1 John 3:2 “Dear friends, now we are the children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

There are question marks about our future. But they are not because we suffer any uncertainty that we will have one, or that it will be wonderful. There are those who have no such confidence. In some faiths, people live with no certainty of the life to come. In Islam, even the imams say that no one can be certain. A clever Christian once spoke to a Muslim friend about this. “You have life insurance for your family?” he asked his friend. “Yes, I do,” his friend replied. “You pay all your premiums?” “Of course I do.” You are sure that if you die the insurance company is going to pay?” “I have no reason to doubt it.” “So here you are, putting all this time and effort into your religion, and you aren’t sure if it will ‘pay’ in the end. It sounds to me like your insurance company is more reliable than your god!”

We are already the children of God, now. Heavenly perfection is the next thing waiting for us. But what does “perfection” look like? I have never seen it. We tend to redefine it. Do you know what it means in baseball that a pitcher pitches a perfect game? It means that after nine innings, a complete game, not one member of the other team reached first base safely. In the history of the sport, 140 years, there have been 23 “perfect games” pitched. But it doesn’t mean the pitcher pitched all strikes. It doesn’t mean that no batter ever made contact with the ball. That level of perfection has never been reached.

What would perfect behavior look like, coming from a perfect heart? It’s easy to identify some things as sins. We can easily exclude the big and obvious ones, as the Bible itself often does in describing heaven. But what would it look like to live completely untainted by any selfish thought, any loveless moment?

What would it look like to enjoy perfect health? Of course there would be no sickness, pain, or injury. But what would it be like to have a body perfectly nourished, perfectly rested, perfectly exercised, perfectly breathing, digesting, circulating, thinking? I believe that God doesn’t give us more details about the life to come because there is nothing to which to compare it in all our experience. It would be like trying to explain calculus and trigonometry to an earthworm.

But he gives us this hint: “…we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Now we are called the children of God. And if that is what God calls us, then that is what we are.

But a day is coming when we will be completely transformed. We won’t be God. But we shall be so like him that it is the best way to try to describe our future. There is nothing on earth to compare our future existence. There is one thing in heaven to which to compare it, and that is God himself. He is the picture of the perfection he promises will be ours.