I’m not one for dancing on this side of death but I suppose I will indeed do some dancing in heaven. In fact, I’m sure I will delight in the glories of God by dancing.

It is true that dancing has gotten a bad rep through immorality and immodesty and of course this dishonors God. But it is God who made us to dance and our sinful nature that corrupted the dancing. The same way that eating, drinking, praying, and other religious function can also be corrupted.

This doesn’t mean that God did not ordain dancing. Instead God ordained it to be a joyful experience. Throughout history, God’s people have danced to the glory of God (Ecclesiastes 3:4; Jeremiah 31:12–14). Miriam along with the women of Israel danced and sang praises to God (Exodus 15:20–21). King David danced and celebrated before God (2 Samuel 6:16).

Needless to say this was all done on earth. How much more joyfully will we celebrate and dance to the glory of God in Heaven? It seems unimaginative that people will be so full of joy that it will be impossible for them to stop glorifying God. But this is what man was made for to glorify God and enjoy him forever. All those who are shy and quiet now will constantly delight in the Lord.

It almost sounds like a non-reality because that much joy seems so far fetch in the state that we are in. But in Heaven there will be joy unspeakable and praise unspeakable. Each day the intensity of God’s glory will be greater and greater and will result in more dancing and praising. Behold the infinite God!

Will There Be Dancing In Heaven?

For it is written “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her” (Ephesians 5:25–26). Christ has profound love for his people. Christ paid an enormous price (that will take us an eternity to comprehend) to give his church the greatest gift that God could ever give. And that gift is Himself in full glory. That is the treasure that a Christian values.

For when Christ prayed at the end of his life in John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” This too, will take us an eternity to comprehend; chasing after God’s glory.

The death of Christ is a demonstration of Christ’s own love for his people. It is written, “The Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). The death and sufferings of Christ indeed has to do with me. After all it was my sin that separates me from God. It wasn’t sin in general; it was my sin that I created. It was my own rebellion from God that deserves justice. Indeed I am lost and deserving of Hell. All I can do is beg and plead for God’s mercy.

It is the call of mercy and repentance that are among the church of Christ. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). “To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,” (John 1:12). To all those who acknowledge that they are lonely and miserable and in great need of Christ there is relief. To all those who acknowledge the corrupt state they are in and the terrifying wrath that abides upon them (John 3:36) there is peace. To all those who acknowledge that they are not good but totally depraved there is joy who believe and trust that Christ has appeased God’s wrath for them.

Christ died to secure an eternity for us to witness his own glory and holiness. He loved us so we may enjoy this through him. On the other side of death we will be fully sanctified as he promised (Ephesians 5:25–26) and see him as he is as it is written “we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

Motives Why Christ Died For Us: To Reveal His Love For Us

Some say that this is divine child abuse that a God would give up “his only Son.” But the Bible says this is love. For it is written, “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die– but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:7–8).” Notice that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This in of itself is just extraordinary. Christ died for wretched, miserable, vile, disgusting criminals. Would you die for a pedophile? Would you die for a murderer?

This is what Christ died for; pathetic, wicked, detestable, completely wasted, imperfect, rebellious man. The God of this universe who ordains the stars and planets and commands them to orbit these paths and structure themselves in their positions of the universe and spread themselves accordingly and they all obey in reverence. He orders the valleys to be cast down and the mountains to be lifted up and they all bow in reverence. He commands the seas to spread themselves out and come to this point and come no further and they bow in honor and reverence. Then he turns to man. He says, “Come.” Man says, “No, No! I will not!”

Do you see what God has done to save sinners? Why would he want to save a tiny planet of cosmic dust filled with wasted criminals? Does he not demand justice?

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Right there is justice. Someone had to carry out divine wrath. Christ the Son of God sacrificed himself to be carried out for the slaughter. Out of love and grace for the pitiful sinner and in spite of man’s worth God the father sacrificed his only son on that tree. Therefore man and God can be reconciled in full harmony, and man can glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Motives Why Christ Died For Us: To Reveal God’s Grace And Love For Sinners

John when he was taken up said this about music and singing, “And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.” John implies that there were new sounds (voices). John couldn’t hit the nail of what sound it was because there is nothing on earth that sounded like it. He could only pinpoint on what it sounds like as close as he can describe it as.

John also mentions the blowing of a trumpet. “Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them (Rev. 8:6). The first angel blew his trumpet (Rev. 8:7), the second angel blew his trumpet (Rev. 8:8), the third angel blew his trumpet” (Rev. 8:9). And so on. John also writes about a musical instrument called “harps of God” (Rev. 15:2). This could be referring to a regular harp that we know of but regardless there will be musical instruments in Heaven.

Not only there will be singing and the creation of new songs. We will also sing the songs that generations pass have sung even during the time of Moses. For John writes, “And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb” (Rev. 15:3).

There possibly even will be secular songs in heaven. Just as long if it doesn’t dishonor Christ. Even they childhood songs you sang when your mother taught you “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” If anything the songs and hymns that we sing today will either be theologically corrected or have more in depth meaning to them.

