Why does the Lord name him our Father in heaven? Surely this points to his uniqueness as Father. God is not like earthly fathers, who may know how to give good things to their children  but yet are so far from perfect (Matt. 7:11). He is the Father of lights (James 1:17). He is the Father of spirits (Heb. 12:9). He is the Father of glory (Eph. 1:17). Yet at the same time, as we can see from the rest of the prayer, God is not a distant deity. Donald W. Shriver, Jr., calls this ‘the bond of tender supremacy.’

Besides the greatness of God, the second presupposition of the Lord’s Prayer, as it is throughout the Bible, is that we live in a fallen world. While still God’s creation, and to be respected and enjoyed as such, the world has nevertheless been infected by a great cancer. Evil has invaded the world, and the chief cause is…the human being. The term the Bible most often uses to describe our own evil is sin. Simply speaking, sin is going against God’s standards, either by transgression or omission. Sadly, one of the most dreadful consequences of this condition is that God cannot be seen and enjoyed as he once was by our first parents in the Garden. The good news of the gospel is that God devised a way for us to return to that unbroken fellowship. One day, we shall see him face to face. But for now things are dark and murky (1 Cor. 13:12). Our Father is in heaven, which means at least in one sense, that he is not on earth.

How Do We Locate Heaven?

So, where is heaven? Since the nineteenth century this term has become increasingly subjective, or just vague. Meant to give comfort, it lacks reality.  And after the twentieth century, with its unprecedented destructiveness, heaven became nearly absent from most discourse. Biblically, heaven can mean atmosphere around us. The rain and the snow comes down from heaven (Isa. 55:9–11) Or it can mean the realm above the earth. The celestial heavens, sometimes translated the ‘firmament,’ refer to what we might call today ‘outer space,’ where the stars and the galaxies are (Gen. 1:14, Heb. 1:10).

Here, and in so much of the New Testament, heaven refers to the dwelling place of God. To use theological terms, God is transcendent and immanent. While we are told that ‘the heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain God’ (1 Kgs. 8:27), that God lives in a ‘high and holy place’ (Isa. 57:15), and that he is ‘The Lord, the God of heaven’  (2 Chron. 36:23; Dan. 2:37), yet also we are told that God is everywhere (he is immanent). While it is best not to try and think of heaven primarily in spatial terms, the image of the tabernacle, or the temple, or the sanctuary, that is, a dwelling place, is often used to describe where God lives (Heb. 8:22; Ex. 25:8). The most important consideration about heaven, in this sense, is the person who occupies it, and what effect the occupant has on us. Indeed, at times heaven is a synonym for God, as we people are described  as ‘looking up to heaven’ (Matt. 14:19; Luke 9:16). Jesus himself came down from heaven, and returned to it (John 6:42; Acts 1:11). Heaven is the place where the angelic beings surround the throne of God (Ps. 148:2; Rev. 4:1–20; 11:19).

The kingdom of heaven, as we have seen, is the realm where God is present, where he rules, with all of his glory. It is the realm where all of the benefits we may have received from him are generate. This is the primary sense in which Our Lord used the term. Later in this prayer, he tells us to ask God’s will be done, “on earth, as it is in heaven,” clearly implying that things here below are not as they should be, nor as they soon shall be (Matt. 6:10). Throughout the Gospels, Jesus refers to God either as his own heavenly Father, or as our heavenly Father, or the heavenly Father (Matt. 15:13; 18:35; Luke 11:13; etc.). In this Sermon, four times he calls God ‘your heavenly Father,’ or the equivalent (5:16, 45; 6:1; 7:11), once ‘our Father who is in heaven’ (here in the Lord’s Prayer) and once ‘my heavenly Father’ (7:21). He identifies God in the same ways many times elsewhere. So the Father is in heaven.

