While I first read the idea that in the New Heavens and New Earth we will enjoy a sort of fullness of our nationality with interest, I now find the idea somewhat silly. The idea goes something like this. I find deep meaning in my citizenship in the USA or in Canada, and the scriptures suggest that such a loyalty and affection for my land is a good thing. In the new heavens and the new earth, God will not destroy good things such as our bodies, our relationships, or the things our bodies enjoy such as food, drink, art, music, or study. It would make sense then, that we would enjoy a perfect form of the nations we are part of. We will retain our national identities, perhaps even enjoy a perfect form of the land we currently live in, while at the same time, praise God as citizens in the Empire of Christ.
I argue that such a view fails to understand the fundamental purposes of nations in the economy of God. Nations are good. It is good to be patriotic, to love one’s own nation and one’s own people, but this is a temporary good. We are moving toward a greater good. And to do so we must be transformed. I used to be a citizen of Toronto and that will always be a part of me. Following that I went to Niverville and sought to participate in the civic life there. I am now in Fort St. John and I seek the good of that city because it is my own. I do not completely leave behind my identity, but I am transformed through it to something better. I believe that that is what it means to be a member of Christ’s kingdom.
I don’t lose my identity as a Canadian as I enter the new heavens and new earth. I retain the goodness of that background, but I move beyond that identity to something bigger and fuller, which existing as a Canadian cannot fill.
But I do not merely seek to prove this through probabilities. There is stronger evidence to be found in an analogy to marriage. Marriage is good. God created marriage, but it is something temporary. When I die, I am not longer a married man. Death severs earthly relationships. Paul says so in Romans 7, “For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.” Marriage, even good marriages, have an end date.
And they are not resumed in heaven. When questioned about the possibility of a woman in marriage with more than one husband in heaven, because of the death of her husband here on earth, Jesus says, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.”
Marriage, one of the most unique bonds we experience here on earth is not renewed in heaven. This doesn’t mean your marriage was for nothing within God’s economy. Rather, it was a temporary good; a good to love and rejoice in for a time. Just as childhood and youth are temporary goods, something to rejoice in for a time, until you embrace a wife, at which time you you die to what you were before and you become something else. It is the same with entering heaven, you die marriage, and in that you are transformed from the glory of marriage to something greater than marriage, something we do not experience yet.
I can sum it up this way. Just as marriage will be transformed so that it no longer can properly be called marriage, so nation will be transformed that it is no longer properly referred to as nation.
If one of the greatest bonds we enjoy here on earth is ended in our death, how can we claim that weaker bonds like that of nation remain on us. There is a real sense, in which we already do that. My family is from a Dutch background, though we keep some of the uniquenesses of that Dutch identity, our calling is to embrace and participate in our new reality, Canada. Likewise, though we may question the wisdom of Immigration policy, the fact is that the Lord has willed to bring this about, and we must seek to create new bonds and build new bodies with those who come, and so the nation changes and transforms.
This is perhaps where the belief that nations are eschatological is at its most unhelpful. Nations are not permanent. Nations die. Who speaks of the Aztec nation anymore? What about the Vandal Nation? What about the Huns? The Assyrian Nation, the Babylonian nation? Israel, the one nation we know a lot about, died twice. She first died in the 7th century B.C. where. It was God who raised her up again: A shoot shall spring from Jesse.
She died again in the first century, but she was raised, renewed in the ressurection of Jesus Christ, and she was transformed into the church. It is only the power of God that raises up his people every time they are close to death. Other nations died.
The idea that nations are somehow permanent leads us to strange places where people try to preserve some idealized version of their nation, that for one, never existed, for another, cannot exist; certainly not anymore. So, for example the first nations here in Canada, often live according to the past, remembering what they once were, seeking to revive a culture that no longer exists and likely cannot exist. Now with the rise of things like Kinism and Nationalism, white people are enabled to do that too. It’s not going to do us any better than it does the first nations.
This also breeds peculiar beliefs such as those who seek to restore the solemn league and covenant, as if that did not die when Charles the Second came to the throne, perhaps even before that. And if not then, it definitely died when the Stuart line ended with the beginning of the reign of William and Mary.
This also tends to breed peculiar beliefs about the nation of Israel as if it is still alive today, as if that nation has some special place. Sure, they have resurrected a nation called Israel, but apart from Christ their is no continuity with that past.
Christ points us toward a future of eternal life. Let us enjoy the goods of the present without seeking to make them eternal. Nations are good. I enjoy being a Canadian. I like the Canadian flag. I have one on my house. I enjoy the cultural products of Canada, ice hockey, maple syrup, and poutine. I like it that Canadians are polite. I desire the good of Canada. I want them to recognize Christ. Let us love our nations and seek their good, without seeking to crystalize our experience into a perfect moment. Nations are no more eternal than marriage is eternal. We ought to delight in the blessings of our nation, even as we delight in the blessings of our marriages. But only God’s kingdom is eternal.
Man was made to mature and to grow, let us not go back to childhood by seeking to eternalize a given nation. Let us instead seek to grow into the kingdom of God, ever-increasing in our willingness to grow in our bond with every tongue, tribe and nation, and so find our future in the family of God, rather than human families.