Forward to the New Creation
A great boost toward that end and a greater sense of purpose in enduring evil and suffering will be ours when we turn our focus away from the paradise lost and toward the new creation to be gained. This theme resounds throughout the Bible. Paul states it succinctly in his letter to believers at Philippi:
“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
Because the new creation is outside of our present natural reality and thus impossible to visualize, pressing toward it seems difficult to maintain at times. Many students in the classroom setting on both sides of the lectern are students who look forward to years of exciting research and discovery in whatever science they are enrolled in and yet they consider a few semesters of “torment” a small price to pay for the thrills that lie ahead. Those who have greatest difficulty in handling the “torment” and for whom the semesters seem to drag on have no great anticipation for such thrills. They are just preparing to support themselves and perhaps a family.
To have a clear vision of the reward ahead can be helpful, but we need more than that to spur us onward. Unless we place a high personal value on the reward, we will resent or perhaps seek escape from the pain and evil involved in reaching it. To latch onto the Christian faith because someone else thinks the new creation makes a superb travel destination will not get us through the tough times. We must want to go there for our own personal and thus spiritual reasons. The author of Hebrews points to Jesus’ life as a prime example of anticipation’s impact:
“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (Hebrews 12:2-3).
We cannot see as clearly and directly as Jesus did the joy that awaited Him at the end of His sufferings, but neither are we called upon to suffer as He did. We may endure hardship and persecution at the hands of evildoers, but most of the people who have suffered most intensely, including Russian and Chinese believers imprisoned for years and tortured horribly, have expressed emphatically that these sufferings, as awful as they were, “are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). These individuals, even without a perfect view of the reward awaiting them, had enough tangible evidence of its reality and a sufficient taste of its quality, to place a high personal value on it. Therefore, they endured.
We can all do more to enhance our capacity for endurance and enthusiasm for the difficulty of life’s training program. Though we cannot in our natural and limited thinking visually picture the physical characteristics of the heavenly realm beyond our earthly existence, we can exercise our spiritual capacity, our eyes of faith, to examine all the clues given in Scripture and develop a composite of its spiritual characteristics. Such an exercise can only (and richly!) increase our hope and anticipation for what soon awaits us.
“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).
We can look at evil and suffering as a boot camp as it were for the final destiny in our travels to the new creation in the heavenly Kingdom. That thought should inspire us to keep looking up and moving forward.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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