The Psalmist writes, “I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being” (Psalm 104:33). The Psalmist will have eternal life and will always have being. Singing praise to God will be a joyful experience to the creature and worship to the creator. For this is one of our purposes of our creation. The first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

I suppose each one of us will endure some kind of music ministry. We will all be some kind of musician before God and richly give thanks and praises. Our entire creativity will be in full throttle and our imaginations to worship Him will be endless.

Will There Be Music and Singing In Heaven?

New Year’s Day has become the closest thing to a global public holiday. For most of the world this is a day of New Year resolutions. In fact, according to The Barna Group, 61% of the nations (U.S.) population has made resolutions sometime during their lives and 41% will make resolutions for this 2011 year.

The term resolution is defined as a determination upon an action or resolving a course of action. In other words, people set this day apart to make commitments in their lives to achieve a goal whether it is related to health, financial, personal improvement, addictions, spirituality, educational, or job related. To put it more bluntly the majority of the world that sets resolutions make resolutions for their own selfish desires or passions. They commit themselves for the most part for more vain things. They take this day and use it to their own improvement in a destructive life.

The day my son was born on 1/1/2011. I was pondering over the decision of why God chose this day for him. I asked God, “What sets this day apart from the rest?” The answer came very suddenly.

During this past spring I’ve read a book by Steven Lawson on the life-long resolutions on Jonathan Edwards called “The Unwavering Resolve of Jonathan Edwards.” This book was a short but a very thoughtful book. For the most part this book gave me an idea of how to discipline myself towards godliness. It pursued me to think holiness and dedicate my life more to Christ and His ways in order to grow in sanctification. In other words, Jonathan Edwards was perhaps one of the greatest Christians that ever lived in the American west and most agree he was one of the greatest theologians that America has ever had. Not only this, but Jonathan Edwards lived a life of preparation in order to die. His life was dedicated to his death with the help of his 70 resolutions. This book gave me the thought of why God chose my son’s birth to be on New Year’s Day. The thought that suddenly came to me was “Resolved.”

Every birthday that my son will have it will be a reminder to me of the resolutions I make towards the training I persist of raising my boy to become Christ like. God chose this day in order to diligently train him up for His glory. This is my son in the flesh but he is God’s. I am simply the steward of this precious boy that God has created for Himself.

In the book of Deuteronomy it is written, “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (6:6–7).

My first resolution to my son for the glory of God is “Resolved, to teach him diligently God’s word and truth.”

Resolved, To Teach Him Diligently

Let’s suppose that Satan took a vacation and God decided to turn us over to who we are. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of the bodies among themselves” (Romans 1:24). “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.” (Romans 1:26). “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Romans 1:26–28). Let me point out that “God gave them up.”

If Satan took a vacation along with all his demons and God gave us up to our own lusts and passions of our wicked hearts. We would make life a chaos. We would fill up the bars, clubs, allow pure evil. In fact Paul writes that there will be gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless people at every corner (1:30).

The problem is not directly at Satan, it is you and me. The Bible declares that every intention of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5). Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked;” (17:9). Jesus Himself declares that, “out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7:21–22).

Now let’s put Satan back into the equation and the grace of God who holds us back from being as corruptible as we are. In other words, without God holding you back with pure grace you would make Adolf Hitler look-like an innocent choir boy singing the “Jesus loves me” song.

If Satan took over a town, the town wouldn’t be chaotic as I mention previously. Remember that Satan is known as crafty (Gen. 3:1) and “the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12:9). Satan doesn’t want us to know how evil, corrupt and unholy we are. Satan doesn’t want us to know that there is a way to be reconciled with God. Satan really doesn’t want people to be bad. I suppose that he doesn’t really care if we are bad or good. Good referring as one who meets the cultures standard of morality. Because there will be a lot of good people going to Hell.

Satan’s perfect take over will look like this. There will be no clubs, bars, or partying. Pornography, drugs, prostitution and gangs will be off the streets. Everyone will have great houses if not their dream house, perfect and comfortable jobs with high salaries. Men and women that get everything they want for their big houses, cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats, and off road terrain vehicles, you name it they get it. Families will go on wonderful vacation several times a year. Children will go to the best schools money can buy. The churches will be completely full every Sunday with great activity and entertainment during the week and the preaching will be great, inspirational, man centered, God loves you attitude, how to live your best life now motto.

Does this really sound like Satan’s take over? It sounds like a lot of communities, neighborhoods and churches close to where I live and maybe where you live too. Satan wants you to have your joyous “best life now.” Because what he is cunning up is one heck of an evil scheme. In his perfect take-over of your town the Gospel of Jesus Christ will not be preached!

Satan’s Perfect Take Over of a Town

“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins”

But the truth is that Christ was resurrected “from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Romans 6:4). And if we trust in His completed work then we shall have eternal life with Him so that “we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will” (Hebrews 13:20–21). When the scriptures speak about Jesus’ blood, it refers to His death. His death is what was accomplished for salvation to everyone who believes, not His blood. It was His bleeding to death, not just blood-shedding. The scriptures speak of Christ being raised from the dead after He shed His blood, but “by the blood” (Hebrews 13:20).

