He Is. When we are "where" He is, so to speak, in His infinite, eternal Existence - for Existence is His defining quality - either we will share that, and will not be capable of being any different from His divine will (and ours with His), or we will hardly exist at all.

The difference between Heaven and Hell, is that in Heaven we are completely as we should be, and can be no different, for there, that is how things are. But in Hell, we will never be as we should be, or otherwise. We will be chasing an impossible lie forever.

Now, how the angels defected from God is a mystery to me. How they can be different from God when they are incorporeal is a mystery to me. But in the relation between man and God, the natural universe and God, this is what I learned from Aquinas.

 

[Emmy]

Dear alexiscurious. When Adam and Eve sinned while with God, it happened because Temptation got the better of them, and God knew the time had come for Adam and Eve, (our proto-types) to have to learn to Love God with heart, soul, and mind, Also: to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. That needed much heart-ache and time, to achieve, and the O.T. is full of the sins and wrong doings Mankind is able to.
In time Jesus our Saviour came and showed us God as God is REALLY.
God is Love and God wants Loving sons and daughters. Jesus told us:
Be ye perfect as God is perfect: ( Matthew 5: 48) Jesus also told us:
" The first and great Commandment is: Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. The second is like it: love our neighbour as ourselves. ( Matthew 22: 35-40: On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
Love is the Key to Heaven, and we were made in God`s image. Then came the fall, and we had to learn to be as God wants us to be: It took a long time, and is still not perfect yet, but Jesus our Saviour is helping and guiding us: JESUS IS THE WAY. I say this with love, alexiscurious. Greetings from Emmy, sister in Christ.

 

[aiki]

How exactly does flesh make us more prone to corruption then any other body God could have given us?

It isn't that our flesh is "prone to corruption" but that sin corrupts the sinner.

So what union with God are you referring to that Adam and Eve didn't already have in the garden?

They didn't possess the spiritual union with Christ that believers do today. A person who is born-again is placed "in Christ" and God's Spirit comes to live within that person. Adam and Eve had no such union.

So wouldn't making us immune to sin in Heaven still disable our capacity to freely love and obey God?

I'm not dogmatic about what I think concerning this issue but it seems to me that the Christian who is in heaven is not alleviated of their capacity to freely choose, but eternally confirmed in what they chose concerning God while on Earth. I am of the view that our choices produce a cumulative momentum, a force, that, as the choice is repeated, confirms us ever more firmly in the direction of that choice. We do initially have the genuine freedom to choose between things, but as we make choices in a particular direction our freedom to choose differently becomes increasingly constrained or bound by those choices. In effect, we become limited by our own free choices. I think this may be, at least in part, what is at work in confirming us so completely in our eternal destiny.

Selah.

 

[FireDragon76]

Adam and eve were ignorant, innocent, and naïve. Those in heaven presumably would not be ignorant or naïve. So they wouldn't be exactly like adam and eve in that way.

It's not so much that people in heaven can't sin, they would be unwilling to sin.