Heaven is also the place to which the Lord brings believers. We are now in the heavenly places, and one day, at the resurrection, we shall be there fully and perfectly. We have here the famous ‘already-not-yet’ that characterizes so much in our Christian lives. In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul uses the expression ‘the heavenlies’ several times (1:3, 1:20; 2:6; 6:12). The heavenlies are where Christ went after his resurrection and ascension, where he now sits at God’s right hand and rules over every power and name (Eph. 1:20–21). God raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Christ in the heavenlies (2:6). This is to show us the extravagance of his gifts. Thus Paul says of us we already are in the heavenly places receiving now the blessings of God through our union with  Jesus Christ (1:3).

Whenever the gospel is preached, not only earthly creatures like us hear and are affected, but heavenly ones as well.

The heavenlies are also a work in progress. Not everything that will be settled in the new heavens and new earth is now already settled. Thus, again in Ephesians, we are told there are rulers and authorities in the heavenlies that need to hear about Christ’s rule (3:10). The thought is astonishing: whenever the gospel is preached, not only earthly creatures like us hear and are affected, but heavenly ones as well. And significantly, we believers are doing battle not chiefly against visible forces, but against heavenly powers (6:12). We must be careful neither to minimize this teaching, nor over-dramatize it. On the one hand, many Christians do not take the supernatural seriously, and do not calculate its reality into their worldview. They do this at their peril. Instead, they need to be apprised of the full force of darkness, as well as the full armor of God they have been given not only to resist but to overcome it. In the words of dual authors E.K. Simpson and F.F. Bruce, “What fell embodiements of force and fraud, leagued against the Lord’s Anointed, the noble army of Christian martyrs and confessors have been fortified to face!” On the other hand, some think they see a devil behind every bush, and blame everything from being overweight to smoking on demons. The Christian life is one of willpower, a mental, physical combat against temptations and sinful inclinations. To be sure this fight is conducted by faith, not relying on our merit, but on the strength Christ will give us. But we cannot lazily blame everything on demonic forces nor minimize our own responsibility.

The Coming Kingdom 

The words heaven, heavenly places, kingdom of heaven, thus refer to a realm that is transcendent, above and beyond the earthly or visible world, but yet deeply affecting our world. The heavenly kingdom is the place from which God exercises his power. But it is also a place where spiritual beings are trying to destroy God’s work. Only faith can fully recognize the reality of heaven in its various expressions. That is why Jesus says to Nicodemus, ‘If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?’ (John 3:12). Here he was calling the new birth an ‘earthly thing,’ because the rabbi Nicodemus should have known about it, based on his understanding of the Old Testament. Heavenly things would include the final appearance of the kingdom of God, the glorious rule of God and other such matters. But they would especially include what Jesus said next to Nicodemus: the Son of Man would descend from heaven, become accursed for the sake of his people, and then be able to ascend back to heaven, his people coming with him, having been saved from the curse they deserved (John 3:13–14).

In the end, believers will enjoy the new heavens and the new earth (Isa. 66:22) God is the creator of this final realm (Isa. 65:17). There will be the New Jerusalem, which has the tree of life available for the nations (Rev. 22:2). Again, the most important feature of the new heavens and the new earth is the presence of God, by whose light all the nations will walk (Rev. 21:22–24). God’s servants will see his face there (Rev. 22:4).

It would therefore be a profound error the characterize heaven as a foggy, contentless or ideal reality in a Platonic way. Heavenly things are not less, but more contentful than earthly things. If there is discontinuity between the things of earth and the things of heaven there is also continuity. Paul is anxious to shed his earthly body and enjoy the heavenly body that we shall one day put on (1 Cor. 15:40; 2 Cor. 5:2). There is a future heaven, into which we shall be safely placed at the right time (2 Tim. 4:18). But he also spoke of being in the heavenlies now, and experience its blessings, as well as the battles of heaven now. Similarly, the author of the Hebrews makes the contrast between heaven and earth, but he also alludes to our experiencing the full reality of heaven now (Heb. 9:23).

This post was adapted from William Edgar, A Transforming Vision: The Lord’s Prayer as a Lens for Life (Christian Focus Publications, 2014), 77–81. Used with permission of the publisher.

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