The wrath of God was propitiated with Christ’s suffering and death. The curse against sin was absorbed. The price of forgiveness was paid. The obedience of Jesus was completed and the righteousness of God was vindicated. Now it was time for the declaration of God’s endorsement by raising Jesus Christ from the grave.

“Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:27–28). “The blood of the eternal covenant” (Hebrews 13:20) is the covenant of His death which by He accomplished and rewarded resurrection.

If one trusts in Christ for His work of what He has done. The sinner sins are not simply forgotten by God. They are paid for and imputed on Christ’s work by His death. In other words, God took those sins and charged them to Jesus and through His death and resurrection it was all paid for. For God commands all to repent and believe and trust in Christ for His accomplish work on the cross.

Motives Why Christ Died For Us: To Accomplish His Own Resurrection

“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”

God’s love can be shown by the degree of our unworthiness. He tells the stars in the sky to go to their locations He has ordained them to be and they all obey. He tells the mountains to rise and the valleys to sink and they all bow in reverence. He tells the planets to orbit this path and they obey. He tells the great seas of the earth to come this far and come no more and the bow. And He turns to man; and He says “come.” And man says “no, I will not.” We deserve divine punishment but God shown divine sacrifice.

If you consider the distance between human and the divinity of God; this is sacrifice. Jesus Christ is the Son of God and He humbled Himself to a lowly creature such as man that is not even worth the dirt. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

God “gave his only son” (John 3:16), Jesus Christ. This is a name established on the Greek label Christos, or “Messiah” or “Anointed One.” Thus God sent His only Son who was divine anointed King over the world (Isaiah 9:6–7). Imagine one of our greatest presidents or government leaders sacrificing for a handful of Adolf Hitler’s. But this is such a bad analogy because we humans can’t imagine the unworthiness of ourselves and the holiness of God. God is transcendent separated from us.

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7). And God’s grace is full of riches. His grace is entirely free. God’s grace is not a response of our worth because we are not worthy but only deserve wrath. Yet, God’s grace is not a response of our unworthiness. God gave us grace because He chose. He loved us because He loved us.

Motives Why Christ Died For Us: To Demonstrate God’s Love and His Grace

Most of the world tries to keep God in His infancy in which He is cute, adorable, tender, sweet, etc. They want to keep God in a place in which they rule over Him by His infancy. The world loves this Jesus. This Jesus that they create is not God. They simply create this Jesus in the own infringement of their imaginations. The world accepts Christmas so easily because the Jesus that they invent doesn’t say things like; “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21) or “For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (Matt. 23:15) even when He says “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). The world doesn’t want a Jesus who makes offensive and authoritative remarks about their corrupted hearts.

God in a manger

Christmas is about Jesus Christ’s deity; not about His infancy. The humility that God took on by becoming fully man and being born into this world, yet at the same time fully God — all powerful and all wise. All seems to be unexplainable. That God came to become an infant without forsaking His deity and divine nature is incredible. This was a true act of humility to become a lowly of a creature like man.

Paul, in Colossians 1:15–20 pens about the essence of Jesus’ divine nature, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Paul was saying that Jesus Christ is an image of God. The Greek word translated “image” means a duplicate, a precise copy, a perfect replica. The baby in that manger approximately 2,000 years ago was indeed God incarnate, simply God who was manifested in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Christmas story is that Jesus Christ who is God; humbled and lowered Himself to become fully man and not forsaking His own deity. Christmas is focusing not on the infancy of Jesus but the deity of Jesus; the God – Man.

The True Meaning of Christmas

Jesus Christ has been tempted the same that we have but Jesus did not sin (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus Christ was sinless. Even though He was the divine Son of God He was still human with all the appetites and physical weaknesses we have. Christ had hunger (Matt. 21:18), pain (Matt. 17:12), grief and anger (Mark 3:5). But Christ’s heart was in perfect love with God.

“Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, designated by God a high priest…” (Hebrews 5:8–10). Jesus Christ became the high priest to act on behalf of men in relation to God to be the sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 5:1) in order for those that trust in His work to be given eternal life. In doing so, Jesus Christ had to be perfect and obedient.

It is not that Jesus had to stop disobeying to “learn obedience” or become an obedient son. When Jesus “learned obedience” (Hebrews 5:8) this refers to that each trial Jesus faced He learned in practice and in pain what obeying means.

“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10). Jesus Christ didn’t suffer to get rid of defects in Him or was gradually cleaning Himself from corruptfulness. Jesus wasn’t corrupt or defected. Jesus suffered in order to fulfill the perfect righteousness that He had to have so He may save us.

This is what Jesus was referring to in His baptism “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15). Jesus did not need to be baptized because He was a sinner. It is to fulfill the perfect righteousness that He had to have so He may save us.

His suffering not only fulfilled the perfect righteousness but it also fulfilled His true humanity to be able to call us brothers and sisters. “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17).

Motives Why Christ Died For Us: Jesus Wanted To Be Perfect and Learn Obedience