On Sinning in Heaven

Over at Stand to Reason, Jonathan Noyes handles the question “How did Satan sin in heaven if you can’t sin in heaven?” along with its worrisome corollary, “Will it be possible for me to sin in heaven?” His daughter texted him the queries from school one day, giving rise to a blog post on a subject I’ve never given a single moment’s thought. But it’s a perfectly reasonable question, so now I’m giving it a moment myself.

Okay, there are definitely a couple of red herrings to avoid along the way, but let’s try to get to the core of it.

Location, Location, Location

Noyes had me worried at first, as he looked like he was heading down the same rabbit trail that initially tempted me, and that’s the issue of location. He starts by distinguishing the heavenly realm of “eternity past”, if we can call it that (in which Satan sinned), from the future eternal kingdom promised to the believer (in which we will not).

I call that a red herring because it’s merely an issue of spiritual geography and, if so, it doesn’t help us with the second question. Satan didn’t sin because he inhabited a particular location with a hitherto undiscovered vulnerability of design that God has now managed to remedy. Nor did Satan sin because of the type of rule God exercised there. His problem was neither environmental nor related to the manner in which God expresses his sovereignty.

Eternity Where?

Another red herring, though it’s worth commenting on briefly: sinning “in heaven” won’t be a long-term issue for me, because I don’t plan to be there much longer than it takes to appear before the judgment seat of Christ and celebrate the marriage supper of the Lamb. If we read the end of Revelation carefully, we have Christ’s millennial reign on planet earth, followed by the great white throne judgment, followed by the new heaven and the new earth. Then comes the New Jerusalem, “down out of heaven from God”. Down to where? Presumably down to the new earth, where the dwelling place of God is no longer heaven, but “with man” for eternity.

Again, however, this is simply a matter of geography. It’s a side issue and a distraction from the change that really matters. Nothing about a city prepared by the Lord Jesus for his people presupposes its nature or beauty may cure (or was ever intended to cure) the chronic problem of sin in the human heart. So then, where Satan sinned is not the issue, and transporting human beings to an eternal kingdom instead of a Garden of Eden is not the answer we need.

Fully Glorified

To his credit, Noyes eventually gets there, pointing out that “God fully glorifies those who enter” the eternal dwelling he calls heaven and scripture calls the New Jerusalem. That’s the bottom line, isn’t it. “When he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

That’s never said of Satan. Satan determined to make himself “like the Most High”, but could not do it. No created being ever could. Further, he sought to emulate the wrong aspects of the Most High, looking only at his power and position rather than his person. In terminology coined by Jonathan Edwards, Satan saw God’s “natural perfections” but never understood or aspired to his “moral perfections”. He coveted the wrong sort of likeness to God.

John is not talking about that sort of likeness when he says, “we shall be like him”. Certainly, we will reign with him, but the power and position he promises us are not the goal, merely a by-product of reaching it. John means we will be like the Lord Jesus in character. Our thoughts and desires will be compatible with his. We will not sin because we will want what he wants and value what he values. Hebrews refers to this coming transformation as making “perfect” the spirits of the righteous.

The Nature of Christ

Unlike Satan, the Lord Jesus is full of humility. Where Satan cried, “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds”, the Lord Jesus, who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant”. He aspired to go the opposite direction. To become like him for eternity of necessity excludes the character flaw that destroyed Satan and will banish him from the presence of God forever. Ascending above the heights of the clouds is his good pleasure and desire only because his Father delights to give it to him.

We will not sin in eternity. It will not be because of our environment but because of the changes wrought within us, changes of which we have only a little taste during the present era. In the face of such a sweeping and permanent character transformation, it will be unnecessary to use words like “allow” in the New Jerusalem. For that matter, you may have noticed that the word “law” is entirely absent from these final chapters of the book of Revelation.

Rules are superfluous to hearts overflowing with the love of Christ.